Although the news may seem a bit trivial, with war and economic chaos flaring in the background of the global stage, Disney leaving Russia will have the same mental and physical benefits as McDonald’s and Pornhub saying their goodbyes to Europe’s largest consumer market.

One of the results of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine has been a number of Western companies abandoning Russia, some temporarily, some for good. This odious display of corporate virtue-signaling, conspicuously absent during the U.S.-led wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria, by the way, represents a setback not only for Russia, but the global economy. However, there is at least one silver lining to the ‘walk-out’ that should be celebrated, and that is how Russians will get a reprieve, maybe a permanent one, from the degenerate brain candy of Western entertainment, notably from the Disney Corporation. Disney’s preponderant footprint in Russia includes local productions and television channels, the licensing of content and consumer products, cruises, magazine and tours, among other business.

Marvel to introduce first transgender woman to franchise in Disney Plus series Ironheart https://t.co/zvlksw7L2D

— World News (@worldnewstweet_) April 6, 2022

The Walt Disney Company was founded in 1923 by brothers Walt and Roy Disney. Over the course of successive generations, Disney became a household name with famous animated productions – from Mickey Mouse (1928) to The Lion King (1994) – that touched the lives of audiences everywhere. It even played a patriotic role in wartime. In 1943, as the Allied forces had their hands full with Adolf Hitler, Disney studios even put out an anti-Nazi propaganda short film, featuring Donald Duck, entitled ‘Der Fuehrer’s Face.’ For many years, the positive influence Disney had on children and adults was never in doubt. But then America began to lose its mind, which had the effect of tarnishing the Disney brand.

So what went wrong with Disney and why should Russians rejoice to see it leaving? Sadly, this is no longer the same company that millions of people over the years have come to associate with family fun, outstanding morals and wholesome entertainment. That innocent golden age of America is a fading memory that won’t be coming back anytime soon, if ever. This transnational corporation has evolved into an entertainment leviathan that has very little in common with ‘Russian values,’ or even American for that matter. A large part of the blame must go to the ‘progressive’ tenets of so-called ‘Cultural Marxism’ that have been simmering below the surface of American society for decades, ever since the arrival of the Frankfurt School, which included sociologists at the cutting edge of ‘critical theory’ like Theodor Adorno, Max Horkeimer and Herbert Marcuse.

The rotten fruit of their collective endeavors became particularly noticeable with the election of Donald Trump, an unexpected turn of events that made Liberals lose their minds and seek out vengeance on conservative, God-fearing Americans. Thus, the Democrats propped up radical left-wing freshmen progressives in their ranks known as ‘The Squad’ (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan), who, together with a complicit media and many other actors, got to work pushing warped ideas onto the American cultural scene and beyond. Thus it should surprise exactly no one that a company with as much clout and influence as Disney was not going escape the social justice warriors and their sick and deranged commitment to ‘cancel culture.’

The “don’t say gay” bill is really a “don’t talk about sex” to kids bill. If you have an issue with it, you’re creepy. End of story.

— Arielle Scarcella (@ArielleScarcell) April 6, 2022

Much of the mental junk food that is being injected into American society across the board is loaded with questions on sexuality, which once upon a time were the sole purview of parents and their children, preferably behind closed doors. Today, government, schools and corporations have come to believe that it is their duty to educate children on biology, sex and gender, with particular emphasis on the latter term. Thus, children are being indoctrinated not with ‘normal’ biological relationships between male and female that the bulk of humanity has practiced since the beginning of time (and explains why we are here in the first place thanks to ‘natural’ reproduction between opposite sexes).

#MarvelStudios is reportedly casting an actress to play a Black, Latina or Afro-Latina transgender character in the #Ironheart Disney+ series! Full details: https://t.co/ZKX75FQjtF pic.twitter.com/MtgVQL2A8s

— MCU – The Direct (@MCU_Direct) March 30, 2022

Rather, at the very youngest ages, youth are receiving lessons in transgenderism, alternative sexual lifestyles, even the occasional trip to the library for ‘Drag Queen Story Hour.’ In some states, school libraries stock reading material – complete with graphic images – that attempt to normalize pedophilia. This is what the left in the U.S. considers to be ‘progressive,’ and this is the insanity that is heading for the rest of the world – inside the Trojan Horse of Disney.

In March 2020, the LA Times elatedly reported on the news that Disney released a film (not under any sort of external pressure, of course) that featured “at least one queer cyclops.” Apparently the sexual proclivities of the other cyclops were not so obvious. In any case, the line (spoken by a female) that the Times got all worked up over went as follows: “My girlfriend’s daughter got me pulling my hair out.” It seems that people can no longer toss around words like ‘girlfriend’ without there being some sort of sexual connotation. Some people would call that the product of a ‘sick mind.’

Last year, Disney Pixar Studios “made history” once again, according to The Banner, by featuring more LGBTQ+ characters “including a minor lesbian character in the movie ‘Onward’ and their first gay couple in their short film, ‘Out.’”

The examples of other film productions dripping in sexual allusions could be continued for many more pages, but I think the point is made. Just as it is with every institution in the United States – from elementary school to the U.S. military – a disproportional amount of attention is being given to sex when it isn’t necessary. Interestingly, the impetus for such productions is not emanating from a wellspring of public demand; the push for such “diversity” is coming from the top, as seen in the Fortune 500 list that now places heavy emphasis on such issues.

It should surprise nobody that the Disney Company is appearing as a microcosm of the United States at large – two sides politically at war with each other, which is exactly the sort of scenario the elite wishes to engender since it further erodes the fragile bonds that hold society and nuclear families together. This month, a group of Disney employees who do not share the same “progressive orthodoxy” of their left-leaning peers that they say has cultivated an “environment of fear” for more conservative employees.

“The Walt Disney Company has come to be an increasingly uncomfortable place to work for those of us whose political and religious views are not explicitly progressive,” the letter reads. “We watch quietly as our beliefs come under attack from our own employer, and we frequently see those who share our opinions condemned as villains by our own leadership.”

The letter comes as Disney management struggles to conciliate employees who assert the company hasn’t done enough to halt a Florida law that forbids teachers from discussing “LGBTQ topics like sexual orientation or gender identity with students in third grade or below.”

While this may be the ‘new norm’ in the West, Russia now finds itself at a magical moment, as it were, where it can forever shut the door to a rudderless company that finds itself promoting ideas that are totally at odds with Russian values and beliefs, while posing great harm to the psychological state of children.

 “No, there is a limit to the tyrant’s power! When the oppressed man finds no justice, When the burden grows unbearable, he appeals with fearless heart to heaven, and thence brings down his everlasting rights, which there abide, inalienably his, and indestructible as stars themselves. The primal state of nature reappears, wherein man confronts his fellow man; and if all other means shall fail his need, one last resort remains—his own good sword. The dearest of our goods we may defend, From violence. We stand before our country, We stand before our wives, before our children!

We want to be a single band of brothers, Never to part in danger or distress. We want to be free, as our fathers were, And rather die than live in slavery. We want to trust in the one highest God, And never be afraid of human power.”

“The Rütli Oath”, Friedrich Schiller’s “Wilhelm Tell”

On March 1^st, Valery Gergiev was dropped by his manager and fired from his position as Chief Director of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra by Munich Mayor Dieter Reiter, for not denouncing Russia over its military intervention into Ukraine. Gergiev’s former manager Marcus Felsner stated to The Guardian that the Russian conductor is “the greatest conductor alive and an extraordinary human being with a profound sense of decency,” but he was unable to “publicly end his long-expressed support for a regime that has come to commit such crimes.”

The question is, who is the biggest loser in all of this? That is, who will suffer the greatest loss culturally from the voluntary dismissal of “the greatest conductor alive”?

No decent human being longs for war. War has historically been recognized as the weapon, the tool of the tyrant. To threaten force upon a people, a civilization and risk its destruction, only to usurp a temporary and precarious throne is rightfully seen as the ambitions of a mad man.

The question is, to whose mad ambitions and designs of war are we, as a global populace, held hostage? That is, who is the tyrant? And who are the upholders of liberty, who have a right to “defend from violence” by their “own good sword”?

Many of you may be wondering what is the “Rütli Oath” and who is Friedrich Schiller?

Well, that is exactly the point. If you do not know, you have been robbed of something and it was done consciously so that you should not know, or remember such things. A citizenry that wishes to be free and would “rather die than live in slavery” and “never be afraid of human power” is certainly not acceptable storytelling for children, let alone adults, in a world where we do not have a right to choose what the future holds.

Schiller is in many ways, the forgotten Shakespeare of Germany.

Today, we can still hear the name of Goethe mentioned frequently, but rarely do we hear the name of his dear friend, collaborator and in many ways mentor, Friedrich Schiller.

The Goethe and Schiller Monument in front of the National Theater in Weimar (1857)

Goethe and Schiller were recognised in the 19^th century as the two most revered figures in German literature. Both men had lived in the city of Weimar located in central Germany and were the seminal figures of the literary movement known as Weimar Classicism.

Weimar Classicism, contrary to what Wikipedia would have you believe, was never a new humanism which emerged from the ideas of Romanticism.

In fact, it was the mythologies of the Romantic movement that launched a form of cultural warfare against the German classics. From Nietzsche, to Wagner, the “Romantic” protest movement of the Jugendbewegung [German Youth Movement], to the Romantic cultural pessimism and existentialism of the post-WWI period known as the “Lost Generation,” all of these waves of “thought” were essentially a part of the same uninterrupted tradition that ran counter to German classicism, since it was Germany who had become a leader in creating geniuses of the Classics.

All of these so-called “Romantic” movements promoted forms of “heroic nihilism” as seen with such individuals as Ernst Jünger, Oswald Spengler, Arthur Moeller van den Brück and others, who helped shape the ideological environment of the Nazis.

The attack on Weimar Classicism began with the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815). Many historians in fact recognise that the Congress of Vienna, which was responsible for the inhumane carving up of Europe after the Napoleonic Wars, was largely to blame for the political foment that led to WWI a century later.

The Carlsbad decrees were adopted by the German Confederation in 1819 as an offshoot to the vision for Europe as defined by the Congress of Vienna which upheld the rule of empire and monarchy. It established severe limitations on academic and press freedoms and set up a federal commission to investigate all signs of political unrest in the German states. This was in reaction to the wave of republicanism that was sweeping throughout Europe after the success of the American Revolution against Britain’s monarchy. Thus, the organizers of the Congress of Vienna saw this spirit of republicanism as a form of revolutionary sedition which had to be crushed at its cultural root at all costs.

What is Weimar Classicism?

The “Weimar Classical” period, beginning around 1772, was named after the place in which much of the leading thinkers lived at the time, such as Goethe, Schiller, Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt, among others [The Humboldt educational reforms became heavily attacked under the Carlsbad decrees and many of the best teachers in Germany ended up migrating to the United States due to heavy censorship].

The Weimar Classical period was defined by a revolutionary spirit for creativity in literature and culture. It was not just about creating anew, but about building upon the richest classical traditions of the past and was very much influenced by Greek Classicism.

Goethe (1749-1832) and Schiller (1759-1805) became the leaders of the literary dimension of this movement. Goethe would be appointed the Director of the Weimar Theater (the National Theater today) in 1791, and it was during this period that Schiller’s epic dramas such as “The Wallenstein Trilogy,” “The Maid of Orleans” (about Joan of Arc), “Maria Stuart” and “Wilhelm Tell” were first performed on the stage.

Schiller, known during his time and beyond as the Poet of Freedom, wrote “Wilhelm Tell” in 1804. It is considered a masterpiece to this day and is especially loved by many in Germany and Switzerland. It is a story of how tyranny and empire were defeated by a people who upheld and defended their dignity and liberty.

The folk story is set in 14^th century Switzerland during the Habsburg rule of the Austrian Empire. According to historical records, referenced in the White Book of Sarnen, written in 1474 as a collection of medieval manuscripts, the Rütli Oath was a conspiracy to overthrow the Habsburg tyranny and is what launched the Burgenbruch rebellion. Among the names mentioned in the medieval manuscript is that of the hero, Wilhelm Tell.

This small grouping of Swiss people from just three cantons (townships) at the time, which grew to 26 cantons, went on to oppose the tyrannical rule of the Austrian Empire and form the Heveltic Confederation. The Rütli Oath was the first declaration of independence for Switzerland.

Germany during the time of Schiller’s writing “Wilhelm Tell,” was not a sovereign nation but rather was ruled between the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy and the Kingdom of Prussia. After the Napoleonic era, the Congress of Vienna founded the German Confederation (as a replacement to the Holy Roman Empire), loosely made up of 39 states. The Emperor of Austria held the permanent “presidency” of this German Confederation until the Seven Weeks’ War between the Kingdom of Prussia and the Austrian Empire in 1866. Prussia won and took over the “inherent right” to rule the German lands.

Thus, the effects of Schiller’s controversial choice of historical setting for his epic drama “Wilhelm Tell” during his life and beyond, should not go unnoticed. Schiller had chosen to stress this period in history, very much like what Shakespeare had done, as a lesson for the people of his time, that no one should subject themselves to the folly and whim of a tyrant. In turn, Schiller defined the spirit that would be required to oppose the bondages of empire and imperial rule. It is for this reason that “Wilhelm Tell” is among the most loved dramas by Schiller.

It is no coincidence that Beethoven (1770-1827) would choose a poem by Schiller, “Ode to Joy” to culminate his own life’s work in his 9^th Symphony.

Beethoven was also for republicanism and his 9^th Symphony is clearly a call for the voice of the people to rejoice in the recognition that all men are brothers and that all humankind was destined to live in harmony and peace. Ode to Joy was originally titled “Ode to Freedom” by Schiller. Alexander Thayer in his biography of Beethoven wrote “the thought lies near that it was the early form of the poem, when it was still an ‘Ode to Freedom’ (not ‘to Joy’), which first aroused enthusiastic admiration for it in Beethoven’s mind.”

This was the spirit that had come under attack by the Carlsbad Decrees and the Romantic movement, as epitomised by Richard Wagner (1813-1883) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).

It is also no coincidence that Wagner was Adolf Hitler’s favourite composer. You may think this unfair to Wagner, but it is nonetheless very relevant.

Hollywood movies have long projected the idea that a deep appreciation of classical music is connected to Nazis or psychopaths, especially where the music of Johannes Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) is concerned.

Besides countless movie scenes of SS officers playing classical music on their gramophones right before doing something heinous, there are also scenes like this one in Schindler’s List where Bach’s Prelude from English Suite no. 2 is played while horrific acts of violence are conducted by Nazis.

We also see this in Hannibal Lecter’s love for Bach’s Goldberg Variations along with scenes of cannibalism, seen in the original and the 2013 tv series remake. And once again in Stanley Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange where Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony is played during the “brainwashing scene” with Nazi references and symbolism, and in another scene where the protagonist is having violent visions and fantasies.

Pairing classical music with Nazis and psychopaths is no coincidence. It is part of the ongoing cultural warfare against Weimar Classicism and classicism in general as something akin to totalitarianism. Whereas in fact, it was the very opposite. Totalitarianism viewed Weimar Classicism with its revolutionary bent of liberty for the people as a mortal threat to its existence.

Hitler made it known who were among his favourites, including “Germanic” composers such as Wagner and Anton Bruckner who were both paragons of the Romantic movement. During the Nazi reign, heavy censorship and cultural controls were enforced to uphold what Hitler identified as a strong Germanic identity, heavily influenced by artists from the Romantic movement.

The legendary and extremely gifted German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886-1954), stands out during this period of heavy censorship. He not only refused to become a Nazi adherent, but the Gestapo was aware that he was providing assistance to Jews and giving much of his salary to German emigrants during his concerts outside of Germany. (1) Georg Gerullis, a director at the Ministry of Culture remarked in a letter to Goebbels, “Can you name me a Jew on whose behalf Furtwängler has not intervened?” (2)

Furtwängler was the principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1922-1945. In 1934, Furtwängler publicly described Hitler as an “enemy of the human race” and the political situation in Germany as a “schweinerei” (meaning literally swinishness). (3)

In 1933, Furtwängler met with Hitler to try to stop the antisemitic policy in the domain of music. Berta Geissmar, a close associate of Furtwängler, wrote “After the audience, he told me that he knew now what was behind Hitler’s narrow-minded measures. This is not only antisemitism, but the rejection of any form of artistic, philosophical thought, the rejection of any form of free culture...” (4)

So many years later, Furtwängler would be a major target for destruction by the new CIA-run cultural witch-hunt known as the Congress for Cultural Freedom (the new Congress of Vienna) founded in 1949 to launch a post-modernist assault on German classical culture.

Furtwängler wrote in his diary in 1935 that there was a complete contradiction between the racial ideology of the Nazis and the true German culture, the one of Schiller, Goethe and Beethoven. (5) He added in 1936: “living today is more than ever a question of courage”. (6)

It is this question of courage that will define what will dictate the future culture of Germany. Would Culture and Art be ultimately judged by the standards of truth, beauty and goodness? Or would such things be buried in the ground, and forgotten, as what largely happened to both Schiller’s works and his mysterious and abrupt death in 1805 which led to his body being dumped in a mass grave before a proper funeral service could be held?

[For more on this story, refer to Irene Eckerts’ beautiful paper “Schiller vs. the Congress for Cultural Freedom.”]

An Ode to the “Pearl of the Desert”: the Ancient City of Palmyra

Palmyra is an ancient city in Syria that dates as far back as the second millennium BC. It grew in wealth from the trade routes along the Silk Road. This wealth enabled the construction of monumental projects such as the Great Colonnade, the Temple of Bel and the tower tombs. Greco-Roman culture influenced the culture of Palmyra, which in turn produced distinctive architecture that combined eastern and western traditions. Palmyra is considered one of the most important historical sites in West Asia.

Syria is located within the cradle of civilization. For this reason, it is immensely rich in a diversity of cultures, religions and schools of thought. It has many ancient cities, many ancient memories.

In 2015, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), occupied the city of Palmyra and began executions of hostages within the amphitheater. They also detonated explosives that destroyed the iconic Baalshamin Temple among other ancient architectural treasures.

As the ancient city was being destroyed over a period of two years, the west used ISIL photos to boost their news ratings as clickbait. It should also not go unmentioned, that the United States in particular, but several western countries in total, have been responsible for the backing of terrorism in West Asia.

ISIL was clear with its intention, they were not just attacking anyone who did not fit into their idea of what they thought a Muslim world should look like, attacking both Muslims and non-Muslims who did not fit into this narrow and barbarous view. They were also attacking the history of all civilization itself. For in their eyes, it was all of civilization that was at fault and would have to be wiped off the face of the Earth so that the new world could be built anew. ISIL, though very much a war against the people, was ultimately a war against whole civilizations and their ancient cultures.

During this tragedy, as with countless others, the west was largely unaffected. On March 2, 2017, the Syrian Army, along with support from the Russian military, were successful in taking back Palmyra.

Extensive damage had been done during the ISIL occupation and much of the ruins of Palmyra have been lost forever. There was also the painful memory that was now associated with the ancient city, that of death and terror, for public executions were displayed in the amphitheater for a two-year period, including that of Khaled al-Assad who was the director of antiquities and had been tortured for days for information on hidden artifacts.

It seemed like the memory of Palmyra would be stained with this tragedy for many generations. ISIL may have left, but its spirit of terror and destruction remained.

The response to this destruction was one of the most beautiful displays of courage and dignity that I have ever seen in my lifetime. And of course, many in the west have likely never heard of it or understood its strength and magnitude in face of what was occurring in West Asia.

In response to the attempt to erase all memory of civilization, the Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra from St. Petersburg traveled to Palmyra’s Roman Theatre and performed for an audience of Syrian people and some western dignitaries. The date of the concert coincided with the handover for the burial of the remains of special forces officer Aleksander Prokhorenko, who died after ordering an airstrike on his own position after he was surrounded by IS fighters.

The concert “Pray for Palmyra” was conducted by none other than Valery Gergiev, and the first piece that was chosen by Maestro Gergiev was Bach’s Chaconne piece performed by Pavel Mulyukov (his performance starts at min 27:26).

For anyone who has not seen this performance, it is really a must. It speaks to both the pain and sorrow from such horrific tragedy. But, it also speaks to hope and optimism, to beauty and strength. There were no words that could respond to what happened in Palmyra, it was only through the beauty of the music from the German classic composer Bach, that was profound enough to both acknowledge the level of pain and despair as well as the immortality of the soul and the sacredness of the individual. That no matter the level of carnage and mayhem, it could never eradicate the sanctity of human life.

This beautiful message was a Russian initiative, and we should all thank Russia for reminding us of this.

Munich Fires “the Greatest Conductor Alive”

Valery Gergiev, who was the chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic from September 2015, was fired on March 1, 2022, for refusing to denounce President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. That is, Maestro Gergiev was fired for what he wouldn’t say, and not for what he said.

Alongside this, 20 year old pianist Alexander Malofeev who was scheduled to play a Vancouver concert in August was “postponed” indefinitely. Why? Because Malofeev is Russian. It is as simple as that.

Leila Getz, Vancouver Recital Society’s artistic director felt that hosting a Russian performer might impact Vancouver’s large Ukrainian Canadian community. In this case, it did not even matter if Malofeev was willing to publicly criticize Russia’s intervention.

Anna Netrebko, a famous Russian opera singer was withdrawn from her future performance at New York City’s Metropolitan Opera because she refused to denounce President Putin, although she did publicly denounce the war. In this new McCarthyite atmosphere, that was not enough. The Met General Manager Peter Gelb acknowledged that Netrebko “is one of the greatest singers in Met history…”

This purging of Russian artists in the music domain also coincides with the smearing of 15 year old Russian skater Kamilia Valieva during the 2022 Olympic Games. Valieva was vilified after the suspicious and unprofessional handling of details around possible doping, which was a carefully-timed set-up in order to manipulate the relative standings of the figure skater. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) bent their own rules and guidelines in order to baselessly ostracise and vilify Valieva.

Valeria Nollan and Alexandra G. Kostina write in their article “Has the West Lost Its Soul and Feelings for Beauty and Fairness?”:

“For the envious elites, it is precisely Valieva’s otherworldly beauty and innocence, especially when connected with Russianness, that must be destroyed.  [Finnian] Cunningham notes, ‘Such a beauty could not be tolerated for it destroyed the US media campaign to otherwise demonize Russia and instill enmity towards that nation.’ They detest the Russianness that manifests sheer joy and freedom from their control, at the same time envying the culture that could provide such fertile soil for beauty to flourish.  How, they say, can a nation of barbarians and Untermenschen grow such magnificent flowers?  Ultimately, they want to banish the “alien” country that dares to remind them of what they have lost—the feelings for beauty and innocence.  Because beauty is both an aesthetic and spiritual category in which perception of something outside the self can resurrect the human being, it also encompasses feelings for one’s homeland, its flag, and its national anthem.  Perhaps this tearing away of these sources of pride and inspiration for Russian Olympic athletes is part of the carefully curated humiliation imposed on Russia as a result of dubious charges of doping, both individual and institutional.”

Although much of the witch-hunt against Russian artists, performers of beauty and optimism, is clearly an attack on Russian culture, where now even Russian art will be subjected to censorship for the mere fact that it is Russian, with the goal of causing shame and humiliation for merely being Russian. The loss is not one sided and the greatest loser in all of this will not be the Russian people.

As seen in the historical case of Germany, any artist that is a vehicle for beauty and optimism is considered a threat to the status quo within a system of empire. For it is beauty and optimism which allows a people, a culture, to find the courage to oppose the shackles of the censors, and dare to fight for liberty. For if one recognises the sanctity that lies within all human life, the unnatural bondage and humiliation of that life becomes intolerable. Thus, when a people, a culture, would rather die to fight for this liberty from empire than live a life of drudgery, forever the servant of another; this is obviously unsustainable to the status quo and an empire will always seek to crush such a spirit.

Thus, any culture, any art that represents such an idea, is a threat to the western system of our present day.

This can be clearly seen with the attack on anything deemed “classical” by the Frankfurt School (7) and the Congress for Cultural Freedom. The removal of these Russian artists is not only being done as an attack on the Russian people and Russian culture, it is an attack on all of us, for it is robbing us all of that beauty and optimism needed to fight for true political freedom.

If we are to believe that the Russians are inherently villainous by nature, it can no longer be tolerated that high standards of Russian artistry be permitted to be shown to the world, for it would stand in stark and sublime contradiction to what the censors would have us believe. That perhaps, the Russians actually remember something that we here in the west have forgotten, but once knew.

When Maestro Gergiev was fired from the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra for refusing to denounce President Putin, his manager, Marcus Felsner said in a statement to The Guardian that dropping Maestro Gergiev was “the saddest day of my professional life.” He called Maestro Gergiev “the greatest conductor alive and an extraordinary human being with a profound sense of decency,” and yet this was apparently not enough. If you are not with the censors, you are against the censors, and a powerful influencer of beauty and optimism like Maestro Gergiev thus had to be banished from their lands.

Who truly looses from such a banishment?

Perhaps the German people would do well to remember the attack, that is ongoing, on their own classical culture, which was among the greatest in the world. The German people would also do well to remember that their country has never truly been sovereign; once again cut up into pieces by the Versailles Treaty, which led to the crippling of German industry and the slow starvation of the German people.

However, most importantly, the Germans would do well in remembering that it was never their choice to join NATO, but that West Germany was an occupied country by the UK, USA and France from 1945 to 1955. And that this direct occupation only ended after West Germany agreed to join NATO in 1955. It was never Germany’s choice but rather was an offer by gun point for a piece, a crumb of “liberty.”

“Independence” on a short leash.

However, the occupation never truly ended, and Germany in all of its history has never truly been free.

It is time Germany break free from its Stockholm Syndrome, for it is their own classical cultural heritage that is at risk of being entirely erased.

The author can be reached at cynthiachung.substack.com

(1) Prieberg, Fred K. (1991). Trial of Strength: Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Third Reich. Quartet Books.
(2) Ibid.
(3) L’atelier du Maître “, article by Philippe Jacquard
(4) Geissmar, Berta (1944). The Baton and the Jackboot: Recollections of Musical Life. London and Edinburgh: Morrison and Gibb ltd.
(5) Wilhelm Furtwängler (trad. Ursula Wetzel, Jean-Jacques Rapin, préf. Pierre Brunel), Carnets 1924-1954 : suivis d’Écrits fragmentaires, Genève, éditions Georg, 1995, p. 39.
(6) Wilhelm Furtwängler (trad. Ursula Wetzel, Jean-Jacques Rapin, préf. Pierre Brunel), Carnets 1924-1954 : suivis d’Écrits fragmentaires, Genève, éditions Georg, 1995, p. 11.
(7) While many have come to realize that the rot within the western education system is tied to the growth of Critical Race Theory, few have come to realize that the school that birthed this perverse analysis of sociology and history is found in a group called the Frankfurt School that emerged out of a sick network of Marxist academics in Frankfurt Germany who envisioned curing society from the tyranny of its traditions which they concluded were the source of fascism. Using a mix of Freudian and Marxist theories applied to sociology, these nihilistic reformers shaped the entire Congress for Cultural Freedom, promoted relativism and destroyed the classical humanist foundations in education that had formerly governed western schooling relegating the study of the classics to obsolete “dead white European males”.

For many decades, every American public institution – from the spook-infested studios of Hollywood to the dinosaur legacy media – presented a tired and repugnant image of the Russian people to its audiences. Now, with Moscow forced to contend with a neo-Nazi element smack on its border, the by-product of that sinister propaganda campaign is targeting Russians in the form of pure racism.

If the Western world’s contempt for Russia could somehow be converted into reusable fuel, the Western world would have enough oil and gas reserves to last the next 1,000 years and probably much longer. But alas, the world of science and technology has not yet found a way of tapping into human irrationality for any strictly practical purposes, thus we’re just left with crude displays of xenophobia in some of the most unexpected places.

This week, for example, the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra fired famed Russian conductor, Valery Gergiev for not denouncing Moscow’s special operation in Ukraine. Gergiev, 68, a vocal supporter of Vladimir Putin, had previously expressed his approval of Crimea becoming part of the Russian Federation. And while Germany’s cultural elite are free to hire and fire whoever they like, and for whatever political views they deem inappropriate, it would be good to see some consistency on such matters. When U.S.-led NATO forces unleashed hell on Iraq in 2003 and in Libya in 2011, for example, were any American or European composers sacked because of their views and place of birth? In fact, cheering on Western forces during their long run of illicit warmongering, in hardscrabble places like Iraq, Syria and Libya, would have done nothing to hurt a person’s career and more than likely advance it.

On the other end of the cultural spectrum, in the realm of sport, Russian and Belarusian athletes were banned from competing in the Beijing 2022 Paralympic Winter Games due to the military conflict in Ukraine. Again, where is the precedent for this noxious form of discrimination, where competitors are outright banned solely for the ‘crime’ of being born in a particular country? And let’s not forget, as much as the mainstream media would like us to, that Russia was not the only nation that found itself engaged in a military operation at this period in time.

On February 24, the very same day that Russia began its special operation in Ukraine, Israel conducted yet another air strike near the Syrian capital Damascus. The unprovoked attack left three Syrian soldiers dead, according to Syria’s state media. How many people are aware that it was the fourth reported time this month that Israel has launched strikes inside of Syria? If the International Olympic Committee was aware of it, why did that unsettling information not stop Israeli athletes from competing?

Former Russian Olympic champion Alina Kabaeva said the sanctions unfairly targeting Russian athletes represent the “most disgraceful page in the history of world sports.”

“The leadership of many international sports organizations has long been engaged in completely unsportsmanlike affairs under various pretexts,” continued Kabaeva, who went on to become a State Duma Deputy following her retirement from sport. “Now it is no longer hidden.”

And finally there has been a refusal on the part of journalists to hear the perspective of Russian citizens.

On March 3, the Australian talk program Q&A took questions from the audience as part of its extremely biased discussion on the events in Ukraine. During the program, a viewer in the audience, one Sasha Gillies-Lekakis, introduced himself as part of the Russian community in Australia before saying, “I’ve been pretty outraged by the narrative created by our media depicting the Ukraine as the ‘good guy’ and Russia as the ‘bad guy’.” He went on to explain, correctly, that since 2014, “the Ukrainian Government together with Nazi-groups like the Azov Battalion have besieged the Russian populations in the Donbas, killing an estimated 13,000 people according to the United Nations. My question is where was your outpouring of grief and concern for those thousands of mostly Russians?”

It seems to be a reasonable question that deserves a fair answer, but Q&A host Stan Grant was having none of it: “Sasha, people here have been talking about family who are suffering and people are dying, and I understand you wanted to ask your question is there some reasoning for this. But you supported what’s happening [in Ukraine] hearing that people are dying and can I just say I’m not comfortable with you being here. Could you please leave?”

And that pretty much sums up the Western media’s mindless approach to the conflict if you happen to be Russian or pro-Russian – “Could you please leave” – that is, if you were fortunate to have been invited in the first place. This month, RT and Sputnik were blanked across the EU, while Strategic Culture Foundation has suffered heavy censorship since at least 2020 for ‘the crime’ of being a Russia-based analytical platform that presents an alternative voice to the West’s obsessively controlled narrative. Such attacks on free speech, which carry unmistakable racist overtones, have been coming so thick and heavy that an entire Telegram channel, called ‘Russophobia Watch,’ has been created just to track them.

It is no secret that the media has been priming the public mind for a long time about the “aggressive Russians” with numerous debunked stories, like Russiagate, where somehow a handful of Russian social media posts, as the fairy tale goes, managed to sway the 2016 presidential election for Donald Trump. Once again, it seems that the real culprits of such political shenanigans – liberal-driven Silicon Valley behemoths, like Google, who really does have the infinite power to sway elections – were merely projecting and protecting their own misdeeds behind their favorite fall guy, Russia.

Speaking of aggression, let us not forget, since the mainstream media certainly has, that for many years humanity has been held captive audience as U.S.-led NATO launched a number of unprovoked wars in places like Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

Where was the virtue-signaling pearl clutching then from the sanctimonious liberal capitals, especially when none of those brazen military escapades were remotely justified? Meanwhile, Russia has been warning on NATO expansion very publicly – at least since Vladimir Putin’s now-famous presentation at the 2007 Munich Conference on Security Policy – to absolutely no avail. Yet now the West, in all of its dripping hypocrisy and double standards, wants to lecture Russia on the merits of peace, yet that is exactly what Moscow was attempting to achieve for many years.

By Joe LAURIA

consortiumnews.com

See Part I for how RAND and its creed “systems analysis” was created and how Albert Wohlstetter would ultimately become the kingpin of RAND.

A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: the Fabian Society

For us to understand what ultimately made Albert Wohlstetter the man he became we must first start with the story of Bertrand Russell. And for this, we must begin with the Fabian Society.

The Fabian Society was founded on January 4^th, 1884 in London as an offshoot of The Fellowship of the New Life, which in turn was founded just one year earlier by Scottish philosopher Thomas Davidson. The Fellowship advocated pacifism, vegetarianism and simple living, under the influence of Leo Tolstoy’s ideas. (1) Some of its members also wanted to become politically involved in transforming society which led to the formation of the Fabian Society.

One of the nine founding members of the Fabian Society was Frank Podmore, who was also an influential member of the Society for Psychical Research.

Alfred Russell Wallace, William Crookes, F.W.H. Myers and renown psychologist William James’ work on mediums, telepathy and materializations led to the founding of the Society of Psychical Research, the Theosophical Society and their American branches.

Alfred Russell Wallace was a close associate of T.H. Huxley (Darwin’s bulldog) and co-founded the theory of natural selection alongside Charles Darwin.

The Fabian Society was extremely influenced by the ideas of Darwinism. Much of what they supported in terms of ideologies and philosophies was for the purpose of advancing Darwinism and saw Karl Marx’s newly published system as the perfect vehicle to carry Darwin’s logic into a controlling ideology to organize the masses.

Karl Marx himself was very much drawn to the ideas of Darwin, including two explicit references to Darwin and evolution in the second edition of Das Kapital. (2)

Marx would write in a letter that:

“Darwin’s work is most important and suits my purpose in that it provides a basis in natural science for the historical class struggle.”

In a book review of the first volume of Das Kapital, Engels wrote that Marx was “simply striving to establish the same gradual process of transformation demonstrated by Darwin in natural history as a law in the social field.” (3)

The Fabian Society would define itself as a socialist movement, influenced by Karl Marx and the Marxist Social Democratic Federation soon founding England’s Labour Party in 1900. The party’s constitution was written by Fabian Society leader Sidney Webb and borrowed heavily from the founding documents of the Fabian Society.

Immediately upon its inception, the society featured such prominent eugenicists such as George Bernard Shaw, Thomas Huxley’s protégé H.G. Wells, Arthur Balfour, founder of Geopolitics Halford Mackinder and Bertrand Russell.

Prominent Theosophist Annie Besant would also become a member of the Fabian Society upon its inception, and was the leading speaker for both the Fabian Society and the Marxist Social Democratic Federation.

At the core of the Fabian Society were Sidney and Beatrice Webb, who would also help co-found the London School of Economics (LSE), with Rothschild funding, to propagate the Fabian Society outlook in 1895.

Harold Laski, one of Britain’s most influential intellectual spokesmen for Marxism, would become a Fabian Society member, a professor at the LSE (1926-1950), and a chairman of the British Labour Party (1945-1946).

Bertrand Russell would teach social democracy at LSE from 1895-1896 and from 1937-1938 lectured on the science of power. On the official site of LSE, Russell is credited as “one of the spiritual and financial founders of LSE…[whose] involvement in the early life of the School helped to define its ethos.”

The Coefficients club was also set up by Sidney and Beatrice Webb and included among its membership H.G. Wells and Bertrand Russell, as well as Leo Amery, Harold Laski, Halford Mackinder (who was Director of the LSE from 1903-1908), Alfred Milner and Clinton Edward Dawkins (the three times great uncle to the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins).

The name “Fabian” is derived from the Roman General Quintus Fabius, known as the Cunctator from his strategy of delaying his attacks against the invading Carthaginians until the right moment, and who’s fame is founded on having beaten Hannibal by never engaging in direct combat.

In the founding Fabian document it is written: “For the right moment you must wait, as Fabius did most patiently, when warring against Hannibal, though many censured his delays; but when the time comes you must strike hard, as Fabius did, or your waiting will be in vain, and fruitless.”

Fabians would advocate the strategy of permeation, whereby you affect the change you want to see by slowly permeating all levels of society’s controlling structures. Once you have permeated sufficiently you can strike collectively and essentially take over from within. It would be a technique that the Trotskyists would become notorious for, such as with the French Turn.

As Matthew Ehret wrote in his “Origins of the Deep State”:

“The Fabian society program focused on broad social welfare programs such as universal health care, mass education, and better working conditions which were designed to attract the disenfranchised masses. Under the Fabian program, such programs held no substance in reality, as the true means to justify their creation was banned…[that is]…true scientific and technological progress…

This ruse was thus designed to merely bring the will of the lower classes under the deeper influence of a ruling oligarchy via the promise of ‘democratic socialism’ and a naïvely utopian ‘end of history’ ideal…The controllers of Fabian Socialism are not, nor have they ever been ‘democratic socialists’…”

At its heart, Fabianism was merely fascism with a “scientific” socialist face.

Matthew Ehret writes:

“The Round Table movement served as the intellectual center of the international operations to regain control of the British Empire and took on several incarnations over the 20th century. It worked in tandem with the Coefficients Club, the Fabian Society, and the Rhodes Trust, all of whom witnessed members moving in and out of each others ranks.”

Historian Carrol Quigley, wrote of this cabal in his posthumously published “Anglo-American Establishment”:

“This organization [the Round Table]…has been the most powerful single influence in All Souls, Balliol, and New Colleges at Oxford for more than a generation…it had a great deal to do with the formation and management of the League of Nations and of the system of mandates; it founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1919 and still controls it.”

H.G. Wells was chairman of the League of Free Nations Association and published his call for “world peace” in his book “The Idea of a League of Nations” published in 1919.

The purpose was again to lure people in with glorious promises of a “social democracy” while in fact weakening nation states such that they would be unable to resists the coming of a new world empire.

H.G. Wells would publish “The New World Order” in 1940, and was no doubt the guiding influence on Julian Huxley’s outlook when he wrote the manifesto for UNESCO.

Bertrand Russell’s “Proposed Roads to Freedom”

In 1918, Russell publishes “Proposed Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism and Syndicalism”. Here are some relevant quotes:

“My own opinion – which I may as well indicate at the outset – is that pure Anarchism, though it should be the ultimate ideal, to which society should continually approximate, is for the present impossible…On the other hand, both Marxian Socialism and Syndicalism, in spite of many drawbacks, seem to me calculated to give rise to a happier and better world than that in which we live. I do not, however, regard either of them as the best practicable system…The best practicable system, to my mind, is that of Guild Socialism, which concedes what is valid both in the claims of the State Socialists and in the Syndicalist fear of the State by adopting a system of federalism among trades for reasons similar to those which have recommended federalism among nations.”

“The terrorist campaign in which such men as Ravachol were active practically came to an end in 1894. After that time, under the influence of Pelloutier, the better sort of Anarchists found a less harmful outlet by advocating Revolutionary Syndicalism in the Trade Unions and Bourse de Travail.”

“In England Marx has never had many followers. Socialism here has been inspired in the main by the Fabians…What remained was State Socialism and a doctrine of ‘permeation.’ Civil servants were to be permeated with the realization that Socialism would enormously increase their power. Trade Unions were to be permeated with the belief that the day for purely industrial action was pasts, and that they must look to Government (inspired secretly by sympathetic civil servants) to bring about, bit by bit, such parts of the Socialist programme as were not likely to rouse much hostility in the rich. The Independent Labour Party…was largely inspired at first by the ideas of the Fabians…It aimed always at cooperation with the industrial organizations of wage-earners, and chiefly through its efforts, the Labour Party was formed in 1900 out of a combination of the Trade Unions and the political Socialists. To this party, since 1909, all the important Unions have belonged, but in spite of the fact that its strength is derived from Trade Unions, it has stood always for political rather than industrial action.”

“Anarchism, which avoids the dangers of State Socialism, has dangers and difficulties of its own…Nevertheless it remains an ideal to which we should wish to approach as nearly as possible, and which, in some distant age, we hope may be reached completely…The system we have advocated is a form of Guild Socialism, leaning more, perhaps, towards Anarchism than the official Guildsman would wholly approve. It is in the matters that politicians usually ignore – science and art, human relations, and the joy of life – that Anarchism is strongest… ”

In his “Proposed Roads to Freedom” Russell makes it clear that he is most sympathetic to the philosophy of Mikhail Bakunin and Prince Kropotkin, who were both involved with the Mounte Verità society, a sister branch to the Theosophists (refer here for the relevance of this).

Interestingly, Russell’s proposed roads to freedom, that is, socialism, anarchism and syndicalism all lead to the same destination point…the League of Nations.

Russell writes:

“If the peace of the world is ever to become secure, I believe there will have to be, along with other changes, a development of the idea which inspires the project of a League of Nations.”

Thus, Russell is all for minimising the power of the State until we can reach the “ideal,” in the form of a world empire.

The Unity of Science: Radical Positivists, Eugenicists, and Anarchists Unite

The Vienna Circle of Logical Empiricism was a group of philosophers and scientists who met regularly from 1924 to 1936 at the University of Vienna. The Vienna Circle’s influence on 20th-century philosophy, especially philosophy of science and analytic philosophy, is immense up to the present day.

The philosophical position of the Vienna Circle was called logical empiricism (aka: logical positivism). It was greatly influenced by such members as Ernst Mach, David Hilbert, and Bertrand Russell. The Vienna Circle was committed to the ideals of the Enlightenment and its aim was to make philosophy “scientific” with the help of modern logic.

This was very much along the line of what David Hilbert (member of the Vienna Circle) had called for at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1900, whereby Hilbert put forth the thesis that all scientific knowledge should be reduced to the form of mathematical “logic.” Thus, all “scientific” knowledge would henceforth be solely deducible from mathematical models.

In 1900, Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead (who taught Russell) set forth to achieve Hilbert’s challenge which resulted in the three volume “Principia Mathematica” published thirteen years later. The Principia would be the new Bible in many ways for generations of analytical philosophers and logical positivists.

Continuing along these lines, the Unity of Science Movement was organized in the late 1930s by former members of the Vienna Circle of Logical Empiricists, such as Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, and new members such as Ernest Nagel. The greatest aim being to create an encyclopedia that would establish how the unity of sciences should proceed, bringing together intellectuals to establish a fortress against the chaotic terrain of politics, which was extremely adverse to the “ideals” of a scientific way of life. All contributors to this process agreed that the progress of science should eventually create a “scientific world-conception,” helping to build (or control) a big picture of what science means.

“Encyclopedia and Unified Science” would be published by the movement with this aim. The first edition came out in 1938 and was co-written by Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, Charles Morris, John Dewey, Niels Bohr and Bertrand Russell.

Interestingly, science fiction was considered just as important as the logic of science to this world-conception.

Though H.G. Wells was not an official member of this movement, we should keep in mind that he was always committed to the same goals as Russell. Wells was not only a world famous writer of science fiction, but was also working on his own new secular Bible series in three books designed to unite all forms of knowledge. (4)

Among this trilogy is “The Science of Life” co-written with Julian Huxley, and meant to give a popular account of all major aspects of biology as known in the 1920s. It is credited with introducing modern ecological concepts and emphasised the importance of behaviourism and Jungian psychology (Jung was a member of the Mounte Verità society).

It also promoted Eugenics.

Julian Huxley, Vice President (1937-1944) and President of the British Eugenics Society (1959-1962) was the one to coin the term “transhumanism.” Julian was also the first director-general of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 1946, to which he wrote its mandate “UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy.”

Norbert Wiener was taught by Bertrand Russell at Cambridge and by David Hilbert at the University of Göttingen. He would go on to found “cybernetics.”

John Dewey, a member of the Unity of Sciences movement, would greatly dictate and shape a global educational reform, which was promoted by UNESCO, and has immense influence to this day.

It was clear that along with a world government, you would need a world-conception of what is regarded or approved of as “scientific,” all else would be thrown into the dust bin and would be considered unfit to shape policy. This was enforced by the construct of a global education system to implement the “right” sort of ideas and forbid the “wrong” sort.

Russell would put it forth most succinctly in his “The Scientific Outlook” (1931):

“The scientific rulers will provide one kind of education for ordinary men and women and another for those who are to become holders of scientific power. Ordinary men and women will be expected to be docile, industrious, punctual, thoughtless and contented. Of these qualities, probably contentment will be considered the most important. In order to produce it, all the researchers of psycho-analysis, behaviorism and biochemistry will be brought into play… all the boys and girls will learn from an early age to be what is called “cooperative” i.e.: to do exactly what every body else is doing. Initiative will be discouraged in these children, and insubordination, without being punished will be scientifically trained out of them.”

In 1953, Russell would update this creepy piece of work and make it even creepier, writing:

“It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment… This subject will make great strides when it is taken up by scientists under a scientific dictatorship. Anaxagoras maintained that snow is black, but no one believed him. The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray.”

If you think that sounds awfully similar to Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” it is because it is, in fact Russell was contemplating charging Aldous with plagiarism.

Albert’s Radical Days

Albert Wohlstetter started at City College of New York (CCNY) in 1931. It was here that he would be mentored by Morris Raphael Cohen, a professor of philosophy and mathematics and a Russian émigré with a nihilist background.

In the 1930s, City College had developed a reputation as the “proletarian Harvard,” and this was very much due to Cohen, who started a Marx Circle at CCNY. This Marx Circle met regularly at the Henry Street Settlement House, which had been established by followers of the Fabian Society.

The Henry Street Settlement House was purchased by Jacob Schiff in 1895, likely through Rothschild funding (recall Rothschild also funded the London School of Economics which was started by the leading Fabians Sidney and Beatrice Webb). By the 1930s the settlement house was being used for classrooms and residences. Schiff was a financier who went on to receive the Medal of the Rising Sun from Japan in exchange for providing $200 million for the Japan-Russo war and then went on to pour millions into the Bolsheviks that overturned Czarist Russia in 1917.

While a Professor of Philosophy at CCNY (1912-1938), Morris Raphael Cohen came under the influence of philosopher Thomas Davidson, founder of the Fellowship of the New Life from which the Fabian Society arose in 1884. Cohen’s “Marx Circle” continued within Davidson’s enterprise. Cohen also studied under William James, co-founder of the Society for Psychical Research (connections to the Theosophists), while at Harvard University.

Cohen was also strongly influenced by Bertrand Russell, who in turn held Cohen in high regard. Cohen would write in his autobiography “A Dreamer’s Journey”:

“It was the study of Russell’s Principia Mathematic which I began soon after I was appointed to teach mathematics at City College in 1902, that finally liberated me…Russell came closer to being my philosophical god than any one before or since…”

Cohen would also mentor Ernest Nagel and Sidney Hook at CCNY. All of these men were close mentors/friends to Albert Wohlstetter. Hook would become a leader of the Marxist faction at CCNY.

Nagel cowrote “An Introduction to Logic and the Scientific Method” with Morris Raphael Cohen, in 1934.

Ernest Nagel, one of the founders of the Unity of Science Movement, earned his PhD from Columbia University in 1931 and went on to spend his academic career there, becoming the first John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at the University in 1955.

Upon graduating from City College in 1934, at the age of twenty- one, Albert enrolled at Columbia Law School. Albert abandoned law school, after a year, for a graduate program in mathematics. He wrote his MA thesis under the supervision of Ernest Nagel and under the watchful eye of his friend, the philosopher and mathematical logician Willard Van Orman Quine. (5)

Alfred North Whitehead was Willard Van Orman Quine’s thesis supervisor for his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1932. It was Whitehead who introduced Quine to Bertrand Russell which began their correspondence.

Morton White was another one of Ernest Nagel’s doctoral students, and a close friend of Albert (6) who would join the Fieldites (a Trotskyist splinter group) along with Albert.

It should be clear thus far that, Albert was heavily under the influence of the Unity of Science movement thinkers, with Fabian Society overlap, since his days at City College New York.

During Albert’s time as a student at Columbia University (1934-1939), he would become very close friends with militant philosopher and Trotskyist Sidney Hook and found a mentor in Columbia’s highly respected Art Historian and Trotskyist intellectual Meyer Schapiro. (7)

The reader should be aware that Sidney Hook is credited as having converted James Burnham (who, like Hook, was also a professor in philosophy at the New York University) to Trotskyism, acknowledged by Burnham himself in his autobiography. In 1933, along with Sidney Hook, Burnham helped to organize the socialist organization, the American Workers Party (AWP).

In 1934, Trotskyists in the Communist League of America (CLA) did a French turn on the American Workers Party (AWP), in a move that elevated the AWP’s James Burnham into the role of a Trotsky lieutenant and chief adviser.

Sidney Hook earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University, under the supervision of John Dewey. It was at Columbia that Hook began the project that was to occupy him throughout the 1930s, of seeking a synthesis between Karl Marx’s “dialectical materialism” and Dewey’s pragmatism.

In the late 1930s, Hook assisted Trotsky in his efforts to clear his name in a special Commission of Inquiry headed by John Dewey, otherwise known as the Dewey Commission.

The Dewey Commission was initiated on March 1937 by the American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky. The commission proclaimed that it had cleared Trotsky of all charges made during the Moscow Trials (8) and made the claim that Stalin had framed Trotsky.

This Commission was a pseudo-judicial process set up by American Trotskyists and its sympathizers. It had no power of subpoena, nor official imprimatur from any government.

Thus, we find a very clear overlap between the Unity of Science Movement and the Trotskyists.

Albert would co-write at least one article with Morton White an article for the “Partisan Review” (9) which was a very influential Marxist magazine that had become more Trotskyist in its leaning. This was due to a new cast of editors, including Dwight Macdonald.

Dwight Macdonald is another close friend of Albert. (10)

Albert would actually join a communist group called the Fieldites, also known as the League for a Revolutionary Workers Party (LRWP), a splinter group from the “official” Trotskyists. In the case of the Fieldites, they had a reputation of having an even more aggressive stance against Stalin’s Soviet Union than the typical Trotskyists. So even more militant.

Interestingly, the founder of the Fieldites was Max Gould (his pseudonym was B.J. Field) a former Wall Street petroleum analyst and graduate from Columbia University. Field had been personally close to Trotsky (11) in the early 1930s and was one of the leaders of the CLA during the heated 1934 period before he was expelled. It was at this point that Field founded the LRWP in May 1934.

The LRWP soon found itself under investigation by the FBI for subversive activities.

Thus, one very big question that comes to mind is, if Wohlstetter was a card carrying member of the LRWP (12), how did he manage top security clearance as a leading nuclear strategist for the RAND Corporation during the McCarthyite era and to which the House Committee on Un-American Activities acted as a standing committee from 1945-1975?

Even Herman Kahn, another prominent RAND nuclear strategist had his security clearance temporarily removed due to his wife’s affiliation with a communist group. So why was Albert’s past never brought up?

Alex Abella offers a possible explanation for this in his “Soldiers of Reason,” where he writes:

“…the records of the group [LRWP] were lost when Field, moving files surreptitiously from an office in a horse-drawn lorry—this was 1934, after all—became involved in an accident at a busy intersection after his horse died. Afraid that he would be charged with the accident and that his radical activities would land him in an even greater jam. Field fled the scene, leaving all the files, publications, and membership rolls to be disposed of by New York City sanitation.”

It is this rather dubious story that is used to explain how all records of the LRWP were lost, never to be found again, and how Albert was very conveniently given a fresh start.

So yes, if we are going to be “fair” with Albert, he was never a faithful Trotskyist, but then again, who ever was? The entire group was notorious for infighting, factions, splintering and permeation tactics, with a long list of renunciations. The importance is rather on what were all these groupings, notably the Fabians, Unity of Science Movement and the Trotskyist all working towards, since it was no coincidence that they were always revolving in each other’s orbits.

Albert was steeped in Marxist doctrine in tandem with the ideologies from the Unity of Science Movement by a network of socialist philosophers that spans three generations, and thus it is absurd to claim that this was all just a coincidence or a “brief” phase of radical experimentation on Albert’s part.

Renunciations, switching titles and mock conversions were all part of the game.

A Road to Damascus? Trotskyists “Convert” to Radical Positivism

James Burnham would remain a “Trotskyist intellectual” from 1934 to 1940. Before this, James Burnham graduated from Princeton, followed by Balliol College, Oxford University (recall Carroll Quigley’s quote on Balliol’s connection to the Round Table and the Fabian Society) before becoming a professor in philosophy at the New York University where he met Sidney Hook and was converted to Trotskyism.

In February 1940, Burnham renounced both Trotsky and Marxism altogether, writing “Science and Style: A Reply to Comrade Trotsky,” explaining his reasons for this and why from now on he would be a follower of Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead and the new Encyclopedia of Unified Science:

“Do you wish me to prepare a reading list, Comrade Trotsky? It would be long, ranging from the work of the brilliant mathematicians and logicians of the middle of the last century to one climax in the monumental Principia Mathematica of Russell and Whitehead (the historic turning point in modern logic), and then spreading out in many directions – one of the most fruitful represented by the scientists, mathematicians and logicians now cooperating in the new Encyclopedia of Unified Science.”

In 1941, Burnham would publish “The Managerial Revolution” which was a sort of guidebook to Fabian Society thinking at the time of how the world was to be ruled. In fact, Burnham was of the viewpoint that this vision had already won (for more on this refer here).

In his “The Managerial Revolution,” Burnham echoes the Fabian Society methodology and Russell’s “The Scientific Outlook,” writing:

“Nevertheless, it may still turn out that the new form of economy will be called ‘socialist.’ In those nations – Russia and Germany – which have advanced furthest toward the new [managerial] economy, ‘socialism’ or ‘national socialism’ is the term ordinarily used. The motivation for this terminology is not, naturally, the wish for scientific clarity but just the opposite. The word ‘socialism’ is used for ideological purposes in order to manipulate the favourable mass emotions attached to the historic socialist ideal of a free, classless, and international society and to hide the fact that the managerial economy is in actuality the basis for a new kind of exploiting, class society.”

Although Albert would never make such a dramatic public declaration as did fellow technocrat Burnham, it is clear where he ultimately pledged his allegiance by his promotion of systems analysis (part of the trifecta of information theory and cybernetics) behind everything he did at the RAND corporation. (For more on this story refer to Part 1 of this series)

Burnham would go on to work for the OSS, followed by the CIA and would become “the real intellectual founder of the neoconservative movement and the originally proselytizer, in America, of the theory of totalitarianism.”

This helps us to understand why so many of Alfred Wohlstetter’s acolytes were prominent neoconservatives, such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle.

RAND, under the guidance of Albert Wohlstetter, would gain the power to execute the mission of the Fabian Society. The Hannibal moment of victory had come with their entry into the JFK administration as McNamara’s Whiz Kids, who would not only “manage” the Vietnam War, but all wars that ensued under the American flag.

With entry into the government, they now had access to influencing all national policy including housing, healthcare, and education. Their permeation had become absolute.

Albert and Roberta would continue living in Laurel Canyon (a center of the counterculture movement), promoting an image of Albert as the ever-loving and patient teacher to an endless stream of doting students who would see him as a father figure, rather than for what he truly was, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Notes

(1) Colin Spencer (1996), The Heretic’s Feast: A History of Vegetarianism, Fourth Estate, pg. 283.
(2) I. Bernard Cohen (1985), Revolution in Science, Harvard University Press, p. 345.
(3) Ibid.
(4) The three books to H.G. Wells’ self-declared “new Bible” were: “The Outline of History” (1919), “The Science of Life” (1929), and “The Work, Wealth, and Happiness of Mankind” (1932)
(5) Ron Robin (2016), “The Cold War They Made: The Strategic Legacy of Roberta and Albert Wohlstetter,” Harvard University Press, p. 40.
(6) Ibid, p. 38.
(7) Ibid, p. 40.
(8) The Moscow Trials occurred between 1936-1938 and concluded that Trotskyist cells were at the heart of a fifth column operation within Russia which were committed to overthrowing Stalin and bringing Russia into a pro-Fascist program.
(9) Wohlstetter, Albert; White, Morton Gabriel (Fall 1939). “Who Are the Friends of Semantics?”. Partisan Review. 6 (5): 50–57.
(10) Wreszin, Michael (1994). A Rebel In Defense of Tradition: The Life and Politics of Dwight Macdonald. New York: HarperCollins. p. 113.
(11) Ron Robin (2016), “The Cold War They Made: The Strategic Legacy of Roberta and Albert Wohlstetter,” Harvard University Press, p. 45.
(12) Alex Abella (2008), “Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire,” Harcourt Books, p. 76.

[Part 3 will go over Albert’s role in shaping the RAND/Whiz Kids management of the Vietnam War, and his relationship to Team B, the false dichotomy of Kissinger vs Brzezinski, and the Trilateral Commission.]

At his year-end press conference, Russian President Putin said that “a woman is a woman and a man is a man,” and he expressed his confidence that the religious denominations of the Russian Federation would have the moral fiber to resist the intrusion of the corrupted and degenerate values of the Western world.

Alas, the Western World has no such moral fiber. The West has cut itself off from its past and is tottering on the premise that it can survive by acculturating its youth to disbelieve in the West. The purpose of Western education is the deracination of Western youth and their alienation from Western culture. That is what insouciant families pay taxes and tuition for.

Every year in my Christmas column I point out that the voices that connect us to the past have been demonized and cut off, leaving us in a country without a foundation. Moreover, Hollywood, TV, media, Internet, and educational systems at every level in every state are working openly or surreptitiously to rewrite the history of Western culture as a white racist enterprise that must be overthrown. The purpose of public schools has been converted to brainwashing children into a guilt complex due to the color of their skin and to installing a sense of entitlement into the minds of BIPOC children. Parents protest but ideological anti-white school boards pay no attention.

In other words, what education does in the Western world is to deracinate the white ethnicities and elevate the immigrant-invaders.

Western education has already produced a generation or more of people who have no idea who they are. “Western Civ Has To Go” was a student chant in US universities as long ago as the 1960s. For decades few graduating classes have ever read a word of Shakespeare. Indeed, their proficiency in the English language is so poor they are incapable of reading him. The literary and artistic metaphors used to convey meaning are unknown to them. The classic literature of Western civilization in which the real challenges of life are revealed are replaced by Woke and minority whining. Essentially, the educational systems produce illiterate barbarians. The smartest ones are the dumbest of all. They are the unthinking geeks who produce the police state control devices and robotics that are inherent in the digital revolution. The purpose of the digital revolution is to remove independence, purpose, and meaning from human life. We are not even going to be permitted to drive cars. Privacy is not only a disappearing value, it is becoming a non-word, a word whose meaning is incomprehensible to all but the very old.

George Santayana said that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” It did not occur to him that soon there would be people, indeed entire countries, without a past.

European cities that survived the mass bombing of civilian cities by the British and Americans during WW II have ancient buildings, cathedrals, and narrow streets that remind people that there was a past. But not Americans. In the US everything is constantly remade. Neighborhoods are torn down and reappear as something else. I live in what was until a few years ago an old Florida community, a charming, quiet place of beauty. Today almost every house has been knocked down and the lots divided and subdivided. Everywhere massive commercial rentals have gone up that sleep 20 to 30 people despite zoning that prohibits it. A live community with a history fell victim to outside real estate speculators and developers and is now populated with holiday makers numbering 20 or more times the former population. If a person who lived here 10 years ago returned, he would not recognize the place. His house no longer exists. His neighbors’ homes no longer exist. Nothing that he remembers exists.

This happens to entire cities. I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, but today I cannot find my way in the city. All landmarks are gone.

Now cities are removing monuments that represented memory, street names that represented memory, school names that represented memory in order to cleanse themselves of what they have been indoctrinated to believe is a racist past.

When a governor of the state of Virginia ordered the removal and destruction of a statue of Robert E. Lee, we see not only the success of critical race theory in brainwashing a weak-minded governor of Virginia, the Virginia state legislature, and the Virginia media, but also the acquiescence to the erasure of memory. Americans have become a people without a past.

All of the Western nations no longer exist. Nations are reduced to countries without borders as there is scant limit to influx by peoples of alien languages, cultures, and behaviors. All Western nations are Towers of Babel. In Europe religious life is found only among Islamist immigrant-invaders. They are building mosques (churches) everywhere. As I often ask, how long has it been since a Christian church was built in Europe or the UK.

Even the most famous Christian cathedral of Europe–Notre Dame–is being refashioned as a multicultural shrine with street art and modern art murals creating with mood lighting “emotional spaces” in place of confessional boxes and medieval integrity of the Christian cathedral. In effect, Notre Dame, and thereby Christianity, is being vandalized and adulterated, and the Pope apparently signed off on it.

So what is the West when the West is without nations, without Christianity, and without a past?

It is a nothing. And this is what the Russians and Chinese are beginning to see.

Every great family and every great civilization has some roots in sin and crimes. What the Western world has forgotten is that they also have roots in accomplishments, moral, artistic, cultural, economic, political. We should not forget that man is fallen. There are good and evil that contend for his soul. It was Christianity that gave the powerless a voice capable of challenging the voice of raw power. It was this voice, together with material interests, that produced accountable government, itself subject to a rule of law.

Today the rule of law is disappearing. The US Constitution is in tatters. Everyone has become a tyrannical dictator. Not only presidents, chancellors, and prime ministers, but also employers, school boards, university administrators, mayors, governors, airlines, restaurants, sports organizations, issue mandates that are violations of the Nuremberg Laws laid down by the United States at the WW II war crime tribunals. Now the government in Washington refuses to obey its own creation, finding that Big Pharma profits, control over citizens, and perhaps darker agendas are more important than the rule of law.

The “watchdog media” are silent on the transgression but are shrill in propagandizing the criminal agenda. In other words, there is no honest media to hold government accountable, so government does what it desires. This is the definition of tyranny.

paulcraigroberts.org

The biggest mistake that the new film Don’t Look Up makes is to bill itself as a comedy. It isn’t really funny at all. Instead it is deadly serious and chilling as it accurately depicts how American society would react to a real, existential crisis.

First, such a crisis would be ignored in favor of celebrity news, then it would be scorned, science would be belittled, millions of people on social media would not believe it even when the establishment accepted it was true and then the corporate-controlled government would find a way to prevent mankind from being saved in favor of making a profit.

The film uses an impending, life-destroying comet headed directly to earth as a metaphor for the much slower, but not slow-enough, existential threat of climate catastrophe. There are many people who do not believe climate change is real, climate science is scorned, celebrity news drowns out climate news and other serious topics and corporate control of government, namely the fossil fuel industry, is preventing mankind from being saved in favor of making a profit.

NASA says the possibility of a comet directly hitting earth is at least 100 years off. In the meantime, it has a space program,  Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), test launched just two weeks ago, that would send spacecraft towards threatening asteroids to deflect them off course.

This method is portrayed in the film as the first attempt at salvation, until a creepy figure, clearly a composite of Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos, convinces the U.S. president, played by Meryl Streep, to call it off. The billionaire in the film is the president’s top donor and is worshiped the way those three real billionaires are, as visionaries — and not just the profit-driven businessmen that they are.

Streep’s Trump-like president gets away with previously taboo behavior, loved by her hard-right, working class fans, but is driven by winning elections and getting her nominees approved, like any president.

A manipulated and debased public is prone to revolt each time they realize they are being duped. In the meantime, their ill-informed and herd-like presence on social media is constant and menacing.

It’s a society gone mad, just like the real one.

The film’s top stars — Streep, Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett and Jennifer Lawrence — have helped catapult Don’t Look Up to the number one film on Netflix just days after its Christmas Eve release.

The story is by Adam McKay and David Sirota and directed by McKay.

As a “comedy” audiences can just laugh it off. But we laugh at our own peril.

consortiumnews.com