The Aspen Institute has issued the results of its much heralded 16-person Commission on Information Disorder on how to protect the public from misinformation. The commission on disinformation and “building trust” was partially headed by Katie Couric who is still struggling with her own admission that she edited an interview to remove controversial statements by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The Aspen recommendations however are a full-throated endorsement of systems of censorship.

The findings and recommendations are found in an 80-page report on how to combat “disinformation” and “misinformation,” which are remarkably ill-defined but treated as a matter of “we know when we see it.”  From the outset, however, the Commission dismissed the long-standing free speech principle that the solution to bad speech is better speech, not censorship. The problem is that many today object to allowing those with opposing views to continue to speak or others continue to listen to them.  The Commission quickly tosses the free speech norm to the side:

“The biggest lie of all, which this crisis thrives on, and which the beneficiaries of mis- and disinformation feed on, is that the crisis itself is uncontainable. One of the corollaries of that mythology is that, in order to fight bad information, all we need is more (and better distributed) good information. In reality, merely elevating truthful content is not nearly enough to change our current course.”

In addition to Couric, the Commission was headed by Color of Change President Rashad Robinson and Chris Krebs, former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Robinson was also a notable choice since he has been one of the most outspoken advocates of censorship. While some of us have been denouncing the expanding system of censorship by companies like Facebook, Robinson was threatening boycotts if the companies do not “rein in” those considered racists or spreaders of misinformation.

The Commission also includes Prince Harry who has referred to free speech protections under the First Amendment as “bonkers.”

Much of the report seems more aspirational in recommendations like “endorsing efforts that focus on exposing how historical and current imbalances of power, access and equity are manufactured and propagated with mis- and disinformation — and on promoting community-led solutions to forging social bonds.”

The Commission also appears to endorse the movement against “objectivity” and “both sideism” in the media: “Commissioners also discussed the need to adjust journalistic norms to avoid false equivalencies between lies and empirical fact in the pursuit of ‘both sides’ and ‘objectivity,’ particularly in areas of public health, civil rights, or election outcomes.”

Former New York Times Magazine reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones was one of the journalists who pushed the New York Times to denounce its own publication and promise to curtail columns in the future. In so doing, she railed against those who engage in what she called “even-handedness, both sideism” journalism.  Likewise,  Stanford Communications Professor Emeritus Ted Glasser has publicly called for an end of objectivity in journalism as too constraining for reporters in seeking “social justice.” In an interview with The Stanford Daily, Glasser insisted that journalism needed to “free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.” He rejected the notion that journalism is based on objectivity and said that he views “journalists as activists because journalism at its best — and indeed history at its best — is all about morality.”  Thus, “journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.”

However, the most chilling aspect of the report is the obvious invitation for greater forms of censorship. It calls for the government to become involved in combatting misinformation, the scourge of free speech and an invitation for state controls over speech. Ironically, there is no need for such direct government involvement when social media companies are acting as the equivalent of a state media in the censorship of public debates.

The import of the recommendations are abundantly clear:

 “Reducing Harms: Mitigating the worst harms of mis- and disinformation, such as threats to public health and democratic participation, and the targeting of communities through hate speech and extremism.

Comprehensive Federal Approach: Establish a comprehensive strategic approach to countering disinformation and the spread of misinformation, including a centralized national response strategy, clearly-defined roles and responsibilities across the Executive Branch, and identified gaps in authorities and capabilities.

Public Restoration Fund: Create an independent organization, with a mandate to develop systemic misinformation countermeasures through education, research, and investment in local institutions.

Civic Empowerment: Invest and innovate in online education and platform product features to increase users’ awareness of and resilience to online misinformation.

Superspreader Accountability: Hold superspreaders of mis- and disinformation to account with clear, transparent, and consistently applied policies that enable quicker, more decisive actions and penalties, commensurate with their impacts — regardless of location, or political views, or role in society.

Amendments to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996: 1) Withdraw platform immunity for content that is promoted through paid advertising and post promotion; and 2) Remove immunity as it relates to the implementation of product features, recommendation engines, and design.”

The ill-defined terms of “misinformation” and “disinformation” become more menacing when those terms are used as the basis for a government and private sector system to take “decisive actions and penalties” against those who spread such information.  The Commission is more focused on harm than the specific definition:

“Disinformation inflames long-standing inequalities and undermines lived experiences for historically targeted communities, particularly Black/African American communities. False narratives can sow division, hamper public health initiatives, undermine elections, or deliver fresh marks to grifters and profiteers, and they capitalize on deep-rooted problems within American society. Disinformation pours lighter fluid on the sparks of discord that exist in every community.”

In the end, the Commission dismisses the classic defense of free speech while calling for greater regulation of speech to address “deep-rooted problems in American society.” However, the deepest rooted problems in our society include the denial of free speech. Indeed, the First Amendment is premised on the belief that this right is essential to protecting the other freedoms in the Constitution. It is the right that allows people to challenge their government and others on electoral issues, public health issues, and other controversies.

The Aspen report is the latest evidence of a building anti-free speech movement in the United States. It is a movement that both rejects core free speech values but also seeks to normalize censorship. In the last few years, we have seen an increasing call for private censorship from Democratic politicians and liberal commentators. Faculty and editors are now actively supporting modern versions of book-burning with blacklists and bans for those with opposing political views. Columbia Journalism School Dean Steve Coll has denounced the “weaponization” of free speech, which appears to be the use of free speech by those on the right. So the dean of one of the premier journalism schools now supports censorship.

Free speech advocates are facing a generational shift that is now being reflected in our law schools, where free speech principles were once a touchstone of the rule of law. As millions of students are taught that free speech is a threat and that “China is right” about censorship, these figures are shaping a new and more limited role for free speech in society.

jonathanturley.org

“[James Burnham is] the real intellectual founder of the neoconservative movement and the original proselytizer, in America, of the theory of ‘totalitarianism.’”

– Christopher Hitchens, “For the Sake of Argument: Essay and Minority Reports”

In the first part of this two part series, I went over how the roots for the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset can very clearly be traced back to 80 years ago, when an American, former high-level Trotskyist who later went on to become the intellectual founding father of neo-conservatism, James Burnham, wrote a book on his vision for “The Managerial Revolution.” And that it was in fact, these ideologies of Burnham that triggered Orwell to write his “1984”.

From Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution to Global Fascism: Burnham’s Recruitment into Allen Dulles’ OPC

“Burnham was a consultant to OPC on virtually every subject of interest to our organization. … He had extensive contacts in Europe and, by virtue of his Trotskyite background, was something of an authority on domestic and foreign Communist parties and front organizations.”

– E. Howard Hunt’s Memoirs (Watergate ‘plumber’ and famous CIA dirty trickster)

It is understandably the source of some confusion as to how a former high level Trotskyist became the founder of the neo-conservative movement; with the Trotskyists calling him a traitor to his kind, and the neo-conservatives describing it as an almost road to Damascus conversion in ideology.

However, the truth of the matter is that it is neither.

That is, James Burnham never changed his beliefs and convictions at any point during his journey through Trotskyism, OSS/CIA intelligence to neo-conservatism, although he may have back-stabbed many along the way, and this two-part series will go through why this is the case.

As I discussed in part one, Burnham had by May 21, 1940 officially resigned from the “‘philosophy of Marxism,’ dialectical materialism,” and by 1941 achieved fame and fortune with his book “The Managerial Revolution.”

Burnham, made clear in this book, that he was not only very ready to accept the outcome of a victorious Nazi Germany (this was his conclusion at the time), but that this was both a natural and an inevitable course that the entire world would have no choice but to follow. Burnham made no qualms that Nazi Germany was considered by himself as the most superior form of his concept of a “managerial society.”

He would go on to state in his “The Managerial Revolution” that the Russian Revolution, WWI and its aftermath, the Versailles Treaty gave final proof that capitalist world politics could no longer work and had come to an end. He described WWI as the last war of the capitalists and WWII as the first, but not last war, of the managerial society. And, that many more wars would have to be fought after WWII before a managerial society could finally fully take hold.

This ongoing war would lead to the destruction of sovereign nation states, such that only a small number of great nations would survive, culminating into the nuclei of three “super-states”, which Burnham predicted would be centered around the United States, Germany and Japan. He goes on to predict that these super-states will never be able to conquer the other and will be engaged in permanent war until some unforeseeable time.

He predicted that Russia would be broken in two, with the west being incorporated into the German sphere and the east into the Japanese sphere. (Note that this book was published in 1941, such that Burnham was clearly of the view that Nazi Germany and fascist Japan would be the victors of WWII.) Burnham states that “sovereignty will be restricted to the few super-states.”

This future of “forever wars” amongst a few super-states has obvious remnant influences from Trotsky’s “Permanent Revolution” militant ideology.

This was also just the kind of thing Allen Dulles was talent searching for.

During the 1920s and 1930s both Dulles brothers acted as significant players in the “Rearming of Germany by Night,” largely organised through their law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, which operated as the center of an intricate international network of banks, investment firms, and industrial conglomerates that helped rebuild Germany after WWI.

The German representative of the Dulles brothers’ law firm was Dr. Gerhardt Alois Westrick, who acted simultaneously as a financial agent for Hitler and an Abwehr spymaster in the United States. In January 1940 Westrick was given the title of Wehrwirtschaftsführer for his contributions to the war effort. He was then assigned by von Ribbentrop to undertake a mission to the United States to meet American business leaders and gain their support for Germany. (1)

Allen Dulles was also a director of the J. Henry Schroder bank, whose German chairman, SS General Baron Kurt von Schroder, was one of the main assistants to Schacht in organizing the fund that financed Hitler’s 1933 rise to power. Allen Dulles remained on the board of the Schroder Bank until 1944, well after he had taken his post as chief of the OSS in Switzerland.

Allen Dulles also worked very closely with Thomas McKittrick, an old Wall Street friend who was president of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Five of its directors would later be charged with war crimes, including Hermann Schmitz, one of the many Dulles’ law clients involved with BIS. Schmitz was the CEO of IG Farben the chemical conglomerate that became notorious for its production of Zyklon B, the gas used in Hitler’s death camps, and for its extensive use of slave labour during the war. (2)

David Talbot writes in his “The Devil’s Chessboard”:

“The secretive BIS became a crucial financial partner for the Nazis. Emil Puhl – vice president of Hitler’s Reichsbank and a close associate of McKittrick – once called BIS the Reichsbank’s only ‘foreign branch.’ BIS laundered hundreds of millions of dollars in Nazi gold looted from the treasuries of occupied countries.”

Allen Dulles was first recruited into the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) in October 1941, a forerunner of sorts of the CIA. During most of his work with the OSS he was stationed in Bern, Switzerland, where he was later found to be implicated in a number of incredibly suspect activities that would raise concern that his allegiance and loyalty was really with Nazi Germany.

Such activities included sabotaging the success of operations by American intelligence and engaging in secret negotiations on behalf of individuals directly or indirectly affiliated with the Nazi Party, one of the most well-known incidents of this is Dulles’ curious conduct during Operation Sunrise, aka the Bern incident, in favour of SS Gen. Kurt Wolff.

[In a previous three-part series paper I go through further details of the fascist roots of the CIA, and how Allen Dulles, and his brother Foster Dulles, play instrumental roles in all of this.]

The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) was created as a department of the CIA in 1948, but operated as a rogue operation until Oct. 1950. Many of the agency’s recruits were “ex” Nazis. (3)

OPC was preceded by the Special Procedures Group (SPG), whose creation in March 1948 had been authorized in December 1947 with President Harry Truman’s approval of the top-secret policy paper NSC 4-A.

NSC 4-A was a new directive to cover “clandestine paramilitary operations, as well as political and economic warfare,” this provided the authorization for the intervention of the CIA in the Italian elections of April 1948 (in favour of Italy’s Christian Democrats, which hid thousands of fascists in its ranks, over what would have been the election of the Communist Party of Italy, who were admired for leading the fight against Mussolini). This success in tampering with the Italian elections demonstrated that psychological/political warfare could be the key to “winning” the Cold War.

When OPC was created, it inherited all of SPG’s resources.

On June 18, 1948, NSC 4-A was replaced by NSC 10/2, creating the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). NSC 10/2 was the first presidential document which specified a mechanism to approve and manage covert operations, and also the first in which the term “covert operations” was defined.

George F. Kennan, the director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, was the key figure behind the OPC’s creation. (4) Frank Wisner, who worked as a Wall Street lawyer for the law firm Carter, Ledyard & Milburn, was former OSS and very close to Allen Dulles. He would be called in from the State Department as OPC’s first director.

From 1948-1950 the OPC, though technically a department within the CIA was not under the CIA’s control, it was a renegade operation run by Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner. OPC was brought under CIA control in October 1950, when Walter Bedell Smith became Director of Central Intelligence, and it was renamed the Directorate of Plans (for more on this refer to my paper).

During the period of 1948-1950, Dulles and Wisner were essentially operating their own private spy agency, likely with the special blessing of George F. Kennan, as the OPC was actually more beholden to the State Department then the CIA during this period. (5)

During WWII, Burnham would leave his teaching post at NYU to work for the OSS and carried on to work for the CIA when the OSS was disbanded in Sept. 1945. He would later be recommended by George F. Kennan to lead the semi-autonomous “Psychological Strategy Board” (PSB) division of the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). (6)

This is hardly a coincidence, as Jewish-American author Naomi Wiener Cohen states in her book “Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership” concerning the disastrous effects to Russia of the British-inspired Russo-Japanese war (Feb 1904-Sept 1905), which provoked the 1905 Russian ‘revolution’ that lasted until 1907. That revolution paved the way for the overthrow of the Tsar and the coming to power of the Bolsheviks in the October revolution of 1917:

“The Russo-Japanese war allied Schiff with George Kennan in a venture to spread revolutionary propaganda among Russian prisoners of war held by Japan (Kennan had access to these). The operation was a carefully guarded secret and not until the revolution of March 1917 was it publicly disclosed by Kennan. He then told how he had secured Japanese permission to visit the camps and how the prisoners had asked him for something to read. Arranging for the ‘Friends of Russian Freedom’ to ship over a ton of revolutionary material, he secured Schiff’s financial backing. As Kennan told it, fifty thousand officers and men returned to Russia [as] ardent revolutionists. There they became fifty thousand “seeds of liberty” in one hundred regiments that contributed to the overthrow of the Tsar.”

Thus one can make a good case that George Kennan brought Burnham in, specifically due to his history as an experienced high-level Trotskyist with “the right stuff,” for his, as Orwell puts it, readiness to worship the power of the moment and his agreement that ultimate power could only be achieved through a “permanent revolution.”

George Kennan was also not an ideological socialist, best known as the author of the Cold War strategy of “containment,” he adamantly opposed FDR’s recognition of the Soviet Union, refused to support the United States working with the Soviets in defeating Hitler, accusing Stalin of being just as bad…or perhaps he preferred Hitler’s succession to power?

Kennan writes in his Memoirs:

“We should have no relationship at all with them [the Soviets]…Never- neither then nor at any later date- did I consider the Soviet Union a fit ally or associate, actual or potential, for this country.”

Kennan made it clear he was no fan of Stalin’s Soviet Union, but he certainly thought differently about the uses of “former” militant Trotskyists, possibly it was this branch of the Bolsheviks he truly wished to see succeed? Perhaps they were to play a similar role for subversion from within in the United States as they did in Russia?

[In a future installment I will discuss how “former” Trotskyists infiltrated the RAND Corporation, the Pentagon, and the CIA (as part of the second purge of American intelligence). For part of the story you can refer here.]

As Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould put it in their excellent article “How the CIA Created a Fake Western Reality for Unconventional Warfare”:

“Burnham functioned as a critical connection between Wisner’s office and the intelligentsia moving from the extreme left to the extreme right with ease. Burnham found the congress to be a place to inveigh not just against Communism but against the non-communist left as well and left many wondering whether his views weren’t as dangerous to liberal democracy as Communism.

 According to Frances Stoner Saunders [author of the acclaimed book ‘The Cultural Cold War’], members of the British delegation found the rhetoric coming out of the congress to be a deeply troubling sign of things to come… ‘I felt, well, these are the same people who seven years ago were probably baying in the same way to similar German denunciations of Communism coming from Dr. Goebbels in the Sports Palast. And I felt, well, what sort of people are we identifying with? That was the greatest shock to me. There was a moment during the Congress when I felt that we were being invited to summon up Beelzebub in order to defeat Stalin.’

The Congress for Cultural Freedom didn’t need Beelzebub. It already had him in the form of Burnham, [Sidney] Hook and Wisner, and by 1952, the party was just getting started… In 1953 Burnham was called upon again by Wisner to reach beyond Communism to help overthrow the democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh in Tehran, Iran…His book, “The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom,” would become the CIA’s manual for displacing Western culture with an alternative doctrine for endless conflict in a world of oligarchs.” [emphasis added]

The Machiavellians: Burnham’s “Managerial” Defenders of Freedom

“The modern state … is an engine of propaganda, alternately manufacturing crises and claiming to be the only instrument that can effectively deal with them. This propaganda, in order to be successful, demands the cooperation of writers, teachers, and artists not as paid propagandists or state-censored time-servers but as ‘free’ intellectuals capable of policing their own jurisdictions and of enforcing acceptable standards of responsibility within the various intellectual professions.”

– Christopher Lasch “The Agony of the American Left”, author of “Britain’s Secret Propaganda War”

In Burnham’s “The Managerial Revolution,” he writes:

“Most of these intellectuals are not in the least aware that the net social effect of the ideologies which they elaborate contributes to the power and privilege of the managers and to the building of a new structure of class rule in society. As in the past, the intellectuals believe that they are speaking in the name of truth and for the interests of all humanity…Indeed, the intellectual, without usually being aware of it, elaborate the new ideologies from the point of view of the position of the managers.”

What this means is that the intellectuals themselves do not understand who in fact will benefit in the end by the philosophies and theories they support and defend, they are mere instruments for the propagation of a new ruling class and hold no true power. Aldous Huxley’s, who also promoted a managerial ruling class in his “Brave New World,” speech to naïve Berkeley students, titled “The Ultimate Revolution” comes to mind…

As Huxley put it:

“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it.”

As already stated, Burnham had been recommended by George F. Kennan to lead the semi-autonomous “Psychological Strategy Board” (PSB) division of the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). The PSB D-33/2, created on May 5, 1953, laid out the strategy for how “free intellectuals” could be manipulated against their own interests to facilitate a CIA dictated transformation of Western culture. In fact, as Frances Stoner Saunder’s makes the point in “The Cultural Cold War,” it is likely Burnham himself was the one to draft PSB D-33/2.

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould write in “The Final Stage of the Machiavellian Elite’s Takeover of America”:

“PSB D-33/2 foretells of a ‘long-term intellectual movement, to: break down world-wide doctrinaire thought patterns’ while ‘creating confusion, doubt and loss of confidence’ in order to ‘weaken objectively the intellectual appeal of neutralism and to predispose its adherents towards the spirit of the West.’ The goal was to ‘predispose local elites to the philosophy held by the planners,’ while employing local elites ‘would help to disguise the American origin of the effort so that it appears to be a native development.’

While declaring itself as an antidote to Communist totalitarianism, one internal critic of the program, PSB officer Charles Burton Marshall, viewed PSB D-33/2 itself as frighteningly totalitarian, interposing ‘a wide doctrinal system’ that ‘accepts uniformity as a substitute for diversity,’ embracing ‘all fields of human thought — all fields of intellectual interests, from anthropology and artistic creations to sociology and scientific methodology.’ He concluded: ‘That is just about as totalitarian as one can get.’

With ‘The Machiavellians’ Burnham had composed the manual that forged the old Trotskyist left together with a right-wing Anglo/American elite. The political offspring of that volatile union would be called neoconservatism, whose overt mission would be to roll back Russian/Soviet influence everywhere. Its covert mission would be to reassert a British cultural dominance over the emerging Anglo/American Empire and maintain it through propaganda.” [emphasis added]

As already discussed in part one, Burnham describes how it is necessary that the masses believe the revolution to be beneficial to them, when in reality it is just to transition from one ruling class to the other. The promise of some form of socialism free from the oppression of capitalism is offered, but the masses are told that true socialism will need time and can only be achieved further in the future, in the meantime, a managerial class is put in place.

Burnham writes:

“The ideology must ostensibly speak in the name of ‘humanity,’ ‘the people,’ ‘the race,’ ‘the future,’ ‘God,’ ‘destiny,’ and so on. Furthermore, in spite of the opinion of many present-day cynics, not just any ideology is capable of appealing to the sentiments of the masses. It is more than a problem of skilful propaganda technique. A successful ideology has got to seem to the masses, in however confused a way, actually to express some of their own interests.

…At the present time, the ideologies that can have a powerful impact, that can make a real headway, are, naturally, the managerial ideologies, since it is these that alone correspond with the actual direction of events…In place of the ‘individual,’ the stress turns to the ‘state,’ the people, the folk, the race…In place of private enterprise, ‘socialism’ [only by name] or ‘collectivism.’ In place of ‘freedom’ and ‘free initiative,’ planning. Less talk about ‘rights’ and ‘natural rights’; more about ‘duties’ and ‘order’ and ‘discipline.’ Less about ‘opportunity’ and more about ‘jobs’.”

He goes on to discuss the need to change the meaning of words such “destiny,” “the future,” “sacrifice,” “power,” from the old ideologies of capitalism to suit the new ideologies of managerialism.

George Orwell would address this in his “1984,” where Burnham’s “The Managerial Revolution” appears pseudonymously as “The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism.”

Burnham continues:

“There will be no the managerial ideology any more than there was a the capitalist ideology. The several managerial ideologies will, however, revolve around a common axis, as the capitalist ideologies revolved around a common and different axis…In this country, Technocracy and the much more important New Dealism are embryonic and less-developed types of primitive, native-American managerial ideologies.”

Burnham’s reference to New Dealism as a managerial policy may be troubling to some, however, Burnham only looks at the mechanics of a social situation and its potential uses in a managerial society, it does not mean that the thing he is talking about as it is currently functioning is a form of oppression on the people. As Burnham states in his book, Roosevelt’s New Dealism is not what was intended on paper so to speak.

Burnham writes:

“The firmest representatives of the New Deal are not Roosevelt or the other conspicuous ‘New Deal politicians,’ but the younger group of administrators, experts, technicians, bureaucrats who have been finding places throughout the state apparatus…in short, managers.”

Keynes’ vision for New Dealism opposed that of Roosevelt. Burnham expresses frustration that a man that had nothing to do with the creation of an idea was now pulling the strings, for more on this refer here. One example of the sort of New Dealism Burnham is referencing, fit for his vision of a managerial society, can be found in the Green New Deal, or the anti-BRI Build Back Better for the World (aka: B3W).

These are the sorts of ideologies we are told will be universally beneficial, when in reality they are meant to benefit a select ruling class, in this case a managerial class, with the intention to maximize global control to the detriment of the majority.

As Orwell put it in his essay “Second Thoughts on Burnham”:

“It will be seen that Burnham’s theory is not, strictly speaking, a new one. Many earlier writers have foreseen the emergence of a new kind of society, neither capitalist nor Socialist, and probably based upon slavery…”

The Great Reset: Oligarchical Collectivism

“What you radicals, and we who hold opposing views differ about, is not so much the end as the means, not so much what should be brought about, as how it should, and can, be brought about.”

– Otto H. Kahn (speaking to the League of Industrial Democracy in New York Dec 30^th 1924), partner of Jacob Schiff and Felix Warburg’s Kuhn, Loeb & Co. and director of American International Corp.

Burnham concludes in his “The Managerial Revolution”:

“The new world political system based on a small number of super-states will still leave problems-more, perhaps, than a unified single world-state; but it will be enough of a ‘solution’ for society to keep going. Nor is there any sufficient reason to believe that these problems of the managerial world system, including the managerial wars, will ‘destroy civilization.’ It is almost inconceivable even what it could mean for civilization – to be literally destroyed. Once again: what is being destroyed is our civilization, not civilization.”

For the destruction of our civilization, this is precisely the intent of the World Economic Forum and its Club of Rome/Henry Kissinger affiliations, and it is their intention that the very people who will be enslaved by such a ruling class, will ironically be the ones who passionately fight to see it through. The masses themselves will be the ones willing to sacrifice and defend at all costs a growing power structure that intends to bring about their very own destruction.

There are perhaps even those who know this and believe in such a cause nonetheless, after all, if they agree that “the real enemy is humanity itself” as concluded by the Club of Rome on solving the problems of mankind, then the destruction of our civilization is not only justified, it is also our duty to bring it about.

But if such an ideology proves to be a sham, a fairy-tale meant to benefit a select ruling class, its believers will be complicit in bringing about the most atrocious crimes ever committed upon humanity in our entire history of existence.

We are now standing on that precipice…

Orwell concludes in his “Second Thoughts on Burnham”:

“It is curious that in all his talk about the struggle for power, Burnham never stops to ask why people want power. He seems to assume that power hunger, although only dominant in comparatively few people, is a natural instinct that does not have to be explained, like the desire for food. He also assumes that the division of society into classes serves the same purpose in all ages. This is practically to ignore the history of hundreds of years…The question that he ought to ask, and never does ask, is: Why does the lust for naked power become a major human motive exactly now, when the dominion of man over man is ceasing to be necessary? As for the claim that ‘human nature’, or ‘inexorable laws’ of this and that, make Socialism impossible, is simply a projection of the past into the future. In effect, Burnham argues that because a society of free and equal human beings has never existed, it never can exist. By the same argument one could have demonstrated the impossibility of aeroplanes in 1900, or of motor cars in 1850.

…so long as they [the Nazis] were winning, Burnham seems to have seen nothing wrong with the methods of the Nazis…This implies that literally anything can become right or wrong if the dominant class of the moment so wills it…That a man of Burnham’s gifts should have been able for a while to think of Nazism as something rather admirable, something that could and probably would build up a workable and durable social order shows, what damage is done to the sense of reality by the cultivation of what is now called ‘realism’.”

The author can be reached at https://cynthiachung.substack.com/

(1) Bloomenkranz, Sol (2012-07-06). Charles Bedaux – Deciphering an Enigma. iUniverse. ISBN 978-1-4759-2637-8.
(2) David Talbot “The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government”
(3) Ibid., pg 128
(4) Corke, Sarah-Jane (1 May 2006). “George Kennan and the Inauguration of Political Warfare”. Journal of Conflict Studies. 26 (1). ISSN 1715-5673
(5) Miscamble, Wilson D. (1992). George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 1947-1950. Princeton University Press. p. 199. ISBN 0691024839.
(6) Kimball, Roger (September 2002). “The power of James Burnham”. The New Criterion. Archived from the original on 2019-10-14. Retrieved 2020-06-03

Hearing the idea of a “Ministry of Social Cohesion” was quite exciting for someone who writes about politics, geopolitics and ideology on a regular basis. On the surface this sounds like a systemic answer to the paradox of our time – that our omnipresent Liberalism only acknowledges the individual and yet humans have always lived in groups from the darkness of prehistory. This sort of ministry sounds like it could be a part of a new rising Chinese Communism or the dreams of a still theoretical “Illiberal” system in Hungary or Russia. But now this concept with a spicy name is being put into place deep in the heart of the West in Germany. Based on the direction that the victorious side in the Cold War has taken over the last 30 years we should be very skeptical that this proposed Ministry of Social Cohesion will work for the benefit of common ethnic Germans in their homeland and will be unlikely to help build a cohesive now multi-ethnic Germany.

Why should we be skeptical of something that sounds so reasonable?

Whenever something that is already illegal is being made illegal yet again, we should be very suspicious. For example, in modern times in the West there is nowhere, where you could simply beat a certain type of person to death, who posed no threat to you, and get away with it. There simply never were any court cases regarding murder, in which the defense plead “but the victim was Gay/Black/Muslim your honour” in an attempt to get their client acquitted.

And yet despite everyone being constitutionally made equal regardless of sex, race or some other inherent factors “Hate Crime” legislation has been pushed hard by those who somehow either believe that certain groups get murdered daily with no repercussions or that simply want to create a system of double standards, where if the supposed victim of a crime is in X group and the accused perpetrator is in Y group, then life is over for the member of group Y simply by accusation and, if convicted, the punishment will be especially harsh.

Image: Today’s Germans have just cause to fear any big bureaucratic projects coming out of this building.

Hate crime legislation is one of the loudest examples of making something illegal twice, but it is far from alone and this need to make people in Germany “more equal” is sure to result in making them less equal.

Germany already provides everyone legal equality. The idea that there needs to be a ministry to make certain ethnic groups feel a greater sense of equality is of course a red flag. Furthermore, it is hard to imagine that EU bureaucrats who live perpetually in a set of progressive political blinders would be able to achieve the stated goal of making “All forms of group-related enmity… outlawed.” This also raises the question of how can one get rid of enmity? Are German-speaking Turkish stand-up comics to be shot for taking shots at Romanians migrant workers?

The United States did a good job of making European immigrants leave their bitterness towards each other in Europe, which their English-speaking children quickly forgot about. This was not so much due to government involvement but distance and living in a pre-internet world. How to make Turks, Arabs and others leave the past back home in a globalized world is not so easy.

But the cause for concern is that the state is being given a special wing designed to “protect” minority rights in a nation that already has legal Rule-of-Law equality. This will surely create new double standards that will not favor ethnic Germans.

What benefit does Social Cohesion provide? Freedom

In our diverse 21st century where any of us can use a cheap smartphone that allows us to communicate with the entire world and offers the magic of automatic translators, it is now more than ever time to understand that if a society is to be strong it needs to have cohesion in order to have purpose and to survive. As Russians say “you have to have all your muskets firing in the same direction”. An intellectually diverse society that agrees on nothing is vastly weaker and open to foreign influence than one with a generally accepted ideology.

The America of the Cold War that had a Left and Right wing as “two sides of the same coin” arguing over nuances in how to build the dream of the Founding Fathers is much different than the one we live in today in which half of the population wants the other half to die in concentration camps.

But beyond the obvious factor of solidarity making stability, one thing that is often overlooked is that when cohesion is high, and there is an overall agreement in society about right and wrong, this creates a condition of great freedom for the common man. When most people more or less agree over things, it is very easy to be tolerant of the opinions of other people that you either generally agree with or at least do not find threatening.

When America was arguing over what Capitalism should look like in the nation it was much less of a problem than today’s war over Capitalism vs. Socialism (aka Communism). When we all agreed that Capitalism was the way to go, it was easier to calmly advocate what that system should look like in comparison to two sides arguing over completely mutually exclusive systems.

If Social Cohesion is high, there will be more agreement in society which will make individuals feel more free. In an eclectic nation with radically different ideas battling for power, freedom of speech is unlikely to flourish.

What should a German or any Ministry of Social Cohesion look like?

The problem with trying to produce Social Cohesion from the armchair of politicians is that it could very easily wind up becoming extremely heavy handed reminding us of a certain period in German history that wound up ultimately destroying any hopes of Germany becoming a global power. This type of ugliness needs to stay in the past forever.

So the question of how to make any society have a higher cohesion level without negative reinforcement is perhaps not so simple. “Do things the German way or get the truncheon” is a non-option. Furthermore, any of the ideas below are fairly universal and would apply to many nations across the globe be they Nigeria, Thailand, India etc.

One of the easiest ways to create a more united state would be to give big tax breaks or other leniencies on things that meet a certain German national character. Building a house in Europe is not cheap, but building one in a traditional German style just like all the other ones around it, should yield some sort of tax rebate or other bonus. This discount would be given regardless of the ethnicity of the owner of the new house. This would reward “Germanness” without punishing those who do otherwise. Architecture has an effect on our subconscious and having children grow up in typical homogenous German surroundings certainly cannot hurt when trying to achieve the goal of Social Cohesion.

Image: Why should those who refuse to participate in German society, get any benefits from it?

This tax break/credit/bonus could apply to restaurants that offer traditional German food, or other organizations that provide a German option for the masses in a diverse globalizing world. The key issue is that all of these benefits for businesses and organizations that do things the German way must give these benefits universally to any citizen of any ethnicity so as to not violate the principles of a Western constitution. As long as everyone can participate in subsidised German activity X for free regardless of their appearance, then the law is not violated. This is a means of welcoming others into a culture rather than the traditional negative reinforcement option of laying down punishments for noncompliance which governments across our planet love to do.

To an extent, a technocratic algorithm of “carrots without sticks” will naturally push Germany towards a higher level of Social Cohesion.

All shifts in political attitudes require some sort of media promotion and preferably on a grand scale.

Removing the previously stated “Hate Crime” legislation, and other hand-outs that make certain people in Germany live in a privileged status would also have to go. Getting rid of bigotry requires a feeling of fairness, and when you can live in Germany on the taxpayer’s time while at the same time trashing the nation online and sometimes literally you are never going to have a unified society.

The idea of Social Cohesion is important but it is anathema to Progressive Liberalism

The real barrier to any Social Cohesion in a country like Germany that is extremely Progressive is the fact that the to achieve this goal one has to believe that the traditional culture of the nation is a good thing, a great thing, that people should participate in in order for the privilege of getting the benefits of that culture’s wealth, resources etc.

The core of Euro-Liberal identity is self-hatred which is in direct contrast to this stated goal of having a more united society. That is why we should be highly skeptical of any of their attempts to do so. To create a strong German culture that fully assimilates migrants into the fold requires one to actually like Germanness, which is a quality almost completely absent from the halls of power in Berlin. This is why we are much more likely to see successful attempts to bring about Social Cohesion in the Global East where self-hatred is not mandatory.

This topic should remain up for discussion, the great civilizations of humanity are going to need to work towards maintaining cohesion while technology erodes it on a daily basis in our “ever globalizing world”.

For most of recorded history, domination by brute force has been the norm for human civilization. Someone claws their way into a position of power over the other humans, and you obey and respect him or he’ll have his goons attack you.

As people became more educated and more aware of what’s going on in their world, they began to decide that they didn’t much like being attacked by the ruler’s goon squad whenever they stepped out of line. Because there are a lot more ordinary people than rulers, this forced an end to the practice of rule by overt brute force tyranny in some parts of the world.

So a few things changed. First, we began to see rulers shipping their violent goon squad enforcers overseas. While it is now taboo to openly butcher members of your citizenry who oppose you, it is considered perfectly acceptable to send troops across the sea to destroy foreign nations which disobey your dictates.

Second, since it is no longer considered appropriate to physically force your nation’s citizens to comply with your agendas, we’ve seen a shift to psychologically compelling them to comply instead. Now instead of being compelled to advance the interests of the powerful under threat of being bashed in the head, we are psychologically manipulated into advancing those interests by mass media propaganda and other forms of narrative control.

The Real World And The Narrative World

We each inhabit two very different worlds simultaneously: the real world, and the narrative world. Manipulators exploit the differences between these worlds to trade narrative-world currency for real-world resources.https://t.co/CyfulfIsLt

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) February 12, 2021

With the murderous goon squads now doing their business overseas and our rulers now chaining our minds instead of our bodies, things look a lot more civilized. But they aren’t really. They still get everything they want, and if we ever want anything that inconveniences them, they simply manipulate us in a more convenient direction.

Being manipulated into voting for and consenting to the agendas of the powerful is not meaningfully different from having the agendas of the powerful forced upon you. People think of control by propaganda differently from control via brute physical force because we have a tendency to imagine that the body and mind are separate. Chaining people’s bodies looks tyrannical while chaining their minds does not, but as far as the powerful are concerned they accomplish the same goal.

The unaware believe that civilized society has dispensed with tyranny and moved to democracy, where people enact their will through voting. The more aware see that this “democracy” is an illusion because the will of the public has been totally hijacked via mass-scale psychological manipulation by the powerful, but still see this movement away from brute force tyranny as a major victory. The truly lucid see that while psychological abuse is in some ways preferable to physical abuse, all the powerful have really done is move the chain from around our necks to around the thought bubbles above our heads. As far as the powerful care, nothing has changed.

Freedom is the ability to enact your own will for your own life. If anyone is preventing you from doing this, you are not free. If anyone is manipulating you into enacting their will instead of your own authentic will, you are not free. Freedom and manipulation cannot coexist.

I Desire Your Freedom

“I desire your freedom. Your real freedom. From all forms of oppression, from all forms of manipulation, even your own. That is true sovereignty. I desire this for you. I desire this for everyone.”https://t.co/Copnrrumom

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) February 15, 2021

There is tyranny by brute force, and there is tyranny by manipulation. In both cases the victim winds up enacting the will of the manipulator, but in the latter there is the erroneous belief that that action was freely chosen. It was not. You are not free if you’re manipulated.

You see this play out in abusive relationships: “She can leave whenever she wants, door’s right there.”

You see it in abusive cults: “Everyone is here of their own free will.”

You see it in abusive governments: “Things are the way they are because of how people keep voting.”

And it’s always a lie. Forcing someone’s mind in a given direction is the same as forcing their body in a different direction; the only difference is one makes you look like an abusive tyrant and the other form of tyranny is far less obvious. They’re both forms of tyranny though.

The fact that tyranny by manipulation is less obvious is why it’s the chosen route for tyranny to transpire through in the western empire. Vast fortunes are poured into controlling the way people think, act and vote via mass-scale psychological grooming in the form of plutocrat-controlled news media, influential plutocrat-funded think tanks, and the ever-expanding agenda to control what information people consume on the internet.

Tyranny via propaganda manipulation is not less abusive than tyranny via brute force, and its victims are no more at fault. Blaming the victims of tyranny via manipulation for being gullible is the same as blaming the victims of tyranny via brute force for being weak.

If people saw a husband walking his wife with a chain around her neck with her hands and feet in shackles, they would be shocked and alarmed. But people see wives with psychological chains around their minds every day and they never know it. In both cases the wives are victims of abuse, but in the latter case no alarm bells go off, and no attempts to help are made.

Manipulation is force. Diddling narratives and exploiting cognitive biases to deliberately subvert someone’s personal will is force. Pushing someone’s mind in a given direction via deception and dishonesty and is not less abusive than pushing their body in a given direction via brute force. It just happens that the latter is taboo while the former is encouraged and rewarded with lucrative punditry contracts and huge think tank contributions.

How To Defeat The Empire

“What I do advocate, in as many different ways as I can come up with, is a decentralized guerrilla psywar against the institutions which enable the powerful to manipulate the way ordinary people think, act and vote.”https://t.co/4F5dWaURdq

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) September 10, 2019

We will not be truly free until we free ourselves of this psychological domination. We will not free ourselves of this psychological domination until we see it the same way we see tyranny enacted by physical brute force. We need to learn to not just perceive the chains around the mind, but to view them as just as shocking, horrifying and unacceptable as chains around the body.

Until then it won’t matter what else we do. People talk about forming viable third parties to upend the status quo, but as long as the psychological chains are in place they’ll just manipulate that new three-party paradigm in the same way they manipulate the two-party one currently. People talk about staging a leftist takeover of one of the two parties, but again as long as the mass-scale manipulation machine is in effect that dynamic will keep coming down in favor of the powerful.

We’ve got to make those chains visible to everyone, and we’ve got to make them as outrageous as physical ones. We do this by highlighting the various ways mass-scale psychological grooming is being conducted by the powerful, thereby drawing attention and awareness to what’s going on.

Make fighting mass-scale psychological manipulation your foremost priority. Awaken people to the fact that they are being manipulated, because manipulation only works when you don’t know it’s happening. Help people see the chains, and you will give them the ability to remove them. Then, and only then, will it become possible to create a healthy world together.

All positive human change is the result of expanded awareness, from substance abuse recovery to civil rights. It was the expansion of awareness which forced them to move from tyranny by brute force to tyranny by manipulation. Expanding it further will force them to move off of this as well. The chain was wrapped around our bodies, now it is wrapped around our thought bubbles, and soon we will remove it altogether.

caityjohnstone.medium.com

Pericles’ famous funeral oration shows how civic pride and historical awareness point toward the common good.

By Christopher M. ENGLAND

As the United States muddles through a global pandemic and the aftermath of a contested election, it is hard to avoid a sense that the country is now suffused by a spirit of grievance and revenge. Donald Trump’s call to “make America great again” has given rise to the cynical response, voiced by Andrew Cuomo and others, that “America was never that great.” Even libertarians and many traditional conservatives have come to see talk of greatness as little more than a smokescreen for an aggressive foreign policy and an interventionist state. Unfortunately, none of the parties to this debate appear to fully grasp the vital role that conceptions of civic greatness play in sustaining a free society.

In this context, the legendary Harvard philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once made an unusual comment about the culture of freedom. In 1933, surveying a political landscape wracked by the Great Depression, Whitehead rather bizarrely suggested that the preservation of freedom in the West might require a public culture that could replace the religious symbolism of the Book of Revelation with political symbolism of the “speech of Pericles to the Athenians” from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. Strange as this juxtaposition may appear, Whitehead had a very simple, and very timely, point to make.

He argued that Western notions of political freedom are largely an outgrowth of the Christian religious tradition that conceives of universal moral standards and insists on the equal dignity of every individual soul. This egalitarian universalism opens the intellectual space for conceptions of human rights, classical liberalism, democracy, democratic socialism, and many other forms of modern politics. So far, so good.

However, Whitehead also thought the Christian legacy had a darker side, because its moral vision of the world can sometimes foster feelings of resentment against inequality, which stubbornly persist despite our best efforts, as well a spirit of revenge against those who transgress the moral law. Whitehead saw these more destructive aspects of the Christian legacy exemplified by the apocalyptic tenor of the Book of Revelation, in which the Lord punishes transgressors in a culminating act of sovereign power. His point is that a political culture of resentment and revenge remains an ever-present temptation in societies that explicitly cherish equality and universality, even when those values take on a more secular garb, as is the case in nearly all contemporary democracies. Paradoxically, the same values that create the culture of freedom can undermine it by pitting citizens against one another in a cycle of retribution.

For just this reason, Whitehead was fascinated by Pericles’ funeral oration, delivered in 431 BC to honor Athenian soldiers killed during the first year of the Peloponnesian War with Sparta. He understood that the address, perhaps the most famous speech in Western history, provides an account of a democratic polity in which a shared conception of political greatness helps to offset feelings of resentment and moralistic revenge. The upshot is that equality and universality may not be enough to sustain a culture of freedom: these moral values require a political supplement, and that supplement is civic greatness.

The Athenians were facing difficult circumstances when Pericles, whom Thucydides calls “the first citizen of Athens,” was called to speak in honor of the dead. Sparta had ravaged the fields surrounding Athens early in the war, destroying the property of numerous citizens, and many promising young men had already perished. Nevertheless, he used the opportunity provided by the eulogy to tell the Athenian citizenry a story about their own greatness that allowed them to see their suffering as something to be borne together, with honor and dignity.

Surprisingly to modern readers, Pericles begins by declaring that the first place of honor must go, not to the fallen soldiers, but to those distant ancestors who founded the state, and secondly, to their own fathers who preserved and increased this inheritance. This is a complex rhetorical move, and the purpose of dwelling on the achievements of the ancestors is severalfold. One goal is to clarify the obligations that stretch across the generations, creating a longer time horizon that makes it possible to sacrifice immediate self-interest in favor of a common good that will only be realized in the future, when many of those in the audience, like the fallen soldiers, will no longer be living. This generational vantage point is a necessary counterweight to democratic cultures that privilege short-term gratification in a way that impedes collective action.

Second, praising the founders is designed to activate feelings of pride in the audience—but to do so in a manner that enlists self-interest in the service of the common good. Notice that Pericles’ reference to the achievements of previous generations is not at all nostalgic, because it does not portray the past as a golden age to which Athens should return, nor does he suggest that its greatness has been unfairly stolen by fate or some foreign rival. To the contrary, the reference to the founders is designed to confront those in attendance with a great achievement and then dare them to surpass it with their own deeds. From this perspective, Pericles insinuates that Athens remains great precisely because it has been given the opportunity to preserve and, with luck, exceed what has come before. The point is to encourage a prideful, self-interested citizenry to win glory by competing for the common good.

In short, Pericles is intentionally sketching a story about the Athenian past that makes it “useful” for those still living. Of course, he knows quite well that much of this praise is an embellishment, something he tacitly concedes when he refers to the “evil” deeds of previous generations. “Everywhere,” he declaims, “whether for evil or for good, we have left imperishable monuments behind us.” The ancestors, whatever their achievements, also committed grave injustices, made mistakes, and fought amongst themselves. Does this fact mean that Pericles is telling a lie about Athenian greatness? Should the imperishable monuments be torn down? Is he trying to obfuscate the plain truth that “Athens was never that great”?

Not necessarily. For one thing, exaggerated condemnation of past injustices is no more truthful than exaggerated praise. More importantly, a cynical fixation on past wrongs, even if it were somehow more truthful, would not only fail to honor the sacrifices made by countless Athenian citizens, but such disparagement would also have a corrosive effect on the entire body politic. The time horizon would contract, and each individual would be encouraged to look only to himself, since personal sacrifices on behalf of such a corrupt regime would be both pointless and morally dubious. Cynicism would also play upon the listeners’ pride in a destructive way, turning self-interest toward a search for blame and urging them to compete in exacting vengeance. But the truly democratic spirit, Pericles suggests, depends on a willingness to overlook certain things. Democratic societies recognize that men are flawed, but also believe that a man’s “merit as a citizen more than outweigh[s] his demerits as an individual.”

Pericles goes on to praise the written laws that make Athens great. He claims that social status in Athenian society depends upon merit, not inherited wealth. Moreover, its democratic government “favors the many instead of the few” and enables citizens to freely pursue their own interests and talents. Again, it is easy to see that the democratic ideal Pericles is describing is not, strictly speaking, true. Athenian society was always stratified by gender and class, in addition to holding thousands of slaves in bondage.

Nevertheless, Athens was more egalitarian than virtually any other society in the ancient world, and its free citizens played a greater role in public life than the population of any 21st-century democracy. That imperfect achievement is worth praising. More to the point, it is just this fictional account of democratic equality that sustains the political ideal, keeping the standard alive as something to be realized in the future. If the Athenians were to accept that politics everywhere is simply about power and self-interest, they would risk destroying the ideal.

Finally, Pericles insists that the democratic spirit extends beyond explicit laws to include the unwritten habits of collective life. He says that Athenian democracy is unique because “far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbor for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive….” Public condemnation of law-abiding fellow citizens, though not contrary to (and indeed protected by) the law, necessarily sparks offense and wounds pride. In turn, wounded pride creates factions, and factions fight. Conversely, the properly democratic form of tolerance practiced in Athens minimizes factional conflict by encouraging citizens to refrain from indulging in petty insults or moralistic contempt when one’s neighbor happens to do what he likes.

Relearning these lessons has never been more important. The funeral oration shows that individual self-interest and the spirit of retribution for past wrongs can be redirected toward the public good precisely because the citizens of Athens are tied together by a common history that extends across the generations, by shared narratives, and by a common quest for civic greatness. In America as in Athens, the alternative is factional infighting and political decay.

theamericanconservative.com

With President Biden’s inauguration many feel that they can finally breathe a deep sigh of relief. At last sanity has been restored and we can all go back to our predictable lives knowing that the future can only get better during these next four years.

Well…not quite.

There still remains the problem that everybody may not be on board with the progressive changes that Biden’s Administration plans to push through. This, of course, is wholly unacceptable.

Disagreement has become an extremely sensitive issue lately; it was once thought that debate was an essential component to a strong and healthy democracy, however, we are now told that it is extremely dangerous, in fact, it may soon be categorised as a form of domestic terrorism.

As early as mid-Nov 2020, Biden was already discussing the need to pass further laws against domestic terrorism. This is interesting since under the 2001 Patriot Act (which was meant to be a temporary enforcement in reaction to 9/11, however, is still in place 19 years later), domestic terrorism is already defined as;

“activities that (A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the U.S. or of any state; (B) appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.”

So, the question begs, what else needs to be added to the Patriot Act, which was recognised at the time of its enforcement as something that should only be temporary since it was understood that it infringed upon civil liberties? Come to think of it, why is the Patriot Act still in place, which allows for the indefinite continuation of human rights violations such as warrantless wiretapping; illegal torture, kidnapping, and detention; mass surveillance; government secrecy; Real ID; no-fly list; political spying; abuse of material witness statutes; and attacks on academic freedom?

As Glenn Greenwald wrote in his formidable paper The New Domestic War on Terror is Coming, “what needs to be criminalized that is not already a crime?”, keeping in mind that as of June 2020, the United States has the highest prisoner rate in the world, followed by El Salvador, Turkmenistan, Thailand and Palau.

Well, the answer is apparently simple and as always for our own good. We have come to a point in time where the enemy is not some radicalized ideology, it is not some foreign despot, it is not even the threat of war (whether it be economic, cyber or nuclear), but rather it is ourselves. We, the people, are the new enemies of the State.

You may protest “Not I! I am a model citizen! I pay my taxes on time, I am never late or call in sick for work, I make sure to be up-to-date with the newest ‘woke’ revelations and I don’t engage with anything outside of the mainstream matrix during my free-time.” People such as yourself think, that when the Biden Administration is calling for tougher laws against domestic terrorism, that it is obviously meant for the ‘other guy,’ those uneducated bigots who are screaming at the top of their lungs “Treason!” and inciting what we are told to be forms of ‘insurrection,’ all in the name of the archaic ideas of ‘patriotism’ and the ‘U.S. Constitution.’

You, unlike so many others, have no problem recognising that the U.S. Constitution is actually part of the problem, that by the standards used today, the U.S. Constitution is itself responsible for ‘inciting violence’ and thus guilty of domestic terrorism, and thus needs to be revoked.

But you see… that’s just not good enough.

Though you are well on your way to becoming a model citizen in the 21^st century, you still have a little ways to go. It is for this reason that a guide to 21^st century Newspeak has been recently released to make sure that well-intentioned citizens like yourself are fully informed of what is required of you in terms of appropriate behaviour, as well as appropriate thoughts, and though this will take a little more time, appropriate instincts.

21^st Century Newspeak

The first alteration that will need to take place is freedom of thought. It has been shown through peer-review studies that individual thoughts are susceptible to forming erroneous beliefs and can lead to dangerous behaviours such as refusal to integrate into a community standard.

Once an individual refuses to integrate into its designated community, it is only a matter of time before this individual shows opposition and even antagonism towards said community. Thus failure to integrate is one of the first signs that an individual is on the path to becoming a domestic terrorist.

Because the individual mind is flawed, it can no longer be trusted to be the standard of its own judgement of what is right and wrong. It is for this reason that we are introducing groupthink. This concept is not new, however, the difference is from now on the individual’s environment will only be allowed to reciprocate the values of groupthink, and all other thoughts outside of groupthink are to be banned and punishable under the new laws.

Even if thoughts outside of groupthink appear as harmless to the collective, they are not, for any thought that is not groupthink threatens to lead to a different outcome than that intended by groupthink and thus is a threat to the security of the collective.

In order to ensure commitment to groupthink, it will be mandatory that every individual engage in at least 2 minutes of Hate every hour throughout the day, every day. This can be achieved either by watching 2 minutes of Hate news, or by engaging in a public 2 minutes of Hate with a colleague, a friend or family member via social media.

It is imperative that an individual watch the 15 minute morning and evening “What to Hate” news provided by the Ministry of Truth (or Minitrue), in order to be the most up-to-date with what are the ongoing and new subjects of Hate, and what were previous subjects of Hate which are no longer deemed to be subjects of Hate.

It is most important that an individual never refer to a former subject of Hate as such. Any present subject of Hate must be seen as having always been a subject of Hate and any former subject of Hate must be seen as having never been a subject of Hate.

This may appear as an impossible task, but we assure you it is entirely possible with the use of doublethink, which many of you have already been practising. Doublethink requires that one be both conscious and unconscious of the fact that they are telling deliberate lies while genuinely believing them; to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies. This makes up a part of our new Party slogan: FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.

Those who excel the most in doublethink will receive the highest stations within our newly organised community, as safe-guards against the renegade, the domestic terrorist.

Another alteration that will need to occur is how we think and refer to the past and the future. With the newly enforced groupthink, the present is what groupthink dictates it to be, which is subject to change, however, must be regarded as having always been.

The past is what the present dictates it to be, if it were not, it could challenge the basis for the present. Thus to preserve the present, the past must serve the present, only justifying why we Hate what we presently Hate and why we Love what we presently Love and can do nothing to contradict these Party lines. There will be permitted no records of an alternative past, there will be no way to prove that the past was ever different from what the present dictates it to be, the only threat to this narrative is the record of the individual mind, and once this ceases to be there will only be the Minitrue record as the recorder of past Truth.

In effect, the model citizen will perceive the past as dead and the future as unimaginable. The future is unimaginable because it is impossible to think of an alternative to the present, in fact, the mere act of thinking of an alternative to the present is considered a challenge to the status quo of the present, and thus is a challenge to groupthink, and thus is a form of domestic terrorism, which we will call from now on thoughtcrime.

Thoughtcrime is essentially any thought pertaining to memory, judgement of right and wrong, thoughts of an alternative reality, and self-reflection, which are now all deemed forms of thoughtcrime. If an individual is to engage in any of these sorts of thoughts, it is only a matter of time before they will come into conflict with groupthink and the Party line, thus private thoughts are banned and punished under the new laws.

It may seem an impossible task at first not to engage in private thoughts, but again, we assure you it is entirely possible using crimestop. Crimestop is the practice of not grasping analogies, failing to perceive logical errors, misunderstanding the simplest arguments, of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop is essentially, protective stupidity.

It is imperative that one practice crimestop during any interaction with another individual, however, it is also imperative that one practice crimestop within their own inner-dialogue, such that even from your own conscience you will be protected from committing a thoughtcrime.

Newspeak will also help dissuade from thoughtcrime. Newspeak is to be the new acceptable vocabulary, anything that references words outside of the most-up-to-date edition of the Newspeak dictionary will be considered Oldspeak and something to be construed as counter to groupthink. It is understood that by reducing the vocabulary to revolve around a few words such as good; which for example can be used as plusgood, doubleplusgood, ungood etc, it will serve to narrow the range of thought an individual is capable of, and thus reduce the capability of committing a thoughtcrime. How wonderful! That in the future we will be unable to commit crime for we will be incapable of its thought! This makes up another part of our new Party slogan: IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

In terms of the new laws, in effect, nothing will change. Unacceptable behaviours and thoughts will not be designated as illegal per se; one reason for this is because we do not plan on having any public trials. Anyone who is in violation of conduct will simply be removed either temporarily into a “re-education facility” or will be vaporised. Any subject that has been vaporised will be removed from the collective memory records and can never be referred to as having ever existed.

The reason why no public trials will be held from now on is because, as we have seen, dissent is infectious. Thus, holding public trials risk further encouragement towards dissent. It is for this reason that dissenters must be removed swiftly and quietly in the middle of the night. Such disappearances will occur relatively regularly and will eventually become the new normal, however, it will not be traumatic for the collective. The subject will simply cease to exist as if it were all just a dream, the structure of our daily routine unaffected.

In order to ensure utmost compliance, the collective will be employing the use of children spies, this has already been occurring abroad, and proves to be very effective.

Purges and vaporizations will be a necessary part of the government mechanics and will become the new normal. We have already discussed the necessity for vaporizations, as for the necessity of purges, it is because the community will be built so as to remain in stasis, however, this can only be accomplished through artificial means, for it is not natural that a thing remain the same but rather that it either improves or deteriorates.

However, in order for the Party to maintain absolute control, there can be no change to the present except for that chosen by the Party, thus any change is a challenge to the Party. In order to facilitate an artificial environment of no change, resources must artificially be kept low, and purges need to occur so that this environment of scarcity is tightly controlled and maintained.

In order for us to achieve this, our economy will have to go through stagnation, we will need to decrease the amount of land used for cultivation, we will no longer add capital equipment needed for industrial growth and great blocks of the population will be prevented from working and will be kept half alive by State charity. The wheels of industry cannot be allowed to turn so as to increase the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed, and in practice the only way of achieving this is by continuous warfare.

War will continue under the Old Cold War doctrine. War will always be present, and yet will never be seen by the majority of our citizens, the reason for this being that war will not be about a real threat to security nor about real conquests but rather will be about maintaining the present status quo by exhausting the surplus of consumable goods, while also helping to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs.

However, real war will be purely an internal affair, the war waged by the ruling group against its own subjects, with the object of the war as to keep the structure of society intact and unchanging.

A peace that is truly permanent under this new ideology is no different than an invisible permanent war. For peace in our new era will equate to stability through no change. This makes up our first Party slogan: WAR IS PEACE.

Conclusion

All of these means are necessary if we are to realise that the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism, and that oligarchy is the only means to achieving peace, freedom and strength for the collective.

However, we are still very far from this ideal and there is much that threatens its becoming, namely, the masses, or what we call the proles. So long as the masses believe that they are entitled to freedom of thought, our endeavours cannot succeed.

The individual must voluntarily relinquish this. It cannot be taken from them no matter the degree of control and no matter the threat of physical harm. An individual’s mind is theirs and cannot be taken, instead, the individual must be led to believe that it is in their best interest to relinquish their mind.

Let us do our best then to convince the individual that they are no longer fit to use their mind and let us pray that we are successful, for if we fail, our entire system of control fails with it.

“You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity…Reality exists only in the human mind, nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.”

– O’Brien in George Orwell’s “1984”

The author can be reached at cynthiachung@tutanota.com

Plato continues saying: “the excess of liberty, whether in states or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery and so tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty.”

In writing these words, Plato revealed that societies are controlled through false dualisms that cause its victims to slip from one extreme to the other in an endless cycle. This vacillation will forever occur under the condition that the people remain ignorant of certain fundamental facts of life pertaining to the co-existence of our unique freedom-loving individuality and our obligation recognize our participation within a larger social unit and higher moral law.

To the degree that this paradox is not resolved, then the individuals within society will never achieve “inner directedness” (aka: sovereignty) required to give authenticity to a nation organized by the “consent of the governed.”

The core lesson explored by Plato throughout all of his dialogues is that we are a species of BOTH reason and passion who live in a discoverable universe where both freedom and law co-exist. As Plato outlines rigorously throughout his Timaeus, this universe is shaped by a creator who made it not only Good, but also embedded his essence into the smallest particle of creation. By virtue of our ability to discover and act on this causality (aka: intention) organizing Creation, Plato demonstrates with scientific rigor that humanity truly made in the living image of that Creator, and that laws and theories must flow from that discoverable fact.

To the degree that we fail to organize ourselves in this way, society will be doomed to live under varying types of oligarchical structures, while elites (modern day sophists) manage the passions, perceptions and convictions of the masses by casting shadows upon a cave wall which we believe to be our reality.

The Story So Far

In the first installment of this 3-part series, I reviewed the false debate between top-down vs bottom-up thinking catalyzed by John Maynard Keynes vs his Austrian school enemy Friedrich von Hayek. We spent time reviewing the history of the American System of Political Economy that was advanced by Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Henry Carey, Lincoln, McKinley, and Franklin Roosevelt in opposition to the “British system of political economy” of free trade and speculation.

In the 2nd installment, we reviewed the sordid life and mind of a eugenics-loving imperialist name John Maynard Keynes whom generations of Americans have been told shaped the New Deal and whose ideas of “random-money-printing-during-crises” are the only solutions to stopping a meltdown like the one looming on our horizon.

In this third and final part, we will review the false “anti-Keynesian” counter-gang operation which was spread like a net to catch those unsuspecting fish who rejected the suffocating theories of Keynes and wanted something more compatible with liberty in their lives. The figure who was selected to be the champion of this counter-gang operation took the form of Austrian School economist Friedrich von Hayek.

Introducing Friedrich von Hayek

In his 1944 The Road to Serfdom, Hayek lays out his inability to resolve the “Plato paradox” early on when he discusses the problem of governments who plan for the future:

“In order to achieve their ends the planners must create power – power over men wielded by other men … Their success will depend on the extent to which they achieve such power. Democracy is an obstacle to this suppression of freedom which the centralized direction of economic activity requires. Hence arises the clash between planning and democracy”

In a nutshell, Hayek asserts that ALL forms of national planning lead inexorably to tyranny. In this, Hayek does not differentiate between George Washington, Lincoln, List or McKinley who were followers of the American System School vs fascists or radical Marxists who believed in top-down controls with no regard for individual freedom.

Hayek also argues that all progress of human history is the result of unconstrained individualism liberated from all top-down intention (“spontaneous self organization”) and that all value originates from individual passions to satisfy pleasures and avoid pain.

Neither Hayek nor his teachers Ludwig von Mises and Carl Menger created these ideas themselves, but derived all of it from the earlier works of two British Imperial strategists: 1) Adam Smith and 2) Smith’s intellectual predecessor Bernard Mandeville.

Both figures were celebrated not coincidentally by both von Hayek and John Maynard Keynes as great geniuses, and yet both were provably political agents whose ideas were in direct opposition to the American revolutionary ideals as outlined by Franklin, Hamilton, Washington et al. The patronage of both Mandeville and Smith by the highest echelons of the British Empire (Prime Ministers Walpole and Shelburne) is thus not a coincidence.

The Sick Mind of Bernard Mandeville

In 1966, Hayek delivered a lecture in praise of a figure named Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733) whose ideas, he argued, laid the foundation for British Liberalism of Adam Smith and his own Austrian school.

What did Mandeville say that was considered so innovative and wonderful? Mandeville argues that while people should try to behave ethically, the truth is that morality itself has no intrinsic existence (beyond being a useful regulator of commoners). Moreover, progress only happens when people are free to pursue their vices without limit. In his “Private Vices Public Benefits” (1714), Mandeville even argues that a killer who steals money and buys time with a prostitute, is doing a service to society since she will use that money to buy new buttons for her dress which employs a button maker, who feeds his family etc…

Mandeville defines human nature as fundamentally lustful and selfish saying: “One of the greatest reasons why so few people understand themselves, is that most writers are always teaching men what they should be, and hardly ever trouble their heads with telling them what they really are… I believe man to be a compound of various passions, that all of them, as they are provoked and come uppermost, govern him by turns whether he will or no.”

Mandeville’s famous 1905 poem The Grumbling Hive demonstrated his vile theory with a bit of creative edge:

“Vast numbers thronged the fruitful Hive;
Yet those vast Numbers made ’em thrive;
Millions endeavouring to supply
Each Other’s Lust and Vanity. …

Thus every Part was full of Vice,
Yet the whole Mass a Paradise
Flatter’d in Peace, and fear’d in Wars
They were th’ Esteem of Foreigners. …

Such were the Blessings of that State;
Their Crimes conspired to make ’em Great;
And Virtue, who from Politicks
Had learn’d a thousand Cunning Tricks,
Was, by their happy Influence,
Made Friends with Vice: And ever since
The Worst of all the Multitude
Did Something for the common Good.”

If “vice=good” then one must ask what becomes of “evil” in Mandeville’s strange world?

The answer is simple. Evil occurs when Nation states attempt to regulate or direct the economic behvior of society according to a moral principle.

As a leading figure of Britain’s Hellfire Clubs, Mandeville’s secret societies were the Epstein islands of the 18th century where all the perverse whims and passions of the oligarchy were satisfied without limit and all of the elite who wanted to take part in this early Bohemian Grove happily took part in the forbidden festivities.

Like today’s Satanists, “the Greater Good” is merely the sum total of small acts of individual evil.

Adam Smith Continues Mandeville’s Legacy

In the face of the spread of French dirigisme (protective tariffs, public credit, manufacturing and public works) during the 18th century American colonies threatening independence, another British operative was employed to generate a sanitized version of Mandeville’s system.

This new social engineer’s name was Adam Smith (1723-1790).

In his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Smith asserts that economic systems should remain subject to the random animal passions of the markets. What are the guides for wealth and creativity if not goals, or intentions? Smith says it clearly: hunger, sex and the fear of pain:

“Nature has directed us to the greater part of these by original and immediate instincts. Hunger, thirst, the passion which unites the two sexes, the love of pleasure, and the dread of pain, prompt us to apply those means for their own sakes, and without any consideration of their tendency to those beneficent ends which the great Director of nature intended to produce by them.”

With his 1776 Wealth of Nations, Smith argued that no nation- especially not the new USA, should ever regulate its own economic affairs, use national banking, protect its native industries, or direct credit for internal improvements. Instead, Smith explained that nations should remain agrarian in order to maximize their profits. Every nation would do what it was good at and simply “cash crop”, but under no case develop full spectrum economies.

Like Mandeville earlier, Smith asserted that the unconstrained passions of the mob seeking to maximize their pleasure would cause progress, and invisible hands would keep this spontaneous order somehow moving forward.

While some Americans were stupid enough to drink the Kool-Aid like the democratic feudalist Thomas Jefferson, others whose minds did not turn to jelly, continued to fight to defend full spectrum economics. Throughout the 19th century these American System proponents found their champion in Henry C. Carey (1793-1879).

The American System vs British Free Trade

Carey argued that his fellow Americans must not “surrender their reason to wild, ridiculous, and absurd theories on morals, religion, politics, or science which have domineered over mankind… As a preliminary step we propose to establish the utter fallacy of some maxims, supported by the authority of the name of Adam Smith, author of the Wealth of Nations, but pregnant with certain ruin to any nation which they may be carried into operation… The influence of these maxims has been most sensibly and perniciously felt in our councils; has deeply affected our prosperity; and has been the main source whence the prevailing distress of the nation has flowed.”

Carey acted as leading Whig advisor to Presidents Harrison and Taylor alongside Henry Clay, and later became a founding member of the republican party shaping Lincoln’s economic program throughout the Civil War.

Paragons of the Dirigiste American System (left to right): Alexander Hamilton, Lincoln and Henry Carey

By 1876, Carey organized the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia which was a major watershed moment for the global adoption of the American System. International networks stretching from Russia, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and beyond brought leading scientists and political economists to the USA where they were exposed to the miracles of science, engineering, and industrial progress that allowed the young nation to outproduce every European state in only one century.

In Germany the American System’s greatest champion was Friedrich List (1789-1846) architect of the Zollverein and enemy of the British System. In his National System of Political Economy (1841), he wrote:

“The motto, ‘laissez faire, laissez passer’ is one that sounds no less pleasant to robbers, cheaters, and thieves than to the merchant, and therefore one ought to regard this maxim with suspicion…. This perversity, to surrender the interests of manufacturing and agriculture to the unfettered demands of trade, is a natural consequence of that theory, which universally looks only at prices, never allowing for the work required to produce, and views the entire world as one single and indivisible republic of merchants. This school of thought [Adam Smith’s] does not see that the merchant can achieve his purpose— obtaining profits by trade, even at the expense of agriculture and manufacturing, at the expense of the productive forces—just as easily through the independence and autonomy of nations. It’s all the same to him, and it is in the nature of his business and his aspirations that he cannot give a fig about the effect that the way in which he imports or exports goods might have upon the morality, the prosperity, and the power of the nation.”

Although Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898) was ousted by a soft coup in 1890 (putting into motion Germany’s later plunge into WWI), his support for List’s reforms united Germany and catapulted it into a pre-eminent position of industrial productivity fast outpacing even the British Empire in only decades. Announcing his protective tariff policy in 1879, Bismarck stated:

“We were, up to this point, the dumping ground for the surplus production of other countries, because of our open-door policy. In my view, this wrecked the prices in Germany. It has prevented the growth of our industries and the development of our economic life. We must close this door, and erect a higher barrier. And what I now propose is that we create for German industry the same market that we up to now have benevolently allowed foreigners to exploit. If the risks of protectionism are as great as is claimed by the adherents of free trade, then France would been impoverished long ago, because they have gone with this theory since the time of Colbert.”

Similar reforms had been applied under Czars Alexander II and III in Russia under the guidance of “American System” follower Sergei Witte which drove the construction of the Trans Siberian Railway, in Japan during the Meiji Restoration, in Ireland with the Carey network that launched Sinn Fein, and in France where the American System school arose with President Sadi Carnot and Gabriel Hanoteau. These emerging new system of win-win cooperation represented a mortal threat for the decaying system of the British Empire and only a dense period of assassinations, color revolutions and war derailed that development.

The Rise of the Austrian School

It was in this climate of electric potential that Adam Smith’s system was repackaged by an Austrian intellectual named Carl Menger (1840-1921) on behalf of the Hapsburg empire which still maintained an alliance with other oligarchical families of Europe’s nobility and which desperately wanted to keep Europe de-industrial, feudal and undeveloped. Menger himself was the retainer of the Royal Houses of Hapsburg and Wittelbach acting as personal tutor to Crown Prince Rudolph von Hapsburg. Just as Smith was commissioned by Lord Shelburne to attack the French dirigiste economic school in his 18th century treatise, Menger was deployed to do the same thing in the 19th century.

After the fires of WWI had settled, the “peace” became little more than an interlude in preparation of a new form of world order to be run by fascist strong men. Though it is often overlooked today, “corporatist fascist economics” did not make its first appearance in Italy as is commonly believed, but rather in Austria after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1919.

At this time, von Hayek worked as the aid to Ludwig von Mises who then served as chief economic advisor to Austria’s new government, under the direct control of the Bank of England’s new governor Montagu Norman and the League of Nations’ Arthur Salter (head of the League’s Supreme Economic Council). Under Mises’ direction, the post-war Austrian government-imposed cuts to services, government spending, and wages leading to mass starvation and poverty. These acts would serve as a template for what Italians and Germans would soon face.

Although Libertarians assert that this austerity was necessary to stop hyperinflation, the great German Foreign Minister Walter Rathenau (follower of Friedrich List and the American System) had a very different idea when he organized the Rapallo Treaty with Russia and dirigiste revival (which were only sabotaged with his June 1922 assassination).

At the height of Weimar’s 1923 Hyperinflation, an organization formed called Pan European Movement led by Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, and Archduke Otto von Hapsburg. This organization was funded by Louis de Rothschild, and Max Warburg while its members included Mussolini, Walter Lipmann, and Nazi Finance Minister Hjalmar Schacht. The PEM would aim to replace nation states with a “benign feudalist system” that became the guiding template for the later European Union years later. Von Hapsburg’s dual role as leader of both this organization and several Austrian School think tanks is not a coincidence.

The Mont Pelerin Society: Fascism with a Liberal Face

Before creating the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947, Hayek had earlier founded the Society for Renovation of Liberalism (SRL) in 1939. Nearly all of the founding members of this group were found among the 37 original Mont Pelerin members. Among this Fabian Society-dominated group were Milton Friedman’s teachers Frank Knight and Henry Simons, Fabian Society member Walter Lipmann, George Soros’ mentor Karl Popper, Ludwig von Mises, and Sir John Clapham. George Soros’ Institute for New Economic Thinking is an extremely lame continuation of this tradition.

With the untimely death of the Franklin Roosevelt, who had threatened to create U.S.-Russia-China post-war alliance the way Henry Carey had nearly done earlier, Keynes’ system of fascist controls were infused into the governance of the Bretton Woods institutions as FDR’s anti-colonial dream was killed.

While Keynes’s doctrine of top-down controls, the Mont Pelerin Society created a counter pole of “bottom up” free markets. It is noteworthy that this group was also run by Pan Europeanists Otto von Hapsburg and Max von Thurn und Taxis (heir to the powerful Venetian family that migrated to Germany in the 15th century). One of Otto von Hapsburg’s last projects before his 2011 death was the creation of the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, now led by neo-fascist Steve Bannon with the mandate of “uniting the right-wing movements of the world” under an anti-Chinese, anti-Muslim perspective.

Although it took nearly 30 years (and several dozen coups and assassinations of nationalist leaders from 1946-1971), the industrial growth of the Bretton Woods system was ultimately killed when the U.S. dollar was floated onto the speculative markets.

After patiently waiting for decades, their time had finally come.

The hundreds of international Austrian School think tanks spread across the Trans Atlantic went speedily to work applying the “solution” to the problems created by the central planning of Keynesianism. Under this “remedy”, a new age of de-regulation, privatization, and “monetarism” was unleashed under a new “greed=good” ethos that would have made Mandeville and Adam Smith smile proudly.

To give an air of legitimacy to this economic paradigm shift, Hayek and Milton Friedman were awarded Nobel Prizes, and theirs quickly became the “new gospel” that infused itself into the conservative right of the world as the “conservative revolution” was launched.

Hayek’s Supranational Police Force and Population Control

It is here that the image of the “lover of freedom” disintegrates and the actual cold fascist soul of Hayek will show its ugly head.

Even though he is sold as an anti-Malthusian (promoting the idea that totally free markets will magically create the creative changes needed to overcome our carrying capacity), Hayek put his views on record saying in 1981:

“Over the next 20 years, the world population is expected to double again. For a world that is founded on egalitarian ideas, the problem of overpopulation is unsolvable. If we guarantee that everyone who is born will be supported, we will soon no longer be able to fulfill that promise [since growth will outstrip resources- ed]. There is only one break for overpopulation, namely that the only ones who may survive and procreate are those who can support themselves.”

The question now arises: who does Hayek believe should grant permission for those self-supporting alphas to procreate and revoke the right to procreate of those who cannot support themselves? He answers this question in the last chapter of his 1944 Road to Serfdom:

“There must be a power which can restrain the different nations from action harmful to their neighbors, a set of rules which defines what a state may do, and an authority capable of enforcing these rules. The powers which such an authority would need are mainly of a negative kind: it must, above all, be able to say “No” to all sorts of restrictive measures.” [p.232]

Hayek goes onto state: “The need is for an international political authority which, without power to direct the different people what they must do, must be able to restrain them from action which will damage others…. An international authority which effectively limits the powers of the state over the individual will be one of the best safeguards for peace.”

It is interesting how a radical individualist incapable of resolving Plato’s “Duty/Freedom” paradox so quickly concludes that for world peace to exist, a global international police force must be created to control nations and judge who may or may not procreate in order to stop overpopulation (or any action which social engineers judge to be harmful to society for that matter).

The Morals of This Story

• John Maynard Keynes was not the architect of the New Deal or even Bretton Woods, although he did want world government and population control from the top.
• Friedrich von Hayek was never the defender of true freedom from tyranny but just another peon for empire who created a “false opposition” to Keynes and still promoted a supranational leviathan run by experts from the top.
• Both operatives were steered from British Intelligence (aka: the new priests of Apollo at Delphi) which wanted you to fall into a false left vs right, top-down vs bottom-up, mind vs emotion debate which has confused humankind for millennia.
• Both Hayek and Keynes repackaged the core anti-humanist axioms of Bernard Mandeville, Thomas Malthus and Charles Darwin into their systems and both obscured the true existence of the American System of Political Economy.

To the degree that we fail to understand what Plato was actually doing as a cultural warrior seeking to outflank the imperial cults of Persia then operating through the Temple of Apollo at Delphi during his life and exhibited throughout his dialogues, we will never come to know what Benjamin Franklin understood as he prepared the groundwork for the world’s first Democratic Republic in 1776.

Franklin knew that this would be neither a monarchy nor a mob democracy.

These founding fathers had, after all, studied Plato and strove to finally resolve the “freedom vs duty” paradox by forming a government based simultaneously on the sacredness of the individual as outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the General Welfare of the whole as outlined in the Constitution.

Whether this American experiment will prove to have been a failure or a success will depend on the morality, courage and honesty of citizens both in America itself and globally to confront the lies of the past and the needs of the future as we move into a new phase of civilization.

The author can be reached at matt.ehret@tutamail.com

The problem? The work showed a group of capitalists sitting around an oversized Monopoly board resting on the bent backs of four naked men of various hues. With their mustaches, jowls, and protuberant noses, the half-dozen white men looked, well, a bit Semitic, and, indeed, Mear One revealed in an interview that two of the portraits were indeed of Jews, i.e. Lord Rothschild and Paul Warburg. (The others were John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and, for some reason, the writer and mystic Aleister Crowley.)

Charges flew that the painting was anti-Semitic because it equated Jews and exploitation, and the usual angry chorus arose. But then the fuss died down, and everyone moved on. And why not? People are busy, they’ve got other things on their mind, and, besides, who wants to get into a battle over something as explosive as anti-Semitism? As George Orwell once observed, “It is almost impossible to mention Jews in print, either favorably or unfavorably, without getting into trouble.” So people kept their heads low, and “Freedom for Humanity” was soon forgotten.

But now the incident seems like one of the seminal events of the early twenty-first century. The reason is that it turned out to enjoy a curious after-life. A half-dozen years later, a right-wing Labor Party member – yes, such things do exist – named Luciana Berger went gunning for the embattled leftists Jeremy Corbyn and discovered that he had been among those rising to Mear One’s defense. “You are in good company,” Corbyn tweeted the artist – in reality, an American named Kalen Ockerman – at the time. “Rockefeller destroyed Diego Viera’s mural because it includes a picture of Lenin.”

Actually, it was Diego Rivera, the Mexican muralist best known today as the husband of Frida Kahlo. But bungling an artist’s name is not what got Corbyn into trouble. Rather, it was failing to show requisite sensitivity to an aggrieved minority group. Berger and her supporters went into action, charging that Corbyn’s blasé approach was typical of a Labor Party riddled with anti-Semitism. Corbyn was suspended, and members were purged for the crime of “denialism,” i.e. arguing that the problem was not as extensive as Berger & Co. said it was. With party leaders warning that “thousands and thousands” would get the ax if they didn’t stop engaging in similar thought crimes, the mood was less London in the year 2020 than Moscow back in 1937 when the entire Old Bolshevik leadership found itself on the chopping block due to equally vague and paranoid charges.

From a scratch to the danger of gangrene, as Trotsky once said. But lost amid the sturm und drang was an all-important question. Was “Freedom for Humanity” really as bad as everyone said? Was it indeed the second coming of Mein Kampf or merely an honest and well-intended statement about human suffering in an age of runaway exploitation?

The answer is the latter, which is why the controversy deserves a second look.

Mear One’s painting is not a subtle work. But, then, neither was Diego Rivera’s Rockefeller Center mural, which he was able to recreate in Mexico City under the title, “Man, Controller of the Universe,” and which “Freedom for Humanity” vaguely resembles. But while both feature workers, decadent bourgeois, and industrial machinery, the tone is different. Where Rivera, good Marxist that he was, was fundamentally optimistic in his depiction of workers and peasants building a new society, Mear One is less concerned with the world to come than the world as it currently exists. Hence his images are glummer and more downbeat.

This may indicate a certain decline in political imagination from Rivera’s day. But that’s not the issue, of course. Rather, it’s whether the half-dozen portraits at its center are anti-Semitic. The answer is yes – if, that is, you assume that every jowly old white man with a protuberant nose is Jewish. But if that’s the case, then what about Jimmy Durante, a.k.a the Schnozz, born of Italian Catholic immigrants on New York’s Lower East Side? Or W.C. Fields, the offspring of impeccable Anglo-Saxon Protestant stock from small-town Pennsylvania, whose proboscis is equally as prominent?

Or the actor Robert Morley for that matter? Or Rembrandt? Since none are Jewish, the answer is therefore no. As for Warburg and Lord Rothschild, yes, they’re Jewish, but what of it? Are Mear One’s critics saying that no Jews are to be found in the ranks of the bourgeoisie? Are they calling for a strict quota system in which they can only be depicted in strict proportion to their membership? Or are they saying that artists must not depict reality at all, but must airbrush it so as to remove any and all images that someone, somewhere, might find offensive?

All of which is nonsense. “Freedom for Humanity” is not racist, and the entire episode was not about anti-Semitism, but about stirring up hysteria in order to whip people into line. After all, criticizing Israel is verboten as far as Anglo-American ruling elites are concerned. Since a way had to be found to silence dissidents, what hotter button could there be to push than that of anti-Semitism? The world has moved on since the days of Dachau and the Gulag, and methods of control are no longer as brutal. But they’re still effective nonetheless.

So if people had been quicker on the draw back in 2012, if they’d argued that anti-Semitism is too important to be tossed around in such a light-hearted way, then maybe demagogues wouldn’t have wound up with such a free hand. It’s vital to nip such tendencies in the bud before they turn into a full-scale witch hunt, which is precisely the case today.