Amos's River of Justice

Category: Politics

Freemasonry is at the core of Western politics. As progressives become more clear about the shortcomings of this system, they are shocked to see Freemasons ending the democratic experiment. This is clearly the result of Freemasonry’s dependence on Plato’s anti-democratic notions. We see this dependence in US politics when Kyrsten Sinema demands unity and civility at all costs. We also see it when a presidential candidate, Hilary Clinton, tells a rival faction to respect authority. This is about the role of politics in our season of creation.

  • America: That Land of Waifs and Strays

    Evelyn Waugh once called America ‘That land of waifs and strays’. Many people who are fortunate to live in the land of their ancestors look at Americans in that way. It’s rude, but mostly because it’s true. America as a country has an abbreviated history. The same can be said for immigrants and their descendants.

    It’s rude also because most of the immigrants would have stayed put if they had been given a choice. Many were not wanted where they came from. If they weren’t literally chased out, they left in search of opportunities that were not available to them in the land of their ancestors. This includes aristocratic immigrants to the colonies.

    That said, promises were made of liberty and brotherhood, and welcome. And many immigrants benefitted from those promises. For former immigrants and descendants to turn around and deny those things to other people is a betrayal of the idea of America. Likewise, the giving of one’s loyalty to another country while claiming to love this country is a betrayal. This point of view is important if we are to correctly interpret current events.

    In this article I will explain the relationship between America’s current political discourse and the European Right.

    The Strangeness and Uprootedness of American Life

    The writers of the American classics tried to make sense of the strangeness of being transplanted on this continent. They wanted to inspire their readers to create a new culture that did not repeat the mistakes of the old world. But several generations later Americans have forgotten the cause of that strangeness. They have lost the very context in which they exist.

    The Threat of Foreign Radical Ideas

    Losing one’s context is not only confusing, it is dangerous, politically speaking. Radical remedies are always available to people who are experiencing confusion, frustration and anger. It is important to point out that the radical political remedies being promoted today did not originate in the United States. They are actually hostile to the United States.

    The European radical Right longs to return to a hierarchical society which actually existed. They want to create a system where ‘everyone knows their place‘. Of course, they imagine their place to be somewhere near the top.

    The American radical Right longs for something that has never existed on this continent, but they also picture themselves on top. What they both have in common is a contempt for political discourse and a personal desire to rule.

    The Conservative Supreme Court

    The US Supreme Court thinks it knows what is missing in American society. The conservative justices, or rather their secret backers, have decided they know what quality life looks like. It looks like an oligarchic theocracy. There are no precedents for such an arrangement in the United States, but the justices would like to ignore that fact.

    This lack of precedents for manipulation by the justices’ is not due to an oversight by previous lawmakers. The Revolutionaries went to quite a lot of trouble to create something different from Europe. Nevertheless, the justices seem to think it makes perfect sense for a country that has never had kings and aristocrats to be ruled by people with pretensions to royalty.

    American conservatives in all walks of life claim they are trying to save the republic. Maybe some of them are, but saving the American republic was never the aim of ‘The Conservative Revolution’.

    The Conservative Revolution

    In Germany during World War II, ‘Traditional’ elites hoped Nazism would get rid of the Weimar Republic and hand the reins of power back to them. Hitler was to be their front man.1 They never considered the possibility that the Nazis would rule in their own right. In their opinion, Hitler and his type were ‘the worst sort of proletarianized street-rabble’2. But the Nazis quickly secured their own power at the expense of the elites. Unfortunately, elite pretensions were exceeded only by Nazi pretensions.

    In the United States today, there are people waiting in the wings to take power. They are not traditional elites. They are more akin to Nazis.

    Spengler’s Predictions of Disaster

    Frightful predictions of disaster are commonly used to turn up the political pressure. Such predictions made world war seem sensible a hundred years ago. Oswald Spengler was not a Nazi, but he was right-wing. He was a German philosopher of history in the early twentieth century best known for his book, The Decline of the West. He thought the best-case scenario, given Hitler’s takeover, was for Nazism to destroy the communists, socialists, and liberal Weimar democrats. This would clear the way for an aristocratic and intellectual elite. Spengler called his vision ‘Prussian socialism’3, and he saw himself as the new guardian, or philosopher-king.

    Spengler’s Differences With the Nazis

    To the Nazis’ way of thinking, Spengler was too aristocratic, monarchist, pessimistic, and not anti-Semitic enough. His challenge to Nazi racism was particularly unwelcome. Contrary to Nazi doctrine, Spengler thought Judaism was culturally wrong, not racially wrong. In his opinion, Judaism’s problem was its Magian character. He believed Judaism shared this trait with the late Romans, Mohammedans, and early Christian theologians such as St Augustine.

    Spengler identified Judaism as a ‘Magian’ form of society with a cave-like conception of space that was intermediate between the classical Greek (‘Apollonian’) idea of the Gods having human characteristics and the West’s Faustian concept of an infinite universe. Magians were dualists who believed in an unrelenting struggle between good and evil. In such a belief system, the separation of politics and religion was theoretically impossible and intellectually meaningless. The Decline of the West argued that the late romans, Jews, Mohammedans, and early Christian theologians like Saint Augustine were all Magian.

    Coogan. pp. 60-61

    In addition, Spengler thought the Volk was a kind of ‘Magian’ distortion of the West’s notion of a free, individual, self-willed ‘I’ in favor of the collective herd. This part of his argument was actually aimed at the left, but it earned him the hostility of the NSDAP. Spengler’s death in 1936 solved a problem for the Nazi hierarchy. However, the Nazis continued ‘to glorify him as a German Virgil who had prophesied Hitler’s coming.’

    The Fascist Mentality

    Spengler’s books, The Decline of the West and The Hour of Decision created a generation of rightist intellectuals in Weimar Germany. This intellectual current has been ‘dubbed’ the Conservative Revolution’,4 and it consisted largely of a hostility to liberal notions of political discourse. But the elites were not supportive of Nazism. Spengler thought people like Hitler were a symptom of decline. The fascists either misunderstood or abused his basic premise.

    Or maybe the fault was Spengler’s after all. His description of events seemed to demand some kind of ‘heroic’ response, even as he claimed nothing could be done.

    Spengler’s Morphology of History: the Root of the Conservative Revolution

    In The Decline of the West, Spengler developed a ‘morphology of history’. The following is his declaration of historical and cultural inevitability.

    All the world’s great cultures, from Babylon, Egypt, China, and India up the the modern West, went through the same inevitable process of rise and fall in a series of vast organic historical life cycles. In its ascendent stage a society was best described as a ‘culture.’ this was a time of self-confidence, growth, and optimism, when both art and religion flourished and day-to-day life was infused with a sense of higher spiritual purpose and meaning.

    Inevitably, Culture was superseded by a state of decay. This Spengler called ‘Civilization,’ an age dominated by money, greed, materialism, and a wide-spread sense of spiritual exhaustion and ennui. Europe (Spengler’s ‘Faustian culture’) entered the age of Civilization in 1789, the beginning year of the French Revolution. The inevitable last stage of Civilization would ‘Caesarism,’ a time when society becomes increasingly dominated by totalitarian strong men who overcome outworn forms of liberal parliamentary democracy. Given its unstable nature, Caesarism would inevitably lead to a series of horrific wars heralding the extinction of the culture’s life-cycle. Rather than deny or run away from the inevitable, the great challenge facing modern man was how to live a heroic and meaningful life in the violent ‘wintertime’ of the West.

    Coogan, pp. 55,56

    The next quote is Spengler’s fatalistic conclusion to Man and Technics:

    We are born into this time and must bravely follow the path to the destined end. there is no other way. Our duty is to hold on to the lost position, without hope, without rescue, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who during the eruption of Vesuvius, died at his post because they forgot to relieve him. That is greatness. That is what it means to be a thoroughbred. the honorable end is the one thing that cannot be taken from a man.5

    In The Disinherited Mind, Eric Heller elaborated Spengler’s vision: “Caesarism reduced society to ‘a strict and rigid order’ of human ‘molecules’ trapped inside warring totalitarian states. Whether in victory or defeat, these societies would remain as sterile as Rome under the Caesars until this spiritually dead mass finally collapsed.“

    Properly understood, this is not a call to battle. It is a set of theories, pessimistic interpretations of events, and predictions of inevitability.

    A Banner to Rally Around

    Instead of collapse, the fascists dreamed of cultural rejuvenation. Francis Parker Yockey first read Spengler’s Decline of the West while on a school break (from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor). Yockey is a case study of the effects of Spengler’s theories. He maintained a near-religious belief in the vision of Oswald Spengler, but he completely disregarded Spengler’s conclusion.

    As Coogan states in his book, Spenglerism is a difficult banner to rally around. Maybe Yockey and others were looking for a banner, but we’ll never know for sure. Francis Parker Yockey ended his life in a jail cell by means of cyanide. He was 42 years old. What we do know is that after reading Spengler, the remaining years of Yockeys life were consumed by his longing for a revival of German fascism.

    Yockey operated in an unmapped world, a mysterious Atlantis whose contours are barely visible under every-shifting seas of time and deceit. His was a world of false identity, deep cover, and relentless travel throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, the Middle Ease, and Latin America. Because he was most at home in the twilight land of the fascist diaspora, a careful examination of his life can serve as an Ariadne’s thread through the labyrinth-like history of postwar fascism.

    Coogan, p. 15
    Francis Parker Yockey’s Caesarism versus Spengler’s Version

    Coogan’s opinion of the fascists in general is that they were incapable of grasping Spengler’s ‘Caesarian skepticism and contempt for humanity, the deep sense of the fleetingness of all phenomena.’ Yockey, for example, chose to believe that the coming of the Caesars, such as Hitler, actually indicated a potential rebirth for the West rather than a decline. In Yockey’s mind, Hitler was Napoleon reborn, and in his book, Imperium, he argued that ‘The Hero’ (Hitler) tried to realize the European Imperium, but like Napoleon, he fell victim to the barbarian Slavs.’ Nevertheless, in Yockey’s mind, ‘both Napoleon and Hitler became Hegel’s ‘history on horseback’.

    Yockey’s vision has similarities with the American Right, but Yockey was unique in some ways.

    [Yockey’s] attraction to both Spengler and Conservative Revolution theorists like Carl Schmitt made him virtually unique in the American far right. American supporters of Nazi Germany were usually German Americans, crude anti-Semitic nativists, or staunch conservatives who viewed Hitler as a heaven-sent bulwark against Bolshevism. Yockey was none of these. He was ideologically converted to a Nazified version of the Weimar “New right” Conservative Revolutionary current. 

    Coogan, p. 88

    However, both of the far-right factions mentioned in this quote were supporters of Nazi Germany.

    The FBI finally caught up with Yockey after years of evasion. Once in jail, he tried to recruit fellow prisoners into a daring escape plan. He also asked one of them to deliver a message to an address in Cuba. However, the prisoners immediately told on him. They didn’t like Yockey because he was ‘anti-U.S., anti-Negro, anti-Jewish, and, basically, anti-everything’. 6

    Yockey was desperate to escape. His fear of the legal process was two-fold. In 1943, he had been honorably discharged from the army after being diagnosed mentally ill. After his arrest, it became clear that he was going to have to submit to psychological testing. Yockey believed this would hurt his credibility in the eyes of his clandestine associates. He was also afraid it would reveal who those associates were.

    What Could Have Been

    Francis Parker Yockey was born on the 18th of September, 1917 in Chicago to Louis Francis and Rose Ellen Yockey. The family was upper middle class and Catholic. Yockey’s mother studied at the Chicago Music College; Francis was a musical prodigy who could have had a career as a concert pianist. He also had a brilliant, photographic memory. Coogan thinks it’s likely that he was attracted to Spengler through his interest in art. (Coogan, p. 14)

    Yockey was a cum laude graduate of Notre-Dame’s law school. After a brief stint in the Army during World War II, he served as an assistant district attorney in Detroit. Then, in 1946, he went to Wiesbaden, West Germany, as a U.S. government attorney assigned to the war crimes trials. Disgusted with what he saw, he abandoned his position and journeyed to the south of Ireland. Under the pseudonym ‘Ulick Varange,’ he wrote his magnum opus, Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics, in just six months. A massive neo-Spenglerian tome that called for the formation of a new European superpower, Imperium was first published in London in 1948. It is still sold today in right-wing bookstores in Europe and America.

    Coogan, p. 14
    Blaming America for Family Misfortune

    Yockey’s anti-Americanism may have started when he identified America as the culprit in his father’s collapse and death from alcoholism. But there were plenty of like-minded scholars who were happy to take part in similar activities, up to a point. Unlike Yockey, many of them found a warm welcome in America’s military and educational establishments.

    Meanwhile, Back in Europe

    Besides Oswald Spengler and Carl Schmitt, Conservative revolutionaries included Ernst Jünger and Martin Heidegger. The content of their claims was intense and seductive. They speak of the decline and destruction of everything humans hold dear–in short, the inevitable unfolding of the terrible fate of man. Heidegger, for example, said that ‘Place is the locale of the truth of being’. According to David Harvey, in this, [Heidegger] was close to Aristotle, but he took it deeper. He was saying there is a certain truth that attaches to the notion of place, and that truth is essential to being or becoming.

    Rene Guenon

    Rene Guenon’s writings about the Kali Yuga are another example of intense content surrounding the fate of man.

    What is most remarkable is that movement and change are actually prized for their own sake, and not in view of any end to which they may lead; this is a direct result of the absorption of all human faculties in outward action whose necessarily fleeting character has just been demonstrated. Here again we have dispersion, viewed from a different angle and at a more advanced state: it could be described as a tendency toward instantaneity, having for its limit a state of pure disequilibrium, which, were it possible, would coincide with the final dissolution of this world, and this too is one of the clearest signs that the final phase of the Kali-Yuga is at hand.

    Rene Guenon, The Crisis of the Modern World, pp. 37,38

    The Shock Value of Trumpism

    It is interesting that even though these thinkers are talking about events that humans can’t control, they insist that the end is near. Ironically, they pair this claim with a political agenda.

    Guenon is a Traditionalist. Traditionalism is the ideology of Steve Bannon. But this is not the first time Guenon has been used in the service of authoritarianism.

    We have seen that certain kinds of thinking can motivate people to pursue any agenda their leaders tell them to pursue. When Donald Trump told his followers that they have to fight or they won’t have a country any more, many fought and many went to jail.

    As if reaching for ultimate shock value, Donald Trump’s campaign recently referenced Nazi Germany. The campaign’s claim to be pursuing a ‘Unified Reich‘ seems almost cartoonish if you ignore the sheer cheek of it all.

    The Comparative Sanity of Edward Moor

    The following is another way of thinking about the Kali Yuga concept. Edward Moor calls the Kali age ‘the present time’. On that everyone agrees. He goes on to explain that the end is tied to the incarnation of Kalki the Horse, an avatar that is yet to come.

    Vishnu, mounted on a white horse, with a drawn scimitar, blazing like a comet, will, as minutely prophesied as to place, time, &c. end the present or Kali age, and renovate the creation with an era of purity. [This] is represented in pictures by an armed man leading a winged white horse…

    Kalki, or Calci, (with the C hard) is otherwise called Kalenki, and Aswah; all said to mean a horse. But as Kal is Time, and in several dialects means both yesterday and tomorrow; or, more extensively, the past and future, may not the name Kalki, of this ender and renovator of ages, have some allusion to that idea, rather than be confined to the form in which it is to be manifested?

    The Hindus, like most other people, have thus a prophetic tradition of the coming of a punisher and redemer. The Sybilline and Delphic oracles Foretold it. The Chinese, Japanese, Siamese, and other eastern nations, have been taught to expect such an event; an idea that seems to prevail so generally among people so distinct, as to be deducible only from a common source.

    The Hindu Pantheon, p. 188

    The Axial Age and Christian Zionism

    This paragraph seems to be a reference to the Axial Age theory, but in an informative tone rather than prophetic. According to the Axial Age theory, an event took place centuries ago with a universal effect. This event inspired the creation of world religions.

    But the Axial Age took place between 800 and 300 BC. On what does Guenon base his assurance that the Kali Yuga will end? Where does Steve Bannon get the idea that it has something to do with Trump? The association of Guenon’s interpretation of the Hindu religion with Donald Trump is not a respectable way to do politics.

    The Christian Zionists have their own dreams of end times. Both Israel and Donald Trump are key to Christian Zionist dreams. But this version of religious politics is just as disreputable as Steve Bannon’s Hindu version.

    The Christian Zionists seem determined to provoke the gory conflagration that their ideology says will result in the return of Jesus. Never mind that Israel is supposed to be Jewish. And secular. They would also like you to ignore that nothing in the Christian Zionist agenda is confirmed by Christian scriptures.

    1. Kevin Coogan, Dreamer of The Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International, Autonomedia, Brooklyn, New York, 1999, p. 77 ↩︎
    2. Ibid. p. 58 ↩︎
    3. Ibid. p. 59 ↩︎
    4. Ibid. p. 15-16 ↩︎
    5. Ibid. p. 58 ↩︎
    6. Ibid. p. 34 ↩︎

  • Conservative Ideology Politics & Principles

    The previous article focused on militant conservatism. But it didn’t go into detail on various types of conservatism, or on the characteristics of conventional conservatism. Nor did it explain how the character of conservatism varies from one nation to another. 21st century progressives are in the process of developing an international outlook, so awareness of ideological and organizational differences is crucial. The concept of conservatism is central to these differences. This article is a review of conservative ideology, politics and principles.

    Summary of the Discussion So Far

    To summarize the discussion so far, after the end of World War II, social scientists in the United States feared militant anti-communism and its negative influence on the civil rights movement and other campaigns. They believed anti-communist and anti-liberal ideas threatened peace and democracy. Many thinkers in the field of International Relations (IR) tried to create a stronger liberalism as part of their strategy. They believed they could accomplish this by borrowing conservative ‘insights’. The fusion of liberalism and the radical Right was called ‘realism’. Another name for realism is conservative liberalism. Postwar American International Relations developed in this context.

    Considering this history, it is not surprising that conventional conservatism has faded into the background. Or maybe it would be more correct to say that conventional conservatism turned into realistic liberalism in the context of International Relations. The same thing happened to liberalism.

    Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and Reinhold Niebuhr

    Thinkers such as Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and Reinhold Niebuhr began to reformulate liberalism in a way that muted the radical, progressivist, egalitarian and utopian premises of the Progressive Era, and to talk about ‘original sin’, the inherent irrationality of human nature, and the limitations of political solutions to intractable problems of the human condition.1 At the same time, they denied that the process was distinctly conservative. Another one of IR’s stated aims was to remove utopian elements from liberal politics. According to Eric Goldman, ‘…liberalism gradually turned into a form of conservatism.’ (Cited by Drolet and Williams2)

    Militant Conservative Ideas Continue

    Militant conservative ideas continued to thrive, however, but not in the mainstream media. They were discussed in a ‘para-scholarly‘, sphere which enjoyed network connections with the political sphere. As a result, radical ideas have spread all over the globe.

    In IR’s defense, these thinkers were influenced by the structural reality of American politics. Both Morgenthau and Niebuhr argued that there was no social basis for an ‘authentic’ conservatism in America. And they were right. According to Morgenthau, the great majority of Americans

    have never known a status quo to which they could have been committed. For America has been committed to a purpose in the eyes of which each status quo has been but a stepping-stone to be left behind by another achievement. To ask America to defend a particular status quo, then, is tantamount to asking it for foreswear its purpose.

    Hans J. Morgenthau, The Purpose of American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 296–7.

    But, as the RIS article illustrated, the radical Right has already come very close to foreswearing America’s purpose. This will be discussed in more detail in subsequent articles. The purpose of this article is to provide a global perspective on conventional conservatism.

    Conventional Conservatism

    I’ll begin with the view of conservatism supplied by the RIS article. According to Drolet and Williams 3, conservatism is not a cohesive school of thought. ‘…conservatism is a counter-movement’. It is a collection of ideas, attitudes, and thinkers that oppose historical liberal and socialist ideas. The only time conservative ideology is coherent in a given time and place is when it’s confronted by rival ideological structures. Conservatives are particularly wary of proposals put forward by anyone perceived to be of the Left.

    This seems to be how conservatism operates, although conservatives will probably object. The following summary is more neutral by comparison. It is taken from an article on Britannica.com.

    Western Europe

    Four great imperial dynasties fell in World War I: Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany and Ottoman Turkey. Those dynasties had been the only remaining representatives of conservatism. Before the war, conservatism presumed monarchy, aristocracy and an established church. After the War, frustrated conservatives created parties to support nationalism in Germany, Italy, and other former allied countries. Then, beginning in the 1930s, the totalitarian Nazi regime either destroyed or coopted conservative parties in Central and Eastern Europe. (This will be explained in another article.)

    Conservative Ideology, Politics and Principles
    Dynasties of World War I Credit: Jelle Wesseling

    By 1946, socialism had been discredited in western Europe because of its inability to rebuild war-damaged economies. For this reason, many western Europeans returned to conservative politics. Of course, European conservatism no longer had aristocratic associations at this time. Conservative policies were attractive to voters because they promised economic growth, democratic freedoms, and the provision of social services by the state. For the rest of the twentieth century, European conservatism represented liberal individualism, social conscience, and opposition to communism.

    Great Britain

    The conservative party in Great Britain was very popular at the turn of the twentieth century. However, there was a Liberal interval. The Liberals were victorious in the general election of 1906, but they had already begun to lose trade union and working class supporters to the Labour Party. A Labour victory in 1924 ended the Liberal Party’s political relevance. For the next 40 years, conservatives formed the government. Their strength was largely the result of formerly Liberal, middle-class voters joining the Conservative Party. Today the Conservative Party in Great Britain is a union of Old Tory and Liberal interests combined against Labour.

    The Interwar Period in Great Britain

    British conservatism after World War I defended middle- and upper-class privileges and opposed socialism. During the 1930s, Conservatives followed a policy of appeasement ( a deal-making commercialist approach) with the Nazis. Appeasement failed and Britain entered the War.

    State welfare services were extended after 1945, under the Labour government and mixed economy of Clement Attlee. When Conservatives returned to power in 1951, they left most of these innovations in place. In fact, they claimed they could do a better job than labour in administering the welfare state. They even went so far as trying to outdo Labor’s programs of social spending and the encouragement of new home construction.

    This era of Liberal-Conservative accommodation ended with Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher’s conservatism stressed individual initiative, strident anti-communism, and laissez-faire economics. Her views had more in common with modern Libertarianism than the older conservatism of Burke. When she said, ‘there is no such thing as society‘ she repudiated the organic view of conventional conservatives.

    David Cameron (2010-16) and Theresa May (2016-19) had less extreme views of individualism. They brought back some of the communitarian elements of conventional conservatism.

    Continental Europe

    In western Europe, conservatism was represented by two or more parties ranging from the liberal center to the moderate and extreme right. There are three types of conservative party in western Europe: agrarian (particularly in Scandinavia), Christian Democratic, and the parties allied with big business. These categories are general and may include combinations of these ideologies.

    Italy

    The Christian Democratic parties have the longest history. They emerged in the 19th century to support the church and monarchy against liberal and radical elements. Since World War I the dominant element in this party has been supporters of business. In Italy, clerical interests remain strongly represented.

    The Christian Democratic Party has dominated governments in Italy since 1945. Since 1993, this has been under the name of the Italian Popular Party. The Christian Democratic Party was an alliance of moderate and conservative interest groups. It has formed a long series of government coalitions consisting of smaller centrist parties and the Italian Socialist Party. The Christian Democratic Party has never had a coherent policy and has been increasingly corrupt and politically ineffective, but it managed to exclude the large Italian Communist Party during the Cold War. The Italian Communist Party has been called the Democratic Party of the Left since 1991.

    After the collapse of the Soviet Union communism was no longer seen as a threat to Europe, so the Christian Democrats lost much of their support. This coincided with the growth of other conservative and nationalist groups that had formerly been outside of mainstream of Italian politics. These include the Northern League, which called for the creation of a federated Italian republic, and the National Alliance (which, until 1994, was the Italian Social Movement). Many regarded the National Alliance as neofascist. In 1994 a new conservative party was founded by the media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi’s party is called Forza Italia (“Go, Italy!”).

    Germany

    Germany was divided between Roman Catholics and Protestants, so the role of the church in the conservative party was not as significant as in Italy. However, Germany’s political climate has been conservative since World War II. This is illustrated by the fact that the Social Democratic Party of Germany has progressively eliminated the socialist content of its program. They even embraced the profit motive in a party congress at Bad Godesberg in 1959.

    However, after 1950, the main Conservative Party, the Christian Democratic Union, adopted a program including support for a market economy and a strong commitment to maintaining and improving social insurance and other social welfare programs. 

    It was the Christian Democrats who presided over the unification of East and West Germany.

    From the 1990s, German conservative ideology has included minimal government, deregulation, privatization, and the reining-in of the welfare state. These policies have been difficult to implement, however. Many Germans continue to support an extensive safety net of unemployment insurance and other social welfare programs.

    France

    There was no Christian Democratic Party in France to represent moderate conservative opinion. Instead, a large number of French conservatives supported parties like Rally for the Republic. (Rally for the Republic was renamed ‘Union for a Popular Movement’ in 2002, and ‘the Republicans’ in 2015.) This party espoused a highly nationalistic conservatism based on the legacy of Charles de Gaulle, president of France from 1958 to 1969. French conservatives also supported anti-immigration groups such as the National Front, which was led until 2011 by Jean-Marie Le Pen and subsequently by his daughter, Marine Le Pen. The National Front, some argued, was not so much conservative as reactionary or neofascist. 

    Gaullist Conservatism

    Gaullist conservatism emphasized tradition and order and aimed at a politically united Europe under French leadership. Gaullists espoused divergent views on social issues, however. There are a large number of Gaullist and non-Gaullist conservative parties and it is difficult to categorized them. They lack stability and tend to identify themselves with local issues. 

    The Twenty-first Century

    In the early 21st century, French conservatives were united by a number of developments. One was the theme of “law and order.” Law and Order was promoted by interior minister (and later president) Nicolas Sarkozy. Unemployed youths in suburban Paris and elsewhere—many of whom were immigrants or the children of immigrants—engaged in periodic rioting to protest their plight, and were met with stiff (and popular) police resistance.

    The perceived threat to French values from immigrants, especially Muslims, also helped unite French conservatives. One of the values allegedly in danger was the conviction that public education should be strictly secular. When young Muslim women insisted on wearing veils to school, the French state reacted strongly. But this may have alienated Muslims from French society more than it reaffirmed French values.

    In general, conservatism in Europe has exerted a pervasive political influence since the start of the 20th century. However, it has found expression in parties of very different character. Parties have been characterized by an absence of ideology and often by the lack of any well-articulated political philosophy. They have espoused traditional middle-class values however. They have also opposed unnecessary state involvement in economic affairs, and radical attempts at income redistribution.

    Japan

    Japan has had conservative rule since the beginning of party politics in the 1880s. The only exception was the military government during the 1930s and 40s.

    Extensive social and political changes took place in Japan after the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Feudal institutions were abolished at this time, and western political institutions, such as constitutional government, were introduced. But in spite of these innovations, and the dislocations caused by rapid industrialization, politics continued to be shaped by traditional loyalties and attitudes.

    The Liberal-Democratic Party

    In 1955, the two most important conservative parties merged to form the Liberal-Democratic Party. Both parties had been dominated by personalities rather than by ideology and dogma. Subsequently, the allegiance of conservative members of the Diet was determined by personal loyalties to leaders of factions within the party, rather than commitment to policy. Today, an older Japan continues to influence the values, customs and relationships of Japanese conservatives.

    The Liberal-Democratic Party has been linked with big business. Its policies aim to foster a stable environment for the development of Japan’s market economy. To this end, the party has functioned primarily as a broker between conflicting business interests.

    Japanese Nationalism

    In the early twenty-first century, there was a resurgence of Japanese nationalism. Much of it was centered on how to teach the history of Japan in the 20th century—particularly the period before and during World War II. Conservative nationalists insisted that the Japanese military had done nothing wrong and had acted honorably. They claimed that stories of widespread war crimes were fabricated by Japan’s foreign and domestic enemies. It is not known how pervasive and influential this resurgent nationalism might be.

    The United States

    Conservatism changed in the United States in response to the New Deal. America’s identity as a liberal country changed as well.

    Conservative Ideology, Politics and Principles
    The New Deal Credit: Traveler1116
    The New Deal was Not a Liberal Policy

    After Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, the perception of the United States as an inherently liberal country began to change. The New Deal was the economic relief program undertaken in 1933 to help raise the country out of the Great Depression. This program greatly expanded the federal government’s involvement in the economy through the regulation of private enterprise, the levying of higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and the expansion of social welfare programs.

    The Old Right

    The Republican Party, drawing on the support of big business, the wealthy, and prosperous farmers, stubbornly opposed the New Deal. While Democratic liberals moved to the left in endorsing a larger role for government, Republicans generally clung to a 19th-century version of liberalism that called for the government to avoid interfering in the market. These staunch conservatives were known as the Old Right. They were powerful enough to prevent the US from entering World War II until after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. However, their policy of fighting the New Deal did not help them at the polls.

    In the first decades after the war, the United States, like Britain, gradually expanded social services and increased government regulation of the economy. However, in the 1970s, the postwar economic growth that the United States and other Western countries had relied on to finance social welfare programs began to slacken. This took place just as Japan and other East Asian nations were finally attaining Western levels of prosperity. And unfortunately, liberal policies of governmental activism could not solve the problem. (This article is non-committal about the cause of US stagnation.)

    Neoconservatives

    At this point a new group of mainly American conservatives, the so-called neoconservatives, arose to argue that high levels of taxation and the government’s intrusive regulation of private enterprise were hampering economic growth. They also claimed that social welfare policies were leading those who received welfare benefits to become increasingly dependent upon government. The neoconservatives generally accepted a modest welfare state. They were sometimes described as disenchanted welfare liberals. But they insisted that social welfare programs should help people help themselves, not make them permanent wards of the state. In this and other respects neoconservatives saw themselves as defenders of middle-class virtues such as thrift, hard work, and self-restraint, all of which they took to be under attack in the cultural upheaval of the reputedly hedonistic 1960s.

    An Interventionist Stance

    The neoconservatives also took a keen interest in foreign affairs. They adopted an interventionist stance that set them apart from the isolationist tendencies of earlier conservatives. Many of them argued that the United States had both a right and a duty to intervene in the affairs of other nations in order to combat the influence of Soviet communism and to advance American interests; some even claimed that the United States had a duty to remake the non-Western world on the model of American democratic capitalism. Among American political leaders, the chief representatives of neoconservatism were the Republican presidents Ronald Reagan (1981–89) and George W. Bush (2001–09). Its most articulate advocates, however, were academics who entered politics, such as New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick, who served as ambassador to the United Nations during the Reagan administration.

    During the Reagan era (the 1980s), more-traditional conservatives whose viewpoints harkened back to the Old Right remained resentful of neoconservatives for supposedly having co-opted and diluted American conservatism with a false brand of anticommunist “welfare statism.”

    Paleoconservatives Try to Take the Party Back

    The fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991) encouraged the “paleoconservatives,” as they were then identified by the conservative intellectuals Paul Gottfried and Thomas Fleming, to forcefully articulate their opposition to neoconservatism and to advocate new policies inspired by the Old Right’s ideological battles with New Deal Democrats.

    Neoconservatives Counter with Accusations of Anti-Semitism, Racism, Isolationism, and Zenophobia.

    Neoconservatives countered with long-standing accusations that the paleoconservative celebration of America’s Christian heritage and opposition to immigration from developing countries were indicative of the movement’s underlying anti-Semitism, racism, isolationism, and xenophobia.

    The influence of paleoconservatism within the American right arguably reached a high point at the end of the 20th century in Pat Buchanan’s unsuccessful attempts to secure the Republican presidential nomination in 1992 and 1996 and in his failed campaign for president as the nominee of the Reform Party in 2000.

    1. Drolet, J.-F., Williams, M. C. 2021. The radical Right, realism, and the politics of conservatism in postwar
      international thought. Review of International Studies 47, 273–293. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210521000103 ↩︎
    2. Ibid. p. 289 ↩︎
    3. Ibid, p. 275 ↩︎

  • Anglo-Saxons v the World

    There are core philosophical differences between Europe and the ‘Anglo-Saxon nations’ of Great Britain and the United States. Europeans seem to be aware of this, but the American people are not, maybe because the American educational system does not identify America as Anglo-Saxon. Instead, we are encouraged to think of ourselves as a melting pot with a diverse heritage. As a result, I believe we are poorly equipped for dialogue with the rest of the world. On the other hand, I suspect our leaders are aware of their Anglo-Saxon identity. If so, this might explain their recent behavior. Are they operating on the premise of Anglo-Saxons v the World? More importantly, is America’s behavior inspired by hubris, or are Americans responding to a sense of isolation?

    I recently watched a video attributing the turmoil in the world to a breakdown in Anglo-Saxon philosophy and politics. In that video, Professor Wen Yang attributed the current turmoil in the world to a cultural and spiritual lack in Anglo-Saxon philosophy. He included the United States in the Anglo-Saxon category because he considers the US an extension of the British Empire.

    Yang has issued a challenge that should not go unanswered. If we the people are considered Anglo-Saxons by virtue of where we live or who our allies are, we had better be able to respond to such accusations. The purpose of this article is not to introduce a new cause, but to explore what the Anglo-Saxon label means for conversation and analysis.

    Is Anglo-Saxon Culture Uncivilized Compared to the rest of the world?

    Anglo-Saxons v the World
    Credit: duncan1890

    In Yang’s opinion, the Anglo-Saxon problem is very old. But while his argument might provide an explanation for the behavior of the United States in recent decades, his premise that the Anglo-Saxons missed the Axial Age can be disputed. Yang specifically attributes the behavior of the US and her allies in the Middle East to a lack of Axial Age influence and a resultant breakdown in Anglo-Saxon philosophy.

    The Axial Age is a term coined by the German philosopher Karl Jaspers. It refers to broad changes in religious and philosophical thought that occurred in a variety of locations from about the 8th to the 3rd century BCE. As we will see, Yang’e analysis implies that the Anglo-Saxon nations have remained uncivilized and irreligious while other cultures progressed spiritually and morally. In this context, it might even be racist. Is Anglo-Saxon culture uncivilized compared to the rest of the world? However one answers this question, the Axial Age argument is not useful or even accurate.

    The British Contribution to the Debate

    Alan Macfarlane, an authority on Anglo-Saxon culture, has a completely different interpretation of the influence of the Axial Age. There is scholarly consensus that it was Japan that missed the Axial Age, and that Japan was the only world civilization to never experience it. Furthermore, the consequences of missing it were not necessarily negative.

    Macfarlane explains the Axial Age as follows: for the civilizations that were affected by it, the world they knew was separated from an ideal philosophical world that was held in opposition and tension to that world. This resulted in the creation of world religion. The Japanese never separated their world. Therefore, Japan is not an actual civilization. Japan is an ancient shamanic civilization.

    Macfarlane reached this conclusion independently, but he has since discovered that Robert Bellah1 and Shmuel N. Eisenstadt2 discovered it as well.

    Apparently, missing the Axial Age does not lead directly to an Anglo-Saxon-type society.

    Is America Really Anglo-Saxon?

    Now we have to confront the question of whether America really is Anglo-Saxon. According to Alan Macfarlane, the United States does not have a key ingredient of Anglo-Saxon culture: boarding school. Boarding school was so influential in British culture and economics, another explanation would be needed for the presence of Anglo-Saxon characteristics in the United States.

    What is an Anglo-Saxon? Origins of Europe and Britain

    According to Macfarlane, the origin of the Anglo-sphere was the Anglo-Saxon invasions after the fall of Rome. Anglo-Saxon society had a peculiar family system. They had small, nuclear families, but they sent their children away to boarding school. Public education (the British name for boarding school) is the oldest institution in Britain, and it goes back to the Anglo-Saxon period. In Britain, children were, and still are, sent away between 8 and 13 years old. Macfarlane argues that this custom had the effect of splitting economic and social unity.

    Romantic Love and Common Law

    The children who are sent away are no longer a member of the unit of production in that household. This practice led to the development of romantic-love marriage, in addition to its economic effects. Romantic love was not inspired by the troubadours. It was a natural result of boarding school. Love was a self-choice.

    Boarding school also had common law effects. The development of Britain’s legal system was unique. British law protected the individual, in contrast to law on the Continent, which did not protect the individual. However, Europe has adopted many aspects of British law, so this difference is no longer noticeable.

    The British Trust

    The trust, is another interesting feature. A trust is a non-government hybrid unit that turns things into people and vice versa. It was devised as a vehicle to get around the king’s inheritance tax. All of the major British economic institutions were trusts. And Anglo-Saxon trusts became a key device for modern capitalist democracy. However, the British trust is not like the corporation on the Continent.

    Trusts explain how the Catholic Church can exist in Britain. Religions set themselves up as trusts. Trusts made non-conformity possible.

    Trusts also explain the relation of Britain to its empire. First, trusts can be dissolved. The British empire disappeared in 20 years because the empire was a trust. Another an important difference with Continental empires is that in Britain, these relations often continued as part of the Commonwealth after they were ‘dissolved’.

    Continental empires on the other hand, were were familistic, relational, and therefore, difficult to break out of. And once a part of the Continental empire broke away, it was out for good.

    The Cruel Streak in Anglo-Saxon Culture

    Finally we get a suggestion that these cultural practices have had both good and bad effects. On the negative side, there is a cruel streak in Anglo-Saxon culture. British society is based on confrontational, competitive, games, which are formed as clubs. Everything is individualistic and contractual. Parliament is a game, life is a game. And all of the games have teams. The Anglo-Saxon world is unfair in many ways, but it is made tolerable by humor. Humor in capitalist society acts like myth in other societies.

    The Need for Understanding

    There is tension between the Continent and Anglo-world. However, Macfarlane aims to promote peace by describing the natural characteristics of civilizations. He argues that ignorance of these characteristics can lead to misunderstandings, which are more serious today because a rapid rise in population has resulted in pressure on resources and migration. Several spheres are being mixed together. This has never happened before. These factors, combined with rapid changes in technology, have created a confused world. His books include: How to Understand Each Other3, and China, Japan, Europe and the Anglo-Sphere, a Comparative Analysis4. His point of view is a valuable addition to this discussion.

    Conclusion

    Anglo-Saxons may have a well-developed sense of humor, but clearly, there is nothing funny about the United States’ behavior in recent decades. Analysis is important, but the Axial Age doesn’t explain what we’re seeing. On the other hand, an understanding of Anglo-Saxon culture might be a good place to start.

    I was going to compare Anglo-Saxon and Continental philosophy, but I realized the focus should be on the Axial Age. The following papers deal with philosophical differences and might be useful for further exploration:

    Analytic/Anglophone and Continental Philosophy, Psychology Wiki

    America and Europe: John Locke vs. Saint Augustine by Steven Hill. This article describes how the United States came to view the ownership of property.

    Two Traditions of Liberalism by James H. Nichols, Jr. This is a review of João Carlos Espada’s book The Anglo American Tradition of Liberty: A View from Europe.

    The Anglo-Saxon Conservative Tradition 5 by Rod Preece. This book can also be read on JSTOR. Preece argues that the distinguishing mark between old and new conservatism is not between the old world and the new but between Anglo-Saxon nations and others. Anglo-Saxon ideology is best understood as Lockean liberalism.

    1. The Axial Age and Its Consequences, Edited by Robert N. Bellah and Hans Joas, Harvard University Press, 2012 ↩︎
    2. EISENSTADT, SHMUEL N. “The Axial Age : The Emergence of Transcendental Visions and the Rise of Clerics.” European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie / Europäisches Archiv Für Soziologie, vol. 23, no. 2, 1982, pp. 294–314. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23997525. Accessed 27 Mar. 2024. ↩︎
    3. Alan Macfarlane, How to Understand Each Other, CAM Rivers Publishing, 2018 ↩︎
    4. Alan Macfarlane, China, Japan, Europe, and the Anglo-sphere, CAM Rivers Publishing, 2018 ↩︎
    5. Rod Preece, “The Anglo-Saxon Conservative Tradition.” Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue Canadienne de Science Politique, vol. 13, no. 1, 1980, pp. 3–32. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3230084. Accessed 25 Mar. 2024. ↩︎

  • Machiavelli Was The West’s First Democratic Theorist

    Author John P. McCormick argues that Machiavelli was the West’s first Democratic Theorist. He was a forerunner of today’s left-wing populism. Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) is often interpreted as a cynic, or as a philosopher of political evil. But according to McCormick, “Machiavelli was a republican idealist whose support for popular rule can inspire struggles against the oligarchies of today.”

    This article is a follow-up to a previous post, in which Professor Wen Yang compared Anglo-Saxon societies unfavorably to ancient societies. He argued that Anglo-Saxons did not have the advantage of the Axial Age. Professor Jeffrey Sachs also thought Anglo-Saxon philosophy had lost its way, but not because it missed the Axial Age. Sachs thought their problems began when they broke with the Christian tradition. But both Yang and Sachs agreed that the political philosopher who broke with centuries of Western tradition as Niccolò Machiavelli. However, the fact that Machiavelli was writing about his own Italian Republic is an important omission. His historical context is important too.

    Machiavelli’s diplomatic and philosophical career took place during a turbulent time. The French invaded Italy in 1494 and the army of Emperor Charles V sacked Rome in 1527. Machiavelli believed that if the Italians would return to ancient domestic and military orders by rearming the citizens, the citizens could beat back hegemons like France, Spain, and the German emperor.

    Of course the Italian Republic’s trouble was nothing new. McCormick says socioeconomic elites always enable oppression of common people, in every time and place. However, there is an important difference in the way ancient republics dealt with corruption. The citizens of ancient republics would have punished their ruling elites much more severely than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were punished.

  • Why No one Denies Anything to Netanyahu

    Why No One Denies Anything to Netanyahu
    Dolphin-class Submarine

    In a Neutrality Studies interview, Professor Dr. Dr. H.C. Wolfgang Streeck explains why no one denies anything to Netanyahu. They fear he might use nuclear weapons on his neighbors. This interview was based on an article Dr. Streeck wrote on this subject in December of 2023.

    If Streeck is correct, this explains President Biden’s unwavering support of Israel’s brutality during an election year. It also suggests why Biden’s support of Israel is not unique among American leaders, including Donald Trump. Nor is it unique to the United States. Aside from South Africa no government has done anything to stop Netanyahu.

    None of this is Biden’s fault. It’s not even the fault of the United States. That might sound strange. Lately, everything seems like the fault of the United States. But the most likely culprits have escaped notice. The United States did not create the overarching threat of nuclear weapons in Israeli hands. France was the first country to supply Israel with the ability to make nuclear weapons. Germany has contributed to Israel’s expansion and nuclear arsenal since World War II. The Israelis now have a ‘tripod’, which means submarines, missiles, and fighter jets. Their huge fleet of fighter planes is capable of going to Tehran and back without refueling, and while carrying a nuclear payload. And their Dolphin-class submarines are capable of being fitted with nuclear warheads.

    The nuclear arsenal of Israel is not just playing a part in the strategic decisions of Israel, but in the behavior of its neighbors. It is estimated that Israel has about 400 nuclear warheads of different kinds. By some estmates, Israel has the most technologically sophisticated nuclear arsenal, just behind or on par with the US.

    And it gets worse. The Israelis haven’t admitted they have nuclear weapons. This means there are no inspections and no formal nuclear policies. That’s serious enough, but when you consider that Israel’s neighbors in the the Middle East don’t have nuclear weapons at all, you begin to understand why Netanyahu feels so free to butcher the Palestinians. Israel’s neighbors in the Middle East offer no deterrence to Israel’s nuclear arsenal.

    How did this happen? France’s contribution took place before the Unite States entered the world stage. Germany’s contributions have been taking place since World War II. After the war the Germans were being supervised by the United States. However, they did some things on their own initiative.

    Streeck blames Germany’s courting of Israel on an absence of an identity, its dependence on the United States, and its pariah status. For these reasons, the Germans thought it was important to have some kind of good relations with Israel. After 1949, there was a conversation about reparations between Germany and Israel’s David Ben-Gurion. They discussed what Germany could do as compensation for the Holocaust. Ben-Gurion was quite clear that he needed support for expansion in Palestine, and Germany gave him that support. More recently, Germany has supplied Israel with six Dolphin-class submarines capable of being fitted with nuclear warheads. That’s how Streeck explains it anyway.

    I would put it this way: Germany made an alliance with Jews who happen to live in the most strategic location in the Middle East. Out of guilt. Never mind that every conqueror in the modern age has had designs on that place, incuding Hitler. But back to the interview.

    The fact that the Israeli government can pursue the strategy they are now pursuing has something to do with their confidence that if American public policy weakens US support, they have their own tools. So, there is a sort of intelligence feedback loop. The Americans are aware that if they don’t support Israeli policy in relation to Palestine, the Israelis will do it themselves. Then Israel might do things that are out of the control of the United States.

    I was worried before watching this interview by suggestions for electoral stategy in the US. There are journalists who say we can’t vote for Joe Biden because of his part in the genocide of Gaza. Some say outright that Trump is a better choice. It’s hard to explain these comments from reasonable people. We know that President Donald Trump helped Netanyahu’s reelection chances. He did this by recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heighs. Israel illegally seized the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967, and since then every American administration has considered it ‘occupied’ territory. But not Trump. Trump also moved the US embassy to Jerusalem against the wishes of the Palestinians. And, since October 7, candidate Trump has assured Israel of his support.

    I agree that the US should support Israel when it is attacked by Hamas, but electing an eratic character like Trump is not the solution. Trump is no more concerned about the Palestinians than Netanyahu.

    Another thing to consider is whether this attack on Gaza is part of a strategy to elect Trump. If Netanyahu prefers Trump to Biden, which I think he does, humiliating Biden would be a good way to help Trump. And if Streeck is right, there’s nothing Biden can do about it.

    If you’re waiting for my suggestion of who you should vote for, you may have missed the point of this article. I predict that Netanyahu will continue to pound the Palestinians until the election. And if that’s what he wants to do, no one will stop him.

  • Did the Germans Win the War?

    The book, Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile1, paints a disturbing but convincing picture. It’s convincing because it explains the way the world behaves. Did the Germans win the war?

    I’m not just referring to the claim that Martin Bormann lived out his days as a free man in Argentina. Or that after the war, he took the wealth looted from defeated countries with him to Argentina. And it’s not just that he took that loot out of Germany with the knowledge and approval of Germany’s industrial leaders. It’s also that Bormann was carrying out well-laid plans to help German industrialists and bankers take control of the global economy. And it can be argued that the world is living with the consequences.

    Our curiosity has been put to sleep by the horror of the Holocaust

    The Holocaust is the event that stands out in the last century. It’s a horror story you can never get out of your head. And because it’s so prominent in the collective imagination, it masquerades as the entire purpose of World War II. After all, what other explanation is needed? We know about Nazi racism, European anti-Semitism, and the Nazi belief that the German race had to be purified. We also know that everywhere the Germans went, they arrested and deported the Jews. What Manning’s book does is awake the natural curiosity that has been put to sleep by the real horror of the Holocaust. The underlying purpose of the war was theft in the service of supremacy.

    1938: The Jews are required to register their wealth

    The boldfaced robbery of German Jews is the first important fact of World War II. Anti-Semitism justified it, but the same pattern has been repeated in wars that don’t involve anti-Semitism. In 1938, a Nazi Law Forced Jews to Register Their Wealth—Making It Easier to Steal. This was shortly after Nazi Germany annexed Austria. At that time, Hitler’s government issued a decree requiring all Jews in both Germany and Austria to register any property or assets valued at more than 5,000 Reichsmarks. This amounted to around $2,000 in American currency of the period, or $34,000 today. All types of property were included: furniture, paintings, life insurance, stocks. Aryanization was the name for the state-sanctioned theft that followed, and it totaled about 7 billion Reichsmarks. This process was made more painful by the fact that Germany’s Jews had already been methodically removed from public life, civil service, and business.

    The Jews were robbed even when they decided to leave. This is further evidence that theft was the underlying purpose.

    For those Jews with the means to leave the country, legally emigrating meant relinquishing 50 percent of one’s monetary assets, and then exchanging the rest of the remaining Reichsmarks for the currency of whatever country would be the final destination. “By late 1938, they were allowing Jews to keep only 8 percent of what their Reichsmarks were worth in the foreign country,” Hayes says—which only made it harder to find a safe haven, since the Jewish refugees couldn’t take any of their savings with them.

    Lorraine Boissoneault, Smithsonian Magazine

    1939: The Jews are robbed of intellectual property

    One thing you can say about the Nazis is they were thorough. They even robbed the Jews of intellectual property.

    A 1939 executive order required all Jewish men to add ‘Israel’ as a second name and women to add ‘Sara.’ This made it easier for Nazi officials to deny intellectual property registrations and renewals to Jewish applicants, cutting them off from the IP system… 

    In some instances, works by Jewish authors were nearly completely reproduced and distributed by others without their consent. One example of an Aryanized work is Alice Urbach’s So kocht man in Wien!, a Viennese cookbook. Urbach was forced to transfer the rights to her book, which was then republished with new authorial credit to “Rudolf Rösch.” The new work kept most of the original texts and photographs of her cooking demonstrations but removed elements celebrating Vienna’s diversity. 

    In the field of medicine, Dr. Josef Löbel’s Knaurs Gesundheitslexikon was a health encyclopedia that, after the Otto Liebmann publishing house was taken over by a Nazi publisher, was republished by the author Herbert Volkmann under the pseudonym “Peter Hiron.” Volkmann even added new sections on race, homosexuality, and prison psychology. He similarly usurped authorship for Dr. Walter Guttman’s Medizinische Terminologie and its ongoing publications.

    Library of Congress Blogs, The Seizure of Jewish Intellectual Property Ahead of World War II

    The Holocaust as a distraction from Germany’s need for Jewish wealth

    The Jews of Austria, Poland and Eastern Europe were also methodically robbed. Much of the stolen wealth went to generous social programs back home in Germany. But most of it funded the Nazi war machine. If Hannah Arendt knew about this when she wrote about the Eichmann trial, ‘the banality of evil,’ was a perfect description of what happened.

    In hindsight, we shouldn’t be surprised that World War II was all about annexing and looting defeated countries. That’s what war has always been about. It is highly disturbing that Germany looted its own citizens, but it was terribly logical considering the need for war funding. I’m arguing that the Holocaust has erased our common-sense understanding of war. The theft or recovery of wealth is war’s basic motivation.

    The troubling nature of capitalism is not Germany’s fault

    Paul Manning’s claim that the theft never stopped is the most disturbing part. His story suggests that the industrialists who funded the Nazi Party won the war. It may be more correct to say the German economy won the war. In this light, it is tempting to blame the current state of Western capitalism on the German takeover. But the troubling nature of capitalism is not Germany’s fault.

    Woodrow Wilson revealed the nature of capitalism in 1920. Professor David Harvey quoted Wilson in his video on Class Nation and Nationalism. This is Harvey’s summation: ‘Relations between nations are connected together by the fact that every capitalist wants a market and wants to spread market exchange all over the world. Therefore that market process must be protected by that nation-state in relation to other nation-states in battering down the walls between them.’

    Putting the Holocaust in its place opens the way to enquire about what was happening in Germany before World War I. The history books say that Germany’s punishment after the Great War that led to World War II. This punishment was an indirect consequence of liberalism.

    Two faces of liberalism

    Liberalism enabled the use of economic sanctions and blockade. Nations could be controlled by economic warfare because they had become tied together in the system of market exchange. However, this represents a surrender to temptation by the powerful states. It was not liberalism’s original mandate. There are two faces of liberalism.

    In the 19th century, the prevailing doctrine of free trade liberalism protected global trade from wartime measures. It shielded countries such as Germany from efforts to target their foreign dependence. Germany’s industries depended on foreign minerals such as manganese, which it paid for through a global financial system centered on London. Through this mechanism, Germany was able to obtain resources that it did not itself possess. But that changed during the Great War.

    The other face of the liberal order: sanctions, and the Great War

    So the important question becomes, how did the Great War start? First, German unification upset the balance of power in Europe in 1871. Then Germany proceeded to form an alliance with Austria-Hungary and Italy. This represented a new threat to the existing order, and it was reinforced by the ambition of its leader, Kaiser Wilhelm II. The Kaiser had plans to build a battle fleet to rival Britain’s. He eventually switched his spending from the navy to the army, but his relationship with Britain never recovered.

    Naturally, Britain negotiated agreements with France and Russia. This led to fear of encirclement on the part of Germany. Tensions escalated when Germany tried to oppose a French takeover of Morocco and Britain supported France. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the final straw. Finally, the enmeshment of these countries in the liberal global economy increased the pressure on Germany by allowing the use of economic warfare.

    The modern history of the economic weapon

    The modern history of the economic weapon began during World War I. Britain and France tried to isolate Germany and its allies from the global economy. They sought to starve their economies of resources and their citizens of food, even though the suffering caused by this tactic was well understood. It was considered a regrettable necessity: 300,000-400,000 people in Central Europe died of starvation or illness thanks to blockade, while 500,000 perished in the Ottoman Empire. Germany, for its part, used U-boats to cripple transatlantic shipping.

    Economic and financial sanctions continued as a way to reinforce the authority of the League of Nations during the interwar period. However, the economic weapon was now claimed to be a weapon of peace. Powerful nations realized they could employ sanctions without any declaration of war. They also told themselves it could be used as an alternative to war. But sanctioned states took different lessons from this treatment.

    What the Nazis learned about liberalism from sanctions and blockade

    The Nazi leadership saw the threat of foreign sanctions as further justifying its hegemonic ambitions—the more territory it influenced or controlled, the less vulnerable it would be to the Jews and Bolsheviks, whom it believed, or claimed to believe, were orchestrating the international campaign against Germany. The Nazi’s behavior can be largely explained by this liberal tactic of sanctions and blockade.

    Just as they were a century ago, the crucial dilemmas of sanctions are the dilemmas of liberalism. Is the world better off when countries are interdependent with each other than when they hold themselves aloof? How far do you go in cutting countries out of the world economy when they turn to conquest, or look to spread illiberalism? Is the economic weapon really so much better than the military one?

    International economic coercion is the dark shadow cast by the global liberal economy. Sanctions would not be nearly so effective in a world where liberalism had not won. Isolation from global trade and finance are painful precisely because they are so intertwined with the workings of national markets. In a world of complex supply chains spanning dozens of countries, and global financial systems that are woven into the warp and woof of local banking relations, it is impossible to tell where the domestic economy ends and the international economy begins.

    lawfaremedia.org, The Modern History of Economic Sanctions

    The Jewish case compared to the Balkans

    Now let’s return to the Jewish case, as compared to the Balkans. Similar to the Jewish experience in Nazi Germany, widespread economic violence was committed during the 1990s Balkan wars. The plunder obtained in this way financed and sustained armed groups, ensuring that the conflicts could continue. However, in most of the cases presented at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, the focus is on violations of civic and political rights. Only a few cases deal with violations of economic rights.

    As a consequence of this prosecutorial approach, the underlying war criminal networks that supported the war – war profiteers, organised crime gangs, illegal smugglers of gasoline, people, weapons and so on – remained invisible, even though their connections to political parties and elites that emerged during and after the conflict are well-known facts.

    Elma Demir, UN Court Archives reveal the political economy of the Balkan Wars

    The Jewish case as compared to Gaza

    Again, there are similarities in the Jewish case compared to Gaza. Israeli soldiers have looted millions in money and gold from Gaza since the war started.

    Gaza’s government media office said it had received “dozens of reports from residents of the Gaza Strip on the issue of stolen money, gold, and artefacts” over a period of 92 days, which ran from 7 October to Saturday.

    The office said the items were valued at 90 million shekels ($24 million) and were “seized by the Israeli occupation army”, The New Arab’s Arabic-language sister site al-Araby al-Jadeed reported.

    Israeli soldiers have boasted of the items they have looted in videos posted to social media.

    The media office said the thefts occurred in various ways, with thefts at checkpoints of bags containing valuable belongings, and raids on the homes of people who were asked to evacuate.

    The New Arab

    It is estimated that the Israeli Army may have looted possessions worth tens of millions of dollars in addition to taking personal belongings from Palestinian citizens.

    Israel is the servant of the global liberal order

    The policies of Israel today are blamed on Netanyahu’s right-wing government. But this government has controlled Palestine for 20 years. The identity of Netanyahu and his cabinet is irrelevant. They could be almost anyone. Their Jewishness is a necessary convenience. But, to the extent that he is really Jewish, Netanyahu must be tortured by the knowledge that the Mossad was commanded to stop its Nazi-hunting after the arrest of Adolf Eichmann.

    According to Paul Manning, the Mossad was threatened with a loss of financing if they continued to search for Nazis. This illustrates the extent to which Israel is the servant of the global liberal order.

    1. Paul Manning, Martin Boumann: Nazi in Exile, Lyle Stuart Inc. Secaucus, NJ, 1981 ↩︎

  • Erdogan Defends Gaza

    When Recep Tayyip Erdogan defends Gaza , he is one of the few leaders in the Middle East to openly criticize Benjamin Netanyahu for his callous bombing campaign. In addition to providing hope for Gaza in her ongoing trial, Erdogan also reminds us that the Levant has seen better times. Palestine was under Turkish rule for four hundred years prior to the days of the British Mandate of Palestine. Apparently, Erdogan has not forgotten this long-lost child of the Ottoman Empire. On November 29, after Netanyahu continued to spew his vile threats at Gaza, Erdogan called Netanyahu the ‘butcher of Gaza‘.

    During his time as president of Turkey, Erdogan has helped the Palestinians in many ways. His most important effort is probably his humanitarian relief to Gaza. This relief has been desperately important during Israel’s continuing blockade of food, water, medicine and electricity. Without his help and the help of the United Nations, the population of Gaza would have starved to death long ago. But shockingly, Netanyahu’s blockade remains in place even during his bombing spree. Erdogan’s courage is all the more admirable because his criticism may have cost him politically and monetarily. He is tied up, with the rest of the world, by the manipulations of dying energy markets. In fact, an energy war surrounds the upcoming climate summit.

    COP28

    COP28 UAE

    It has been reported that the COP28 president secretly used his climate summit role to push oil trade with foreign government officials. The COP28 president is Sultan Al Jaber, chief executive of the national oil company ADNOC and the Chairman of MASDAR, the United Arab Emirates fossil fuel and renewable energy companies. In this article by Rachel Donald of Planet: Critical, she explains that much of the behavior we see in the oil markets is due to the fact that oil is no longer a good investment. The costs are too high for profitability. However, gas is another matter. But this only refers to the lower cost of gas compared to oil production. Renewable energy is the obvious way of the future, but the West is determined that renewables will not prevail. The West claims gas is a transition fossil fuel that will move the world toward renewable energy, but that’s not at all what gas represents.

    The fight to end fossil fuel use threatens the political world order

    The market for both oil and gas have decreased, but gas is still relatively inexpensive to produce. This motivates producers to artificially increase the demand.

    The sheer size of gas reserves would enable another 125 years of burning fossil fuels. For rational people, continuing to use gas in stead of renewables makes no sense as a policy. The motivation for its continued use is that the transition to renewable energy will diminish the power of Western nations.

    Due the high costs of constructing the international infrastructure, developing nations are forced into partnerships with Western countries in order to exploit these natural resources. Renewables, on the other hand, are within the reach of developing countries, which would give them energy independence from Western countries. This threatens the political world order. And it is this fact that is missing from the climate energy conversation.

    China has cornered the renewable energy industry, but…

    The energy war is the Global North’s biggest investment. But while the U.S. and its allies have been focused on fossil fuels, China was busy gaining access to precious minerals needed for renewable energy, and expanding supply chains. Under the right circumstances this would assure China’s power over the West. Unfortunately, China still needs energy to supply the world with renewable power.

    China is the biggest customer of ADNOC. If China’s gas supply were cut off for some reason, it would cause an oil crisis for China. But the crisis would spread. In retaliation, China would stop its exports of materials to the allies’ industries. By the time the markets sent their lobbyists to Washington, it would already be too late. The economies of both superpowers would be in free-fall.

    Erdogan’s courage in context

    Turkey had just renewed relations with Israel after a decade-long rupture. The two countries had been discussing developing closer trade relations and working on new energy projects that could have helped build longer-term trust. But recently, as mediators have been trying to extend the truce between Israel and Hamas, Erdogan accused Netanyahu of complicating the process by insisting that he is going to eradicate Hamas. Now Israel has recalled all diplomatic staff from Turkey and other regional countries, and Turkey has withdrawn its Tel Aviv envoy. This is an example of the price paid when Erdogan defends Gaza.

    How should the world gage the threat of Benjamin Netanyahu?

    Of course this spectacle has also been painful for those of us who can only watch it happen. My own opinion is that Netanyahu is more than a threat to Gaza. He seems to take pleasure in broadcasting threats and administering public cruelty to the Palestinians. He has no problem with horrifying observers all over the world. And this is in spite of world-wide calls for a cease-fire. Benjamin Netanyahu is not exhibiting the behavior of a rational person, let alone a prime minister. In addition, AIPAC is threatening to run candidates against American representatives who criticize Israel. All things considered, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that Netanyahu, with Western backing, is a threat to the entire world.

    This is the context in which Recep Tayyip Erdogan defends Gaza. It seems to me that he is our only hope for an end to Israel’s hostilities against Gaza and the rest of the world.

  • Erdogan Defends Gaza as World Energy Markets Die

    When Recep Tayyip Erdogan defends Gaza , that’s the least of his worries. He defends Gaza as World Energy Markets die. Erdogan is one of the few leaders in the Middle East to openly criticize Benjamin Netanyahu for his callous bombing campaign. In addition to providing hope for Gaza in her ongoing trial, Erdogan also reminds us that the Levant has seen better times. Palestine was under Turkish rule for four hundred years prior to the days of the British Mandate of Palestine. Apparently, Erdogan has not forgotten this long-lost child of the Ottoman Empire. On November 29, after Netanyahu continued to spew his vile threats at Gaza, Erdogan called Netanyahu the ‘butcher of Gaza‘.

    (more…)

  • Gaza’s Natural Gas Field

    Gaza's Natural Gas Field

    Control of gas and oil supplies is an important focus of Israel’s U.S. ‘protectors’. It appears this is a large motivation for the bombing of Gaza. The story of Gaza’s natural gas field and the U.S. military are missing in reporting of the bombing of Gaza. A natural gas field was discovered off the Coast of Gaza in 1999 by BG Group, a multinational oil and gas company headquartered in Reading, United Kingdom. And this gas field is not the only one on Israel’s radar.

    Secret U.S. military base(s) are also missing from the story of the bombing of Gaza

    It has come to light that the United States has a military base in Israel. This was reported in the Jewish Virtual Library. JVL sources were listed as Barbara Opall-Rome of the Defense News and The Washington Post. The Post’s article is no longer on its website. Actually, there is more than one. The chronology is complicated and will be discussed in more detail below.

    Israel is claiming rights to several gas fields, but who really owns them?

    Several gas fields have been discovered off the Mediterranean coast in recent decades. In fact, while the Israelis were bombing Gaza, Israel granted twelve licenses to six companies to explore for natural gas in that area. Total oil and gas reserves were valued at $524 billion in 2019. 

    But did Israel have a right to award these licenses? According to a UN report, Israel is not entitled to all of the gas. Some of the reserves are in the occupied territory of Palestine. Much of the rest is outside of national borders and should be shared with relevant parties. In fact, the UN report questioned whether Israel has a right to any of it. After all, the gas fields took millions of years to form and the Palestinians occupied the entire territory of Palestine for thousands of years before the Israelis arrived.

    The question of the hour is, who owns this particular gas field off the Gaza coast? It won’t be surprising to anyone that the majority owner, the Palestinian people, have no access to its income.

    Gaza swims with sharks

    The Palestine National Authority has maritime jurisdiction up to 20 nautical miles off of Gaza’s coast. This is according to the Oslo II Accords. The PNA signed a 25-year contract for gas exploration off the Gaza coast with BGG in November 1999. Long story short, Gaza ended up with nothing. Here are the details as described by Rachel Donald of Planet Critical.

    Ehud Barak

    Palestine’s Prime Minister at the time, Ehud Barak, authorized BGG to drill the first well in July 2000. And of course, BGG struck gas. Then Palestine and Israel began to negotiate. They agreed on a deal that was thought to be fair to both Israeli demand and Palestinian supply. But then…

    Arial Sharon

    Arial Sharon became Prime Minister. His government rejected a supply deal between the Palestinian gas field and the state-owned Israel Electric Corporation.

    Tony Blair to the rescue

    Enter UK Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2002. As a result of Blair’s influence, Sharon agreed to negotiate an agreement. He agreed to take an annual supply of 0.05 trillion cubic feet of Palestinian gas for a period of 10 to 15 years. But in 2003 Sharon decided the money might be used for terrorism. So he changed his mind.

    Hamas scuttles a new deal with Ehud Olmert

    Ehud Olmert’s government made a new deal with the Palestinians that was supposed to start in 2009. Israel would purchase 0.05 trillion cubic feet of Palestinian gas for $4 billion annually. However, the 2007 Battle of Gaza changed the deal again. This battle began when Hamas took control of the strip. They supposedly did this because they wanted to increase the original 10% Palestinian share in the BGG deal.

    I have no inside knowledge of Hamas’s motivation. However, In my opinion it is curious that an attack by Hamas also justified Israel’s 2023 bombing campaign. In both cases Israel benefitted by claiming entitlement to self-serving retributions. In 2023, Israel took the opportunity to award exploration licenses off the Mediterranean Coast. Now back to the saga of Palestine’s gas field.

    Israel nullifies the 1999 contract that BG Group, the Palestinian government and the PNA agreed to

    An Israeli team of negotiators was set up by the Government of Israel to formulate a deal with BGG, bypassing both the Palestinian government and PNA. This nullified the contract signed in 1999 between BGG and PNA. However, in December 2007, BGG withdrew from negotiations with the Israeli government.

    In 2008, Israel belatedly tries to restart negotiations with BGG

    In June 2008, the Israeli government recontacted BGG to urgently renegotiate the deal. But it seems this was a cover for at attack on Gaza, which was already planned. The UN report states: “The decision to speed up negotiations with BGG coincided, chronologically, with the planning of an Israeli military operation in Gaza, whereby it would appear that the Government of Israel wished to reach an agreement with BGG prior to the military operation, which was already in an advanced planning stage.”

    Israel confiscates Palestinian gas fields in 2008 invasion of Gaza

    The invasion of Gaza by Israel in December 2008 brought the Palestinian gas fields under Israeli control—without regard for international law. Israel’s government has been dealing with BGG ever since. The UN estimates billions of dollars in loss for the Palestinian people.

    The military base(s)

    According to the Jewish Virtual Library and Defense News, there is a new U.S. military base located  at the Israel Defense Forces Air Defense School near Beersheba. When construction began in 2017, its stated purpose was to support a contingent of soldiers who would operate systems to help Israel defend against rocket and missile attack. In this base, the plan was for U.S. soldiers and Israeli airmen to be living and working side-by-side. But these articles also mention a U.S. independent facility in the same general area of Israel’s Negev desert.

    Pentagon awards contract for expansion of the joint base in August 2023.

    The dates reported by the various websites are confusing. I believe construction of the joint U.S. and Israeli facility began September 16, 2017, while Donald Trump was in the Whitehouse. The JVL says ground was broken for the initial construction in 2017. And this one seems to be the one that was expanded in 2023. But before this base was built, the U.S. already had a military base in Israel.

    Making sense of the dates

    The Intercept says the Pentagon awarded a multimillion-dollar contract for construction of a base in August 2023. However, this contract must have been for its expansion, because the JVL and Defense News says construction was begun in 2017.

    At that time, the U.S. had another military site independent of Israel that was not the subject of an expansion. The Intercept was able to report the monetary value of this older site because it was mentioned in an August 2 contract announcement by the Pentagon. The intercept reports that this site is a $35.8 million U.S. troop facility.

    The two sites share a code name

    The U.S. military has operated this independent facility for more than a decade in the same general area of Israel’s Negev desert, according to the Jewish Virtual Library, Defense News and the Intercept. But Ken Klippenstein and Daniel Boguslaw of the Intercept report that both sites are part of code-named Site 512.

    The Americans operate the independent site without an Israeli presence. Its purpose is to house the U.S. AN/TPY-2, an X-Band radar that is integrated with Israeli search and track radars to augment early warning in the event of ballistic missile attack from Iran. The Intercept article specuates that these sites did not warn against the Hamas attack because they were focused in Iran.

    One of Israel’s Iron Dome systems is in the U.S.

    One of Israel’s operational Iron Dome systems is now in the U.S., according to the Defense News article. It is competing with U.S.-proposed systems as a possible solution to the medium and short-range air defense requirement.

  • We Have High Expectations for Israel

    We have high expectations for Israel. Are they realistic?

    Judaism or Zionism?

    We are outraged about the behavior of Israel toward the Palestinians. At the same time, atrocities that are happening in other parts of the world don’t demand our attention. Apparently, we have high expectations for Israel. The question is, are these expectations realistic?

    (more…)
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