As Expected: Wretched US Journalism on Ukraine

Poroshenko gladhanding European Council's head Herman Van Rompuy. (European Council)

Poroshenko being welcomed by European Council’s head Herman Van Rompuy. As a tool of the West, and Washington’s puppet, Poroshenko has been given the red carpet treatment throughout the “Atlantic” sphere of power. The European vassals continue to fill their assigned roles. (European Council)

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he U.S. news media has failed the American people often in recent years by not challenging U.S. government falsehoods, as with Iraq’s WMD. But the most dangerous violation of journalistic principles has occurred in the Ukraine crisis, which has the potential of a nuclear war.

A basic rule of journalism is that there are almost always two sides to a story and that journalists should try to reflect that reality, a principle that is especially important when lives are at stake amid war fevers. Yet, American journalism has failed miserably in this regard during the Ukraine crisis.

IS PARRY DECRYING AS ABERRATION WHAT IS IN FACT STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE FOR US JOURNALISM? READ BELOW THE GREANVILLE POST EDITOR’S OWN ANNOTATION ON THIS ARTICLE. CLICK ON THE BAR BELOW.

[learn_more]Editors Note:
We deeply appreciate and respect Robert Parry as a brave, decent, and often exemplary journalist, but in some ways his critiques of corporate media seem to us a bit surrealist, like the tale of the naked somnambulist walking amid the ruins. Where has this man been all his life without understanding the myriad ways in which class (capitalist ownership) deforms the corporate media’s perspective?

Dom Hélder Pessoa Câmara was Catholic Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Brazil. An advocate of liberation theology, he is remembered for the aphorism, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.” (Wikipedia)

It follows that the US government, as the formal and most powerful instrument used by the plutocracy to carry out its global and domestic agendas, is naturally accorded respectful and cooperative treatment by those who some critics, during the run-up to the Iraq War in 2003, accurately baptized “the stenographers to power.”

In advanced capitalism, at a time when sophisticated tools of opinion manipulation are used by all spheres of social power, the separation of media and government is illusory—they are all part of the same class structure, pushing the cart in the same direction. America in particular, on which so much depends, lacks effective tools to counteract the power of plutocratic media. The Internet, while slowly making a difference, is not yet capable of framing a national debate or rolling back a propaganda wave once it starts (i.e., the current largely successful demonization of Russia and Putin).

Reflecting the decrepitude of the system itself, and its multiplying internal crises and dysfunctions, the performance of the American media in particular, and Western media in general, have deteriorated markedly in the last three decades, to the point that their output is now an obscenity, an insult to truth and the intelligence of any moderately well informed person. That said, there was never a golden age of US journalism, as some Pollyannish voices would claim, never a moment in the last 100 years when the majority’s consciousness was not manipulated and distorted to conform with the government’s narrative on any issue of importance to the ruling class.

The media’s scandalously underwhelming performance, their deeply ingrained mediocrity, are inherent in their ownership roots. It will not come as a shock to hear that the nation’s way of looking at any important issue has always been framed self-servingly by the powers that be and sold to the masses by the private media and satellite spheres of communications (the political class, churches, etc.). That’s why we had a Korea, and a Vietnam, and an overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran in the 1950s, along with a similar coup in Guatemala, an unrelenting war on Cuba for more than half a century, the murder of Chile’s revolution in the 1970s, and scores of other crimes that constitute a bloodbath in the Third World, all the way up to our time, when the hypocrisy and criminality of the Western powers, once again deeply involved in the Middle East and Central Asia, have added Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan to their long list of unnecessary and avoidable tragedies.

All of this and much more on the domestic front (like the absence even in 2013 of anything resembling a civilized healthcare system), has happened without an adequate popular response, the kind of rectifying mobilization to be expected in a properly informed citizenry.

Not content with this unbroken chain of outrages, the Washington cabal—again with the media’s consent and support—has lately, especially under Bush2 and Obama administrations, been aligning the pieces to preserve US hegemony at all costs—the coveted unipolar world inherited after the collapse of the Soviet Union—an objective which puts America on a collision course with Russia and China. This insane project—pushed by the American establishment and in particular the neocon vermin that, still unchallenged, infests the nation’s foreign policy and security apparatus—has created the Ukraine mess, which, as Parry notes, has brought the world to the doorstep of nuclear Armageddon.

In view of the above, can anyone really believe that if America had had, all along, a semi-decent press, one that at least honestly attempted to explain the world as it is, and combat obscurantism—not a Ministry of Truth permeated by cheap anti-communism, jingo rhetoric, and now largely manufactured “anti-terrorist” hysterias—any of this could have happened? That we would find ourselves in this unbearable predicament, assaulted daily by ugly issues that should have been settled ages ago?

The lesson is obvious. The huge edifice of lies and glaring omissions of truth is not accidental. All of these horrors and reigning imbecilities are not inevitable or God-ordained, but just a logical offshoot of capitalism and the manner in which it operates on all social and political levels. In fact, capitalism —and its natural progeny, fascism and imperialism—need an elaborate propaganda system to whitewash their systemic crimes. Capitalism without constant lies is impossible.
Under such circumstances, the outcome is as clear as it is unavoidable: the bigger the crimes the more cynical the lies and the greater the escapism. This is the feature that defines our media age almost 100%, and which now clearly permeates almost all the reportage attaching to Eastern Europe, which Parry so justly deplores. It is a reality that must be combatted with all our strength and creativity.

—P. Greanville[/learn_more]

REGULAR ARTICLE RESUMES HERE

With very few exceptions, the mainstream U.S. media has simply regurgitated the propaganda from the U.S. State Department and other entities favoring western Ukrainians. There has been little effort to view the worsening crisis through the eyes of ethnic Russian Ukrainians living in the east or the Russians witnessing a political and humanitarian crisis on their border.

Frankly, I cannot recall any previous situation in which the U.S. media has been more biased – across the board – than on Ukraine. Not even the “group think” around Iraq’s non-existent WMDs was as single-minded as this, with the U.S. media perspective on Ukraine almost always from the point of view of the western Ukrainians who led the overthrow of elected President Viktor Yanukovych, whose political base was in the east.

So, what might appear to an objective observer as a civil war between western Ukrainians, including the neo-Nazis who spearheaded last year’s coup against Yanukovych, and eastern Ukrainians, who refused to accept the anti-Yanukovych order that followed the coup, has been transformed by the U.S. news media into a confrontation between the forces of good (the western Ukrainians) and the forces of evil (the eastern Ukrainians) with an overlay of “Russian aggression” as Russian President Vladimir Putin is depicted as a new Hitler.

Poroshenko being given "Solidarity" award by Poland. Poland should know better than to ally with Washington in denial of her own horrible suffering at the hands of Nazism. (Via Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, flickr.)

Poroshenko being given “Solidarity” award by Poland (June 3, 2014). Poland of all nations should know better than to ally with Washington in denial of her own horrible suffering at the hands of Nazism. (Via Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, flickr.)

Though the horrific bloodshed – more than 5,000 dead – has been inflicted overwhelmingly on the ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine by the forces from western Ukraine, the killing is routinely blamed on either the eastern Ukrainian rebels or Putin for allegedly fomenting the trouble in the first place (though there is no evidence that he did, as even former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has acknowledged.)

I realize that anyone who doesn’t accept the Official Washington “group think” on Ukraine is denounced as a “Putin apologist” – just as anyone who questioned the conventional wisdom about Saddam Hussein giving his WMDs to al-Qaeda was a “Saddam apologist” – but step back for a minute and look at the crisis through the eyes of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.

putin-caricature-5684702096_4c7a99c652_o

Putin: Woe to the working journalist that would dare to say something truthful or kind about Putin. (DonkeyHotey, flickr)

A year ago, they saw what looked to them like a U.S.-organized coup, relying on both propaganda and violence to overthrow their constitutionally elected government. They also detected a strong anti-ethnic-Russian bias in the new regime with its efforts to strip away Russian as an official language. And they witnessed brutal killings of ethnic Russians – at the hands of neo-Nazis – in Odessa and elsewhere.

Their economic interests, too, were threatened since they worked at companies that did substantial business with Russia. If those historic ties to Russia were cut in favor of special economic relations with the European Union, the eastern Ukrainians would be among the worst losers.

“RUSSIAN AGGRESSION”: REPRODUCING OBAMA’S SPECIOUS REFRAIN, WITHOUT CHALLENGES. CLICK BAR BELOW.

[learn_more] Example of the many occasions when Obama, self-righteously, and without proof, except fabrications, has accused Russia of aggression.

[/learn_more]

REGULAR ARTICLE RESUMES HERE
Remember, that before backing away from the proposed association agreement with the EU in November 2013, Yanukovych received a report from economic experts in Kiev that Ukraine stood to lose $160 billion if it broke with Russia, as Der Spiegel reported. Much of that economic pain would have fallen on eastern Ukraine.

Economic Worries

On the rare occasions when American journalists have actually talked with eastern Ukrainians, this fear of the economic consequences has been a core concern, along with worries about the harsh austerity plan that the International Monetary Fund prescribed as a prerequisite for access to Western loans.

For instance, in April 2014, Washington Post correspondent Anthony Faiola reported from Donetsk that many of the eastern Ukrainians whom he interviewed said their resistance to the new Kiev regime was driven by fear over “economic hardship” and the IMF austerity plan that will make their lives even harder.

“At a most dangerous and delicate time, just as it battles Moscow for hearts and minds across the east, the pro-Western government is set to initiate a shock therapy of economic measures to meet the demands of an emergency bailout from the International Monetary Fund,” Faiola reported.

In other words, Faiola encountered reasonable concerns among eastern Ukrainians about what was happening in Kiev. Many eastern Ukrainians felt disenfranchised by the overthrow of their elected leader and they worried about their future in a U.S.-dominated Ukraine. You can disagree with their point of view but it is an understandable perspective.

When some eastern Ukrainians mounted protests and occupied buildings – similar to what the western Ukrainians had done in Kiev before the coup – these protesters were denounced by the coup regime as “terrorists” and became the target of a punitive military campaign involving some of the same neo-Nazi militias that spearheaded the Feb. 22 coup against Yanukovych.

Merkel: Anti-Russian and conservative, she continues to vacillate, thereby prolonging the agony in Ukraine. (Wikipedia)

Nearly all the 5,000 or more people who have died in the civil war have been killed in eastern Ukraine with ethnic Russian civilians bearing the brunt of those fatalities, many killed by artillery barrages from the Ukrainian army firing into populated centers and using cluster-bomb munitions.

Even Human Rights Watch, which is largely financed by pro-coup billionaire George Soros, reported that “Ukrainian government forces used cluster munitions in populated areas in Donetsk city” despite the fact that “the use of cluster munitions in populated areas violates the laws of war due to the indiscriminate nature of the weapon and may amount to war crimes.”

Among all the noise and cold-blooded disinformation, what gets lost is the human tragedy represented by thousands of Novorossiya victims of indiscriminate bombing by Kiev's armed forces. Inna Kukurudza was just one of them. Relegated to the same information limbo as thousands of Palestinians, victims of Israel's criminal policies.

Amid all the noise and cold-blooded disinformation, what gets lost is the human tragedy represented by thousands of Novorossiya victims of indiscriminate bombing by Kiev’s armed forces. Homemaker Inna Kukurudza was just one of them. Relegated to the same information limbo as thousands of Palestinians, victims of Israel’s criminal policies. Washington’s hypocritical policy in Ukraine is directly responsible for this enormous humanitarian crisis. (Courtesy: RevolutionNews.com)

Neo-Nazi and other “volunteer” brigades, dispatch by the Kiev regime, have also engaged in human rights violations, including death squad operations pulling people from their homes and executing them. Amnesty International, another human rights group that Soros helps fund and that has generally promoted Western interests in Eastern Europe, issued a report noting abuses committed by the pro-Kiev Aidar militia.

“Members of the Aidar territorial defence battalion, operating in the north Luhansk region, have been involved in widespread abuses, including abductions, unlawful detention, ill-treatment, theft, extortion, and possible executions,” the Amnesty International report said.

The Aidar battalion commander told an Amnesty International researcher: “There is a war here. The law has changed, procedures have been simplified. … If I choose to, I can have you arrested right now, put a bag over your head and lock you up in a cellar for 30 days on suspicion of aiding separatists.”

Amnesty International wrote: “Some of the abuses committed by members of the Aidar battalion amount to war crimes, for which both the perpetrators and, possibly, the commanders would bear responsibility under national and international law.”

Neo-Nazi Battalions

And the Aidar battalion is not even the worst of the so-called “volunteer” brigades. Others carry Nazi banners and espouse racist contempt for the ethnic Russians who have become the target of something close to “ethnic cleansing” in the areas under control of the Kiev regime. Many eastern Ukrainians fear falling into the hands of these militia members who have been witnessed leading captives to open graves and executing them.

As the conservative London Telegraph described in an article last August by correspondent Tom Parfitt: “Kiev’s use of volunteer paramilitaries to stamp out the Russian-backed Donetsk and Luhansk ‘people’s republics’… should send a shiver down Europe’s spine.

“Recently formed battalions such as Donbas, Dnipro and Azov, with several thousand men under their command, are officially under the control of the interior ministry but their financing is murky, their training inadequate and their ideology often alarming. The Azov men use the neo-Nazi Wolfsangel (Wolf’s Hook) symbol on their banner and members of the battalion are openly white supremacists, or anti-Semites.”

Based on interviews with militia members, the Telegraph reported that some of the fighters doubted the Holocaust, expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and acknowledged that they are indeed Nazis.

Andriy Biletsky, the Azov commander, “is also head of an extremist Ukrainian group called the Social National Assembly,” according to the Telegraph article which quoted a commentary by Biletsky as declaring: “The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival. A crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”

The Telegraph questioned Ukrainian authorities in Kiev who acknowledged that they were aware of the extremist ideologies of some militias but insisted that the higher priority was having troops who were strongly motivated to fight. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ignoring Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Storm Troopers.”]

So, the current wave of U.S. propaganda condemning a rebel offensive for violating a shaky cease-fire might look different if seen through the eyes of a population under siege, being cut off from banking services, left to starve and facing “death squad” purges by out-of-control neo-Nazis.

Through those eyes, it would make sense to reclaim territory currently occupied by the Kiev forces, to protect fellow ethnic Russians from depredations, and to establish borders for what you might hope to make into a sustainable autonomous zone.

And, if you put yourself in the Russian position, you might feel empathy for people who were your fellow citizens less than a quarter century ago and who saw their elected leader ousted in a U.S.-backed coup. You also might be alarmed at the presence of Nazi storm troopers (considering the history of Hitler’s invasion) and the prospects of NATO moving up to your border with a possible deployment of nuclear weapons. You might even recall how agitated Americans got over nuclear missiles in Cuba.

Granted, some of these Russian fears may be overwrought, but the Kremlin has to worry about threats to Russia’s national security just like any other country does. If you were in Putin’s shoes, what would you do? Would you turn your back on the plight of the eastern Ukrainians? Would you let a hostile military alliance push up against your borders with a potential nuclear threat, especially given the extra-legal means used to remove Ukraine’s constitutionally elected president?

Even if the U.S. press corps fulfilled its obligation to tell both sides of the story, many Americans would still condemn Putin’s acceptance of Crimea’s pleas for reentry into Russia and his assistance to the embattled eastern Ukrainians. They would accept the U.S. government’s relentless presentation of the Ukraine crisis as “Russian aggression.”

And, they might still buy the story that we’re endlessly sold about the Ukraine crisis being a premeditated move by Putin in a Hitlerian strategy to conquer the Baltic States. Even though there’s zero evidence that Putin ever had that in mind, some Americans might still choose to believe it.

But my point is that American journalists should not be U.S. government propagandists. Their job is not to herd the American people into some “group think” corral. A good journalist would want to present the positions of both sides with some evenhandedness.

Yet, that is not what we have witnessed from the U.S. news media on the Ukraine crisis. It has been nearly all propaganda nearly all of the time. That is not only a disservice to the American people and to the democratic precept about an informed electorate. It is a reckless violation of professional principles that has helped lurch the world toward a potential nuclear conflagration.

Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’.

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Ulfkotte Postscript to “Gekaufte Journalisten” (Bought Journalists)

Prepared by Senior Editor Paul Carline, who also translated from the German.

Ulfkotte

PREAMBLE

The book “Bought Journalists”

Udo Ulfkotte (born 20 January 1960) is a German journalist. He was formerly an editor for the German main daily newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ).

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]ccording to Udo Ulfkotte, the CIA and German intelligence (BND) bribe journalists in Germany to write pro-NATO propaganda articles, and it is well understood that one may lose their media job if they fail to comply with the pro-Western agenda.^[6]^[7]^[8] In 2014, Ulfkotte published Bought Journalists (“Gekaufte Journalisten”), in which he reveals that the CIA and other secret services pay money to journalists to report a particular story in a certain light.^{[9] (Read more)}

Carl Bernstein in 2007. (Wikipedia)

[dropcap]C[/dropcap]arl Bernstein is the American reporter who exposed the Watergate Affair and thus brought about the resignation of US President Nixon. Bernstein is a Pultizer prize winner. He is a “heavyweight” in the field of journalism. After he left the Washington Post in 1977, he spent six months working on a single text: the article on journalists’ cooperation with the CIA. His report was published in Rolling Stone. In that article, Bernstein revealed that around 400 American journalists were actively working with the CIA. The New York Times even had a contract with the CIA under the terms of which journalists could be “loaned” to the CIA at any time. The best-known lead article writers and commentators in the US were thus on the books of the CIA, including publishers and top editors – and also foreign journalists. At the latest since this revelation in 1977 it has been clear that the CIA recruits journalists and leading staff in media companies worldwide or employs them as informants.

What does that mean for us in Germany? One example: the SPD politician Manfred Lahnstein was the Federal Finance Minister in 1982 and from 1983 to 2004 worked for the Bertelsmann media conglomerate, becoming finally a “special representative of the board”. Lahnstein was also a member of the Trilateral Commission. And since the mid-1990s he has been chair of the Board of Trustees of the foundation that owns the newspaper Die Zeit. Lahnstein’s name also surfaces in the estate of the former CIA agent Robert Trumbull Crowley as a CIA informant. Lahnstein is one of 2619 names of apparent/alleged CIA informants. Robert Trumbull Crowley died in a Washington hospital on 8 October 2000. He was the deputy head of operations for the CIA and head of the Clandestine Operations Division. It is possible that the people named in his list were not aware that they were being ‘run’ as CIA informants. In August 2014, I wrote to Manfred Lahnstein at Die Zeit to ask him whether he knew that – like other Germans – he was on the CIA list of informants. And clearly at the time he was responsible for media at Bertelsmann – because the list included his then address in Gütersloh. Lahnstein’s reply to me expressed obvious surprise: “Thanks for the tip. I had no idea”.

I am convinced that Lahnstein was telling the truth. My research revealed that in the past members of the Trilateral Commission appeared almost automatically and without their knowledge on the CIA list of those who were close to US secret services or who actively supported them. Lahnstein could have got onto the CIA list just by being a member of the Trilateral Commission. The message is: stay well away from transatlantic organisations!

It is inexplicable why, despite this, our journalists still continue their membership of such organisations. Because at the latest by 2006 they ought surely to have known what goes on there. In 2006 the TV program Arte broadcast a documentary “Benutzt und gesteuert” [“Used and manipulated”]. The documentary revealed to an astonished public how the CIA was trying to influence the editorial departments of German publishers and TV and radio programmes through camouflaged organisations. It was clear: writers, musicians, the staff of publishers and public radio stations – many of these were being ‘remote-controlled’ from Washington. And magazines – such as the literary magazine Der Monat [The Month] were being co-financed by the CIA. When this became known as a result of an article in the New York Times, Die Zeit simply bought out Der Monat.

All of this was never a secret. It was just that no-one wanted to see it. As early as 1996 the CIA had publicly stated that it was increasing its recruitment of journalists. And where does one find the best contacts? In the many transatlantic organisations – because the CIA is usually represented at their meetings.

Many of those whom I have named in this book will now likely maintain that they did not know what was happening around them. They will claim that they were too stupid, too naive or too incompetent. But it’s all so transparent: the leading people on the transatlantic campaigns are members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The CFR is intimately connected to the CIA. And the CFR has many offshoots – such as the German Council on Foreign Relations (better known to Germans as the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik (DGAP) – whose godfather at its founding was the CFR. Almost all the pro-American lobby organisations are linked through the Transatlantic Policy Network (TPN) – which is a lobby organisation representing European and American big business, media and think-tanks. Its list of member companies includes: Allianz, AT&T, BASF, Bertelsmann AG, Boeing, BP, Caterpillar Inc., Citigroup, Coca-Cola, Daimler AG, Dell, Deutsche Bank, Dow Chemical, Ericsson, Facebook, GE, Hewlett Packard, HSBC, IBM, Nestlé, Oracle, Pfizer International, SAP AG, Siemens AG, S.W.I.F.T., Syngenta and UPS. And then there’s the list of the think-tanks which are also linked with the aforementioned multinationals under the umbrella of the Transatlantic Policy Network:

AmCham EU (The American Chamber of Commerce to the EU), the Aspen Institute – Berlin, the Aspen Institute – Italy, the Atlantic Council of the United States, the Brookings Institution, BRUEGEL, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace [!!], the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, Chatham House, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the DGAP, the European Policy Centre (EPC), the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT), the European-American Business Council, the European Institute, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Institut Français des Relations Internationales (IFRI), the TransEuropean Policy Studies Association (TEPSA), UNICE and the US Council on Competitiveness. And finally the “Atlantik-Brücke” and its partner organisation The American Council on Germany, plus the Rockefellers’ Trilateral Commission.

There are prominent politicians in almost all of the above-mentioned organisations. That’s it: the network of big business, media and think-tanks which many journalists in leading media organisations, CEOs, politicians and academics have become entangled. Are they all just in it for fun?

Is it then a conspiracy theory, if I am personally convinced that high-level brainwashing is being carried out by the many individual cells of the Transatlantic Policy Network and the organisations in its periphery? That the point of view of the members and friends of these many lobby organisations, the recipients of their scholarships and the ones who carry out research for them is so cleverly shaped and narrowed until it becomes a perfect medium for the ideas of the multinationals, the secret services and US interests and that their ideas and strategies appear to them as if they were their own? The ideas shaped in this way are then cast out like spawn into countless numbers of publications and other communications media and sold as the products of their own independent thinking.

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Why Is Henry Kissinger Walking Around Free?

By Andy Piascik

(Henry Kissinger at 2008 Davos meeting via wikipedia.)
SIMULPOST WITH CYRANOS JOURNAL TODAY

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n September 11, 2013, hundreds of thousands of Chileans solemnly marked the 40^th anniversary of their nation’s 9/11 terrorist event. It was on that date in 1973 that the Chilean military, armed with a generous supply of funds and weapons from the United States, and assisted by the CIA and other operatives, overthrew the democratically-elected government of the moderate socialist Salvador Allende. Sixteen years of repression, torture and death followed under the fascist Augusto Pinochet, while the flow of hefty profits to US multinationals – IT&T, Anaconda Copper and the like – resumed. Profits, along with concern that people in other nations might get ideas about independence, were the very reason for the coup and even the partial moves toward nationalization instituted by Allende could not be tolerated by the US business class.

Henry Kissinger was national security advisor and one of the principal architects – perhaps the principal architect – of the coup in Chile. US-instigated coups were nothing new in 1973, certainly not in Latin America, and Kissinger and his boss Richard Nixon were carrying on a violent tradition that spanned the breadth of the 20^th century and continues in the 21^st – see, for example, Venezuela in 2002 (failed) and Honduras in 2009 (successful). Where possible, such as in Guatemala in 1954 and Brazil in 1964, coups were the preferred method for dealing with popular insurgencies. In other instances, direct invasion by US forces such as happened on numerous occasions in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and many other places, was the fallback option.

The coup in Santiago occurred as US aggression in Indochina was finally winding down after more than a decade. From 1969 through 1973, it was Kissinger again, along with Nixon, who oversaw the slaughter in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. It is impossible to know with precision how many were killed during those four years; all the victims were considered enemies, including the vast majority who were non-combatants, and the US has never been much interested in calculating the deaths of enemies. Estimates of Indochinese killed by the US for the war as a whole start at four million and are likely more, perhaps far more. It can thus be reasonably extrapolated that probably more than a million, and certainly hundreds of thousands, were killed while Kissinger and Nixon were in power.

In addition, countless thousands of Indochinese have died in the years since from the effects of the massive doses of Agent Orange and other Chemical Weapons of Mass Destruction unleashed by the US. Many of us here know (or, sadly, knew) soldiers who suffered from exposure to such chemicals; multiply their numbers by 1,000 or 10,000 or 50,000 – again, it’s impossible to know with accuracy – and we can begin to understand the impact on those who live in and on the land that was so thoroughly poisoned as a matter of US policy.

Studies by a variety of organizations including the United Nations also indicate that at least 25,000 people have died in Indochina since war’s end from unexploded US bombs that pocket the countryside, with an equivalent number maimed. As with Agent Orange, deaths and ruined lives from such explosions continue to this day. So 40 years on, the war quite literally goes on for the people of Indochina, and it is likely it will go on for decades more.

Near the end of his time in office, Kissinger and his new boss Gerald Ford pre-approved the Indonesian dictator Suharto’s invasion of East Timor in 1975, an illegal act of aggression again carried out with weapons made in and furnished by the US. Suharto had a long history as a bagman for US business interests; he ascended to power in a 1965 coup, also with decisive support and weapons from Washington, and undertook a year-long reign of terror in which security forces and the army killed more than a million people (Amnesty International, which rarely has much to say about the crimes of US imperialism, put the number at 1.5 million).

In addition to providing the essential on-the-ground support, Kissinger and Ford blocked efforts by the global community to stop the bloodshed when the terrible scale of Indonesian violence became known, something UN ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan openly bragged about. Again, the guiding principle of empire, one that Kissinger and his kind accept as naturally as breathing, is that independence cannot be allowed. That’s true even in a country as small as East Timor where investment opportunities are slight, for independence is contagious and can spread to places where far more is at stake, like resource-rich Indonesia. By the time the Indonesian occupation finally ended in 1999, 200,000 Timorese – 30 percent of the population – had been wiped out. Such is Kissinger’s legacy and it is a legacy well understood by residents of the global South no matter the denial, ignorance or obfuscation of the intelligentsia here.

If the United States is ever to become a democratic society, and if we are ever to enter the international community as a responsible party willing to wage peace instead of war, to foster cooperation and mutual aid rather than domination, we will have to account for the crimes of those who claim to act in our names like Kissinger. Our outrage at the crimes of murderous thugs who are official enemies like Pol Pot is not enough. A cabal of American mis-leaders from Kennedy on caused for far more Indochinese deaths than the Khmer Rouge, after all, and those responsible should be judged and treated accordingly.

The urgency of the task is underscored as US aggression proliferates at an alarming rate. Millions of people around the world, most notably in an invigorated Latin America, are working to end the “might makes right” ethos the US has lived by since its inception. The 99 percent of us here who have no vested interest in empire would do well to join them.

There are recent encouraging signs along those lines, with the successful prevention of a US attack on Syria particularly noteworthy. In addition, individuals from various levels of empire have had their lives disrupted to varying degrees. David Petraeus, for example, has been hounded by demonstrators since being hired by CUNY earlier this year to teach an honors course; in 2010, Dick Cheney had to cancel a planned trip to Canada because the clamor for his arrest had grown quite loud; long after his reign ended, Pinochet was arrested by order of a Spanish magistrate for human right violations and held in England for 18 months before being released because of health problems; and earlier this year, Efrain Rios Montt, one of Washington’s past henchmen in Guatemala, was convicted of genocide, though accomplices of his still in power have since intervened on his behalf to obstruct justice. And Condoleeza Rice was forced to cancel her commencement appearance at Rutgers this past spring because of student outrage over her involvement in war crimes.

More pressure is needed, and allies of the US engaged in war crimes like Paul Kagame should be dealt with as Pinochet was. More important perhaps for those of in the US is that we hound Rumsfeld, both Clintons, Rice, Albright and Powell, to name a few, for their crimes against humanity every time they show themselves in public just as Petraeus has been. That holds especially for our two most recent War-Criminals-in-Chief, Barack Bush and George W. Obama.

Andy Piascik is a long-time activist and award-winning author who writes for Z, Counterpunch and many other publications and websites. He can be reached at andypiascik@yahoo.com.

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Clare Daly calls Obama a war criminal in Irish parliament

A gale of fresh air.
If you never saw this, here’s your chance.

[dropcap]C[/dropcap]lare Daly, an Irish parliamentarian uses the kind of talk we practically never hear in the US Congress—or media, for that matter—as both institutions have been completely pre-empted and prostituted by corporate power, to denounce Obama during his visit to Ireland in 2013. Such “disrespect” is desperately needed in our time of criminal imperial presidents.

READ MORE ON CLARE DALY, THE OUTSPOKEN IRISH WOMAN WHO TELLS IT LIKE IT IS
‘Obama hypocrite of century’: Full interview with controversial Irish MP Clare Daly

Who is Clare Daly?

Clare Daly (born April 1968) is an Irish politician.^[1] She was elected as a Socialist Party Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin North constituency at the 2011 general election.^[2] She was previously a Socialist Party councillor for the Swords electoral area on Fingal County Council. She resigned from the Socialist Party on 31 August 2012, redesignating herself as a United Left Alliance TD.^[3]

Daly is from Newbridge, County Kildare. Her father, Kevin Daly, was a Colonel in the Irish Armyand Director of Signals. She is a long-standing atheist, though her brother and an uncle are in the Catholic priesthood.^[4] Daly studied accountancy at Dublin City University.^[4] She was twice elected president of the Students’ Union and was prominent in the students’ movement campaign for abortion rights and information. On leaving college she took a job in the catering section of Aer Lingus on a low wage,^[4] and became SIPTU‘s shop steward at Dublin Airport when the airline was engaged in extensive cost-cutting and outsourcing. Daly was elected to the Labour Party‘s Administrative Committee as a youth representative. She was expelled from the Labour Party in 1989 alongside Joe Higgins and other supporters of the Militant Tendency.

She resigned from the Socialist Party on 31 August 2012.^[3] In a statement, the Socialist Party said “it believed Ms Daly had resigned because she placed more value on her political connection with Independent TD Mick Wallace than on the political positions and work of the Socialist Party.”^[18] This claim was dismissed by Daly as “absolute nonsense”, who stated that she had not called for Wallace’s resignation because the Socialist Party had not called for his resignation.^[19] She requested a share of the €120,000 Socialist Party’s Leaders Allowance to allow her to continue to fund her activities as an Independent TD.^[20]

In April 2013, along with Joan Collins, she founded a new political party called United Left.^[21]

Daly has accused the government of “prostituting” Ireland to US President Barack Obama and criticised what she described as media and political “slobbering” over First Lady Michelle Obama and her children during their stay in Ireland. She also called President Obama a hypocrite and a war criminal for speaking about peace whilst using drones to bomb foreign civilians and wanting to supply weapons to Syrian rebels, some of which are affiliated with Islamist organisations, including Al-Qaeda. Taoiseach Enda Kenny responded to her comments, saying they were a disgrace to Irish people around the world and to the victims of The Troubles since President Obama has supported peace in Northern Ireland.^[22]^[23]^[24]

SEE MORE ABOUT DALY ON WIKIPEDIA

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The Disintegration of the United States and the Fourth Political Theory: A Brief Overview

SPECIAL FOR THE GREANVILLE POST

“The eventual obsolescence of ‘old media’ and its continual replacement with ‘new media’ is one of the driving forces of change, which sees an end to the hitherto success of the hegemonic myth of a mono-culture, within the present-day borders of the US…”

(CNN/screen grab)

As the undisputed citadel of global capitalism, changes in the US will affect the entire planet.

By Joaquin Flores

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he emerging debate over the potential and application for a Fourth Political Theory (4PT) in the United States is one of increasing concern and importance within the present world-crisis. In order for its potential and application to be understood, it must begin by addressing the following areas which contain questions in the form of both problems and possibilities.

In this piece we will explore the following five elements. First, an introduction to a way of looking at the problems and possibilities. Second, we will look at some of the material factors which indicate a crisis of legitimacy in the current US regime. Third, we will move on to a description of the elements of an organic process of developing a 4PT intellectual movement that comes from within the US. Fourth, we will look at some of the basic elements which frame the present discourse in the US. Finally, we will provide an understanding of popular political views in the US as being primarily Socialist and Libertarian.

An Interesting Conundrum

From the outset, we encounter what appears to be a very interesting conundrum. On the one hand, the US is the core of the Atlanticist Empire, and as such it enjoys rigid control over media, academia, and—through its coercive mechanisms—the political life of the whole entity. On the other hand, a strong component of the ‘American’ mentality is a rejection of rigidity and frozen concepts, a flexibility and a willingness to experiment with new things, and even to take on new identities. This kind of flexibility and rejection of frozen concepts creates an extraordinary playing field, and will figure into both promises and dilemmas which will face the deconstruction of the US Empire. To understand it then, is to approach questions surrounding the scope of said possibilities.

One manner of approaching these questions is to make several distinctions. The first is that the US already has its own political traditions which at no time formally accepted anything after liberalism. Within this liberalism, however, upon closer examination, it is revealed strong influences both of the Second political theory, and the Third political theory, with a closer tendency towards the corporatist model of the third. At the close of the 19th century, there was something of a combination of the two found in the ideas of Edward Bellamy, the American Knights of Labor, the Fabians, and the Guild Socialist movement. Much of these were metabolized and combined with early Corporatist thought at the dawn of the 3PT, and in the US were painted with the star-spangled banner and called ‘Progressivism’. Nevertheless, these are not justified typically upon the framework, formally, of those other models and theories. The US system has been presented thoroughly within the language of Liberalism, even where it has synthesized and fused elements of Socialism and Fascism.

Short explication of eurasian theory in 4 maps

From unipolar americano-centric world to multipolar (4-polar) world.

CLICK IMAGE TO EXPAND (Eurazia.org)

The model of unipolar world. The nucleus and layers (2-3). Russia-Eurasia conceived as “black hole”

russianReaction-map-4-big

The counter-strategy. The eurasian geopolitical activity of construction of multipolar world.

The structure of multipolar world. The eurasian vision of future.

Thus, it is already visible to us that there are at least two possible methods of application of a 4PT for the US. The first would involve a rather inorganic process of placing the European and Eurasian experience into the mold of the US. The second, however, would involve taking the core methodological framework of a 4PT, but creating it organically from within the US’s own political culture and politico-philosophic history. First, this would have to take place at the academic level, where these ideas would gain traction, and become then the framework by which alternative media pundits and activists took their inspiration. The US needs its own figures to communicate ideas regarding its own radical transformation.

This second proposal seems the most prudent, because this is not only based upon a more popular approach to US political culture, but also one which promotes “isolationism” and “non-interventionism”. This non-interventionism is not only characteristic of the core US popular sentiment, and is closest to its own formally described philosophical origins, but also sets the right framework for disassembling the Atlanticist Empire in practical terms as well. Simultaneously, it would mean a smaller US with different borders.

Outside of these two proposals or possible methods of application of a 4PT for the US, which will be explored later on in this paper, is the present and existential problem of the US as a viable entity. The need in the US for a new political theory and a new conception of itself will be driven not in the abstract, but by very real, very tangible issues confronting the US project.

To summarize then, there are possibilities on the level of theory for the development of a 4PT in the US, and there is an economic and ethno-demographic requirement for one as well. Even to confine ourselves to the economic and ethno-demographic problems in the US, we can see that the US suffers from a crisis in legitimacy. Understanding this, and the potential for further research in this area, will allow us to better understand how the US Empire can be disassembled and on what basis a 4PT can be introduced.

A Crisis in Legitimacy

The results were, for US analysts and lawmakers, startling. Below is the breakdown of the results

[Figure 1] CLICK ON IMAGE TO SEE RESULTS IN MORE DETAIL

There are reasons which can help to explain this kind of result, which we will explore in brief. By and large, they relate to the nature of the ‘American People’. Oswald Spengler adequately described a critical feature of Anglo-Saxon political economy, being that Great Britain is primarily a multi-ethnic society (Angles, Normans, Saxons, Picts, Welsh, Scots, Jutes, etc.) which is internally organized and self defined by socioeconomic class. This observation was made in relation to his critique of the Marxian analysis of class, which he saw as being overly based in his observations of society in Great Britain and the British isles. Nevertheless, to the extent that this was arguably true of Great Britain and the British Isles, it is inarguably the case of the US which is comprised of people extraordinarily less related and less connected by geography and time; such as Latinos, African Americans, Arab middle-easterners, Anglo-Saxons, Western Europeans, Slavs, Native Americans, east Asians, and south-east Asians. Furthermore, within these larger groupings are contained national groups who in fact may have more animosity towards each other than they do to others outside of these larger groups; for example, Salvadorians and Mexicans, or Chinese and Japanese.

The United States has therefore not a ‘people’ (ethnos or ‘narod’), it is not a ‘nation’ bound by long standing historical, linguistic, cultural, familial, or experiential ties. It may be a in a process of ethnogenesis, but success in that project will depend on phenomenon which will likely take place over a length of time longer than the near-term political structures are able to accommodate. This latter question is one that must be considered in exploring the former. The fragile nature of the US ‘state’, and its hegemony within its continental sphere is predicated upon a number of technological devices, that promote a kind of cultural or sociologic conformity, whose lifespans are nearing an end. Specifically, the eventual obsolescence of ‘old media’ and its continual replacement with ‘new media’ is one of the driving forces of change, which sees an end to the hitherto success of the hegemonic myth of a mono-culture, within the present-day borders of the US.

So, in looking at ethnicity and that ‘non-people’ nature of the US population (it is a population, not a people), we must also look at class. The US is not a ‘national’ society, but a ‘class’ society which uses extraordinary amounts of jingoism to masquerade as a ‘national’ society. The kind of struggle waged against the oligarchy in the US has primarily been successful (in a limited sense) when it was a class struggle. This was when workers, farmers, small land-owners, and small businessmen, have found common cause in a popular class struggle – across ‘ethnic and national’ lines, against the oligarchy. Thus racism has historically been used by the US oligarchy as a means to frustrate a kind of class struggle against it.

The US is not a ‘national’ society, but a ‘class’ society which uses extraordinary amounts of jingoism to masquerade as a ‘national’ society…

To help see that antipathy towards the United States and the federal government is connected to a potential class struggle, we can look at the second graph from the Reuters study. In it we see a direct correlation between class and support for disintegration of the US and opposition to the federal government.

It is also inarguable that the economic trends in the US are seeing an upward redistribution of wealth, away from the shrinking middle-class, leading to further polarization and instability. This is quite dangerous when combined with other factors, such as rising food costs and decreasing political legitimacy. This must be understood in relation to proven models of successfully charting instability, using the very same methods of analysis which the US relied on, somewhat successfully, to destabilize North-African and Middle-east countries during the so-called Arab Spring.

In our paper titled “Towards a New American Revolution”, we explained: “But history proves that there is only so much that people can take, before they rise up. In objective terms, an observed pattern indicates that uprisings are all but inevitable when food prices exceed the nominal FAO-UN index figure of 210 when combined with a government with decreased legitimacy in the public eye [2]. This threshold figure was first crossed in February of 2008, which directly led to the Arab Spring ‘uprisings’ in 2010. This high index figure was in all ways engineered: after the collapse of the Housing bubble in 2007, the massive and endless bailouts starting with QE-1 were used to generate a stock market bubble.” [2]

“Besides creating an important ideological fiction of a ‘rebounding stock market’, specifically perishable goods commodities futures markets were targeted for cornering. This resulted in an engineered spike in grain prices. Governments were forced to rebalance their internal economies in order to subsidize and correct for this sudden change. This is also no small part of the ‘sovereign debt’ crises in the EU periphery states, the PIIGS nations – Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain – which continue to experience a sustained condition of social upheaval which has been branded in different ways by various participants, pundits, and analysts (indignados, 99%/Occupy, etc.) [3]”

Indeed, in the face of a rising FAO index (food price index), and upward redistribution of wealth, we have seen a considerable increase in the number of those in the US population who receive direct government assistance to purchase basic food. We can see that this number is at about 50 million persons. That is despite several decades of austerity legislation which makes it more difficult to qualify for said assistance.

The following graph will show that after the QE1 ‘bailout’ of 2008, GDP grew, yet household earnings dropped significantly, demonstrating an upward redistribution. Not only is there a sharp shift, but it is rapid. The number of homeless and unemployed families in the US stands at an all time high, not only in numbers, but per capita as well.

To further illustrate this point, we ought to look at a race/ethnic demographic map of the US. While the largest three or four US cities are relatively ‘integrated bastions of multiculturalism’, the real demographic figures by states of residence are clearly visible along ethnic and/or racial lines. Taken in context with the poll regarding secession, we can begin to see the framework of more loose representation of the various regions embodying the states of the present-day United States. This map shows where the majority of African-Americans are concentrated. Session here would result in a confederation with a distinctly ‘African-American’ cultural essence.

The recent wave of seemingly racially charged police killings of African-American suspects, has further highlighted long standing racial antagonisms in the US. The federal government in DC continues to impose its highly centralized rule under the spectacle of a federal republic, and a new generation of black youths are becoming politicized and made more militant under these norms. In a secessionist scenario, the area shown in the map below would be in a position to ‘reset’ race relations, and solve any number of related problems. Furthermore, a conception of a ‘New South’ can be created, one which also takes into consideration some of the ‘confederate’ ideas of a new generation of southern whites who are themselves not racist per se, i.e. oppose supremacism, but who also view sympathetically the secessionist CSA of the 1860’s before and during the US Civil War. Economically, it would be most viable if it were able to integrate more closely with other actors in the Caribbean who also are of African descent, and to which the African-American intellectual elites and academics have already made significant political connections with, dating back to at least the middle of the last century. As a post-US and anti-imperialist state, it would also be able to integrate further with Cuba, and form links also with Afro-Brazilians.

A note should be made here, because in the state of Florida we would expect to find a high number of people identifying as both black and Hispanic (of Caribbean origin), and are therefore not included in this demographic map.

The next map shows the same, with the same consequences, for so-called ‘non-white Hispanics’ and ‘Latinos’. In post mid-century political discourse, this region is referred to as ‘Aztlan’.

With the exception of Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Washington, the states shown below correspond to the territories of Mexico prior to the Mexican-American war of 1846. Some legal basis for a secession of this ‘Aztlan’ territory or region can be made from the manner by which the treaty which formalized the peace process following the war – The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo – has been abrogated. These demographic trends are universally agreed to continue. In the near future, the south-west will be majority latino/hispanic. While it is not on the agenda, even a total closing of the border cannot change this eventuality due to birth rates.

When looking at these two maps together, several conclusions may come instantly to mind. It becomes clear that what will be left of the ‘US’ may be in the remaining area. What has not been discussed is the issue of Native American sovereignty. Native American claims on a legal basis are likely to be larger than the area indicated in the below Figure 7. However, it is important to understand that these reservations already exist as sovereign nations, which have accords with the US federal government. The tribes which live on these reservations are sovereign political entities, with their own police force and institutions for managing natural resources and other social needs. While they are largely impoverished, this is a result of conditions largely imposed upon them, in a manner similar to the colonial or neo-colonial Atlanticist model, and are not indicative of their innate abilities as a people (or ‘first peoples’).

When looking at ‘Native Americans’ or ‘first peoples’, there, in the US culture, is an all around sense of sympathy. It is a commonly held view that Native Americans have not had justice, and that the things which happened to them, and continue to happen, are wrongs which still must be righted. Here it will be important to continue to work with a new generation of tribal leaders who want to increase their people’s right to self determination in all spheres, sovereignty, and autonomy.

Conclusively then, we can now see where the areas of promising research and work on the subject are. The US faces a crisis in legitimacy, and the manner in which it is paradigmatically incapable of understanding the roots of these problems also creates certain opportunities. When we look at the number of people in the US who would like to have their state leave the US, and we look as well at the ethnic or racial demographic reality, the stark contradictions which characterize this aspect of the US alone are easily discernable.

The Organic Process of a 4PT in the United States in Academia

When we understand a ‘Fourth Political Theory’, we understand the previous three – Liberalism, Socialism, and Fascism. Formally, the United States, unlike Europe and Eurasia, has only experienced the first. Socialism and Fascism are formally alien and European or Eurasian phenomenon (and ideas), which the US in formal terms cannot be said to have ever passed through. Upon more close examination, however, we can uncover the following: the US has maintained a formal framework within Liberalism, but there is more than this.

Indeed it still holds liberalism’s primary values such as individualism/atomization, commercialism/materialism, and of course the strange combination of moral or ethical universalism and relativism (together). At the same time, its proponents and official advisors at the academic level, in each generation, were influenced in part by the developments occurring in Europe and Eurasia during the 19th and 20th century. Bonapartism had an influence on neo-federalism and neo-federalist drift; jumping forward a century, the rise of Socialism and Fascism also influenced (and indeed were influenced by) the concepts behind mass social organization and the related technical forms of mechanical and sociologic analysis (e.g Weber, Marx, et al), useful to the maintenance and expansion of the Atlanticist project. This was seen in projects like Roosevelt’s Public Works Administration act of 1933, and the New Deal in general.

The 3PT in many ways came from a study of the US economy at the start of the Taylorist or Fordist period. Works like ‘The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State:1900-1918’ by Weinstein also provide a coherent reference for understanding the incorporation or interpretation of Socialism and Fascism into an otherwise commonplace discourse on social organization and social progress. These occurred after the rise of Socialism (2PT) and before the rise of Fascism (3PT).

In that light, ‘progressivism’ from the same period as is covered by Weinstein’s work, can be seen as the American pragmatic metabolization of those deficiently modernist elements of Socialism and Fascism. Simultaneously, they also were a continuation of the ‘American System’ figures like Henry Clay and Jefferson Davis. ‘Progressive’ still to this day is the label which both radical liberals (left liberals) and liberal-communists (socialists, ‘Marxians’, etc.) use to describe themselves within the obfuscating mandates of politeness within the Anglosphere’s political discourse.

In the US there are vulgarized forms of a nascent ‘Fourth Political Theory’ in academia, based in post-modernism, critical theory, and post-structuralism, already gaining prominence for some decades, coming to dominate the departments of philosophy at any number of the most ranked and prestigious universities. These have in some areas either surpassed or consumed the ‘analytic’ school.

It also acts as a kind of semi-affirmative response to Heidegger, through figures such as Marcuse and Camus (i.e liberal-‘communist’ existentialism). Other students are introduced to Heidegger through Arendt. But at any rate, while problematic, it also demonstrates the framework for a common language and universe of ideas and concepts which, with the right efforts and direction, can be seen as a fertile ground for a more properly understood ‘Fourth Political Theory’. The ideas of Heidegger, as well as Husserl, Hölderlin (et al), are vigorously approached, even where in many sectors they are poorly defined or understood, and the views of Adorno and Marcuse are valued over Heidegger.

What does dominate, however, much of the US vulgar though nascent ‘4PT’ is a liberal (i.e relativist) Nietzschean ‘transvaluation of all values’. While wrapped in liberal conceptions, there remains in sections of this milieu some very fertile ground. It is here that among US graduate students, young professors, TA’s, and lecturers – as opposed to mainly vetted and tenured professors – who have encountered A. Dugin and who already have begun to see him as a figure deserving attention. Because this represents the culmination of Continental European philosophy which was seen as the most appropriate way to approach a Cold-War mandated critique of Marxism, we now have in this period an unintended consequence, whereby mainstream institutions promoted the study of the Continental school at the expense of the Anglo Analytic school.

Presently there is simply a one party system with no opposition, and no mechanism for oppositional politics to positively influence the political outcome.

Simultaneously, Western Marxism was also, and in some areas is still, taught at the highest levels in US academia. Over the last several decades, many among the Marxians and Structuralists have become Post-Marxians and Post-Structuralists. Others have become ‘left-Nietzscheans’ in the image of Foucault, while others still have gravitated towards Soviet Marxism, and have become or remained “unreconstructed Marxists”. This next connection may be somewhat difficult for those not familiar with US academic and intellectualism. There was something of a flowering of Marxist and Structuralist academia and new interest which began vigorously in the 1960’s. At the same time that these pseudo-Leninists, Anarchists, etc. were nominally dedicated to a materialist view of history, epistemology, and ontology, there was also something else going on beneath the surface. There was also a significant increase in interest of the same milieus in Buddhism, Hinduism, “eastern philosophy”, Islam, and New Age. Based on their anti-liberalism and anti-imperialism, they were drawn to a center of resistance which appeared to be led either by the USSR or China. Simultaneously they were drawn to ideas which sought to redefine man’s relationship with modernity and consumerism, and draw up a new interest in mysticism and esoterica. So in a number of ways this is and was similar to the milieus and circles which existed in Weimar Germany that gave rise to popular National Socialism; a simultaneous interest in questions like the mysteries surrounding human origin and human spiritual potential with a view towards the East, with an anti-capitalist and pro-socialist view of political-economy.

Furthermore, the influence of Marxism and the related ‘conflict theory’ in the field of sociology cannot be overstated.

In many ways this was a product of the pro-market bend of the ‘Open Society’ initiative, which came to be dominated by Chicago school thinkers and writers. Karl Popper warned that it would be necessary to include liberal-socialist economic and political thinkers into this ‘Open Society’ as part of a broad liberal project, to include the US left and those associated with the Socialist (2nd) International. His warning was not heeded, and this contributed in part to the left/right polarization of academia, and helped to push those critical of market economics into the position they are today. This, in its own way, today can be seen favorably in that it will contribute to the conditions that will make a 4PT academic pole in the US possible.

While taking their ideas primarily from Continental philosophy, and as such being deeply immersed in Hegelianism and Existentialism, these are organically ‘American’ thinkers who already have publication networks and peer review journals, tenured positions within academia, with some considerable influence.

Entirely separately, and in a different direction, are the Analytic and Liberal philosophic schools. With some exceptions, such as communitarianism and analytic Marxism – both of which challenge Rawls’ liberalism while still being modern – these are essentially liberal. Nevertheless, in this realm we encounter the primary Epicureanism which characterizes much of the foundational thinking in a truly US philosophy. There is less here that is obviously workable or compatible with developing a 4PT pole of attraction, but this should not be overlooked. Primarily because the core of US conservatism lies here, and in order to transcend the left/right paradigm means looking at where these ideas fit – from liberalism – and how these liberal ideas of the framers of the US constitution can be directed against the Atlanticist project. After all, there are any number of ideas contained here which are really not compatible with the Atlanticist project. The ‘universal’ liberalism is conceptually contained, of course, in the foundational discourse of the US project.

At the same time, concepts from the early 19th century, in J.S Mill such as ‘Experiments in Living’ can be seen as political-philosophical concepts which promoted federalism (today, confederalism) as opposed to a unitary state. These are anti-universal in nature, or rather, what is universal is ‘to each their own’. By ‘experiments’ Mill means really two things – heterogeneity or diversity, and independence or local sovereignty. Mill saw this valuable not simply in the liberal individual sense; giving rise to entrepreneurship, individual initiative and ingenuity, but between various towns, communities, and states. Anathema to him would be modern liberal universalism, which really puts an end to global diversity in living. Later, Mill would take more socialist views on economics, seeing the limitations of market economics when placed upon societies of scale.

The ideas of Mill, as well as Bentham and Locke, as well as of course Jefferson, (et al), really are not only compatible with a multi-polar vision of the world, but also hold the US accountable by the very same ideas and ideals which it claims to hold dear. These dig into liberal and its offshoot, libertarian thought, and can form of anti-imperial and multi-polar resistance to the Atlanticist project.

Similarly, in the past, in academia, we saw how the Frankfurt school was relocated out of Germany, and brought to the US at Columbia University once political conditions made their work too difficult.

Likewise, once (or, preventing this, before) a foothold can be established by a core group of supportive academics, a ‘NYU’ School or ‘UC’ School can be established, for example, in Belgrade, Tehran, or Moscow, with dissident professors. They would publish and hold conferences in English and would be American ex-patriots who form a nucleus of academic resistance. Their views, lectures, books, and articles, would be the focus of English language information distributed and projected across all mediums of new media.

Basic Elements which frame the Present US Discourse

In the practical political sphere within the US, there is not a struggle between liberalism and something else, but between two or three visions of liberalism. At the same time, there are kernels of something post-liberal and anti-modern within two of these. Presently there is simply a one party system with no opposition, and no mechanism for oppositional politics to positively influence the political outcome. This is the political system which now corresponds to a liberal form of capitalism which ignores or pretends to ignore sociologic formulae, and proceeds to give (or burden) all responsibility for the outcome of a person’s life on the ‘individual’. Politically, this one party has two faces – one Democrat, the other Republican. On the fringes of these parties however, both on the radical anti-capitalist ‘left’, and on the paleo-conservative, libertarian, and constitutionalist ‘right’, there is potential for a fertile ground as well. The area of mutual agreement which these two fringes have, which are otherwise apparently at odds, has grown rapidly and enlarged considerably over the last fifteen years. If we were to date this, the ”9-11” phenomenon might be seen as a starting point of this growth and enlargement of the agreement zone, if depicted on a Venn diagram.

It is, of course something to consider that ‘left’ and ‘right’ within the Anglosphere have a somewhat different meaning than either what they have in Eurasia, or what they had within the Anglosphere in the middle of the last century. These areas of agreement between ‘left’ and ‘right’ relate to the power of big businesses (corporations), the never ending wars (military imperialism and military industrial complex), the decline of living conditions (collapse of the middle class), and the erasure of constitutional rights in areas of speech, political association, privacy, in addition to the malignant growth of a consumerist and celebrity oriented culture.

There is another sphere of problems which both are in agreement about, but use entirely different terminology to explain, and assign different causes and solution to said problems. But this ought not be a source of frustration, but yet one that would require further work. These relate to the role of markets and even as to what the very purpose of society is. The radical left in the US has a conception of what the purpose of society is, which is closer to how Eurasianists view the question, in that it contains a criticism of liberalism and modernity.

There really is no 3PT pole in the US whatsoever, not beyond some exoticist following confined to virtual spaces, and with no influence at all on the political discourse. Europeans and Eurasianists often make the mistake of thinking there is one, because there are some racist or segregationist type groups, but these are purely identity based. Their view of society and economics is purely liberal in every sense. They are liberal racists. Their fascination with the Third Reich, in such cases, is based primarily upon television documentaries which present perspectives not only distorted in content, but fixated upon symbolism, military hardware as it relates to this, and aesthetics in general. Their numbers are extremely small, and the lack of academics, intellectuals, supporters, popular support, or even individuals capable of organizing has been well known and documented for decades. Anyone familiar with, for instance, the National Renaissance Party, is abundantly clear about the prospects of this sort of initiative

Furthermore, it does not behoove a European or Eurasian 4PT supporter to make political alliance with this irrelevant milieu. From a public relations perspective, this can only result in extreme marginalization, and a total inability to ever gain real or meaningful traction. It also makes unworkable the tacit alliance with Latin American ‘National Communism’ such as Bolivarianism. The issues in the US of race, or even immigration, are not similar enough to its European version to warrant a similar approach. African Americans are not immigrants to the US, and were brought against their will, only to be subjected to any number of well documented conditions. The historic Anglo enforcers of white rule in the US are not indigenous to the US, and are not ‘defending’ the land from ‘foreigners’. The Native Americans and Mexicans, however, are the indigenous people. This obvious fact is not lost upon anyone seriously involved on any level in the US in bringing down the US Empire. This should not be misinterpreted as anything else, however. Given the mobility of the middle class in terms of choosing where to live, and given that in the US culture it is the norm to settle in a place other than where one is born or has family, there are few reasons to live in one place as opposed to another.

What we find that people choose to live in communities and parts of towns where the people bear a phenotypic resemblance to themselves. Given the phenomenon of ‘white flight’ in the 1960’s, where whites moved from cities into suburban areas as well as new developments and towns, combined with self-segregation, we are presented with reasons why in fact ‘White Nationalism’ (understood separately from 3P) has never taken hold in the US: people self-selected their neighbors, and the pressures are not really present.

Popular Resistance to the Atlanticist Project – Americans are Socialists and Libertarians

The main popular poles of resistance in the US are, on the radical ‘left’ – not to be confused with liberal left intelligentsia and gate-keepers; rather we look at the hard-line communists and to a lesser extent socialists and anarchists; and on the ‘right’ it is the Libertarians and Constitutionalists, and to a lesser extent the paleo-conservatives and the militia-movement (which are respectively related to the former two). Both of these categories each represent many tens of millions of individuals.

” 11% Say Communism Better Than U.S. System of Politics and Economics”.

As 80% of ‘Americans’ are adults in a population of 320 million, the number supporting Communism today stands at about 26.5 million. Another reputable scientific polling agency, Gallup, reported in 2010 that 36% (of an adult population), or 92 million, of all Americans had a positive view of Socialism, from which we can infer, would otherwise identify as ‘Socialists’ [4].

On the libertarian end, we are also able to quantify. Ron Paul ran on a purely Libertarian platform but as a Republican in the 2012 primaries, and came in fourth place, receiving about 2.1 million votes [5]. This process was widely understood to be have been rigged against Paul, and in a manner not too different from previous electoral riggings in the US, may have in fact been robbed. The Cato Institute however sheds some more light on this question with their study. They find that about a minimum of 14% of ‘Americans’ are Libertarian, with as many as 44% [6]. That gives us between roughly 30 million and 110 million, out of the universe of US adults, being 256 million.

What this means is that the formalized political system, represented nominally by Democrats on the center-left and Republicans on the center-right ⁽¹⁾ have a monopoly on a political process that actually does not represent the fundamentally socialist and libertarian nature of the US population. Communists and socialists are largely compelled to vote for Democrats, and Libertarians and Constitutionalists are largely compelled to vote for Republicans. Separately, Anglo culture focuses on a passive aggressive form of politeness, and in public spaces it is rare for Americans to state their real views (or have these published by the gatekeepers), under fear of passive judgment and concealed ostracization. Privately they will call themselves communists/socialists or libertarians/constitutionalists, but in public you will hear the terms, respectively, ‘progressive’ and ‘conservative’, even though they know they are essentially concealing their real view.

How we can interpret this data, is another matter, which will require further research. To wit, a majority of socialists and libertarians at present have a prevailing modernist and liberal worldview. Nevertheless, what we can understand better is what we are working with and working from. A 4PT approach in the US may begin with a Venn diagram of things which are common to 4PT and Socialism, and 4PT and Libertarianism. Furthermore, the anti-imperialist angle and the deconstruction of the Atlanticist Empire are by and large shared values among both libertarians and socialists.

On the outset, we can already begin to see a sketch of the sort of memetic campaign that would be required to popularize 4PT ideas within the US. Naturally, a 4PT permutation from within the US would have to entirely reconsider Liberalism, and ultimately do away with most of its features. At the same time, some of the views and values of ‘Americans’, and even a few root concepts in Liberalism, are salvageable. Thus, we may see in a post-Liberal and post-Atlanticist US something very loosely analogous in the US to how Russia has today metabolized the Soviet experience.

The United States may need to deconstruct, and if it ever re-establishes as a power, that it is a land-power or continental power. A new covenant or contract with its old parts would need to be made, based on a different understanding of itself, its past, and the various ‘nations’ living in its different former parts. The process of US ethnogenesis is likely to be a long one, and it is more likely that the political project will fail, leading to contraction, centuries before ethnogenesis can take place. Given the unknowable future of technology and other developments, it is questionable if this ethnogenesis will ever take place. What seems more certain to be on the near-term agenda, is a deconstructed United States which will see a conversion into distinct zones better suited to the majority populations of each part. The forms this takes, naturally, are still unclear, whether they will nominally call themselves the US or not is not knowable, nor is it entirely fundamental.

Divisions of race and class in the US, combined with a liberal ideology which can no longer provide meaning, coupled with a sinking economic model, means that a significant change is on the horizon. These changes create the possibility for a Fourth Political Theory of some kind to take the place of the late Liberal theory which is failing today.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joaquin Flores, is a geostrategist and founder and director of the Center for Syncretic Studies (Belgrade).

The Center for Syncretic Studies aims to:

Sustain a public hub for programmatic discussions about the present state of syncretic and new ideological movements and work, act as a think-tank for syncretic and new ideological frameworks to promote political and geopolitical alternatives

Be a public forum internationally that supports dialogue between historically adverse movements and organisations, intellectuals and non-governmental organisations across the political and ideological landscape.

Perform regular geopolitical and geostrategic systems analysis summary and forecasting.