Texac is Missing. Russell Bentley’s whereabouts unknown after 5 days of fruitless searches

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Russell Bentley, quickly nicknamed "Texac" after he first touched Slavonic ground, has always. been a highly improbable character. A native son of Texas, and a self-declared Communist, gifted with more than his share of valor and audacity, and above all a man of action, he didn't have to meditate too long to figure what he needed to do when he heard about the US coup in Kiev in 2014, and the ensuing war by the new neo-Nazi regime on the rebel republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. Echoing the International Brigades, he simply packed his things and made his way at his own expense to the Donbas, via Russia. Bentley decided to fight for the Donetsk People's Republic after being moved by the actions of the Ukrainian regime forces. He expressed a strong commitment to what he perceived as a "battle against fascism", driven by the desire to take a stand against what he saw as "injustices in Ukraine". Once there, to the surprise of many (in his 50s, he was certainly not exactly in his prime), the US Army vet offered his services as a frontline soldier and in the ensuing years was involved in several (by now) almost legendary battles in the first war between the young but tough little republics and the much larger but apparently tactically deficient (though still vicious) NATO-supported Ukrop army. Russell was a member of the Vostok battalion.

Russell honoring comrades

A few years later, having won the love and trust of the Donetsk people, he began to serve the young republic (now formally part of Russia) as an information officer. This was a natural transition, as Russell is also a gifted writer and the author of many articles describing his war experiences, ⁽¹⁾ not to mention the fact the Donbas rebels needed a voice that could speak eloquent English to the rest of the world. At the more personal level, Russell also met a woman who became his loyal companion, Lyudmila. It is she who is now seeking the authorities' help to locate her husband. Fact is, as the war began again in 2022, Russell and his wife —with typical defiance—decided to remain in their home, a spot dangerously close to the Ukrainian lines and easily within the reach of shells and other nastiness the Ukies have been regaling the Donetsk population with for over a decade.

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Given Russell's well-deserved fame, and the morale blow it could signify to Donetsk if he were to suddenly go missing, it is not unthinkable that he might have been the subject of a special op to kidnap him or outright kill him. After all, assassination ops are one of Kiev's specialities. That seems to be the logic behind his disappearance. Yes, the odds are not good, but I just hope I am proven completely wrong about this. No matter what his detractors may say, Russell was a hero. Something of a rarity in a culture that doesn't produce too many of his kind any more.

Russell (left) with kin, during a visit back home.

⁽¹⁾ See The Donbass Cowboy: A War Journal by Russell Bentley, a book review by Mike Kuhlenbeck.

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Ode to War

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DEFEAT CAPITALISM AND ITS DEADLY SPAWN, IMPERIALISM
ecological murder •

Jacques Pauwels

The Great War: The first truly industrial war. Observe this image closely.

Around the turn of the [20th] century, it had become apparent that the aristocratic-bourgeois elite had achieved considerable success with its anti-democratic strategy. The symptoms of this success were visible everywhere: plenty of “little” people, particularly peasants and members of the lower-middle class, had embraced nationalism, anti-Semitism, militarism, and imperialism, and voted not for the socialists, but for conservative parties, such as Germany’s Catholic Zentrum. In any event, in most countries, the franchise was still a privilege of the “better” classes, and an enormous amount of state power remained concentrated in unelected institutions such as the parliaments’ upper chambers, the bureaucracy, and the army, institutions in which the elite had solidly retrenched itself. The church still enjoyed a lot of influence, mostly among the peasants in the countryside, and worked hard to regain lost loyalty in the camp of the working class, which, under socialist influence, had abandoned Christianity en masse during the 19th century.

The Catholic counter-offensive in this respect culminated in the 1891 proclamation of the Encyclical Rerum Novarum, in which Pope Leo XIII condemned socialism as a “plague” and ordered the creation of Christian political parties and trade unions. During the “severe pontificate” of Leo XIII, the elite could also increasingly count on the church to “glorify the throne, the sword, the flag, and the established social order” and, conversely, to condemn socialism and (non-Christian) trade union activism. Nevertheless, the spectre of revolution – not only social, but also national revolution – continued to haunt Europe. Agitation and tension also affected distant parts of the world such as South America and China. The elite feared not only the possibility of a sudden and violent revolution, but also the prospect of a gradual and pacific evolution towards democracy, loathed as the rule of the presumably ignorant and vicious populace.

During the “severe pontificate” of Leo XIII, the elite could also increasingly count on the church to “glorify the throne, the sword, the flag, and the established social order” and, conversely, to condemn socialism and (non-Christian) trade union activism. Nevertheless, the spectre of revolution – not only social, but also national revolution – continued to haunt Europe.

Democracy was indeed something for which both the haute bourgeoisie and the nobility, from the most powerful monarch to the lowliest village squire, had nothing but contempt. The reason for this should be obvious: democracy, power exercised by and for the people, spelled the end of a system in which power was exercised by, and indeed for, a small part of the people, namely the tiny demographic minority that the combination of nobility and upper-middle class happened to be. Genuine democracy, that is, not only the political but also the social-economic emancipation of the lower orders, was not in the interest of the elite. Emperor William II publicly denounced democracy, equating it with anarchy. But at the time democracy was also a dirty word in Great Britain, because it stood for the power of the popular masses and not the supposedly normal, natural, or “God-given” power of the “better” classes, that is the propertied classes - or as they used to say in French, the power of the gens de rien, the “people of nothing,” instead of the gens de bien, the “people of substance.”

British tank in a ditch. Their entry into the battlefront was less than spectacular.

Early tanks were feared by the troops, but countermeasures were soon fielded.

If the masses came to power via elections, that too would constitute a catastrophe from the perspective of the elite. It was firmly believed that in this case, the scenario of the Paris Commune would repeat itself, but on a much larger scale, with enormous effusions of blood and, as outcome, nothing less than the end of civilization, or at least of aristocratic-bourgeois civilization, and the birth of a monster: a socialist or, as they already said at the time, a “communist” society.

The fear of the disagreeable consequences of the process of democratisation and of the apparently irresistible rise of the masses that was linked to it loomed even worse when one considered the problem within a worldwide instead of merely national or even European context. Did democratisation not similarly threaten to produce an equally irresistible rise of the masses of coloured folks in the colonies, to bloody “Communes” over there, and ultimately to the hegemony of the white man giving way, not only in the colonies but all over the world, to the rule of the inferior brown, black, and yellow masses?

"The ancient French race and a new social group, formed by a heterogeneous, motley crew, including outcasts of the old race as well as recent newcomers, not yet assimilated and…inassimilable, the extraordinary coalition of Protestants, Jews, Freemasons, socialists, and aliens [métèques]."

One can easily understand that this vulgar way of thinking managed to become “the dominant world-view of Europe’s ruling and governing.” Concepts such as “natural selection” and “survival of the fittest” fit marvelously into the liberal theory that preached that competition separates the wheat from the chaff, so that the victors in the social and economic competition, that is, the prosperous businessmen and the elite in general, are manifestly the best and the fittest and thus merit being the “victors.” And was it not evident that, in a race with countless competitors, there could only be a few winners? Consequently, the wealth and the power of a small number (the elite), as well as the poverty and powerlessness of the great number (the masses) were deserved and justified. The former did not have to be ashamed, and the latter did not have the right to complain, but had to shut up. The inequality of individuals and groups of people, such as classes, was the natural state of things (or, for the believers, the God-given and therefore immutable order of things). Any attempt to change that order, as the socialists and the nationalist champions of ethnic minorities proposed to do, was not only doomed to fail, but was in fact a senseless and even criminal undertaking.

Social Darwinism was equally useful for the purpose of affirming and justifying the power of the white man in the colonies. All-too-easy conquests in Africa, the American “Wild West,” and elsewhere convinced the Europeans and Americans that their own white “race,” then still generally known as “Aryan,” though numerically insignificant in number, was qualitatively far superior to the huge masses of brown, black, and yellow folks. But a hierarchy likewise prevailed within the “Aryan” family, even if it was not entirely clear who occupied its summit. The “Anglo-Saxons” was the answer given to that question in London, but in Berlin they were convinced that on top were the Teutons, a “race” to which belonged not only the Germans, but also other “Germanic” tribes such as the “Anglo-Saxons,” the Scandinavians, the Dutch, and the Flemish denizens of Belgium. In Paris and Rome, it was firmly believed that superiority had been bestowed on the French, Italians, and other “Latin” nations by virtue of their imperial Roman pedigree. In the United States, finally, the palm was handed not just to the presumably superior “Anglo-Saxons,” but to “Nordic” people in general, preferably those embracing a Protestant version of Christianity. The anthropological nec plus ultra there would long remain the “WASP,” that is, the American who was not only white, but also Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. Italians and other folks with slightly darker skin, people of the so-called “Mediterranean” type, generally shorter of stature, dark-haired, and Catholic, and of course the “Celtic” Irish, also Catholics, were perceived to inhabit a no-man’s-land that separated the “Nordic” wheat from the chaff of blacks and Indians or “redskins.” For the latter, a special term – with a Nietzschean ring to it – would be coined, namely “under-men,” by the American “scientic racist” Lothrop Stoddard. He first used this term in a book published in 1920 entitled The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy. This opus was immediately translated into German and impressed and inspired Hitler, who co-opted the term in its infamous German version, Untermensch.

From a Social Darwinist perspective, all the members of the superior “Aryan” family had ample reason to be satisfied and happy. In their community, social or economic problems could not exist, and if somehow they did appear, it was the fault of members of inferior “races” who, like a kind of dangerous germ, had penetrated the healthy body of the “Aryan” community to contaminate it and make it sick. Revolutionary socialism was such a disease, a potentially deadly disease, and the germs that had engendered it were the Jews who had infiltrated the “Aryan” community. It was taken as given that the Jews, like all other “inferiors”, were envious of the superior “Aryans” and dreamed of bringing them down from their lofty pedestal, using socialism as an instrument to achieve that evil objective. Thus we can understand why anti-Semitism was widespread at the time in conservative, anti-democratic, anti-socialist, and counter-revolutionary circles.

Henry Ford being decorated by the Nazis, an honor he proudly accepted. (Ford was awarded the Grand Cross of the German Eagle on his 75th birthday, 30 July 1938.)

Explaining social problems by pointing the finger at foreigners, not necessarily but preferably the Jews – in other words, making the Jew a scapegoat – already had a long tradition. Luther had blamed the Jews for the peasant revolts, and according to theorists of counter-revolutionary conservatism such as de Maistre, de Bonald, and Burke, it was the Jews – and the Freemasons – who had unleashed the French Revolution. Later, the Jews would similarly be accused of planning the Russian Revolution by people like Oswald Spengler, a German historian and philosopher who today no longer enjoys a good reputation, but also by personalities that many continue to admire, for example, the American automobile manufacturer Henry Ford and the most famous of all British statesmen, Winston Churchill.

Indian troops (Sikhs), in the service of the British crown, marching in Paris' grand boulevards. Many people thought they looked awfully smart, and their battlefield deeds proved their military mettle.

The Social Darwinists believed that outside of Europe too, inferior peoples, green with jealousy, would try in one way or another to put an end to the legitimate worldwide hegemony of the “Aryans.” For example, in Africa and the United States, or at least in the Southern states, blacks – who were only recently slaves – were presumed to always be looking for opportunities to rape white women, in the hope that they would thus pollute and ultimately destroy the “Aryan race.” (In contemporary Europe, still extremely repressed on the sexual level, it was the Jews who were suspected of lusting after “Aryan” females.) Yet another menace lurked in the shape of the immense human masses of Chinese, simultaneously loathed and feared by whites as the “yellow peril.” (The less numerous Japanese did not yet inspire such fear.) And the Chinese nationalists’ Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1901 in Beijing was ruthlessly crushed by the combined armed forces of no less than eight imperialist powers, fraternally united for the occasion. In 1914, when these same powers rather unfraternally went to war against one another, the Germans, who had looked forward to a military contest among fellow “Aryans,” were shocked that the French mobilized Senegalese and Moroccan troops against them and that the British called up Indians to fight on their side. Noblesse oblige and, confronted with the menace of inferior peoples, the “Aryans,” no matter how divided they may have been among themselves, should maintain a common front, so the Germans believed. On the other hand, in the African theatre of operations, for example in East Africa, the Germans themselves did not hesitate to use black soldiers against the British and Belgian forces, which also consisted mostly of black recruits.

Victims of a gas attack.

What had gone wrong, and what could be done about it? To find answers to these questions, the European and American elites sat down at the feet of the great German philosopher of the end of the century, Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche has been described by Arno Mayer as "the chief minstrel of this battle [of the elite against all forms of equality],…[a man whose] thought was coherently and consistently antiliberal, antidemocratic, and antisocialist…He reviled his own age for permitting the masses to shackle the will to power of the ‘highest specimens’…[so that] herd animals made themselves masters."

With the Enlightenment and liberalism, Europeans had gone astray, explained Nietzsche. Liberty, equality, and progress for all had been an impossible and dangerous ideal in a healthy society. An elite of superior beings must dominate and the masses must be dominated. To allow the inferior masses to come to power was not merely a mistake, but a crime. And, according to Nietzsche, the criminals who incited the people and fomented revolutions were the Jews, whom he called the “spiteful people par excellence.”

Nietsche: Preaching a form of uber individualism and social darwinism, his philosophy fit perfectly the visions of exclusivity entertained by the aristocrats in the capitalist and ancien regime precincts.

The elite can and must exercise power, said Nietzsche, and could find inspiration for that in the brilliant example of Ancient Greece, where a superior social layer of capable, wise, and courageous people ruled with an iron fist over a crowd of hilotes, aliens, and slaves, the inferior oi polloi, “the multitude.”

But Great Britain also boasted a tradition of glorification of war. In The Crown of Wild Olive, published in 1866, the great Victorian author John Ruskin, who remained very popular and influential until 1914, lauded war as follows:

In the British monthly The Nineteenth Century and After, there appeared in 1911 an article entitled “God’s Test by War,” written by a certain H. F. Wyatt. “The biological law of competition,” one could read there, “still rules the biological destiny of nations as of individual men.” And to the question whether a country like Britain could still play a role in the competition, the answer was: “How shall we know? By the test. What test? That which God has given for the trial of peoples – the test of war.”

An almost identical tribute to war was featured in the catalogue of the Universal Exposition of Paris in 1900, more specifically in a comment about the military section:

"War [is] ‘natural to humanity…a school of the highest qualities of man…Peace fructifies the arts, trade, and industry, [but] also develops those states of mind called selfishness, pessimism, nihilism, egoism’…[war can] restore the lofty virtues that seem to be fading, raise their spirit, and give them new heart."

“Never before has war received so much homage at the lips of men,” complained the Polish-English writer Joseph Conrad in 1905, “and reigned with less disputed sway in their minds.” It was not the “little” people, however, but the elite who excitedly guzzled the soup of Nietzschean ideology and pseudo-scientific Social Darwinism. “The cult of war was an elite, not a plebeian, affair,” insists Arno Mayer, “[because] there was no spontaneous clamor for war among the presumably aggressive and bloodthirsty masses.” And he added:

Darwinian and Nietzschean thought…became immensely meaningful and valuable to the elites engaged in reaffirming their dominance…Indeed, they became a central component not only of the Weltanschauung but also of the persuasive belief system of the ruling and governing classes.

The Belgian historian Sophie de Schaepdrijver also recognizes that Nietzschean belligerence “had not only infected Germany, [but] the Belle Époque elites of all of Europe.” The young Winston Churchill was typical of the British elite. He was “really fascinated by war” which he considered “the normal occupation of man…war – with gardening”! In 1914, when the Great War broke out, Churchill would be ecstatic and declared that war was “glorious and delicious.” In any event, it was not the working class and the rest of the lower orders, supposedly the classes dangereuses, but the openly belligerent ruling elite that revealed itself to be “Europe’s most formidable classe dangereuse,” as Arno Mayer has put it.

"Over the top"—Perhaps the most dangerous moment in trench warfare.

According to the German admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, militarism and war were necessary as antidotes to “the propagation of Marxism and political radicalism among the popular masses.” He viewed Mars as the perfect ally against Marx! The European (and American) elite, which felt increasingly threatened by the rise of the labour movement and of socialism, believed that it could use war as a kind of life vest that would allow it to survive the democratic deluge. In this sense, it is true that war was “a profoundly conservative activity,” directed “against the Idea of Progress,” as the American historian (and World War II veteran) Paul Fussell has written.

As far as the elite was concerned, war could and would be a cure for the great ailment that affected not only the socialists, but the workers and the lower orders in general. With their demands for higher wages and other benefits, the labouring masses had presumably revealed themselves overly materialistic, egoistic, even hedonistic. War, inevitably accompanied by privations and hardship, would purge them of this materialism and infuse them with asceticism. War would teach the socialists and workers in general to be satisfied with less and to accept their lot in life instead of making all sorts of extravagant demands. Military service and war were also considered – for example by the many French army commanders who had perused the book by Le Bon – as a means to transform the popular crowd (foule), supposedly undisciplined and therefore untrustworthy and dangerous, into disciplined, malleable, and servile “troops” (troupe).

“had caused many to long for a more heroic existence…The elites of the Belle Époque in all of Europe experienced an urge for ruthless action of any kind, for a merciless battle that would put an end to this boring bourgeois existence full of conventions and compromises.”

This viewpoint was shared by the great German general and field marshal (as well as count) Helmuth von Moltke, for thirty years the chief of staff of the Prussian army, known as “Moltke the Elder” to avoid confusion with his nephew Helmuth von Moltke, “Moltke the Younger,” who was to be commander in chief of the German Army in 1914. In 1880, Moltke senior wrote the following in a letter:

Perpetual peace is a dream – and not even a beautiful dream – and war is an integral part of God’s ordering of the universe. In war, man’s noblest virtues come into play: courage and renunciation, fidelity to duty and a readiness for sacrifice that does not stop at giving up life itself. Without war, the world would be swamped in materialism.

War, it was said, not only amounted to an edifying spiritual experience but was also a kind of sport and therefore quite enjoyable. In a book published in 1903, based on his experiences during colonial wars, entitled Modern Warfare, or How Our Soldiers Fight, Brigade General Sir Frederick Gordon Guggisberg wrote the following:

"An army…tries to work together in a battle…in much the same way as a football team plays together in a match…The army fights for the good of its country as the team plays for the honour of the school…Exceptionally gallant charges and heroic defences correspond to brilliant runs and fine tackling."

Perhaps it was these lines that inspired a British officer, Wilfred Nevill, of the Eight East Surrey Regiment, on July 1, 1916, to give the signal for attack by kicking a football towards the German lines. The Daily Mail would celebrate this exploit with this poem:

On through the hail of slaughter,

Where gallant comrades fall,

Where blood is poured like water,

They drive the trickling ball.

The fear of death before them,

True to the the land that bore them,

The Surreys played the game .

War, then, was supposedly good for everyone, and therefore desirable. War was expected to function as a catharsis: it would cause a wind of fresh air to blow through the musty old dwelling that Europe had become. Of war, one expected “deliverance from vulgarity, constraint, and convention.” War was associated with “liberation and freedom.” It could not come too soon. “How I long for the Great War,” wrote the English conservative Catholic writer Hilaire Belloc, “it will sweep Europe like a broom.” The German writers known as pre-Expressionists similarly imagined that war would bring deliverance from the prison of a sick society and a sad and boring era. One of them, Georg Heym, openly longed for the occurrence of some thrilling event that would put an end to “this idle, greasy, and sticky peace.” The year 1914 would finally bring the hoped-for relief from this taedium vitae, associated with all sorts of illusions about war.

The association of war with liberation also appeared in the work of an Italian intellectual, Giovanni Gentile, who would later describe himself as “the philosopher of [Italian] fascism.” He glorified war as “the suffering through which the human soul is purified and responds to the call of its destiny.” Other transalpine admirers of war and violence were the painters and other members of a cultural movement that became known as Futurism. This movement was supposedly “avant-garde,” but it was definitely not progressive in the political or social sense of the term. Arno Mayer has described the Futurists as “allied with conservative forces,” who distanced themselves from socialists and workers, the political vanguard of political progress. Instead, they trusted in extreme Italian nationalism, imperialism, and war to clear the ground for the machine age and culture, regardless of the human, social, and political cost. Inspired by Nietzsche…the Futurists denied equality, opposed the leveling of society, and believed in an aristocracy of the spirit and the arts.”

WWI: French machine gun nest.

One might think that Mayer exaggerates somewhat, but in the Manifesto of the Futurists, published in 1909, the author, the famous writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, shouted from the rooftops that,

we [the Futurists] want to glorify war, the world’s only hygiene, as well as militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for women.

In 1914, the wishes of the Nietzscheans were to be granted. Countless young men would go to war voluntarily, convinced that by “undergoing [their] baptism [of war]” they would achieve “manhood,” as a German soldier, a member of the Danish minority in the region of Schleswig-Holstein, put it in 1914. One of his comrades, another German of Danish origin, confided to his journal in typically Nietzschean terms that he went to war “to strengthen [his] character, to strengthen it in power and will, in habits, custom and earnestness.”

A major advantage that war was expected to bring was undoubtedly the fact that in wartime the rules of the game of democracy – and of the allegedly inefficient parliamentary system that was associated with it – were deemed to be useless, and would therefore have to be abandoned in favour of the authoritarian power relations and strict discipline featured in armies. Was it not evident that in wartime, commanders had to give orders and subordinates had to obey unconditionally? Of discussion and of input from below, of criticism, in other words, of democracy of any kind, there could no longer be any question. And it went without saying that the commanders would be the traditional, natural or God-appointed leaders of society, in other words, the existing elite – the aristoi, to use Nietzschean terminology – held to have emerged “organically”.

For the elite, war would also be an occasion to realize its own supposedly innate potential for leadership, to demonstrate excellence as political and military leaders, and to display heroism. It was hoped that the authoritarianism and discipline associated with war would similary transform the undisciplined, restless, and dangerous masses of workers and other proletarians into a multitude of servile and agreeable underlings. War would function as the “school of the nation” in general, but above all it would restore tranquillity and discipline among the lower orders. The proletarians needed to be cured of their democratic and revolutionary illness, caused by “judeo-socialist” propaganda and intrigue according to elitist types such as the infamous German nationalist Heinrich Class, and for this illness war happened to be the ultimate remedy. War was to function as a “wake-up call” for “all the good elements of the people” and would thus inaugurate a national renaissance.

The elite, then, viewed war as an instrument for the control of the popular masses. This is precisely what was implied in Churchill’s aforementioned remarks comparing war to gardening. In both cases, the aim was to control, to tame. Gardening was about the control of luxuriant plants, the taming of nature. War was about the control of society, about the taming of people in general and of the undisciplined, unruly – and dangerous – working class in particular.

In the case of gardening, one must sometimes be prepared to prune, and to prune deeply, thus improving quality at the expense of quantity. The Nietzschean elite, which also worshipped older, but still influential intellectual idols such as Malthus, was convinced that waging war would involve an analogous kind of pruning. The inevitably high losses war causes among the rank and file constituted not only an inevitable and even necessary Malthusian “positive check” on the population, but could also be justified as a quantitative cut that improved the quality. The popular masses were simply too plentiful. It was a crowd that, for the good of society as a whole, needed to be culled from time to time. Was it not a fact that culling made it possible to improve the quality of a breed of cows, deer, etc.? It was not a coincidence that during the Great War, hundreds of thousands of ordinary soldiers, consisting overwhelmingly of peasants and workers, would be sent headlong into certain death by their own generals. Virtually without exception, the latter were members of the Nietzschean and Social Darwinist pre-war elite, steeped in bellicism and contempt of death.

Contempt of death means not fearing death, and indeed, the elite did not fear the death of proletarians they loathed, over whom they exercised total power, and whose lives they would waste so lightheartedly during the Great War, as the German historian Hermann Glaser has observed. With respect to this culling of their ranks, certain proletarians were in fact convinced that these seemingly senseless massacres reflected a desire on the part of their generals to reduce the ranks of the workers and thus to make the fearsome masses less “massive” and less frightful. During one of the many strikes Paris witnessed in June 1919, a striker, reflecting on the Great War, declared that,

This war was wanted by the bourgeoisie, the industrial capitalists, and the leaders of all the countries [involved in the war]. They observed the swelling of the ranks of the proletarian organisations and they feared for their coffers. And so they found a solution: eliminating workers by means of war.

The elite expected the war not only to function as a cure for the distemper of the masses, associated with socialism, but also to give birth to a new form of solidarity, a non-socialist and even anti-socialist solidarity. War was supposed to spawn a “war socialism,” that is, a spiritual instead of materialist socialism, a national instead of an international socialism, a German, French, or British socialism instead of a Marxist and therefore “Jewish” socialism. Mars, the god of war, was expected to become the patron saint of a new kind of society, a society without class antagonisms. It was in this sense that – even if it ended in defeat –war would be “great and wonderful,” as the renowned German sociologist Max Weber believed. His conviction was shared by the writer Thomas Mann who, in a famous book, Reflections of an Unpolitical Man, published in 1918, would sing the praises of what he called the “warrior ideology.” This was the conservative concept of a new community, a product of the war, different as day and night from socialist and liberal societal notions. War was expected to be the instrument that would make it possible to integrate the masses into the existing society, and thus to put an end to the social problems and the class struggle.

War was supposed to unite the entire people and integrate all classes into the established order, to the advantage of the elite. Conversely, war would divide the “proletarians of all countries”, who had been uniting under the auspices of socialism to the disadvantage of the elite. In the struggle against socialist internationalism, war was considered to be the ultimate weapon, the most effective instrument in the strategy of “divide and conquer.”

WW I, The Great Class War 1914-1918, published by James Lorimer in Toronto in 2016.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR / SOURCE

Jacques R. Pauwels is a people's historian. In the tradition pioneered by Marx and Engels, and continued by Michael Parenti, Howard Zinn, Eric Hobsbawm, Leo Huberman, and others of similar merit, he writes history that is not only firmly grounded in truth but is aimed at liberating the mind from the claptrap of existing ruling class mythology. Pauwels has taught European history at the University of Toronto, York University, and the University of Waterloo. His books include Big Business and Hitler, The Great Class War 1914-1918, and The Myth of the Good War.

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DEFEAT CAPITALISM AND ITS DEADLY SPAWN, IMPERIALISM
ecological murder •

Larry C. Johnson
A SON OF THE NEW AMERICAN REVOLUTION BLOG
sonar21

you ever wondered what it was like to live in the historic time in the aftermath of World War II, when the Cold War started and the United States emerged as the dominant power in the world, wonder no more. You are living in an epochal moment in history. It is fraught with danger, peril and a fundamental realignment of the international order. Gone are the days when the United States could order countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar to do their bidding like an old Uncle Ben on a Southern plantation.

The United States is on the verge of becoming the Hitler portrayed in the movie, Downfall — issuing orders to imaginary armies no longer capable of carrying out those orders.

I am not suggesting that the United States is on the verge of a collapse akin to what happened to the Third Reich in May 1945, but I do believe that the era of the United States invading other countries at will and overthrowing governments not willing to genuflect at the altar of U.S. power is over. The war in Ukraine has laid bare the weakness of the United States to control the international arena.

The year 2022 will be recorded by future historians as the watershed moment when Russia took the red pill and awoke from its delusion that its could be a partner with the West. Since the break up of the former Soviet Union, Russian leaders — not just Putin — naively believed that they could be accepted as a partner in the World order controlled by the United States. Vladimir Putin, in his speech on December 21, 2022 to the collegium of the Ministry of Defense, blamed himself for believing Western promises and announced that Russia would now rely on itself and deal with the West as a hostile threat. I encourage you to watch the video. While the West tries desperately to portray Putin as a madman, the man speaking is calm, intelligent and coherent. What a contrast with the political dwarfs that populate the United States and Europe.

The covert actions of the United States and Europe to try to destabilize Russia have failed. The coming year, 2023, will witness the end of the unipolar world dominated by the U.S. petrodollar and U.S. military intervention. I am frequently attacked as a Putin sycophant. That is a pernicious lie. I simply believe that Russia is not bluffing and recognize that Russia is one of the few countries in the world that can grow and prosper without whoring itself to the West.

The United States has experienced one existential threat in its history — the Civil War in the 1860s. Ironically, Russia played an important role in preventing the British from intervening in that war to aid the South. Russia, by contrast, has faced centuries of existential threats and always has found a way to meet and defeat those threats, such as Napoleon’s invasion in the 1800s and the Nazi invasion in 1941. Short of nuclear war, there is nothing the United States can do to stop Russia from securing its borders. The United States will discover in 2023 that its multi-billion dollar military is impotent when it comes to projecting power in Russia.

Putin and his government understand that the current war with the West is not just going to be fought in the fields of Ukraine. It also is a political and economic battle. To this end Russia is forging important relationships with China, India and the former imperial colonies of Europe and the United States. There is no such understanding among the political leaders in Washington. They still labor under the illusion that they can bully and threaten weaker countries to do their bidding. Joe Biden tried that gambit with Saudi Arabia and those oil-rich sheiks told him, in effect, to go pound sand.

While I wish for everyone reading this a Happy and Prosperous New Year, I fear that 2023 will be a period of darkness and suffering for the West. Europe already is being ravaged by inflation and contracting economies. If the dual whammy of inflation and economic deflation hit America, the crisis will be exponentially worse than the 2008 debacle. The apocryphal Chinese curse, “may you live in interesting times,” confronts us. I pray we survive.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR / SOURCE

A former member of the US military and CIA officer, Larry Johnson now comments on geopolitical affairs on his blog A Son of the New American Revolution.

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Since the overpaid media shills will never risk their careers to report the truth, the world must rely on citizen journalists to provide the facts that explain reality.

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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NOTE: ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

A POX ON PAX AMERICANA

DEFEAT CAPITALISM AND ITS DEADLY SPAWN, IMPERIALISM
ecological murder •

Larry C. Johnson
A SON OF THE NEW AMERICAN REVOLUTION BLOG
sonar21

Larry C. Johnson
A SON OF THE NEW AMERICAN REVOLUTION BLOG
sonar21

NOTE: ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

Read it in your language • Lealo en su idioma • Lisez-le dans votre langue • Lies es in Deiner Sprache • Прочитайте это на вашем языке • 用你的语言阅读

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ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

Read it in your language • Lealo en su idioma • Lisez-le dans votre langue • Lies es in Deiner Sprache • Прочитайте это на вашем языке • 用你的语言阅读

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The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.

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Texac is Missing. Russell Bentley’s whereabouts unknown after 5 days of fruitless searches

Patrice Greanville

Neo-Nazi ideology has become one of the main protagonists of political and social life in Ukraine since the 2014 coup d'état. And that's a fact.

No Comment

Print this article

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.

Since the overpaid media shills will never risk their careers to report the truth, the world must rely on citizen journalists to provide the facts that explain reality.

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

Ode to War

DEFEAT CAPITALISM AND ITS DEADLY SPAWN, IMPERIALISM ecological murder • Jacques Pauwels

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NOTE: ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

A POX ON PAX AMERICANA

DEFEAT CAPITALISM AND ITS DEADLY SPAWN, IMPERIALISM ecological murder • Larry C. Johnson A SON OF THE NEW AMERICAN REVOLUTION BLOG sonar21

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NOTE: ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

Read it in your language • Lealo en su idioma • Lisez-le dans votre langue • Lies es in Deiner Sprache • Прочитайте это на вашем языке • 用你的语言阅读

Headline Mysteriously Missing: ‘Putin Prevents Slaughter of Estimated 1 Million Innocent People

John Rachel OpEds

While abhorrence of war is amply justified, there's such a thing as a just war, and Putin may have launched one on Feb. 24th. We live in an imperfect world, and evil sometimes must be confronted.

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

Read it in your language • Lealo en su idioma • Lisez-le dans votre langue • Lies es in Deiner Sprache • Прочитайте это на вашем языке • 用你的语言阅读

Am I in Russia, or Something? (Overheard on the Net)

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.

Indecent Corporate Journos Won't Do the Job, So Citizen Journalists Must

DEFEAT CAPITALISM AND ITS DEADLY SPAWN, IMPERIALISM
ecological murder •

Jacques Pauwels

DEFEAT CAPITALISM AND ITS DEADLY SPAWN, IMPERIALISM
ecological murder •

Larry C. Johnson
A SON OF THE NEW AMERICAN REVOLUTION BLOG
sonar21

Larry C. Johnson
A SON OF THE NEW AMERICAN REVOLUTION BLOG
sonar21

John Rachel
OpEds