Nationalism, Religion and Sports Have Captivated the Working Class. Why Hasn’t Socialism?

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BY BRUCE LERRO
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Viewpoints

WWI: British soldiers standing knee-deep in water in a trench, Serre, Somme, 1916. Lenin had asked the workers not to fight in this war, and instead aim their weapons at their overlords. Unfortunately, the nationalist instinct—a form of tribalism—proved stronger than internationalism. The industrial way of war proved devastating. By the end of 1914, after just five months of fighting, the number of dead and wounded exceeded four million men.

In the closing section of my course Brainwashing Propaganda and Rhetoric: Dark Psychology in the 20th Century, I ask my students to compare organized religion, nationalism and sports, not only to determine the kind of propaganda they are (black, gray or white), but also the devices and artifacts that are used. This includes the use of architecture, statues, rites of passage, liturgy, sacred music, pilgrimages, holy days, use of visual symbols, language manipulation and techniques for altering states of consciousness. The world religions have used these processes for at least 3,500 years to exploit, control and distract people from their misery on earth and direct us instead to variations of ‘you’ll get pie in sky when you die’.

The history of nationalism over the last 400-500 years has closely followed the techniques of organized religion. In fact, I think it is fair to say that nationalism is more powerful than moderate and liberal religion in motivating people. I doubt whether most people of liberal or moderate religion in the West would sacrifice their life for their religion. But at least among the working class who sign up for the military, nationalism can motivate people to fight and die to kill strangers in other countries who share the same social class.

Sports, as opposed to religion or nationalism, is a more joyous escape from the difficulties of life. If I were a betting person, I would bet most Americans might go to the barricades if the AFC and NFC championships were not televised. A championship playoff game such as the World Series could certainly outdraw any religious or patriotic ceremony in TV ratings. And what is the result? Who wins the game ultimately has little effect on the lives of the fans. Yet they continue to watch. This is some mighty potion going’ on. Do the socialists understand it? Do we use similar techniques to win the working classes to socialism? Not on your life!

Qualification

I am certainly not claiming that religion or nationalism has the same hold on people in the 21st century that they did in the 20thcentury. At least in the western countries, there has been a steady decline of interest in religion. Nationalism certainly does not have the grip on Europe that it did in the 19th and 20thcenturies. Still, in spite of this decline both carry enormous power.

I   Socialists’ Failures to Come to Grips With Enchantment

It’s not enough for socialists to simply claim that religion, nationalism and sports are examples of “false consciousness” for the working class.

I would think that socialists, being social, would be hip to what is going on with these propaganda techniques. Sure, you may find cultural critics beginning with the Frankfurt School who will bemoan the lack of taste among the masses and state how all religion, nationalism and sports produce false consciousness. But this is a very mechanical and unnecessarily bleak understanding of the potential of the techniques used in these areas to light a fire under the working class. We must not only point out the manipulative nature of enchantment, but we need to be dialectical and ask how we could use these techniques to promote socialism. After all, the construction of a sacred space (whether a church or a ballpark), a dramatized story, ritualized gestures, and the use of music and the arts to alter consciousness is not just naïve superstition. It is part of our bio-evolutionary heritage to be interested in these things. The alternative to the alienated enchantment of sports, religion and nationalism is not de-enchantment, as so many dry-as-dust socialists seem to think. We must build a “this-worldly” pagan enchantment that is a foundation for socialism.

Socialists’ failures against nationalism and religion

Three examples should give you the picture. The first is the famous one of socialists before World War I. The socialist parties in Europe and, to a lesser extent in the United States, were very confident that the workers of the world would unite to oppose the war. After all, the workers understood that they had no fatherland, right? Wrong. Not only did working class people kill each other after being whipped up to mass hysteria, but most of the socialist ministers, some of them great intellectuals like Kautsky, Plekhanov and Kropotkin got emotionally caught up in defending the fatherland. Socialism as a political movement of internationalism was no match for nationalism.

The failure of fraternity brings massive horrors to humanity

The second example is of Germany in 1933. During the depression in that country, the Socialist Democratic Party (SPD) was the strongest socialist party in the whole world. Economic conditions were bad. Great time for a revolution, right? What did the socialists do? According to the mass psychologist Wilhelm Reich, they simply fed the masses boring statistics about their condition. However, the Nazis understood that there is a charismatic side to people, a side that likes mythology, drama, pomp and circumstance, doomsday scenarios, scapegoats, black and white answers and promises of redemption. Goebbels and the Nazi brass understood mass psychology while the socialists were buried in the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.

My last example is about the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is one of the most horrendous institutions in the West in the last 800 years. Its officials committed every one of the “seven deadly sins” time after time as they tortured heretics and witches. They’ve made deals with royalists and military dictatorships and they have made peace with capitalists long ago. The Catholic Church has a record of child abuse that spans centuries. Yet many U.S., Italian, Spanish, French and all the other people in Catholic countries continue to attend mass and support the Church financially. At the same time, the socialist parties that actually do want to create heaven on earth with workers could not ever get masses of people to come to meetings once a week. People are too busy for that. But they are not too busy for church. How can this be?

The issue here is not that the working-class is stupid or that they are victims of false consciousness. Rather, I believe the issue to be:

+ The Church must be doing many things right to continue to collect their revenues and get people to attend in spite of being seen as the world’s first international terrorist organization.

+ Do the socialists understand this mass psychology? No, they do not.

+ Do the socialists think that the techniques of religion, nationalism and sports could be used to mobilize people for socialism? Ah, what?

Marx did not understand religion and nationalism

Marx said some very riveting things about religion. Among other things he saw the construction of “god” as an alienation of human creativity. But at the same time he believed that religion would wither away under communism as people’s material conditions got better. Clearly this has not been the case. Neither was Marx very dialectical about how religion could be used by socialists. With the exception of liberation theology, socialists have not understood how to transform all the ingredients that go into “cooking” a religious experience and mythologize a socialist story complete with music, ritual, mythology and patron saints. The closest instance of socialists doing something like this is May Day in southern European countries. It used to be that people made costumes for May Day and gathered together while wearing those costumes, sharing food and singing The International. All these things gave it some of the sweep and drama of religion.

The extent to which the Communist Party tried to outlaw religion is revealing in how little they understood it. All this did was to make it more attractive by burying it underground. Socialists also did not understand that nationalism would not disappear under socialism. During World War II Stalin needed to refer to the “Great Russian Fatherland” (hardly a call to socialist internationalism) in order to inspire and join people together through hardship.

Neither did socialists understand that race cannot be reduced to social class.

Again, Marxists’ general approach is that race will only preoccupy people when capitalists use race to keep people from uniting as a class. But once workers gain class consciousness, the issue of skin color will dissolve in people minds. This has not been born out in experience. In addition, because of Marxists’ cynical attitude towards evolutionary psychology they have yet to make current in their theory the fact that ethnocentrism goes all the way back to hunter-gatherers. While ethnocentrism and racism are not the same thing, ethnocentrism is present enough to see that the skin color of people does matter around the world and that this was present long before capitalism existed.

Marxists cannot explain how sports have charmed the working class

A number of years ago, Noam Chomsky commented on how amazed he was by the intelligence of working class people when they called into a sports talk program the Monday after Sunday’s NFL games. Their analysis of what plays didn’t work, what plays could have worked along with the strengths and weaknesses of the players was astounding. But then he pointed out how all this intelligence goes away when the same people are then asked to make a political analysis of the current events in their lives – working conditions, wages, war. The working class is mute when asked to explain how and why capitalism is failing. The question is not why working class people have cognitive compartmentalization, separating sporting events from their everyday life. The question is what does sports offer people that makes them so involved? Have socialists asked themselves what would have to happen to make working class people be carried away by socialism the way they are by sports?

As many of you know, a number of years ago the Seattle Seahawks played the New England Patriots in the Superbowl. The Seahawks were losing but had a great drive going at the end of the game. With about 90 seconds left and the ball on the New England one-yard line, the Seahawks quarterback decided to pass the ball rather than hand it off to Marshawn Lynch who had a great game. The pass was intercepted. I knew the next day in my brainwashing class, this was what they wanted to talk about. It wouldn’t have mattered if the stock market crashed. Why is this? Unless students were betting on the game, they had no material stake in the outcome. Still – most of the men in the class were very involved.

II  Bad Taste: A Communist is Swept Away By Baseball

Flashbulb memories of my performance as a baseball player

When I was about 7 years old I used to play a ‘let’s pretend’ game. I laid out 4 rags I’d gotten from the garage and placed them in a diamond form which represented the bases. The bases were about 45 feet apart. Then I looked at our house and took my batting stand and let my imagination take over. The scene is no doubt familiar to many of you. It is the last of the 9th inning, we are losing by three runs. The bases are loaded and there are two outs. Then I swing and hit the ball – tsssssch! “ As Mel Allen was saying in my head “there is a high fly ball deep to right center. The centerfielder is at the track. It is going, going, gone”. Then I would trot around the bases. As I got older I played a great deal of hardball and I hit home runs, but never quite experienced the situation I imagined when I was seven until my last year of playing.

In 1968 our team from Brooklyn got into a playoff game at Victory Field which was one of the fanciest fields around. My girlfriend Rose Nuccio let it be known to me that this was the last time she was coming to my games. Sunday was her only day to sleep in. “Besides” she said, “you are 0-8” (referring to my performance in the last two games.) She brought her sister Miriam along with her for this game. In the top of the first inning I am up with two guys on base and two outs. The left-handed pitcher, Rick Honeycutt, throws me a high inside curve ball.

“Tshrush”! I tomahawk the pitch and the ball really does head for the right centerfield fence just like in my fantasy 13 years ago. As I watch the ball head for the fence time and space seem to contract. It’s as if I were in my backyard 13 years ago. The ball lands on the tennis courts on the other side of the fence scattering everyone. I am so out of it that as I make my rounds of the bases I miss first base. The coach has to get me to touch the base. As I round second I see Rosie and Miriam jumping up and down screaming like two young Italian gals will. The look on Rosie’s face as our eyes met was like a melting ray of sunlight that united our eyes. I missed third base too. Finally as I headed for home most everyone on our team came out to home plate to meet me. It was as if we won the World Series. I disappear in a mass of teammates at the plate.

I have told this story in my psychology classes as an example of a peak experience. I also use it in my brainwashing class to show how powerful sports can be in moving people. Virtually every time I tell the story I cannot help but become teary. I’ve seen students cry even though they know nothing about sports. Unless socialists can find a way to create this kind of drama, not occasionally but as part of a regular seasonal sequence, we will continue to be marginalized.

The lure of professional baseball: the return of the hero Ken Griffey Jr. to Seattle

My last example is about a baseball player many of you know. Ken Griffey Jr. was a great home run hitter for the Seattle Mariners for about 10 years. For whatever reasons, I believe he asked to be traded to Cincinnati, where he played for about another seven years. Probably because he was a left-handed hitting center fielder like I was, and because of his grace I liked him and followed his career. Then I heard he was traded back to the American League, to the White Sox. The following year he was traded back to Seattle. How would the fans feel? Would they hold a grudge because he left? I knew they wouldn’t. I wanted to see the homecoming so I watched the game when he came back to Seattle. The fans made signs and were screaming for him. They must have given him a 5-10 minute standing ovation. Tears streamed down my face. I wasn’t even a Seattle fan! What was going on was not a baseball game. It was the return of a god to his home ground.

Movie stars, musicians and sports figures are our gods and goddesses. These celebrities have happily replaced priests and military generals as our heroes. Like gods and goddesses, they enter into sports mythology complete with the stories of great World Series, great stories of betrayal (by playing for another team) drug scandals and homecomings. The people of Seattle understood that when they came to this game they were participating in the final days of a great sports god, and this mattered more than who won this particular game. If socialists cannot figure out that this is what is going on with sports fans and, even more importantly, how to use this energy for our purposes, we will continue to be marginalized.

III Socialist enchantment needs to happen before the revolution

Socialism has certainly had its events that could be claimed as peak experiences or even religious experiences. Anyone who had participated in a revolution knows these moments are euphoric and unforgettable. Anyone who participated in the Occupy Movement will not soon forget it. And those centrists fools who think that Occupy “is over” will be in for a rude awakening as their spastic, decaying capitalist system will continue to undergo more nervous breakdowns. These breakdowns will only produce more “Occupies”.

Socialists understand enchantment during and after revolutions, but before the revolution too many socialists are disenchanted crab apples. In part, this is because of a sad lack of yearly seasonal rituals that keep the fires burning between one revolutionary generation and the next.

In Part Two we’ll explore in more detail what this might look like.

Read more of his articles and get involved at Planning Beyond Capitalism He can be reached at goethe48@pacbell.net

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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. 

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SCOTT RITTER: The CIA & the Russian Fascists Who Fight Russia

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Scott Ritter
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March 18, 2024
Disrupting the Russian presidential election and creating an atmosphere of weakness around Putin is precisely what the U.S. intelligence agency would seek to engender.

Putin at a forum in Kazakhstan. Павел Бедняков, РИА «Новости», CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

By Scott Ritter
Special to Consortium News

In the days leading to the Russian presidential election that concluded on Sunday, a network of three Russian paramilitary organizations working under the auspices of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, or GUR, launched a series of attacks on the territory of the Russian Federation.

The purpose of the attacks was clear — to disrupt the three-day Russian presidential election by creating an atmosphere of weakness and impotence around President Vladimir Putin designed to undermine his authority, legitimacy and appeal at the voting booth.

The operation was months in the planning, and involved the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK), the Freedom of Russian Legion (LSR), and the Siberia Battalion. All three of these organizations are controlled by the GUR, whose spokesman announced the attacks.

Left unsaid is the degree to which the C.I.A. was involved in what amounts to an invasion of the territory of the Russian Federation by forces operating under the umbrella of what is openly acknowledged to be a proxy war between the United States and its NATO allies against Russia.

While Ukraine maintains the attacks by the RDK, LSR, and Siberia Battalion are the actions of “patriotic Russians” opposed to Putin, the involvement of the GUR in organizing, training, equipping, and directing these forces makes their attack on Russian soil a direct extension of the proxy war between Russia and the West.

Given the extensive involvement of the C.I.A. in the work of the GUR, it is highly unlikely that an action of this scope and scale could have been executed without the knowledge of the C.I.A. and in the attacks, including its goals and objectives.

Indeed, the presence of high-end U.S. military equipment, including M-2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), in the order of battle in the attack by Russian insurgent forces points to a direct U.S. role, as does the political nature of the mission of election disruption, which has been a long-term objective of the C.I.A. in Russia stretching back decades.

Relationship Begun in 2014 [or earlier, much earlier, ca 1945-7]

Chief Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine in Kiev, 2013. (Dmitry Triku

Chief Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine in Kiev, HUR, 2013. (Dmitry Trikutko, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

The C.I.A.’s relationship with the GUR is well-established, dating back to 2014, according to The Washington Post, when the C.I.A. worked with the GUR to establish a network of bases along the Ukrainian-Russian border from which to conduct intelligence operations against Russia, including missions that involved operations on Russian soil.

The C.I.A. intercepted Russian communications, captured Russian drones for follow-on technical exploitation, and oversaw the recruitment and operation of spy rings operating on Russian soil.

In the lead up to Russia’s initiation of the Special Military Operation (SMO) against Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, the C.I.A. expanded its relationship with the GUR to include specialized training provided by members of the Ground Division of the C.I.A.’s Special Activities Group, responsible for covert paramilitary operations.

The training was focused on unconventional and guerrilla warfare skills that would help facilitate the creation and sustainment of anti-Russian insurgencies carried out by “stay behind” teams operating on any Ukrainian territory that was occupied by Russian forces.

After the SMO began, ethnic Russians who had served since 2014 within the ranks of the neo-Nazi, Ukrainian nationalist, paramilitary organization known as the Azov Regiment organized themselves into a separate organization known as the Russian Volunteer Corps, or RDK.

TRAITORS—Members of the Russian Volunteer Corps on 24 May 2023. (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

The RDK modeled itself after the Russian Liberation Army, an entity organized, trained, and equipped by the Nazi Germans during World War Two which was comprised of Russian prisoners of war. Russians today often refer to the RDK members as “Vlassovites,” after Russian General Andrei Vlasov, who was captured by the Germans and later defected to their cause.

Vlasov recruited Russian prisoners of war into what was known as the Russian Liberation Army, which eventually consisted of two divisions comprising some 30,000 troops. Most of Vlasov’s “army” were either killed in combat, or taken prisoner by the Soviet Union, where they were treated as traitors and punished accordingly (the enlisted sentenced to lengthy terms in the Gulag, and the leaders hanged.) The RDK was able to attract several hundred former Azov fighters and new recruits into its ranks.

A second ethnic Russian military unit, created in the aftermath of the SMO, is comprised primarily of Russian military defectors and prisoners of war. Known as the Freedom of Russia Legion (LSR), it consists of several hundred soldiers organized into two battalions. The LSR operates as part of the International Legion of the Ukrainian Territorial Army.

However, it is controlled by the GUR, according to GUR chief Kyrylo Budanov, as opposed to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.

The third ethnic Russian military unit operating with Ukraine is the so-called Siberian Battalion, composed of ethnic Russians and non-Russian ethnicities from the Siberian territories of the Russian Federation.

The members of this formation are volunteers from Russian Siberia who are opposed to Putin’s government. Like the LSR, the Siberian Battalion operated as a GUR-controlled part of the Ukrainian Territorial Army and is said to consist of around 300 men, according to a report in Euronews. 

The incursion over the weekend by the GUR-controlled, anti-Putin, Russian forces is not the first instance of its kind. In March and April 2023, several small cross-border attacks were carried out by forces affiliated with the Russian Volunteer Corps RDK.

More telling was a larger attack made on May 22, 2023. The timing of this attack, which lasted less than a day, seemed to coincide with the fall of the hotly contested city of to the Russian private military company Wagner.

The capture of Bakhmut by Wagner signaled the beginning of a rapid deterioration in relations between the head of the Wagner Group, the one-time Putin loyalist, insider Yevgeny Prigozhin, and the Russian military leadership, in particular Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff General Valeri Gerasimov.

From left: Putin, Shoigu and Gerasimov during a 2019 military exercise.(Kremlin.ru, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

On June 23, 2023, Prigozhin led thousands of his Wagner fighters in a rebellion which saw him occupy the Russian headquarters of the SMO in Rostov-on-Don, and march on Moscow. While the rebellion was quashed within 24 hours, many of the Wagner fighters said that they had participated only because they were told they would be deploying on to Russian soil, where Wagner was prohibited by law from operating, to defend against further incursions from the RDK.

Information that emerged after Prigozhin’s abortive rebellion showed that the Wagner leader had been in frequent contact with the Ukrainian GUR in the months leading up to his insurrection, and that the RDK attacks were part of a coordinated effort orchestrated by the GUR, designed to weaken and perhaps bring down Putin’s government.

The Biden administration acknowledged having detailed intelligence beforehand about Prigozhin’s revolt, and yet did not provide any warning to the Russian government, suggesting that the C.I.A. was at a minimum cognizant of the GUR operation and tacitly supported it.

A crowd in Rostov-on-Don watching a tank with flowers sticking out of its muzzle during the so-called Wagner Rebellion, June 24, 2023. (Fargoh, Wikimedia Commons, CC0)

The presence of U.S. weapons, including Humvee vehicles, in the possession of the RDK fighters on the weekend likewise hinted at a broader U.S. involvement in their training and equipping, involvement which, given the prohibition on the deployment of U.S. military forces in a training capacity on Ukrainian soil since the initiation of the SMO, pointed to the C.I.A.’s Ground Division as the facilitating unit.

The Russian government has assessed that the total strength of the GUR-controlled forces that attacked Russia in the leadup to the presidential election completed on Sunday numbered around 2,500 men, supported by at least 35 tanks and scores of armored vehicles, including a significant number of U.S.-supplied M-2 Bradley IFVs.

The scope and scale of the military operation, which included helicopter-borne forces inserted behind Russian lines, is such that it could not have been accomplished without the knowledge of the C.I.A. Moreover, the tactics and equipment used (helicopter raids, M-2 Bradley vehicles) strongly suggest a more direct role by the C.I.A. in both the planning and training of the mission and the troops involved.

The C.I.A.’s Ground Division is composed of veterans of the C.I.A.’s secret wars in both Syria and Afghanistan, where the C.I.A. trained secret armies to carry out their own secret wars in support of C.I.A. objectives.

Ukrainian special forces unit in Kabul during the 2021 Kabul airlift. (Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

The discrediting of Putin’s government with an eye to his removal from power has been a goal of the C.I.A. since 2005, when the C.I.A., together with British intelligence, began actively working to create viable political opposition movements inside Russia.

While these efforts have largely failed (the recent death in a Russian prison of Alexei Navalny, believed to have been a creation of the C.I.A., underscores the scope and scale of this failure), the C.I.A.’s covert political warriors in the Political Action Group of the Special Activities Center continue to try to undermine Putin through various means.

Given the Russian government’s stated goal of producing a large turnout in the election as a way to certify Putin’s legitimacy, disrupting voter turnout by creating instability and a lack of confidence would be precisely the kind of cause and effect relationship the C.I.A. would seek to engender.

The fact that the RDK leadership openly bragged that their ongoing attacks were a) designed to disrupt the Russian presidential election and b) were planned months before the attack, is a strong indicator that, given the intimate nature of the C.I.A.-GUR relationship, that the C.I.A. was at a minimum knowledgeable of, and most likely a facilitator, of the GUR-led attacks using Ukrainian-controlled Russian insurgents.

To understand the gravity that surrounds the possibility — indeed, probability — that the C.I.A. was involved, however peripherally, in an attack on Russian soil designed to disrupt a Russian presidential election, one only need reflect on how the United States would react if Russian intelligence services collaborated with Mexican drug cartels to create a well-armed insurgent army composed of Mexican-Americans who attacked U.S. territory from across the U.S.-Mexican border in order to influence the outcome of November’s U.S. presidential election.

The United States would view it as an act of war and respond accordingly.

Manifest Danger of Nuclear Conflagration

The Biden administration is overseeing a Ukrainian policy that is rapidly collapsing around it.

America’s NATO allies, concerned by the lack of leadership from the Biden administration when it comes to Ukraine, are threatening to dispatch troops to Ukraine to bolster a flagging Ukrainian military. The Russian government has warned that any such move would be construed as an attack on Russia, and potentially create the conditions for a general nuclear war between Russia and the collective West.

Now, amid such a tense environment, it appears the C.I.A. has not only green-lighted an actual invasion of the Russian Federation, but more than likely was involved in its planning, preparation and execution.

Never in the history of the nuclear era has such danger of nuclear war been so manifest.

That the American people have allowed their government to create the conditions where foreign governments can determine their fate and the C.I.A. can carry out a secret war which could trigger a nuclear conflict, eviscerates the notion of democracy.

Government of the people, by the people, and for the people seems like a distant dream. In its stead the future of America appears to be in the hands of a rogue intelligence agency that long ago abandoned any pretense of accountability and operating under the rule of law.

Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, published by Clarity Press.

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. 

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The Bitter Pill of Decisive Strategic Defeat

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WILLIAM SCHRYVER
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The Bitter Pill of Decisive Strategic Defeat
WILLIAM SCHRYVER
FEB 28, 2024

Mameyev Kurgan, homage to the motherland, commemorates the greatest battle in history, and the turning point of the war against the invading Nazis. The Great Patriotic War, as it is known in Russia, cost the nation more than 27 million casualties, a figure so colossal as to defy comprehension. If Americans had lost, in just one brutal war, much of it waged in their territory, the entire population of California, Texas and New York, they might begin to understand how the people of Russia feel about watching new armies massing on their borders again. (CC)

The last two years have produced what is, for most people around the world who ponder such things, one of the most unanticipated and yet astounding geopolitical turnarounds in modern history.

The heretofore reigning global hegemon designed to inflict upon Russia — its long-time nemesis — a decisive strategic defeat that would deliver the greatest spoil ever taken, and thereby consolidate its power base into the foreseeable future and beyond.

The empire imagined Russia to be at its civilizational nadir: weak, vulnerable, and finally ripe for the picking.

Notwithstanding the now proverbial failures of the empires that preceded it, the current masters of the Anglo-American empire, in tandem with its European vassal states and a willing proxy force in Ukraine, believed “things are different this time”. They convinced themselves that the power differential between the latest iteration of western empire and its putative Russian adversary was so pronounced as to assure victory over “the gas station masquerading as a country”.

Having previously fashioned for themselves a logically fallacious metric they named “Gross Domestic Product” in order to measure the relative strength of nations, they deluded themselves into believing their imaginary superior “wealth” would guarantee invincibility in all the realms of endeavor that, in aggregate, constitute real power.

If the current war has done nothing else, it ought to have once and for all disabused the shallow minds of the western intelligentsia that an economy based on the financialization of EVERYTHING is not stronger than an economy based on actual production of stuff.

A two-year-long high-intensity conflict has revealed in unmistakable terms that deindustrialized nations are utterly incapable of prosecuting modern industrial warfare.

Of course, the deindustrialization of the so-called “western democracies” took place over the course of several decades, leaving behind the myth of “The Arsenal of Democracy” instead of its material substance. It produced immense profits for a steadily diminishing few even as it hollowed out a prosperous and socially stable middle class and inaugurated an oppressive neo-feudalism that is now well on its way to deconstructing all of western culture.

In entirely unforeseen ways, the increasingly evident failure of the empire’s ill-conceived plan to divide and conquer vast Russia has brought into stark relief the internal contradictions, ideological incoherence, and vast endemic corruption of a capitalist civilization gone irredeemably awry.

In its hubris-fueled determination to prove it could do what no western hegemon had been able to accomplish over the past five centuries, the rapidly eroding Anglo-American empire will now be compelled to swallow the bitter pill of decisive strategic defeat on the same eastern European steppes where its predecessors were served their own banquet of consequences.

 

And the Russians, as is their wont, will pass down new hymns of victory to their children’s children’s children, for generations to come.

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FYI: Over the life of this blog, a few generous people have pledged some money to support it. But I have never required a paid subscription to read my stuff. And I still won’t. However, I have now “enabled” subscriptions purely as a means by which, if people are so inclined, they may support me with whatever amount they so choose. I also include a “Tip Jar” link in every post, if you’d like to go that route. But you don’t have to if you don’t want to. It’s purely voluntary. Everyone will still be able to read everything I write.
For all of you who have previously pledged to support this blog, I express my genuine gratitude. I hope my writing has been informative in some small manner and aided you in your quest to understand our crazy world a little better.
— Will Schryver
 

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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.

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You Only Need To Cage A Bird If It Knows That It Can Fly

Be sure to distribute this article as widely as possible. Pushing back against the Big Lie is really up to you.

Caitlin Johnstone
ROGUE JOURNALIST

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bird in cage- Caitoz

You Only Need To Cage A Bird If It Knows That It Can Fly

Everything you do on this front makes a difference, and don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.

Caitlin Johnstone
February 20, 2024
5 minutes
, , , , ,

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

 One point I keep trying to drive home here in as many ways as I can is that this is the dystopia we were warned about. The main difference between this mind-controlled dystopia and the fictional dystopias in novels like 1984 is that in 1984 people knew they weren’t living in a free society, whereas in this dystopia the people believe they are free.

All mainstream and semi-mainstream political factions are owned and operated by the powerful, and propaganda is used to get the public subscribing to them to advance the interests of the powerful. Because the overwhelming majority of us have been manipulated into espousing one of these power-serving belief systems (they give you multiple choices depending on your ideological disposition), the more overtly totalitarian measures described by dystopian novelists are unnecessary. You only need to cage a bird if it knows that it can fly.

But make no mistake: our society is no more free than those in the dark futures imagined by storytellers. If our minds are not free, then we are not free. If we’re being successfully manipulated into thinking, speaking, acting, voting, working and consuming in accordance with the wishes of the powerful, then we’re just as locked down as we would be if we had chains around our necks. Collectively we could not be any more aligned with the will of the powerful than we already are, even if our brains were replaced with computer chips.

There is no more need for dystopian fiction, because the dystopia has already arrived. It’s here. In fact, dystopian fiction is actually destructive because it causes people to imagine that dystopia is a threat that exists somewhere off in the future instead of right here and now all around us.

We don’t need dystopian fiction for the same reason we wouldn’t need imaginary swords-and-sorcery fantasy novels if we we lived in a world of wizards and dragons. People living in dystopian societies do not need dystopian fiction, they need dystopian facts. Dystopian journalism. Dystopian documentaries. Dystopian polemics. We just need true information and reality-based ideas to counter the lies and manipulation we’re inundated with from day to day.

We cannot be free until we have used the power of our numbers to shrug off the control of our dystopian overlords, and we’ll never do that as long as a critical majority of us are unable to see how profoundly unfree we really are. There’s no escaping the mind control matrix of imperial propaganda until you can see the lines of code it is made of.

Our most important task then, at this point in history, is to keep pointing out those lines of code for as many people as possible, in as many ways as we can think of. The one advantage to this type of dystopia is that our rulers need to maintain their nice-guy free society image in order to preserve the illusion that we are free, so they can’t just come out and start imprisoning everyone who spotlights the myriad ways we are enslaved by lies and propaganda. They’ll never grant us a major mainstream platform on which to do this, but we can operate within the margins, waking up one person at a time to the reality of what’s going on.

So go around spreading the truth. Fighting the propaganda. Weakening public trust in the mass media and the political constructs it manufactures consent for. Highlighting the depravity and murderousness of the empire. Use any and all media and forums you find to be effective. 

Everything you do on this front makes a difference, and don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise. The propaganda machine is the linchpin of their power. It’s what holds the empire together. Without the ability to manipulate the public at mass scale, our rulers cannot rule.

Once people are no longer buying into power-serving narratives, we will gain the ability to begin working toward the creation of a truth-based society that works for everyone. But this will never happen as long as we are being successfully manipulated into believing that this model for human civilization is acceptable and serves our interests. The very first step is un-jacking our brains from the propaganda matrix.

ADDENDUM

Assange, Gaza, And The Ugly Reality Of War Crimes

So I thought I’d do another painting of Assange, but this time in the blue press helmet made famous by those other courageous journalists from Palestine.

Caitlin Johnstone
February 21, 2024
2 minutes
, , , , ,

Mixed media piece I did while nervously awaiting the resolution of the latest Assange hearing:

Text:

If Gaza taught me anything, it’s taught me what war crimes really look like. War crimes are cruel power abuses where soldiers with bombs and guns prey on babies and moms and grandpas and shop owners. War crimes are not abstract to me anymore. War crimes are brutal. War crimes are flesh-from-bones. War crimes are kids crying in the freezing rain because they can’t find any family. War crimes are snipers picking off patients through hospital windows. War crimes are moms starving to death very slowly under a grave of rubble because no one can rescue them. War crimes are little girls with blown-out eyes from being run over by a tank while she slept in her bed.

And who showed us all this? Journalists. Journalists documenting war crimes.

If the US succeeds in extraditing Assange today, they will set a precedent that any journalist anywhere in the world can be snatched up and taken to the US and locked away for the rest of their lives just for embarrassing the US with evidence of their war crimes.

So I’m not gonna lie, I’ve been pacing around like a nervous Pervis through this latest extradition hearing. So I thought I’d do another painting of Assange, but this time in the blue press helmet made famous by those other courageous journalists from Palestine.

Free Palestine. Free Assange. Free the world.

 

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All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon, Paypal, or Substack, buying an issue of my monthly zine, and following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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This is a dispatch from our ongoing series by Caitlin Johnstone


Caitlin Johnstone is a brave journalist, political junkie, relentless feminist, champion of the 99 percent. And a powerful counter-propaganda tactician. 
 

 

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Billy Bob’s Dispatches: Dmitry Medvedev’s Unvarnished Truths. Disregard at your own peril.

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.

Billy Bob's Blowback Roundtable
THE WORLD THROUGH AN INDEPENDENT LEFT LENS
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The onetime prominent "Atlanticist" has become a firm supporter of Putin's SMO in Ukraine.

 
 
 
M
edvedev is a sensible, sane, and rational voice that Western citizens need to listen to and whose message needs to be appreciated and digested. The Western working class needs to put a leash on their oligarchs before they destroy our planet.

Here's Medvedev:

"Sunak, Scholz, Macron, Norwegian, Finnish, Polish and other leaders from NATO countries are saying that “we must be prepared for war with Russia.” And although Russia has repeatedly said that there are no plans for a conflict with NATO and EU countries, this is extremely dangerous chatter if this topic continues.

The reasons are obvious. It is necessary to divert the attention of voters in order to justify multi-billion dollar spending on Bandera’s hateful “Ukraine”. After all, huge amounts of money are not spent on solving social problems in these states, but on a war in a dying country that is foreign to taxpayers, whose population has fled across Europe and is terrorizing local residents.

 
Therefore, every day the leaders of these countries broadcast: we need to prepare for war with Russia and continue to help Ukraine, and therefore we need to produce more tanks, shells, drones and other weapons. But all European leaders cynically lie to their citizens. If, God forbid, such a war happens, it will not go according to the SVO scenario. It will not be carried out in the trenches using artillery, armored vehicles, drones and electronic warfare systems. NATO is a huge military bloc, the population of the Alliance countries is almost 1 billion people, and their total military budget can reach one and a half trillion dollars. Therefore, due to the incomparability of our military potentials, we simply will have no choice. The answer will be asymmetrical.
 

NATO's head, Jens Stoltenberg, better pay close attention.


To protect the territorial integrity of our country, ballistic and cruise missiles with special warheads will be used. This is based on our doctrinal military documents and is well known to everyone. And this is the very notorious Apocalypse. The end of everything. Therefore, Western politicians should tell their voters the bitter truth, and not treat them as brainless idiots. Explain to them what will really happen, and not repeat the false mantra about readiness for war with Russia."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR / SOURCE
Billy Bob is a dedicated anti-imperialist activist and blogger. You can reach him at his Facebook page HERE.

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