Showing posts with label fascism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fascism. Show all posts

10 December 2023

The Lesser of Two Evils Is Still Evil



At the extreme the methods of both the left and the right become increasingly similar, even though their nominal objectives may differ greatly. 

In the end they invoke perception and power to maintain a veneer of hypocrisy, while promoting a dogmatic set of beliefs through varying degrees of force and fraud.  Invoking necessity and the lesser of two evils, dissent is repressed, and discussion is silenced.  Because their beliefs no longer serve the public, or principles, or higher ideals.  

They are enthralled to power and money, and themselves, above all else. 

"Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty. Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand. As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers, with approving smiles."

Simone Weil

23 May 2022

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Old As Babylon, And Evil As Sin - Comex Option Expiration

 

"The whole town and all its inhabitants are quite drowned in carnival din, masks and confetti.  And on top of that the news of the Reichstag fire.  Dancing on a volcano."

Alban Berg, Letter from Berlin, September 1, 1933


“When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically.  They were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities for evil, such lust for power, such disregard for the rights of the weak, or such yearning for submission.  Only a few had been aware of the rumbling of the volcano preceding the outbreak.”

Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom


"There are so many ways of escaping from that which one fears, and not the least of these is hatred.”

Philip Kerr, Berlin Noir


"When you legitimize yourself entirely by inventing enemies, the truth ceases to matter, normal restraints of civilization and decency cease to matter, the checks and balances of normal politics cease to matter.  

The dangers of fascist politics come from the particular way in which it dehumanizes segments of the population.  It limits the capacity for empathy among other citizens, leading to the justification of inhumane treatment, from repression of freedom, mass imprisonment, and expulsion to, in extreme cases, mass extermination."

Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works

"Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege."

Thomas Clement Douglas


"Behind the concrete, the visible events, behind all the objective, logical considerations, we find that which goes beyond the merely rational: the struggle against evil, against the servants of the antichrist. 

Everywhere and always demonic powers lurk in the dark, waiting for the moment when man is weak; when of his own volition he leaves his place in Creation, as founded for him by God in freedom; and when he yields to the forces of evil, he separates himself from the powers of a higher order; after voluntarily taking the first step, he is driven on and on to the next and to the next, at a furiously accelerating rate."

Die Weiße Rose, Fourth Leaflet, Munich, 1942


“Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory, or one of unthinkable horror.”

C. S. Lewis


Stocks were able to rally today, and managed to hold on to the gains and go out near the highs.

The Dollar declined back to the bottom of the 102 handle.

Gold and silver rallied well, but were sold back down during the afternoon, still managing to hold on to some of their gains.

There will be a fairly significant precious metals option expiration on the Comex this Wednesday the 25th.

 Pricing shenanigans are customary.    It's what they do.

Have a pleasant evening.




04 January 2022

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Liars and Pipers

 

"Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.   In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him."

1 John 4:7-8

 

“Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory, or one of unthinkable horror.” 

C. S. Lewis

 

“The pull of fascist politics is powerful.  It simplifies human existence, gives us an object, a 'them' whose supposed laziness highlights our own virtue and discipline, encourages us to identify with a forceful leader who helps us make sense of the world, whose bluntness regarding the 'undeserving' people in the world is refreshing.  Fascism thrives under conditions of economic uncertainty, where fear and resentment can be mobilized to set citizens against one another,

When you legitimize yourself entirely by inventing enemies, the truth ceases to matter, normal restraints of civilization and decency cease to matter, the checks and balances of normal politics cease to matter.

The dangers of fascist politics come from the particular way in which it dehumanizes segments of the population. It limits the capacity for empathy among other citizens, leading to the justification of inhumane treatment, from repression of freedom, mass imprisonment, and expulsion to, in extreme cases, mass extermination."

Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works

 

"Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege." 

Thomas Clement Douglas

 

Ask God to show you your sins, especially those to which you have been blinded, and so easily explain away and rationalize, out of habit and pride.

This is the beginning of our salvation, when we still have a choice for acceptance and true repentance.

Stocks were volatile again today, with deep lows and a bit of an afternoon recovery.

Big cap tech, the flag-bearers of this particular market bubble, led the way lower.

Gold and silver caught a bounce after the mugging dealt to the metals yesterday.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

As I have said before, underlying the equity market is a simmering volcano of mispriced risks.

Lies and manipulation are prevalent in far too many areas of our society. 

As people grow more cynical, abandoning their souls of themselves and their children for some material fear or advantage, the instability in the markets and social discourse will become more pronounced.

Of course they do not believe it, preferring to see the fault in 'them' and not in the madness of their own hardened hearts, often wrapped in fantasies of 'righteous anger' in response to some grievance.

It is a story as old as Babylon, and evil as sin.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

"Then it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature.   It will be too late then to choose your side.   That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not." 

C. S. Lewis, 1944

 

11 April 2019

The Controversial 1935 Nobel Peace Prize For Speaking Truth to Power


"We cannot speak to the conscience of the world when our own conscience is asleep."

Carl von Ossietzky


"Only one who spent the years following the First World War in Germany can fully understand how hard a battle it was that a man like Ossietzky had to fight. He knew that the tradition of his countrymen, bent on violence and war, had not lost its power. He knew how difficult, thankless and dangerous a task it was. to preach sanity and justice to his countrymen who had been hardened by a rough fate and demoralizing influence of a long war.

In their blindness they repaid him in hatred, persecution and slow destruction; to heed him and to act accordingly would have meant their salvation and would have been a true relief for the whole world.

It will be to the eternal fame of the Nobel Foundation that it bestowed its high honor to this humble martyr and that it is resolved to keep alive the memory of his work.

It is also wholesome for mankind today, since the fatal illusion against which he fought has not been removed by the outcome of the last war.

The abstention from the solution of human problems by brute force is the task today as it was then.

Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years, 1956


"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

George Santayana


"The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals; they give them the opportunity to carry on their destruction; and of course they do so.  Is this a sign that the Germans are brutalized in their simplest human feelings, that no chord within them cries out at the sight of such deeds, that they have sunk into a fatal consciencelessness from which they will never, never awake?"

Sophie Scholl, The White Rose, Second Leaflet, Munich 1942

This time, we will not be silent.

Who will be among those who remember the moral imperative to speak truth to power, and nominate Julian Assange for the Nobel Peace Prize?

In memory of Carl von Ossietzky, an investigative journalist and editor of Die Weltbühne who died in hospital in Gestapo custody after being held in various prisons and concentration camps.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935. The award was controversial because von Ossietzky had been imprisoned for revealing the illegal steps the German government had been taking to rearm militarily.

There are those who believe that no matter what a country may do, it is the duty of its citizens to obey their laws without objection. And there are those who hold the primacy of natural law and private conscience and moral duty to resist evil even when it has been declared by a temporal authority to be legal.



Carl von Ossietzky was born in Hamburg, the son of Carl Ignatius von Ossietzky (1848–1891), a Protestant from Upper Silesia, and Rosalie (née Pratzka), a devout Catholic and Social Democrat. His father worked as a stenographer in the office of a lawyer and senator, but died when Carl was two years old.

During the years of the Weimar Republic (1919 – 1933), his political commentaries gained him a reputation as a fervent supporter of democracy and a pluralistic society. He was convicted in 1931 of revealing state secrets, the illegal German militarization, and served 18 months in prison. He was released in 1932.

Ossietzky continued to be a constant warning voice against militarism and Nazism when, in January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor and the Nazi dictatorship began. Even then, Ossietzky was one of a very small group of public figures who continued to speak out against the now ruling Nazi Party.

On 28 February 1933, after the Reichstag fire, he was taken by the police and held without trial in 'protective custody' in Spandau prison. Ossietzky underestimated the speed with which the Nazis would go about ridding the country of unwanted political opponents. He was detained afterwards at the concentration camp KZ Esterwegen near Oldenburg, among other camps.

He was visited while in the camp by Swiss historian Carl Jacob Burkhardt, as a representative of the International Red Cross. Burkhardt described Ossietzky as “a deadly pale broken creature, who seemed numb, with one eye swollen over, and his teeth broken.” Ossietzky said,
“Tell my friends that I have come to the end, soon it will be over and that is good. I hear my wife tried to visit me. I only wanted peace.”
Ossietzky's international rise to fame began in 1936 when, already suffering from serious illness that was not being treated, he was awarded the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize after an international campaign of people who hoped to achieve his release through this recognition and honor. Despite intimidation and protests directed against the Norwegian government, the Nazis had been unable to prevent this, but they now refused to release him so that he could travel to Oslo to receive the prize.

In an act of civil disobedience, after Hermann Göring, then Minister of the Interior for Prussia and head of the police, prompted him to decline the prize, Ossietzky issued a note from the hospital saying that he disagreed with the authorities who had stated that by accepting the prize he would cast himself outside the deutsche Volksgemeinschaft (community of German people).
'After much consideration, I have made the decision to accept the Nobel Peace Prize which has fallen to me. I cannot share the view put forward to me by the representatives of the Secret State Police that in doing so I exclude myself from German society. The Nobel Peace Prize is not a sign of an internal political struggle, but of understanding between peoples. As a recipient of the prize, I will do my best to encourage this understanding and as a German I will always bear in mind Germany's justifiable interests in Europe.'
The award divided public opinion, and was generally condemned by conservative forces. The leading conservative Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten argued in an editorial that Ossietzky was a criminal who had attacked his country "with the use of methods that violated the law long before Hitler came into power" and that "lasting peace between peoples and nations can only be achieved by respecting the existing laws".

Ossietzky's Nobel Prize was not allowed to be mentioned in the German press, and a government decree forbade German citizens from accepting future Nobel Prizes.

The Nobel Peace Prize money was sent to Germany where it was stolen by Ossietzky's Nazi 'defense attorney.'

In May 1936 he was sent to the Westend hospital in Berlin-Charlottenburg because of his tuberculosis, but under Gestapo surveillance. He was largely forgotten during the period of favorable international regard for the Third Reich, sparked in part by the massive public relations campaign surrounding the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the German 'economic miracle.'

Ossietzky died in the Nordend hospital in Berlin-Pankow, still in police custody, on 4 May 1938, of tuberculosis and from the after-effects of the abuse he suffered in the concentration camps. In 1938 Time Magazine named Adolf Hitler as their "Man of the Year."

In November of that year, the Reich entered a new phase of their oppression of dissent and undesirables and those to be cast outside the community of the German people, such as the mentally ill, the disabled, Gypsies, homosexuals, socialists, and trade unionists, with Kristallnacht.

In 1991, the University of Oldenburg was renamed Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg in his honor. This could be seen as a political statement, as Ossietzky's case was being decided upon by the German courts at the time. In 1992 the Federal Court of Justice shamefully upheld his 1931 conviction. After all, as Marin Luther King once noted, what the Nazis did 'was legal.'

I would like to join those people of conscience from around the world who nominate Julian Assange for the Nobel Peace Prize, for speaking truth to power, and upholding the moral imperative for freedom of the press.

Please make as many copies of this as you can and distribute it.

10 October 2018

Déjà Vu All Over Again - The Rise of Far Right Authoritarians and Bully Worship


"In Brazil, a far-right presidential candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, came close in Sunday’s national election to winning the 50% of the vote needed to win without a run-off (he received 46.2%), and is now highly likely to prevail on October 28 against his opponent, the liberal Workers’ Party’s Fernando Haddad, who finished a distant second with 29%.

That result, by itself, is stunning, given that Bolsonaro is an undiluted, explicit authoritarian in the model of Duterte and Sisi – one could easily say 'fascist' even using the narrowest and most most rigorous sense of that term – who had been a fringe figure in politics for decades but is now poised to assume the presidency."

Glenn Greenwald, The Stunning Rise of Brazil's Far Right


"We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.  It is not merely that at present the rule of naked force obtains almost everywhere.  Probably that has always been the case.  Where this age differs from those immediately preceding it is that a liberal intelligentsia is lacking.  Bully-worship, under various disguises, has become a universal religion."

George Orwell


"Through his first year in Germany [1933], Dodd had been struck again and again by the strange indifference to atrocity that had settled over the nation, the willingness of the populace and the moderate elements in the government to accept each new oppressive decree, each new act of violence, without protest...

Dodd continued to hope that the murders would so outrage the German public that the [Hitler] regime would fall, but as the days passed he saw no evidence of any such outpouring of anger

The controlled press, not surprisingly, praised Hitler for his decisive behaviour...In a letter to Hull, Dodd forecast an even more terroristic regime... 'The people hardly notice this complete coup d'etat. It takes place in silence...I would swear that millions upon millions have no idea what a monstrous thing has occurred.'"

Erik Larson, In The Garden of Beasts


It can only be hoped that American democracy will thoroughly realize, and this before it is too late, that fascism is not confined to any one nation or any one party; and it is to be hoped that it will succeed in overcoming the tendency toward dictatorial forms in the people themselves.  Only time will tell whether the Americans will be able to resist the compulsion of irrationality or whether they will succumb to it.”

Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism


"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."

Samuel Johnson




03 August 2015

Central Planning and the Inevitable Abuse of Freedom from a Concentration of Wealth and Power


This is a reprise of a blog posting from August 2011

Most students of economics are aware of the tendency of 'perfect competition' to zero economic profit over time, unless there is a continual renewal and reinvention of the business, under the guidance of a wise, insightful, and responsive management. Even the best enterprise involves a risk of loss, the expense of well paid employees, and significantly hard work, all combined with a bit of luck. Little wonder that a minority of businessmen find this arrangement less satisfactory that other alternatives, which unfortunately includes various forms of cheating, if not outright fraud.

And therefore there is a constant tendency of participants in capitalist systems to foster the unreasonable profits of cartels and the stable pricing power of monopolies, natural or otherwise, with a measure of discretionary control over resources and choices, legislation and information, and political and monetary power.

Corporations are merely creatures of the law, and inferior to it. Without it, they don’t exist. What better way to create the supreme monopoly and maintain it in perpetuity than to skew the law in one’s favor?

When corporations obtain an inordinate amount of power over the social fabric of regulation and governance, the creation of an oligarchy distorts the real economy through the accumulation of too much power in too few hands, in the manner of the central planning bureaucracies of the old line communist nations.

And this is why the standard economic solutions of both stimulus and austerity for normal cyclical excess can be doomed to failure, as they are at this time. The system itself has become distorted and broken, and is badly in need of reform.  Whatever one puts into it will come out badly, and be turned to fruitless purposes, corrupted by the unprecedented concentration of power in the hands of the few, the partnership of the Wall Street banks, big media, multinational corporations, and their servants in the government.

The hallmark of a corrupt enterprise is that while it has the power to confiscate and destroy, it cannot create sustainable organic growth and recovery that benefits the broader public.   This may be a private monopoly or collection of monopolies, or a government chartered agency, or a government itself.  The characteristics of all of these can be very similar.  It is merely the details of their legal composition that differ.   

The modern, somewhat romantic theory of naturally efficient markets peopled by inhumanly rational and altruistic individuals is a fairly modern twist on the noble savage ideal of Rousseau, and just as other-worldly and impractical when applied to a modern society. Certainly no one who has driven recently on a modern highway in rush hour could believe it.

Nineteenth century Americans viewed the business trusts as un-American "internationalists, and  heartless, abusive exploiters of the public interest." And rightly so. They looked for relief to the reform of their government, and the power of democracy and the law.  

This struggle of the individual to maintain a balance of power with the organizations, whether they be the corporation or the state, is a recurrent theme, a continuing saga throughout human history.  Big Government and Big Business have both been inimical to human freedom.

Whether such an accumulation of power in a few hands is achieved by the gun and star chamber, or the pen and the bribe, may not matter to the end result, which is a society plagued by corruption, stagnation, and at its end, a growing instability with a resort to physical force and more overt repression on its own people.

Central Planning - It's not Just for Communists Anymore
By Matthew K
23 August 2011
Vancouver, BC

It's been a rough few weeks for the capitalist system, which bestrides the globe like a teetering colossus. Not only has there been stock market turmoil worldwide, and the temporary threat of a US default on its debts, but an esteemed, mainstream economist suggested that Karl Marx was right. In the Wall Street Journal, no less! Karl Marx Was Right

That would be Nouriel Roubini, whose claim to fame came from timely warnings about the US housing bubble and subsequent US stock market collapse.. It is important to note that he only said that Marx was right in that capitalism could collapse on itself,  not that it actually would.

Most people are familiar with the spectacular failures of central planning in the Communist regimes. According to the resurgently fashionable Austrian school of economics, an economy is too complex to be managed by one expert, or even one committee of experts, regardless whether the clubhouse door reads "Politburo" or "Shark Tank."

According to the Austrians, society's fastest path to prosperity consists of allowing every person to decide freely what is in their best interest, with the emphasis on individual transactions.

A biological analogy comes from flocks of birds, schools of fish, and ant colonies, among others. These swarms function extremely well, despite being composed of simple creatures following simple rules, and despite the anarchic lack of a leader directing things. Our own "simple critter rules" in modern society are probably along the lines of "try to get a higher paying job, and pay lower prices for stuff, within the laws of the land, and without making too many enemies."

A business analogy comes from Toyota. Their quality went from hopeless to fearsome by training every employee to be competent enough to figure out how to do their own job better, and then allowing them to do so. If their management tried to dictate how each task was to be done, they might have peaked at early-80’s American car maker quality levels.

In a similar way, they decided not to try to predict the right production levels for each model, colour, and trim. Instead they pre-built enough cars to fill dealership inventory, and each time a customer purchased a vehicle, they would build one more of that same model, colour, and features. In economic nerd speak, they responded to that "market signal". So if 5% of Corolla drivers wanted a green car with deluxe extras, in the long run 5% of Corolla production would consist of deluxe green vehicles.

Since the flaws of central planning and benefits of distributed decision-making occur in the public sector, the private sector, and even in biology, we can generalize that the USSR's economic problem was ultimately that a small group of people would decide how to (mis)allocate most of the country's resources.

In the past thirty years, there's been an immense concentration of wealth -- particularly in Anglo-American countries (the US, UK, us, the Aussies). The US is at the leading edge of this trend, with the top 1% owning 42% of the wealth, or about six times as much as the bottom four fifths of the population, and a significant portion of the means of production and public information (media) and influence over the course of society.

In recent decades Western capitalism has moved towards the central planning model of a relatively small number of people in charge of directing the allocation of resources. This narrowing of perspective has in turn led to policies progressively more disastrous for the moved and the shaken... which was the Soviet denouement.

I have to credit the influence of the thoughtful blog of a well-to-do American entrepreneur and military strategist, and especially this particular posting. Central Planning and the Fall of US Empire

Capitalism's path back from the self-perpetuating central planning will require a more equitable, or at least a less inequitable, distribution of wealth and power, by which to rebuild the middle class and promote decision making based on individual choice and a more widely based entrepreneurial meritocracy. Which is what Roubini was complaining about, in saying that too much wealth was being redistributed from labour to capital.

It would be a terrible irony if Marx was proven correct, and unchecked capitalism destroyed itself by evolving the self-crippling features of a centrally planned communist economy.  One can only hope that we can reform our current market systems before things get worse.

09 January 2014

The Roots of the Next Crisis, and the Dark Hallway Beyond


“Those who fail to exhibit positive attitudes, no matter the external reality, are seen as maladjusted and in need of assistance. Their attitudes need correction...

Suddenly, abused and battered wives or children, the unemployed, the depressed and mentally ill, the illiterate, the lonely, those grieving for lost loved ones, those crushed by poverty, the terminally ill, those fighting with addictions, those suffering from trauma, those trapped in menial and poorly paid jobs, those whose homes are in foreclosure or who are filing for bankruptcy because they cannot pay their medical bills, are to blame for their negativity.

The ideology justifies the cruelty of unfettered capitalism, shifting the blame from the power elite to those they oppress."

Chris Hedges

Here is a recent conversation I had with a friend about the current state of the US recovery.  As an accountant with a wide range of exposures, I enjoy hearing his perspective since I no longer have that sort of current insight into the corporate culture in America.  I have years of background running large businesses in corporations, and some forays into large scale M&A work, so I have seen quite a bit of it. The methods rarely change, merely the guises and degrees.

Here are excerpts from his side of the conversation with only one parenthetical comment of my own.

"I don’t think we’re seeing profits in a traditional sense. Instead, it appears to me that we’re watching a long, drawn out LBO’ing of America. It appears that companies are liquidating capital and returning it as opposed to earnings spreads on revenue.

It seems like we’re seeing the final blow-off phase that started with the stock option becoming the primary form of compensation for corporate talent. By drawing out the LBO, they re-stock their options each year with a guaranteed return thanks to the Fed and their own Treasury Departments.

The problem is that you can’t have systematic corporate buybacks with employment/economic growth as they create diametrically opposite outcomes. The more work I do, the more I conclude that the US economy has not expanded since 2006.

I was looking at mutual fund data the other day and it showed that people moved their fixed income money into domestic equity - $185 billion in liquidated bond funds to buy $175 billion in equity funds. This happened after the Fed announced tapering was on the table. Just like the gold market, I suspect that “someone” forced the liquidation of bond funds and herded the money into equity funds to keep the rally going.  (I think it is perfectly reasonable to flee bond funds at any time that interest rates are turning higher.  Bond funds often take it on the chin in such a deleveraging of a long term interest rate trend.   However, I think the whole taper thing was hyped and used by the wiseguys, as are most things these days by our financial masters of the universe. - Jesse)

Coincidentally, corporations used half a trillion in cash flow on buybacks. It’s a liquidity game but with limitations. What’s the next asset that can be liquidated or levered? They’re still working on gold but sometime soon, the price of gold will be set in the East, where the gold resides. Agricultural commodities are being liquidated but that ensures a drop in planting next year. Oil is too valuable on the geopolitical front to liquidate.

There are certainly winners in this economy but far more losers. At some point, the weight of the losers acts against the winners, many of whom are levered up with confidence. Corporations can liquidate equity capital but we all know how the LBO’d companies operated in the 1990’s. In many ways, they’ve gotten corporations to behave like consumers did in the 2000’s, only this time they’re trained to buy back their own stock. Every cycle has natural limits.

We know that corporate cash flow is no longer growing and we know that it’s more expensive to sell debt today than a year ago. We also know that the Fed sees the stock market as their proof of success. So how does this shakeout? If corporations are a lemon, how much juice can you squeeze out of the lemon?"

Although I do not wish to be an alarmist, I have to say that this trend of attempting to sustain the unsustainable has gone on longer than I had previously thought possible.

I am fairly sure that the next crisis will bring these things to a head and some sort of resolution. But therein also lies great danger. Philosophies that have grown time can have deep roots, and when faced with what to them is an intolerable change, can react somewhat excessively. They may even welcome the opportunity to act excessively and decisively, at least in their own minds, as the path to winning.

When a ruling subculture that has become accustomed to crushing and liquidating things for its own power and pleasure, whether it is natural resources, the environment, crops, animals, land, or social organizations, eventually runs out of things, it can become frustrated and angry in its seeming impotence to continue on, to keep expanding.

Indirectly and somewhat benignly at first, but with a growing efficiency and determination over time, it will begin with the weak and the defenseless, attacking and objectifying them, even in the most petty of ways and impositions. It will turn to its critics, and then everyone who is defined by them as 'the other.'

That is when a predatory social and economic philosophy can turn into pure fascism, and start liquidating people.  And finally it liquidates and consumes itself.

But really, no one wakes up one morning and suddenly decides, 'Today I will become a monster, and wantonly kill innocent women and children.'

Otherwise ordinary people get to that point slowly, one convenient rationalization for their 'necessary and expedient' behavior at a time. After all, they are the good people, they are the strong, they are the most successful and the favored.

 They are the entitled, and not these others who would seek to drain them, drag them back down. They are the champions of progress and achievement and civilisation, the hardest working, and the epitome of mankind.  

What could possibly go wrong? 

"He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount aloft. He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."

J. H. Newman, The AntiChrist

If you are one who thinks that the above 'could not possibly happen here,' and I am sure that there are many, you may wish to read the following vignette from modern US history. Alan Nasser, FDR's Response to the Plot to Overthrow Him

22 February 2013

On the 70th Anniversary of the Execution of Sophie Scholl, 22 February 1943


"Many people think of our times as being the last before the end of the world. The evidence of horror all around us makes this seem possible.

But isn't that an idea of only minor importance? Doesn't every human being, no matter which era he lives in, always have to reckon with being accountable to God at any moment? Can I know whether I'll be alive tomorrow morning?

A bomb could destroy all of us tonight. And then my guilt would not be one bit less than if I perished together with the earth and the stars.”

Sophie Scholl


"Love does not make you weak, because it is the source of all strength, but it makes you see the nothingness of the illusory strength on which you depended before you knew it."

Léon Bloy

As you know, I have been commemorating the anniversary of Die Weiße Rose, the Munich Students Movement, and the series of leaflets which they produced and distributed in Nazi Germany as a statement of conscience during the height of the reign of terror.

I do not think it is possible for any one of us to genuinely appreciate the courage it takes to do something like this. And I hope that we never do come to understand such an extraordinary vocation to the same degree.  But each one of us is called to act, in our own way, and in our own time.

“The real damage is done by those millions who want to 'get by.'   The ordinary men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies.

Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, love small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you.

But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.”

Sophie Scholl

What is surprising is not that we are called to do so much, but rather, so little.  Love and be grateful to God, treat people as you would like to be treated with respect, kindness, and forgiveness.  Do not lie or steal or cheat,  do not be proud and look down on your fellow creatures, and act with honor and respect for the gifts of His creation. And when we fail through weakness, we are readily forgiven. 'Can you not watch with me, for even one hour?'

But all too often we bargain away our souls, rebelling from even these slight and reasonable requests-- and for so little.


The White Rose
Second Leaflet
Munich, 1942

We will not be silent.

It is impossible to engage in intellectual discourse with National Socialist philosophy, for if there were such an entity, one would have to try by means of analysis and discussion either to prove its validity or to combat it. In actuality, however, we face a totally different situation.

At its very inception this movement depended on the deception and betrayal of one's fellow man; even at that time it was inwardly corrupt and could support itself only by constant lies. After all, Hitler states in an early edition of "his" book (a book written in the worst German I have ever read, in spite of the fact that it has been elevated to the position of the Bible in this nation of poets and thinkers): "It is unbelievable, to what extent one must betray a people in order to rule it."

If at the start this cancerous growth in the nation was not particularly noticeable, it was only because there were still enough forces at work that operated for the good, so that it was kept under control. As it grew larger, however, and finally in an ultimate spurt of growth attained ruling power, the tumor broke open, as it were, and infected the whole body.

The greater part of its former opponents went into hiding. The German intellectuals fled to their cellars, there, like plants struggling in the dark, away from light and sun, gradually to choke to death.

Now the end is at hand. Now it is our task to find one another again, to spread information from person to person, to keep a steady purpose, and to allow ourselves no rest until the last man is persuaded of the urgent need of his struggle against this system. When thus a wave of unrest goes through the land, when "it is in the air," when many join the cause, then in a great final effort this system can be shaken off.

After all, an end in terror is preferable to terror without end.

We are not in a position to draw up a final judgment about the meaning of our history. But if this catastrophe can be used to further the public welfare, it will be only by virtue of the fact that we are cleansed by suffering; that we yearn for the light in the midst of deepest night, summon our strength, and finally help in shaking off the yoke which weighs on our world.

We do not want to discuss here the question of the Jews, nor do we want in this leaflet to compose a defense or apology. No, only by way of example do we want to cite the fact that since the conquest of Poland three hundred thousand Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way.

Here we see the most frightful crime against human dignity, a crime that is unparalleled in the whole of history. For Jews, too, are human beings - no matter what position we take with respect to the Jewish question - and a crime of this dimension has been perpetrated against human beings.

Someone may say that the Jews deserve their fate. This assertion would be a monstrous impertinence; but let us assume that someone said this - what position has he then taken toward the fact that the entire Polish aristocratic youth is being annihilated? (May God grant that this program has not yet fully achieved its aim as yet!)

All male offspring of the houses of the nobility between the ages of fifteen and twenty were transported to concentration camps in Germany and sentenced to forced labor, and all the girls of this age group were sent to Norway, into the bordellos of the SS!

Why tell you these things, since you are fully aware of them - or if not of these, then of other equally grave crimes committed by this frightful sub- humanity? Because here we touch on a problem which involves us deeply and forces us all to take thought.

Why do German people behave so apathetically in the face of all these abominable crimes, crimes so unworthy of the human race? Hardly anyone thinks about that.

It is accepted as fact and put out of mind. The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals; they give them the opportunity to carry on their depredations; and of course they do so.

Is this a sign that the Germans are brutalized in their simplest human feelings, that no chord within them cries out at the sight of such deeds, that they have sunk into a fatal consciencelessness from which they will never, never awake?

It seems to be so, and will certainly be so, if the German does not at last start up out of his stupor, if he does not protest wherever and whenever he can against this clique of criminals, if he shows no sympathy for these hundreds of thousands of victims. He must evidence not only sympathy; no, much more: a sense of complicity in guilt.

For through his apathetic behavior he gives these evil men the opportunity to act as they do; he tolerates this "government" which has taken upon itself such an infinitely great burden of guilt; indeed, he himself is to blame for the fact that it came about at all...

Please make as many copies of this leaflet as you can and distribute them.





Thankfully few are called to the martyr's crown.  But we are all called to take up our cross and follow, each day, in each of our own small ways. That is all most of us can do-- be still, and faithful, and wait on the Lord in our calling. 

And above all do not add to or assist, in any way, the evil in the world, especially by condemning or harming those who stand up against its onslaught.  That is Pilate's sin, to ask 'What is truth' and turn away and lie, if only to ourselves, while looking truth in the face, for the sake of expediency. It is a sin against the Spirit, and one that will not be easily forgiven.

We may believe what we will.   But we will be held accountable for our beliefs.
"I was satisfied that I wasn't personally to blame and that I hadn't known about those things. I wasn't aware of the extent of the crimes. But one day I went past the memorial plaque which had been put up for Sophie Scholl in Franz Josef Strasse, and I saw that she was born the same year as me, and she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler. And at that moment I actually sensed that it was no excuse to be young, and that it would have been possible to find things out."

Traudl Junge,  Im toten Winkel - Hitler's Sekretärin
The saddest words in any language are those of irreparable regret, that come to haunt us in our last hours, 'If only...'



On 22 February 1943, Scholl, her brother Hans and their friend Christoph Probst were found guilty of treason and condemned to death. They were all beheaded by executioner Johann Reichhart in Munich's Stadelheim Prison only a few hours later, at 17:00 hrs. The execution was supervised by Walter Roemer, the enforcement chief of the Munich district court.

Prison officials, in later describing the scene, emphasized the courage with which she walked to her execution. Her last words were:
"How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to offer themselves up individually for a righteous cause?

Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go."

The White Rose
Fourth Leaflet
Munich, 1942

We will not be silent.

"...It is the time of the harvest, and the reaper cuts into the ripe grain with wide strokes. Mourning takes up her abode in the country cottages, and there is no one to dry the tears of the mothers. Yet Hitler feeds those people whose most precious belongings he has stolen and whom he has driven to a meaningless death with lies.

Every word that comes from Hitler's mouth is a lie. When he says peace, he means war, and when he blasphemously uses the name of the Almighty, he means the power of evil, the fallen angel, Satan. His mouth is the foul maw of Hell, and his power is at bottom accursed. True, we must conduct a struggle against the Nazi terrorist state with rational means; but whoever today still doubts the reality, the existence of demonic powers, has failed by a wide margin to understand the metaphysical background of this war.

Behind the concrete, the visible events, behind all objective, logical considerations, we find the irrational element: The struggle against the demon, against the servants of the Antichrist.

Everywhere and always demonic powers lurk in the dark, waiting for the moment when man is weak; when of his own volition he leaves his place in Creation, as founded for him by God in freedom; when he yields to the force of evil, he separates himself from the powers of a higher order; and after voluntarily taking the first step, he is driven on to the next and the next at a furiously accelerating rate.

Everywhere, and at times of greatest trials, men have appeared, prophets and saints who cherished their freedom, who preached the One God and who with His help brought the people to a reversal of their downward course. Man is free, to be sure, but without the true God he is defenseless against the principle of evil. He is a like rudderless ship, at the mercy of the storm, an infant without his mother, a cloud dissolving into thin air..."

Please distribute this as widely as possible.



"Isn't it a riddle and awe-inspiring that things can be so beautiful, despite the horror? I've seen something wondrous peering through my joy in the beautiful, a sense of its creator...Only people can be truly ugly, because they have free will to separate themselves from this song of praise.

It often seems they will drown out this hymn with cannon thunder, curses, and blasphemy. But I have realized they will not succeed. And so I want to throw myself on the side of the victor.”

Sophie Scholl


17 January 2013

Hitlerland: Making a Deadly Peace with the Devil


"We cannot look to the conscience of the world when our own conscience is asleep."

Carl von Ossietzky, German editor of Die Weltbühne, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935


"It would be no sin if statesmen learned enough of history to realize that no system which implies control of society by privilege seekers has ever ended in any other way than collapse."

William Dodd, historian and US Ambassador to Germany, 1933

I am reading a new book titled Hitlerland, by Andrew Nagorski. Thank you to reader Andrew for recommending it. He knows I am very widely read in this period of history and find it fascinating both from an economic, sociological, and political perspective.

I was prepared for a rehashing of things I have already known and read, and I must admit I was initially put off a bit by the title which sounds frivolous. I was pleasantly surprised, even a bit amazed.

The book is highly original, and extraordinarily factual, in that Nagorski spent an extraordinary effort investigating eyewitness accounts, many of them unpublished, by Americans who lived there during the period in Germany from the Weimar Republic to the rise of Hitler and the beginning of the Second War.

He inserts minimal personal opinion and analysis into the writing, being more the journalist than the historian. He does treat the after-the-fact accounts with the proper regard for posturing and self promotion. He does have some very charming vignettes as well that make it a highly readable book.

It is well done, a 'must read' for anyone who wishes to understand that period of time from the perspective of those who lived it.  It adds a new dimension to a much written about period of time.  Remarkably so.

If there is anything that was surprising, it is the abject misery and despair of the German people during the Weimar Republic with the hyperinflation, and how few people actually saw the worst to come politically, after a false economic recovery, with the Crash of 1929. One knows these things, but they do not really understand them, not having lived it.

 Personal accounts help in this. This is why I found the book, When Money Dies by Adam Fergusson so helpful in this regard, as well as Ken Burns masterful documentary, The Civil War.

The fear of the Socialists and the Communists in particular is a key driver for the events of that time, and is not to be discounted.  The cynical dealing and irresoluteness of the Weimar politicians is another factor.  There were open fights in the streets on a regular basis, although they were often surprisingly 'orderly' as this book relates. Some of the passages are quite amusing for those familiar with the German penchant for orderliness, even in the midst of urban warfare.

The capacity for self-delusion and a bad compromise is amazing, especially during periods of confusion, fear, and distraction. And the moral base in Germany at that interwar period was already notoriously relativistic and given to occultism, odd theories, and Nietzchean extremes.  And after war, hyperinflation, and a new Depression, their spirit and will to resist evil was simply exhausted, especially when it was backed by systematic terror and force.

We ought not to be too critical of those people, many of the Americans included, who did not see the worst coming. Did you see the recent financial collapse coming, and what has followed? Do you even understand it yet? History may be amazed at your ignorance. And yet all the signs of trouble were there during the period from 1999 to 2007.

Some people were warning of the credit bubble, the imbalanced financial sector, and widespread fraud.  And the American people were distracted by a 'war on terror,' and not the collapse of their lives and savings after the decimation from a brutal world war that left the flower of their youth dead, crippled, or broken.

And then in Germany there was another Crash, and the onset of Great Depression, and the people thought, no, not again. Anything is better than this. And so the bargain with the devil was made, and after a brief blaze of false glory, hell followed.

This is not to excuse anything that was done, or permitted to happen. Far from it. But it is to place this sort of tragedy within its human context, and to remind us that we are all capable of such confused cowardice and acquiescence in the face of evil.  We must remain steadfast and resolute against it, especially before resistance demands the type of heroism of which few are capable.

The consensus of those who met Hitler was that he was a most ordinary person, with little charisma or appeal.  Dorothy Thompson called him 'the very prototype of the Little Man.'  He seemed nondescript, but inwardly mad, illogical and ineffective, and they were incredulous that he could rise to power.

A key tenet of the Nazis was the rejection of objective fact and reason in favor of the passions of 'the blood' and of instinct.  Truth was not an impartial consideration or serious limitation to conclusion and action.  That is a familiar refrain amongst ideologues and the more extreme elements of both left and right on the political continuum.

There are a few heroic figures in this book, and prominent among them is the Pulitzer prize winning journalist Edgar Ansel Mowrer, whom I had never heard about before this, which is a shame. I will let you read about him for yourself.

I had not realized how badly the prospects of the National Socialist party had fallen in the years after Hitler's imprisonment for the abortive putsch and before his sudden rise to power as chancellor.  They were essentially done.  But they served a purpose as a cat's paw for those wealthy bankers and industrialists who feared the Communists and Socialists, and for cynical Weimar pols who were too busy fighting for power amongst themselves to see the rising threat of fascism.

I had not remembered that during the Night of the Long Knives not only the SA leadership was taken on shot, but old political rivals as well, some of whom were retired from political life. Hitler's ruthlessness was exhaustive, and examples were often made. Again, we ought not to discount the regular use of domestic terror as party policy from the very onset of its ascendancy.

That rise to power was supported by the fresh fears and concerns brought on by the Great Depression which knocked Germany back off course, and the craven weakness of spirit of the politicians of his day. In the manner of Mussolini he gained power almost by default, and then secured it with a brutal iron fist. I am now convinced that without that terrible economic collapse after 1929 to provide a ready platform, he would have died a relatively forgotten crank.

One thing that I wonder about often is the attention given to Hitler because of his abominable atrocities, and the relatively little time spent on his role model, Mussolini. I have read a bit more on him, and he was despicable, a ruthless thug. The early Nazis were referred to by the Americans as the fascisti.  

Here is a brief excerpt from the accounts of the American journalist Edgar Mowrer. It is not anything I had not known from other readings but gives one a sense of the style in which Nagorski allows events to unfold through the words of his witnesses to history, and how he weaves their testimony into a rich tapestry.



16 January 2013

Andrew Nagorski: Hitlerland - Little Eichmanns


The opposite of love is not hate, but callous apathy and uncaring.  Hate is a passion, a counterpart to lust.

And tragedy occurs when such heartlessness is advantaged by careerism, and an ideology that rationalizes unconscionable expediency, sanctioned privation, organized repression, and eventually murder, on a massive scale. 

This is not how monsters are created, but how their enablers and supporters are formed, so that they too can, over time, become as beasts to escape their unbearable shallowness, and the emptiness of their souls.

These are not the Hitlers, but the little Eichmanns. And they are abroad again, making and influencing policy on an alarming scale, today.

"The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil...

The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together...

He [Eichmann] was in complete command of himself nay he was more: he was completely himself. Nothing could have demonstrated this more convincingly than the grotesque silliness of his last words.

He began by stating emphatically that he was a Gottgläubiger to express in common Nazi fashion that he was no Christian and did not believe in life after death. He then proceeded: “After a short while gentlemen we shall all meet again. Such is the fate of all men. Long live Germany, long live Argentina, long live Austria. I shall not forget them.”

In the face of death he had found the cliché used in funeral oratory. Under the gallows his memory played him the last trick: he was 'elated' and he forgot that this was his own funeral.

It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us: the lesson of the fearsome word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.”

Hannah Arendt



h/t Andrew


17 October 2012

Clive Boddy: Two Papers on the Destructiveness of Psychopathy in Business and Government


"The schools would fail through their silence, the Church through its forgiveness, and the home through the denial and silence of the parents. The new generation has to hear what the older generation refuses to tell it...For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing."

Simon Wiesenthal
While there are always a certain small portion of the population who have the sorts of destructive bent as described here, normally society acts to restrain them and their more vile impulses.

However, from time to time, the small percentage can gain enough power through ruthlessness and deception to foster an atmosphere that not only tolerates their excesses, but actually holds them up as an example for the young as well.

I think some of this is the winner's curse. A society that enjoys a long period of prosperity begins to think of itself as exceptional. They become so enchanted with who they think they are, that they just simply forget their own past, and begin to believe in myths and illusions. And human memory and education being what they are, they fall victim to the frauds and deceptions and darker impulses that have plagued them in the past.

Conversely, a society that has been through a series of terrible ordeals can often become simply desperate, almost bestial. They make take a similar path but much more cynically. It is not that they are deluded, they simply do not care.

When the power of greed in business finds a suitable match in the lust for power in the political arena, that partnership can seem almost unstoppable for quite some time. It becomes increasingly difficult to effect reform from within because so many of the more effective elements of society become corrupted and cynical to the point of apathy.

In a word, the governance of society becomes an organized hypocrisy engaged in systematic destruction, of not only others but also of society itself, especially as the others either resist more effectively or collapse from sheer exhaustion.

As I have mentioned before, in discussing this with some older fellows who have a bit of a broader personal perspective, and in reading deeply in history and its cycles, it seems as though the West entered into such a cycle, in the 1980's. It is merely reaching its full flower today.

The consequences on society as a whole, if history is any guide, will be profound, even moreso than we have seen so far.

The Implications of Corporate Psychopaths for Business And
Society: An Initial Examination And A Call To Arms

By Clive Boddy

Corporate Psychopaths are managers with no conscience who are willing to lie and are able to present a charming façade in order to gain managerial promotion via a ruthlessly opportunistic and manipulative approach to career advancement.

What the implications of their presence in business organisations are is an area that is relatively new to the area of business and behavioural research. However the presence of Corporate Psychopaths has several implications for work in business research. This paper reviews the concept of Corporate Psychopaths, describes how they may theoretically be present in organisations at senior managerial levels in much larger numbers than their approximately 1% incidence in the general population would suggest and discusses the implications of this for business and society.

The paper defines Corporate Psychopaths as those people working in corporations who are self-serving, opportunistic, ego-centric, ruthless and shameless but who can be charming, manipulative and ambitious.
It reviews the recent series of papers and news articles on Corporate Psychopaths and discusses how and why Corporate Psychopaths are drawn to corporations as sources of power, prestige and money. The paper suggests that Corporate Psychopaths are a threat to business performance and longevity because they put their own interests before those of the firm. It also discusses how they are a threat to the development of a sense of corporate social responsibility because they have no sense of guilt, shame or remorse about the consequences of their decisions...

Read the entire paper
here.


Journal of Business Ethics
The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis
By Clive Boddy

An understanding of Corporate Psychopaths as expressed in a recent series of papers in this journal and in others, and based on empirical research, has helped to answer the question of how organizations end up with impostors as leaders and how those
organizations are then destroyed from within (Boddy, 2005, 2010a, Boddy et al., 2010a, b).

The event of the Global Financial Crisis has hastened an already changing climate in business research. Commentators are no longer willing to assume that all managers are working selflessly and entirely for the benefit of the organization that employees them, and the study of dark, dysfunctional, or bad leadership has emerged as a theme in
management research (Allio, 2007; Batra, 2007; Boddy, 2006; Clements and Washbrush, 1999).

The onset of the Global Financial Crisis has thus led management researchers to be increasingly interested in researching various aspects of dark leadership in an
attempt to explain the current financial and organizational turmoil around the world. Numerous papers on dark leadership have, for example, been recently reviewed by this author for this journal and it is evident that there are commentators with a deep
knowledge of individual types of dark and dysfunctional leadership and with views on how these people have contributed to the current crisis.

Corporate Psychopaths are one such type of dark manager, and this paper investigates their possible influence on the companies involved in the Global Financial Crisis. This is important because when large financial corporations are destroyed by the
actions of their senior directors, employees lose their jobs and sometimes their livelihoods, shareholders lose their investments and sometimes their
life savings and societies lose key parts of their economic infrastructure. Capitalism also loses some of its credibility.

These corporate collapses have gathered pace in recent years, especially in the western world, and have culminated in the Global Financial Crisis that we are now in. In watching these events unfold it often appears that the senior directors involved walk away with a clean conscience and huge amounts of money.

Further, they seem to be unaffected by the corporate collapses they have created. They present themselves as glibly unbothered by the chaos around them, unconcerned about those who have lost their jobs, savings, and investments, and as lacking any regrets about what they have done.

They cheerfully lie about their involvement in events are very persuasive in blaming others for what has happened and have no doubts about their own continued worth and value. They are happy to walk away from the economic disaster that they have managed to bring about, with huge payoffs and with new roles advising governments how to prevent such economic disasters.

Many of these people display several of the characteristics of psychopaths and some of them are undoubtedly true psychopaths. Psychopaths are the 1% of people who have no conscience or empathy and who do not care for anyone other than themselves.

Some psychopaths are violent and end up in jail, others forge careers in corporations. The latter group who forge successful corporate careers is called Corporate Psychopaths. Who psychopaths are and who Corporate Psychopaths are, is discussed further below...

Read the entire paper
here.

Evil does exist, and its power ebbs and flows. Or rather, evil exists, but as the absence of something else, the deficiency of goodness and humanity. So it can remain resilient through long droughts because it has no substance of its own to sustain, but awaits only for the weakness or indolent apathy of society to rise again.

One can see this clearly in history, although the skeptic will be quick to point out that all seems dismal, since nothing human is ever perfect.

Still, there are degrees in all things, and the weight of goodness often restrains the impulse of evil, although evil seems to remain ever resilient, never conquered, only sleeping to take a turn another day.   Consider the instances of genocide and widespread impoverishment in the last century alone for example, if you will like to see the corridors in which true darkness dwells and the madness is unleashed upon the world.  And then tell us of the natural goodness of men and their works.

Goodness is not a constant state, or even an end in this world, but a way to an end. It is not an objective to be reached, but a way of life that requires continual attention and remembering.
"...Far be it from any of us to be of those simple ones, who are taken in that snare which is circling around us! Far be it from us to be seduced with the fair promises in which Satan is sure to hide his poison!

Do you think he is so unskillful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the truth? No; he offers you baits to tempt you. He promises you civil liberty; he promises you equality; he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform.

This is the way in which he conceals from you the kind of work to which he is putting you; he tempts you to rail against your rulers and superiors; he does so himself, and induces you to imitate him; or he promises you illumination, he offers you knowledge, science, philosophy, enlargement of mind. He scoffs at times gone by; he scoffs at every institution which reveres them.

He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount aloft. He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."

J.H.Newman, The Times of Antichrist

11 August 2012

Michael Parenti: Functions of Fascism and Capitalism's Self Inflicted Wounds



One thing that Parenti does not discuss is the similarity between state communism and fascism in their anti-humanism, central planning, and self-destructive fanaticism.

Many thinkers distinguish between fascism and communism in their attitude toward globalization: the fascists are nationalists and the communists are internationalists.

I believe that my model of the socio-political continuum bridges that gap by referencing the extremes against a measure of their attitude towards the individual as a reference, and not in their approach to how they might organize a world government to which they all seem to aspire.

It also helps to explain how easily parties can cross the divide between the extremes. A Hitler can take a workers party like the NSDAP and turn it into a fascist dictatorship. The neo-cons can morph from far left to far right.

Extremes call out to their opposite extremes. Communism breeds fascism, and vice versa.  Extremes breed extremes, and crowd out the balanced approach to life of the mind, body, and spirit. 

And those on the extremes can no longer see the middle ground;  everything becomes 'the other.'  And so they first fail by avoiding all compromise as a sign of weakness in their increasing ideological rigidity, and then compound error upon extreme error as they silence their critics.  Their errors compounded, they finally take themselves and their followers into the abyss of their own excess.

Parenti is certainly further to the left of my own views.  He seems to be a progressive by much more comfortable with the role of government.   And yet government has a role.

One may not make the poor better off by destroying the rich, but one can certainly help the greater part of the public from becoming poor by restraining the rich and the powerful with the rule of law, transparency and enforcement,  and equal justice for all.  And that requires a good government with the power and willingness to enforce the law.

Great wealth unexplained is often the accumulation of a series of crimes and illegalities undiscovered, from insider trading to market manipulation, monopolies and official corruption, occasionally mixed in with sheer dumb luck and ruthless disregard for the law.

That is why the wealthy are rarely the great artists, athletes, or inventors who they hold up as the example of excellence to which they can hardly presume. They modern wealthy generally create nothing except a climate of injustice, fraud, and corruption.
"Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime
oublié, parce qu' il a été proprement fait."

"The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account
is a crime that has never been found out, because it was well executed."

Honoré de Balzac, Le Père Goriot
















03 August 2012

Chris Hedges On the Current State Of Journalism and Post-Literate Society - The Age of Spectacle


"In our age, the idea of intellectual liberty is under attack from two directions. On the one side are its theoretical enemies, the apologists of totalitarianism, and on the other its immediate, practical enemies, monopoly and bureaucracy. Any writer or journalist who wants to retain his integrity finds himself thwarted by the general drift of society rather than by active persecution. The sort of things that are working against him are the concentration of the press in the hands of a few rich men, the grip of monopoly on radio and the films, the unwillingness of the public to spend money on books...

Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy — or even two orthodoxies, as often happens — good writing stops. This was well illustrated by the Spanish civil war. To many English intellectuals the war was a deeply moving experience, but not an experience about which they could write sincerely. There were only two things that you were allowed to say, and both of them were palpable lies: as a result, the war produced acres of print but almost nothing worth reading...

The enemies of intellectual liberty always try to present their case as a plea for discipline versus individualism. The issue truth-versus-untruth is as far as possible kept in the background...

The organized lying practiced by totalitarian states is not, as is sometimes claimed, a temporary expedient of the same nature as military deception. It is something integral to totalitarianism, something that would still continue even if concentration camps and secret police forces had ceased to be necessary...

Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable.

It can never permit either the truthful recording of facts or the emotional sincerity that literary creation demands. But to be corrupted by totalitarianism one does not have to live in a totalitarian country. The mere prevalence of certain ideas can spread a kind of poison that makes one subject after another impossible for literary purposes.

Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth. (cf. truthiness - Jesse)

Meanwhile, totalitarianism has not fully triumphed everywhere. Our own society is still, broadly speaking, liberal. To exercise your right of free speech you have to fight against economic pressure and against strong sections of public opinion, but not, as yet, against a secret police force. You can say or print almost anything so long as you are willing to do it in a hole-and-corner way.

But what is sinister, as I said at the beginning of this essay, is that the conscious enemies of liberty are those to whom liberty ought to mean most. The big public do not care about the matter one way or the other. They are not in favour of persecuting the heretic, and they will not exert themselves to defend him. They are at once too sane and too stupid to acquire the totalitarian outlook. The direct, conscious attack on intellectual decency comes from the intellectuals themselves."

George Orwell, The Prevention of Literature, 1946

I feel compelled to say an explanatory word or two about Chris Hedges at this point, about what it is that I 'like' about him, and to answer a couple of inquiries about why some others prefer to ignore him, besides the usual suspects as they say.

As I have said previously, politically I am almost a perfect centrist, in the classical sense of the term. I say this after having taken yet another 'objective test' to place myself on the political spectrum. I do not hold this out as anything of significance other than to say, this is pretty much where I come out, where I am in my thinking at this stage in my life. It is a hard place to be, because one sees the world in shades of grays, in all its complexity, without the comfort of easy forms in black and white. It requires quite a bit more thought and effort than most can afford.

Hedges is a socialist, self-admittedly. And I am not. I am a believer in markets, but in sound regulation of them by an objective, publicly controlled organization, much like a referee or umpire, who transparently enforces the rules which are clear and fair to all. Why? Because people always and everywhere will cheat, some much more readily than others. The meme of naturally efficient markets is a classic 'big lie.'

I believe that widely dispersed, practical rules of organization and decision making within a greater context of general principles are far superior in their effectiveness in the distribution of resources that any sort of central planning, of the right or of the left. As Acton once said, 'no class is fit to govern.' So I like decision making that is broadly based, and subject to compromise. I think the rewards and punishments of the market are an effective stimulus to productive behaviour, provided that the rules do not become slanted by the power of an inequality propagated by cheating.

But I also see that rules alone cannot embody wisdom. There is a need for the conscious hand of humanity to guide the legendary 'invisible hand of the market.'

So I like Hedges, because what he says brings me back to center, even though he is further left. That is how bad things have become in this age of austerity, the willfully immature, and the false bravado of the destructively greedy and ideologically irrational. The western nations have moved and are still moving to the Right, as they did in the 1930's. As corruption enervates the old order, as empires once again crumble, we are re-entering the Age of Spectacle, the time of fire.

And if you stay in place, at the center, you have the false feeling of 'moving left,' relatively speaking. It has become noticeable especially when one compares the Right to their forbears of even ten years ago.

Hedges irritates some of the sacred orthodoxies of the Right without a doubt and to say the least since they are the epitome of intolerance. But he also disturbs the Left, who can be as inflexible and censorious as the Right which they hold in utter disdain for those very qualities. And he tweaks their nose on it, which is doubly irritating for those who are currently not in power.

Hedges has an absolutely wonderful description of this phenomenon of the unseeable center in describing the debates he had with both the new religious right, and the irreligious neo-atheists. The relativity of their extreme views distorts all of their perceptions, so that to both groups, Hedges the religious moderate becomes anathema, for similar reasons of intolerance and vanity.

I think that western society has gone off the tracks, in a loosely cyclical manner, by adopting an unsustainable set of priorities. Rather than forming policies to support the general good of the people, they have instead adopted the objective of the 'greatest good' where that implies the maximization of profit, but for a select few. That was a fateful decision, and I mark it somewhat loosely from 1987 for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the bailout of Wall Street by Alan Greenspan. It had its cultural resonance in the theaters.
"The richest one percent of this country owns half our country's wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It's bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth.

I create nothing. I own. We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price per paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you're not naive enough to think we're living in a democracy, are you buddy? It's the free market. And you're a part of it. You've got that killer instinct. Stick around pal, I've still got a lot to teach you."

Gordon Gekko, Wall Street, 1987
This situation, and history, has a lot to teach us indeed, and I think those lessons have only just begun in earnest.

This historically recurrent principle of the greatest greed rather than the greatest good is killing us. There should be no doubt that it will revert to the mean, a balanced society, once again, but that reversion may be painful, and bloody, if history is any guide. But this too shall pass.

I like to include historical quotes in these pieces, like the extended Orwell quote above, not only to illustrate the situation using powerfully resonant words from greater writers than myself, but also, in a Socratic way, to infuse the quiet understanding that every generation fights perhaps not the same, but similar, battles against ignorance, greed, intolerance, mean-spiritedness, carelessness, lawlessness, fear, hysteria, betrayal, hatred, and apathy.

And so there is hope, always.

We are not facing anything new, anything insurmountable,  but rather the same old enemy, the principalities and powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world, and the ancient spiritual wickedness in high places.  And that is the basic plot line of all human history.

And so we will write our own particular chapter in human history and the book of life, and thereby be remembered by our children and our grandchildren, and perhaps by those who interest themselves in all things human, for all time.





I have to note, most strongly, that the same principle of objectifying the other as a prelude to oppression and the language of violence is a tool of both the extreme right and the extreme left.  Their inflexibility and intolerance of differences in the individual virtually indistinguishable, and in every case is used to justify violence and murder.



I include this clip below in particular because he is describing 'the economic hitmen coming home to roost' which has been a forecast and an image I have used for quite a few years.  And it is happening now, predominantly in parts of Europe, but very much in the US and the UK.  The move on from victim to victim, their ravening hunger insatiable.



As they become more extreme, belief systems tend to resemble their putative opposites more closely, and the center becomes almost imperceptible, if noticed at all and not merely held in complete disdain.