In the series of articles I wrote on the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), I argued that the BIS was at the apex of a supranational structure of organisations that have made national sovereignty an illusion.
“The only way to make sense of it is to place a financial criminocracy at the top of the pyramid. Russia and Germany combined were certainly regarded as a real threat to the Anglo-American empire at the turn of the 20th century, until that threat was largely neutralised with the two world wars. But that is for another essay.”
I MISread it assuming you were going along with the customary view of WW2. I fired off a comment on the work of Guido Giacomo Preparata before realising that you were saying what he was saying i.e. that Russia and Germany were deliberately set against each other by the Western forces.
All of which prompts me to make a sad confession. Ever since the “covid coup” of 2020, I have been desperately seeking some Leftist with (if you’ll pardon the expression) the slightest fucking clue as to what is going on. Because it was precisely that covid coup that caused the biggest “reformation” in what we might call the political public consciousness.
The initial “shudder” happened on Off-Guardian when all those Marxists got snooty over covid scepticism. One lectured us all on how covid-as-scam “isn’t how capitalism works”. He based this wondrous insight on the “fact” that a confidence trick such as this “had never happened before”. To which I ask, “How do you know?” and “Even if it hasn’t happened before, why can’t it happen now?”
But that jerk laid the groundwork for every single “Marxist” response I’ve seen since. Even those who seem to only now be coming to the realisation that they’ve “been had” use a rhetoric that seems irrelevant and even archaic to me. They all seem to be fighting old battles and relegating their efforts to “permissible dissent”.
The biggest elephant in the room is the global “response” to covid. In the light of that it’s impossible to view any country’s government anywhere as some kind of serious threat to this current power structure
I’ve been thinking about this more and more and I’ve had this constantly recurring experience with “The Left”. I find some “micro-community” – basically a little group of like-minded Leftists happy to encourage chat and it all goes well for a little while ... until you offend against some shibboleth and one of them goes crazy and derides you and then bans you. There’s no discussion about your offensive comment. No attempt even to try and explain where you “went wrong”. And it’s not even that I disagree with THEIR disagreement. Many times they get annoyed at some anti-Marxist article which can indeed be taken apart and usually very easily BUT THEY DON’T DO THAT! They just get all supercilious and preening.
They don’t seem to understand that you have to come down from that fabled ivory tower and talk to people who may well not know what you know. Talk to them! Reason with them! Accept variations. Consider alternatives.
But instead – it’s ban ban ban. They take the huff. Like little schoolkids. And this from the side that’s always talking about “solidarity”!
Two great comments, I feel your sense of exile too. The force of cancellation is the impulse to scapegoat, to drive out, and it's very powerful and much more rooted in human psychology than the Right-Left kabuki.
I think this is ultimately about levels of consciousness, which sounds holier-than-thou, but it's bloody well true! They're not in it for the sake of getting to the truth. They're in it for the sake of adopting an identity, finding a position that fits that identity, then finding a crowd that shares their position and identity. That's why there's no attempt at a process of debate to find out if what they're thinking is true. They have what they were looking for - an identity and a group to share it with. That's why you get booted if you threaten that.
Now, I'm not saying we're right because we're more interested in the truth. I'm just saying we are not prone to giving everyone the red card because they disagree with us. I'll be the first to admit it's uncomfortable to be told you're WRONG! But one's default position has to be to deal with the REASONS why someone told you that you were wrong, as opposed to dealing with the PERSON who told you were wrong! In good old sporting terms, play the ball not the man! That way, the game ends well, even if you lost, and you can still enjoy a drink in the pub with your opponent after the game.
Until the Democrats proclaimed Humanitarian aid to the Contras (guns, uniforms, boots etc) was saving Nicaragua I was only half convinced the Left wing of the party existed. Afterwards I recognized my error. I think in the USA there is no Left.
Later I read Berdyaev and his Marxist critique from his Russian insider view. His critique starts with Marxist ideology reduces human beings to economic and class categories, ignoring their inner life, moral freedom, and divine image. He favored freedom of spirit. He thought as an Orthodox thinker that Marxism imitated Christianity and was a secular perversion calling for "Revolution" instead of human salvation. Last he saw the totalitarian visage. Then the opposite of human freedom as human slavery. Even later I encountered Volin who was also anti-Bolshevik and anti-Party. (good short bio) https://spartacus-educational.com/RUSvolin.htm.
What's your preferred personal pronoun, comrade? How many microaggressions can stand on the head of a pin? Fight the right, join the left! Yay!
Unclear what you mean by "Marxists", but that sums up well enough the last bunch of lefties I left, before convid convinced me to join the chorus of the politically homeless (my new non-identity).
A plague on both houses, indeed, when it comes to US left-right divide-and-conquer dogmatism that's never seemed worse. People to the left of me: Trust the Science. People to the right of me: Trust the Plan.
“I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.” (Jay Gould)
I was going to be coy about it but I'll just come right out and say it. It was John Steppling’s Aesthetic
Resistance site. We were getting on terrifically until I levelled criticism against his great heroes Freud and Adorno. At which point I was cast into the outer darkness. But I was glad it happened because it focused my mind on the real problem I.e. that this Left didn't have a clue about what was really happening.
It's perhaps that the mind configuration of our propaganda system has successfully bifurcated Left and Right so that each side has much to say but each lacks an essential aspect that the other possesses. The Left have the Marxian understanding but never seem to focus on the right areas. The Right do the opposite.
Consequently the Left underestimate the extent of ruling class control over the media and over other matters too. They fail to see how powerful and devastating the operations of covid and climate and trans are. They fail to see how "Leftist" organs like the World Socialist Website are totally spook factories.
This is why you have to turn to "Right Wing" sites to get a better understanding though without the Marxist underpinning. But of course these are the sites dismissed as "reactionary" by this useless Left.
Not that Steppling is the only offender. I've run up against this insufferable self congratulating arrogance in plenty of other places too. It's a real series of little smug schoolboy units. And the "Rightist" notion of a "liberal elite" rings true here. These Leftists are the smarmy little sneerers who all end up on Blue Sky fretting about how frightfully uncultured everyone else is.
Thanks for your response. I had to laugh when you mentioned WSWS as a spook factory, as my own horror at their covidian cult consciousness left me recalling such history as the CIA's Operation Mockingbird (which by today's standards is small-time psyop).
The left-right divide does seem at times to lack an essential aspect the other possesses, as you hypothesize ("perhaps"). That simply may amount to limited hangouts on both sides useful for leading controlled opposition via good-cop/bad-cop routines to 'solutions' in a larger scheme of control. I suppose much of the propaganda purpose of left and right is that these are empty signifiers which may be filled with content to narrowly define and contain political alternatives while simultaneously confusing perceptions of political reality, particularly when people don't fit neatly into prescribed positions. Accordingly, people who may be in the habit of identifying with left or right may repress disagreements with their side, if only by default, while remaining ignorant of those on the other side who don't follow or fall for what they're told. (Not to mention many who don't bother with partisan political theater, for whatever reasons, or lack thereof.) For example, those who lean left who don't go along with covid, climate change, or trans agenda are effectively marginalized and silenced, while those tilting right imagine such global capitalist campaigns to be Marxist, communist, socialist, etc. Such social engineering is a reminder, for one, of the necessity of (re)building grassroots practices of participatory democracy which encourage more critical communication and consciousness among people for our own political movements beyond the fake binaries.
It's been a long time since I've read Dissident Voice, where I'd come across articles by John Steppling, so I'm not sure what you're referring to with his Aesthetic, or associations with Freud and Adorno. And I'm still unclear what you mean by Marxian, especially since a lot of what passes as leftism seems much more influenced by identity politics and rather corrupt forms of anarchism (e.g., antifa) which follow the legacy of leftwing anticommunism from cold war thought control. I have run across some remarkably naive embraces of corporate mainstream media, but what particularly makes that remarkable is its betrayal of longstanding leftist traditions of propaganda critique, while those on the right, including free market libertarians, remain just as clueless, as when tuning into Fox or reading the Epoch Times, for instance. Some of this I suspect goes back to limited hangouts which selectively take truths and facts only to wrap them in larger lies. But I don't think the right has any corner on better understanding, especially those who support Trump as some sort of populist, anti-globalist hero or savior, while in both his first term with Operation Warp(ed) Speed and all the more now with his second term's technocratic takeover the right is leading the way into a dystopian dungeon as much if not more than the left.
Yes. Glad you got what I was saying! I am a complete convert to the Preparata interpretation of the 2 world wars and how the Anglo-American Establishment duped Germany so thoroughly in order to extinguish the threat articulated by MacKinder. Neo Liberal Feudalism put me onto his book and I haven't looked back since then.
I am now reading Two World Wars and Hitler by MacGregor and O'Dowd and it is simply brilliant. Those chaps are utterly masterful. It is the only way to truly grasp the meaning of the 2 world wars. Preparata definitely gives you the big picture but wading through his financial explanations is like wading through quicksand. MacGregor and O'Dowd's account is just sheer beauty and ruthless logic. An absolute joy and relief. It's also a page turner!
As for the left, you and I could have a competition to see who is more disgusted with them and I am certain I would win! I say that as a former leftie. I read some drivel by Chris Hedges the other day. The best the Left can do is call the right "stupid". This, after 5 yrs of total chaos and accelerationism. That's the best that the leftist intelligentsia can offer. Their heads are so far up Marx's mummified arse, they cannot see what's right in front of them. Even Varoufakis who has a brain and sees the dangers of the digitalisation agenda, does not want to add 2+2.
For the record I think that Marx himself would be disgusted and would say, "Don't take what I say for gospel. Always question. And never be afraid to throw out anything that no longer fits."
1. Have you considered the possibility that humanity is simply designed, like slave making ant colonies, for parasite overlord relationships? That if if the one we're in is dissolved, another one would simply spring up in it's place? It fundamentally relates to Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor - most people do not want responsibility for their actions, the horrors of freedom, they want to be told what to do and if they do it everything will be okay. One doesn't have to look out at the Rothschilds for this - one merely has to look within or talk to those within one's social circle.
2. Have you considered the possibility that this reality is simply a demiurgic Hellhole? Philosophical pessimism - we are never satisfied, we are either striving for something or bored - plus one can only survive in this reality by killing and eating other living things - even a plant screams on a wavelength when it is being consumed. An endless cornucopia of murder. Financial parasitism just adds another layer onto this, but not the deepest one. Schopenhauer thought this reality only makes sense if one considers it a giant prison.
Hi Neo F, and thank you! I am indeed very familiar with Iain Davis’s schematic presentation of the supranational structure to which nations are subordinate. It ought to be the first page of the first lecture of the first university course in International Relations, but….we know that’s not going to happen anytime soon!
To the first question – is humanity simply designed for parasite overlord relationships? I can see how, given the past 7-10 millennia of human history, it might be difficult to refute that. And pre-history, by definition, is somewhat of a void in terms of telling us about human societal structures before recorded history. But I would challenge that proposition by simply asking us to look at this group of people in the comments section of this article – you and I. We are absolutely not prepared to be fodder for parasitic overlords, and nor do we want to be the overlords. We are also not such an insignificant minority that we can be easily dismissed as freakish outliers. If a significant minority of humanity is not designed for parasite overlord relationships, can we be sure that all of humanity is? What is it about us that makes us different? What do we have that others don’t? Can it be acquired or conditioned into the human species in the same way that acquiescence to subjugation appears to have been conditioned into many? In other words, can things be different, especially since we are living proof of a different potential?
To the second question – the demiurgic Hellhole. So, one interpretation of life – all life – is that everything is food for something else, as you point out. And we all know it. Even plants ‘know’ it. So life in this reality is simply one endless killing fest for survival. Which is quite a paradox – everything wants to live, but something else must die to achieve life. Worse still, it’s all pointless because, in the end, we don’t survive. We die! At the point that one accepts this view as the ‘correct’ view of our reality, then the logical thing to do would be to kill yourself in order to end the futility of it all sooner rather than later. Of course, as we know, all the spiritual philosophies have reconciled this conundrum by contriving some intelligence and integrity in the cycle of birth, life, and death. We cannot come to the realisation you have come to without achieving a certain level of consciousness. And reaching that level of consciousness takes time and development. Which is another paradox. We cannot come to a realisation of the horror of reality, until we have participated in it. Even a vegetarian has to participate in the ‘killing’ and eating of plant life.
So I have introduced consciousness into the question, which is unavoidable, since we couldn’t have this debate without it. So maybe the answer lies in consciousness. Consciousness is the reason we have to go through this shitshow to get to another less shitty show? Everything has a cycle and we must go through it. We must start at the bottom, or beginning, of the cycle and keep going. Consciousness is the fuel that takes us through it and we will only know the final and absolute answer to your question when we have arrived at the end. And we can’t know what the ‘end’ is until we have reached it. As a very wise gift card once told me: everything will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, it’s not the end.
"If a significant minority of humanity is not designed for parasite overlord relationships, can we be sure that all of humanity is? What is it about us that makes us different? What do we have that others don’t?" I would argue it's a personality type: on the Big 5 those with low extraversion and low agreeableness. Autistic types, basically. This served an evolutionary function to prevent the herd from following each other off the cliff unquestioningly, but the evolutionary niche is meant to be small. And from one perspective this makes the torture of this reality worse: if we didn't see the parasitical setup as a problem then it wouldn't bother us!
"At the point that one accepts this view as the ‘correct’ view of our reality, then the logical thing to do would be to kill yourself in order to end the futility of it all sooner rather than later."
This depends on whether or not one sees a greater meaning to this endless orgy of violence, or even if one doesn't, one may wish to stick around and consume as long as possible, to delay the Void as long as possible. Regarding this, though, and also your broader point about consciousness, I take the Jungian view of God: that he is both all good and all evil, he is everything, and he adds to his infinity by our contribution to this reality. In this ontology what is "good" is what helps us along our own unique path toward our individuation process, while what is "bad" is what distracts us from it. But still, fundamentally it is horrifying, a God comprised of all evil, the merging of God with the demiurge. Still, it is a more satisfying and comprehensive explanation than the traditional religious explanation, I think.
Personality type could definitely have something to do with it but, as a reason on its own, it seems too deterministic to me. I like the idea of being able to choose who you are, simply because it grants more agency. I baulk at the notion of being a victim of my genes, or some other derivative of determinism. There’s no question that extraversion and low agreeableness both contribute to less fearfulness of being ostracised for wrong-think. But when I examine my life, I can see a tension between my personality and my environment. I can imagine (but obviously can’t be sure of) a different ‘me’ emerging today (in some ways better, in some ways worse) if I’d been exposed to a different environment. It’s the cliched but valid debate over how much of our persona is innate and how much is conditioned. That’s why the cabal take the education system so seriously! But yes, I do see the evolutionary advantage in having a bunch of ‘autistics’ (whatever that means) saying, “Nah, ain’t following all the other lemmings over the cliff.”
I see a contradiction in the Jungian view of God you’ve expressed. Which doesn’t make it wrong, but potential contradictions are always worth exploring. The starting point is God is everything – good and evil. I’m assuming then that this God is the creator from whom we spring. You then suggest that we are consciously choosing (at least some of us are!) the good which advances individuation, and avoiding the evil which distracts us from it. But if God is both things and we are His creation, then why wouldn’t we simply accept the randomness of this good and evil God and unconsciously reflect it in all our choices. Why consciously lean towards the good? Why did this good/evil lotto God give us a conscience that tells us when we’re deviating from the good?
What if God is not good and evil but ONLY good. And what if evil must be presented to us as a choice we can make because, without it being offered to us, we could not know that what we have consciously chosen is in fact ‘good’. You cannot truly know what good is unless you know its opposite.
This framing perhaps presents a less horrific conception of a God that is good and evil. Rather it could be a good and loving God. One who loves us so much that He has given us a taste of the same thing He enjoys in infinite abundance – free will. But free will is not free will unless the choice we make is a conscious one – a choice made in the full awareness of what we are forgoing when we make it. Hence evil is there, but it’s not His nature. Paradoxically, it has to be there to bring us closer to His nature in a truly free choice.
You wrote, "But when I examine my life, I can see a tension between my personality and my environment. I can imagine (but obviously can’t be sure of) a different ‘me’ emerging today (in some ways better, in some ways worse) if I’d been exposed to a different environment." You should look into identical twin studies. Basically, identical twins separated at birth but raised in totally different environments have been rigorously studied. What it found was that environment played a major role in developmental differences between the twins when they were young, but over time the genes took over to the point where they had very similar life outcomes on average (same type of jobs, married same types of women, etc). I think these studies are very helpful in determining how much weight to assign nature versus nurture.
Hello Neo! I think Rusere has responded beautifully, but I'd add this question: what if humanity is designed to be free, or even designed ourselves to be such, but our design has been hijacked by another influence, of a parasitical nature, for its own purposes? And we are currently in the process of freeing ourselves from this again. In other words, where did the designing actually start? And maybe even the needing nutrition from other living things to survive is a part of that. Our having to eat makes us very controllable.
Hi Helen, I think that just begs the question: if God designed humans to be free, but then they were "hijacked", then why did God design this system for humans to be hijacked? See the chart I posted above to Rusere regarding the Epicurean paradox, which I don't think is answerable under traditional ontology or cosmology.
Lorks, this depends on what you understand 'God' to be. I'm personally unable to assume the existence of 'God' as a designer in any way our material brains can comprehend. Particularly, in this case, around designing with a purpose that foresees every possible future interaction with what has been designed by other presences/forces/beings/Gods. It's very hard for us not to project our current material/left-brained/deterministic way of understanding life onto all this. I've given up making any assumptions about deities!
The rise of Technocracy is from a foundational world view of the 19th century. The underlying Banking Cartel is totally in control of the nation states by the 20th. So naturally as national economics evolves in collaboration with banking control and cartels the system evolves. 1930 saw BIS founded. I like to date the control grid from the founding of BIS.
Chat-GPT states-1. Before WWI, a handful of powerful banking institutions in key financial centers (London, Paris, Berlin, New York) dominated global finance. For example:
* The Rothschilds had major influence across Europe.
* J.P. Morgan wielded massive control over U.S. industrial finance.
* Barings Bank and Schroders were dominant in British imperial finance.
2. Interconnected Financial Elites There was a tight-knit group of financiers, industrial magnates, and aristocrats who often collaborated behind closed doors. These relationships resembled oligarchic control, where influence was concentrated in a few hands.
3. Colonial and Imperial Banking Systems The major imperial powers used their banks to control colonies economically. This system was explicitly hierarchical, with the financial core in Europe or the U.S. and the periphery serving its capital needs.
4. Lack of Public Oversight Most central banks were either private or quasi-private institutions (e.g., the Bank of England before full nationalization), and regulation was minimal by today’s standards. This allowed banks to operate with considerable autonomy and influence.
As compelling as it is depressing to those who wish the BRICS was some sort of opposition to we-all-know-what. At least my trusty quote hound did not return empty-mouthed:
“War and the constant threat of war is a ruling-class protection racket under which the unwitting taxpayer is fleeced for vast sums of money transferred to the military industrial complex and the financiers of war who sit at the throne of the Establishment.”
“The pattern is so obvious as to make the reality of it plain – organised crime is so thoroughly grafted onto the System that we must conclude it is the System.”
“...Sustainable Development Goals – the UN charter for global enslavement couched in more lullabies of justice and equality.”
“Technology transfer to a bogeyman is not new. Anthony Sutton exposed in great detail the systematic transfer of US military technology to the Soviet Union during the Cold War.”
Anthony Sutton is the Bête Noire of many Marxist critics. But I followed one such damning summation of Sutton to here:
Note how the Sutton basher quotes “a highly negative 1976 review of Wall Street and FDR in The Business History Review” in which one Howard Dickman “took on Sutton's methodology and arguments.”
But here’s the punchline: Dickman is (or was) part of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. He also appears to be (or to have been) deputy editorial features editor at The Wall Street Journal!
You’d think that these Marxist sleuths would have twigged that this source is perhaps a little biased? But no! They like what they read. And that’s enough!
Curiouser and curiouser. I find that the Howard Dickman review of Sutton can only be accessed through Leftist bloggers (in this case one “kieslowskifan” and one “Rosa Lichtenstein”). The total number of sites quoting this Dickman review amount to about two (reddit and Quora).
So much for this touted “proper methodology”.
You also have to wonder how it comes about that the “proper Marxist methodology” is being exemplified by a Wall Street Journal editor!
I chanced upon a similar critique of Sutton about a year ago. Based on that critique and the ones you've highlighted, the theme in all of them is that they attack his "methodology" and his motive (right-wing conservativism). They attack just about every strawman they can erect for him. But the one thing they don't attack - the FACTS he presents. There endeth the lesson.
This highlights a current problem that goes beyond the historical matter of Sutton's account i.e. today's media presentation of various powers opposed to each other. When it is painfully clear that e.g. the covid programme was international.
The Left are always keen to present some bold non-Western nation that is finally going to stick it to those Anglo-Americans. That's why we got the triumphalist bit about how Al Qaeda struck a blow against the American Empire. China was supposedly the origin of covid - as helpfully pointed out by that movie Contagion which, purely by coincidence of course, gave us the covid epic nine years in advance.
But I've never known an age that reeked so much of desperate distraction. Keep on cheering on the other side fighting your own corrupt side. Just don't look at the strings yanking all sides.
It's a scam indeed.
I knew it was BS when the east went along with the western covid shamdemic.
This was the intent... But they didn't have a deadly virus to truly enact it and they failed.
https://robc137.substack.com/p/covid
Also, BRICS denied Venezuela membership because a single nation, Brazil, blocked it.
That sounds just like the UN where single veto power can stop things.
Yep that Venezuela block was total BS
When I first read this:
“The only way to make sense of it is to place a financial criminocracy at the top of the pyramid. Russia and Germany combined were certainly regarded as a real threat to the Anglo-American empire at the turn of the 20th century, until that threat was largely neutralised with the two world wars. But that is for another essay.”
I MISread it assuming you were going along with the customary view of WW2. I fired off a comment on the work of Guido Giacomo Preparata before realising that you were saying what he was saying i.e. that Russia and Germany were deliberately set against each other by the Western forces.
All of which prompts me to make a sad confession. Ever since the “covid coup” of 2020, I have been desperately seeking some Leftist with (if you’ll pardon the expression) the slightest fucking clue as to what is going on. Because it was precisely that covid coup that caused the biggest “reformation” in what we might call the political public consciousness.
The initial “shudder” happened on Off-Guardian when all those Marxists got snooty over covid scepticism. One lectured us all on how covid-as-scam “isn’t how capitalism works”. He based this wondrous insight on the “fact” that a confidence trick such as this “had never happened before”. To which I ask, “How do you know?” and “Even if it hasn’t happened before, why can’t it happen now?”
But that jerk laid the groundwork for every single “Marxist” response I’ve seen since. Even those who seem to only now be coming to the realisation that they’ve “been had” use a rhetoric that seems irrelevant and even archaic to me. They all seem to be fighting old battles and relegating their efforts to “permissible dissent”.
The biggest elephant in the room is the global “response” to covid. In the light of that it’s impossible to view any country’s government anywhere as some kind of serious threat to this current power structure
I’ve been thinking about this more and more and I’ve had this constantly recurring experience with “The Left”. I find some “micro-community” – basically a little group of like-minded Leftists happy to encourage chat and it all goes well for a little while ... until you offend against some shibboleth and one of them goes crazy and derides you and then bans you. There’s no discussion about your offensive comment. No attempt even to try and explain where you “went wrong”. And it’s not even that I disagree with THEIR disagreement. Many times they get annoyed at some anti-Marxist article which can indeed be taken apart and usually very easily BUT THEY DON’T DO THAT! They just get all supercilious and preening.
They don’t seem to understand that you have to come down from that fabled ivory tower and talk to people who may well not know what you know. Talk to them! Reason with them! Accept variations. Consider alternatives.
But instead – it’s ban ban ban. They take the huff. Like little schoolkids. And this from the side that’s always talking about “solidarity”!
Two great comments, I feel your sense of exile too. The force of cancellation is the impulse to scapegoat, to drive out, and it's very powerful and much more rooted in human psychology than the Right-Left kabuki.
I think this is ultimately about levels of consciousness, which sounds holier-than-thou, but it's bloody well true! They're not in it for the sake of getting to the truth. They're in it for the sake of adopting an identity, finding a position that fits that identity, then finding a crowd that shares their position and identity. That's why there's no attempt at a process of debate to find out if what they're thinking is true. They have what they were looking for - an identity and a group to share it with. That's why you get booted if you threaten that.
Now, I'm not saying we're right because we're more interested in the truth. I'm just saying we are not prone to giving everyone the red card because they disagree with us. I'll be the first to admit it's uncomfortable to be told you're WRONG! But one's default position has to be to deal with the REASONS why someone told you that you were wrong, as opposed to dealing with the PERSON who told you were wrong! In good old sporting terms, play the ball not the man! That way, the game ends well, even if you lost, and you can still enjoy a drink in the pub with your opponent after the game.
Until the Democrats proclaimed Humanitarian aid to the Contras (guns, uniforms, boots etc) was saving Nicaragua I was only half convinced the Left wing of the party existed. Afterwards I recognized my error. I think in the USA there is no Left.
Later I read Berdyaev and his Marxist critique from his Russian insider view. His critique starts with Marxist ideology reduces human beings to economic and class categories, ignoring their inner life, moral freedom, and divine image. He favored freedom of spirit. He thought as an Orthodox thinker that Marxism imitated Christianity and was a secular perversion calling for "Revolution" instead of human salvation. Last he saw the totalitarian visage. Then the opposite of human freedom as human slavery. Even later I encountered Volin who was also anti-Bolshevik and anti-Party. (good short bio) https://spartacus-educational.com/RUSvolin.htm.
Thank you, will get into that!
It's a communist witch hunt by the commies.
The fascist anti-fascists will give you the boot for sure.
What's your preferred personal pronoun, comrade? How many microaggressions can stand on the head of a pin? Fight the right, join the left! Yay!
Unclear what you mean by "Marxists", but that sums up well enough the last bunch of lefties I left, before convid convinced me to join the chorus of the politically homeless (my new non-identity).
A plague on both houses, indeed, when it comes to US left-right divide-and-conquer dogmatism that's never seemed worse. People to the left of me: Trust the Science. People to the right of me: Trust the Plan.
“I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.” (Jay Gould)
I was going to be coy about it but I'll just come right out and say it. It was John Steppling’s Aesthetic
Resistance site. We were getting on terrifically until I levelled criticism against his great heroes Freud and Adorno. At which point I was cast into the outer darkness. But I was glad it happened because it focused my mind on the real problem I.e. that this Left didn't have a clue about what was really happening.
It's perhaps that the mind configuration of our propaganda system has successfully bifurcated Left and Right so that each side has much to say but each lacks an essential aspect that the other possesses. The Left have the Marxian understanding but never seem to focus on the right areas. The Right do the opposite.
Consequently the Left underestimate the extent of ruling class control over the media and over other matters too. They fail to see how powerful and devastating the operations of covid and climate and trans are. They fail to see how "Leftist" organs like the World Socialist Website are totally spook factories.
This is why you have to turn to "Right Wing" sites to get a better understanding though without the Marxist underpinning. But of course these are the sites dismissed as "reactionary" by this useless Left.
Not that Steppling is the only offender. I've run up against this insufferable self congratulating arrogance in plenty of other places too. It's a real series of little smug schoolboy units. And the "Rightist" notion of a "liberal elite" rings true here. These Leftists are the smarmy little sneerers who all end up on Blue Sky fretting about how frightfully uncultured everyone else is.
Thanks for your response. I had to laugh when you mentioned WSWS as a spook factory, as my own horror at their covidian cult consciousness left me recalling such history as the CIA's Operation Mockingbird (which by today's standards is small-time psyop).
The left-right divide does seem at times to lack an essential aspect the other possesses, as you hypothesize ("perhaps"). That simply may amount to limited hangouts on both sides useful for leading controlled opposition via good-cop/bad-cop routines to 'solutions' in a larger scheme of control. I suppose much of the propaganda purpose of left and right is that these are empty signifiers which may be filled with content to narrowly define and contain political alternatives while simultaneously confusing perceptions of political reality, particularly when people don't fit neatly into prescribed positions. Accordingly, people who may be in the habit of identifying with left or right may repress disagreements with their side, if only by default, while remaining ignorant of those on the other side who don't follow or fall for what they're told. (Not to mention many who don't bother with partisan political theater, for whatever reasons, or lack thereof.) For example, those who lean left who don't go along with covid, climate change, or trans agenda are effectively marginalized and silenced, while those tilting right imagine such global capitalist campaigns to be Marxist, communist, socialist, etc. Such social engineering is a reminder, for one, of the necessity of (re)building grassroots practices of participatory democracy which encourage more critical communication and consciousness among people for our own political movements beyond the fake binaries.
It's been a long time since I've read Dissident Voice, where I'd come across articles by John Steppling, so I'm not sure what you're referring to with his Aesthetic, or associations with Freud and Adorno. And I'm still unclear what you mean by Marxian, especially since a lot of what passes as leftism seems much more influenced by identity politics and rather corrupt forms of anarchism (e.g., antifa) which follow the legacy of leftwing anticommunism from cold war thought control. I have run across some remarkably naive embraces of corporate mainstream media, but what particularly makes that remarkable is its betrayal of longstanding leftist traditions of propaganda critique, while those on the right, including free market libertarians, remain just as clueless, as when tuning into Fox or reading the Epoch Times, for instance. Some of this I suspect goes back to limited hangouts which selectively take truths and facts only to wrap them in larger lies. But I don't think the right has any corner on better understanding, especially those who support Trump as some sort of populist, anti-globalist hero or savior, while in both his first term with Operation Warp(ed) Speed and all the more now with his second term's technocratic takeover the right is leading the way into a dystopian dungeon as much if not more than the left.
Yes. Glad you got what I was saying! I am a complete convert to the Preparata interpretation of the 2 world wars and how the Anglo-American Establishment duped Germany so thoroughly in order to extinguish the threat articulated by MacKinder. Neo Liberal Feudalism put me onto his book and I haven't looked back since then.
I am now reading Two World Wars and Hitler by MacGregor and O'Dowd and it is simply brilliant. Those chaps are utterly masterful. It is the only way to truly grasp the meaning of the 2 world wars. Preparata definitely gives you the big picture but wading through his financial explanations is like wading through quicksand. MacGregor and O'Dowd's account is just sheer beauty and ruthless logic. An absolute joy and relief. It's also a page turner!
As for the left, you and I could have a competition to see who is more disgusted with them and I am certain I would win! I say that as a former leftie. I read some drivel by Chris Hedges the other day. The best the Left can do is call the right "stupid". This, after 5 yrs of total chaos and accelerationism. That's the best that the leftist intelligentsia can offer. Their heads are so far up Marx's mummified arse, they cannot see what's right in front of them. Even Varoufakis who has a brain and sees the dangers of the digitalisation agenda, does not want to add 2+2.
Eewww, yuk! (The arse)
For the record I think that Marx himself would be disgusted and would say, "Don't take what I say for gospel. Always question. And never be afraid to throw out anything that no longer fits."
Well researched and entertaining as ever. It's getting pretty hard for the OCGFC to hide what they're up to, isn't it.
We can hope!
Well, I'm seeing it, and I definitely wasn't a few years ago, so that's a plus!
Hi Rusere, great post. The world is definitely centralized above the nation states, and thank you for reiterating it; I covered a similar point here, and I think you may appreciate the embedded chart within it: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/the-global-world-order-is-centralized
A couple questions:
1. Have you considered the possibility that humanity is simply designed, like slave making ant colonies, for parasite overlord relationships? That if if the one we're in is dissolved, another one would simply spring up in it's place? It fundamentally relates to Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor - most people do not want responsibility for their actions, the horrors of freedom, they want to be told what to do and if they do it everything will be okay. One doesn't have to look out at the Rothschilds for this - one merely has to look within or talk to those within one's social circle.
2. Have you considered the possibility that this reality is simply a demiurgic Hellhole? Philosophical pessimism - we are never satisfied, we are either striving for something or bored - plus one can only survive in this reality by killing and eating other living things - even a plant screams on a wavelength when it is being consumed. An endless cornucopia of murder. Financial parasitism just adds another layer onto this, but not the deepest one. Schopenhauer thought this reality only makes sense if one considers it a giant prison.
Hi Neo F, and thank you! I am indeed very familiar with Iain Davis’s schematic presentation of the supranational structure to which nations are subordinate. It ought to be the first page of the first lecture of the first university course in International Relations, but….we know that’s not going to happen anytime soon!
To the first question – is humanity simply designed for parasite overlord relationships? I can see how, given the past 7-10 millennia of human history, it might be difficult to refute that. And pre-history, by definition, is somewhat of a void in terms of telling us about human societal structures before recorded history. But I would challenge that proposition by simply asking us to look at this group of people in the comments section of this article – you and I. We are absolutely not prepared to be fodder for parasitic overlords, and nor do we want to be the overlords. We are also not such an insignificant minority that we can be easily dismissed as freakish outliers. If a significant minority of humanity is not designed for parasite overlord relationships, can we be sure that all of humanity is? What is it about us that makes us different? What do we have that others don’t? Can it be acquired or conditioned into the human species in the same way that acquiescence to subjugation appears to have been conditioned into many? In other words, can things be different, especially since we are living proof of a different potential?
To the second question – the demiurgic Hellhole. So, one interpretation of life – all life – is that everything is food for something else, as you point out. And we all know it. Even plants ‘know’ it. So life in this reality is simply one endless killing fest for survival. Which is quite a paradox – everything wants to live, but something else must die to achieve life. Worse still, it’s all pointless because, in the end, we don’t survive. We die! At the point that one accepts this view as the ‘correct’ view of our reality, then the logical thing to do would be to kill yourself in order to end the futility of it all sooner rather than later. Of course, as we know, all the spiritual philosophies have reconciled this conundrum by contriving some intelligence and integrity in the cycle of birth, life, and death. We cannot come to the realisation you have come to without achieving a certain level of consciousness. And reaching that level of consciousness takes time and development. Which is another paradox. We cannot come to a realisation of the horror of reality, until we have participated in it. Even a vegetarian has to participate in the ‘killing’ and eating of plant life.
So I have introduced consciousness into the question, which is unavoidable, since we couldn’t have this debate without it. So maybe the answer lies in consciousness. Consciousness is the reason we have to go through this shitshow to get to another less shitty show? Everything has a cycle and we must go through it. We must start at the bottom, or beginning, of the cycle and keep going. Consciousness is the fuel that takes us through it and we will only know the final and absolute answer to your question when we have arrived at the end. And we can’t know what the ‘end’ is until we have reached it. As a very wise gift card once told me: everything will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, it’s not the end.
Thanks for the considered response, Rusere.
"If a significant minority of humanity is not designed for parasite overlord relationships, can we be sure that all of humanity is? What is it about us that makes us different? What do we have that others don’t?" I would argue it's a personality type: on the Big 5 those with low extraversion and low agreeableness. Autistic types, basically. This served an evolutionary function to prevent the herd from following each other off the cliff unquestioningly, but the evolutionary niche is meant to be small. And from one perspective this makes the torture of this reality worse: if we didn't see the parasitical setup as a problem then it wouldn't bother us!
"At the point that one accepts this view as the ‘correct’ view of our reality, then the logical thing to do would be to kill yourself in order to end the futility of it all sooner rather than later."
This depends on whether or not one sees a greater meaning to this endless orgy of violence, or even if one doesn't, one may wish to stick around and consume as long as possible, to delay the Void as long as possible. Regarding this, though, and also your broader point about consciousness, I take the Jungian view of God: that he is both all good and all evil, he is everything, and he adds to his infinity by our contribution to this reality. In this ontology what is "good" is what helps us along our own unique path toward our individuation process, while what is "bad" is what distracts us from it. But still, fundamentally it is horrifying, a God comprised of all evil, the merging of God with the demiurge. Still, it is a more satisfying and comprehensive explanation than the traditional religious explanation, I think.
Personality type could definitely have something to do with it but, as a reason on its own, it seems too deterministic to me. I like the idea of being able to choose who you are, simply because it grants more agency. I baulk at the notion of being a victim of my genes, or some other derivative of determinism. There’s no question that extraversion and low agreeableness both contribute to less fearfulness of being ostracised for wrong-think. But when I examine my life, I can see a tension between my personality and my environment. I can imagine (but obviously can’t be sure of) a different ‘me’ emerging today (in some ways better, in some ways worse) if I’d been exposed to a different environment. It’s the cliched but valid debate over how much of our persona is innate and how much is conditioned. That’s why the cabal take the education system so seriously! But yes, I do see the evolutionary advantage in having a bunch of ‘autistics’ (whatever that means) saying, “Nah, ain’t following all the other lemmings over the cliff.”
I see a contradiction in the Jungian view of God you’ve expressed. Which doesn’t make it wrong, but potential contradictions are always worth exploring. The starting point is God is everything – good and evil. I’m assuming then that this God is the creator from whom we spring. You then suggest that we are consciously choosing (at least some of us are!) the good which advances individuation, and avoiding the evil which distracts us from it. But if God is both things and we are His creation, then why wouldn’t we simply accept the randomness of this good and evil God and unconsciously reflect it in all our choices. Why consciously lean towards the good? Why did this good/evil lotto God give us a conscience that tells us when we’re deviating from the good?
What if God is not good and evil but ONLY good. And what if evil must be presented to us as a choice we can make because, without it being offered to us, we could not know that what we have consciously chosen is in fact ‘good’. You cannot truly know what good is unless you know its opposite.
This framing perhaps presents a less horrific conception of a God that is good and evil. Rather it could be a good and loving God. One who loves us so much that He has given us a taste of the same thing He enjoys in infinite abundance – free will. But free will is not free will unless the choice we make is a conscious one – a choice made in the full awareness of what we are forgoing when we make it. Hence evil is there, but it’s not His nature. Paradoxically, it has to be there to bring us closer to His nature in a truly free choice.
Hi Rusere,
Thank you for the response.
You wrote, "But when I examine my life, I can see a tension between my personality and my environment. I can imagine (but obviously can’t be sure of) a different ‘me’ emerging today (in some ways better, in some ways worse) if I’d been exposed to a different environment." You should look into identical twin studies. Basically, identical twins separated at birth but raised in totally different environments have been rigorously studied. What it found was that environment played a major role in developmental differences between the twins when they were young, but over time the genes took over to the point where they had very similar life outcomes on average (same type of jobs, married same types of women, etc). I think these studies are very helpful in determining how much weight to assign nature versus nurture.
Regarding your ontological conception of good and evil, it's a very standard religious conception, but unfortunately I think it completely fails to address the Epicurean paradox: https://i1.wp.com/www.myconfinedspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/epicurean-paradox.jpg
Hello Neo! I think Rusere has responded beautifully, but I'd add this question: what if humanity is designed to be free, or even designed ourselves to be such, but our design has been hijacked by another influence, of a parasitical nature, for its own purposes? And we are currently in the process of freeing ourselves from this again. In other words, where did the designing actually start? And maybe even the needing nutrition from other living things to survive is a part of that. Our having to eat makes us very controllable.
Hi Helen, I think that just begs the question: if God designed humans to be free, but then they were "hijacked", then why did God design this system for humans to be hijacked? See the chart I posted above to Rusere regarding the Epicurean paradox, which I don't think is answerable under traditional ontology or cosmology.
Lorks, this depends on what you understand 'God' to be. I'm personally unable to assume the existence of 'God' as a designer in any way our material brains can comprehend. Particularly, in this case, around designing with a purpose that foresees every possible future interaction with what has been designed by other presences/forces/beings/Gods. It's very hard for us not to project our current material/left-brained/deterministic way of understanding life onto all this. I've given up making any assumptions about deities!
Looking forward to the next installments and many thanks for some good laughs along the way; the reference to lullabies had me howling,
Thank you!
The rise of Technocracy is from a foundational world view of the 19th century. The underlying Banking Cartel is totally in control of the nation states by the 20th. So naturally as national economics evolves in collaboration with banking control and cartels the system evolves. 1930 saw BIS founded. I like to date the control grid from the founding of BIS.
Chat-GPT states-1. Before WWI, a handful of powerful banking institutions in key financial centers (London, Paris, Berlin, New York) dominated global finance. For example:
* The Rothschilds had major influence across Europe.
* J.P. Morgan wielded massive control over U.S. industrial finance.
* Barings Bank and Schroders were dominant in British imperial finance.
2. Interconnected Financial Elites There was a tight-knit group of financiers, industrial magnates, and aristocrats who often collaborated behind closed doors. These relationships resembled oligarchic control, where influence was concentrated in a few hands.
3. Colonial and Imperial Banking Systems The major imperial powers used their banks to control colonies economically. This system was explicitly hierarchical, with the financial core in Europe or the U.S. and the periphery serving its capital needs.
4. Lack of Public Oversight Most central banks were either private or quasi-private institutions (e.g., the Bank of England before full nationalization), and regulation was minimal by today’s standards. This allowed banks to operate with considerable autonomy and influence.
As compelling as it is depressing to those who wish the BRICS was some sort of opposition to we-all-know-what. At least my trusty quote hound did not return empty-mouthed:
“War and the constant threat of war is a ruling-class protection racket under which the unwitting taxpayer is fleeced for vast sums of money transferred to the military industrial complex and the financiers of war who sit at the throne of the Establishment.”
“The pattern is so obvious as to make the reality of it plain – organised crime is so thoroughly grafted onto the System that we must conclude it is the System.”
“...Sustainable Development Goals – the UN charter for global enslavement couched in more lullabies of justice and equality.”
“Technology transfer to a bogeyman is not new. Anthony Sutton exposed in great detail the systematic transfer of US military technology to the Soviet Union during the Cold War.”
Anthony Sutton is the Bête Noire of many Marxist critics. But I followed one such damning summation of Sutton to here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5xi2cb/is_the_work_of_anthony_sutton_on_the_bolshevik/deicca7/?context=3
Note how the Sutton basher quotes “a highly negative 1976 review of Wall Street and FDR in The Business History Review” in which one Howard Dickman “took on Sutton's methodology and arguments.”
But here’s the punchline: Dickman is (or was) part of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. He also appears to be (or to have been) deputy editorial features editor at The Wall Street Journal!
You’d think that these Marxist sleuths would have twigged that this source is perhaps a little biased? But no! They like what they read. And that’s enough!
Curiouser and curiouser. I find that the Howard Dickman review of Sutton can only be accessed through Leftist bloggers (in this case one “kieslowskifan” and one “Rosa Lichtenstein”). The total number of sites quoting this Dickman review amount to about two (reddit and Quora).
So much for this touted “proper methodology”.
You also have to wonder how it comes about that the “proper Marxist methodology” is being exemplified by a Wall Street Journal editor!
I chanced upon a similar critique of Sutton about a year ago. Based on that critique and the ones you've highlighted, the theme in all of them is that they attack his "methodology" and his motive (right-wing conservativism). They attack just about every strawman they can erect for him. But the one thing they don't attack - the FACTS he presents. There endeth the lesson.
This highlights a current problem that goes beyond the historical matter of Sutton's account i.e. today's media presentation of various powers opposed to each other. When it is painfully clear that e.g. the covid programme was international.
The Left are always keen to present some bold non-Western nation that is finally going to stick it to those Anglo-Americans. That's why we got the triumphalist bit about how Al Qaeda struck a blow against the American Empire. China was supposedly the origin of covid - as helpfully pointed out by that movie Contagion which, purely by coincidence of course, gave us the covid epic nine years in advance.
But I've never known an age that reeked so much of desperate distraction. Keep on cheering on the other side fighting your own corrupt side. Just don't look at the strings yanking all sides.