Tag Archives: absolute power

A Note on the Far Right’s Epoch Times

09 Monday Nov 2020

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

For those who have encountered the wild disinformation at times disseminated by The Epoch Times and either swallowed the bait, as with QAnon Conspiracy agitation and propaganda, or confronted and dismissed the same but didn’t fight, here’s a short list of additional reference online –>

https://magazine.atavist.com/stranger-than-fiction-epoch-times-falun-gong-trump-election-2020 – 10/23/2020

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/epoch-times-begins-hiding-its-connection-huge-pro-trump-ad-n1045416 – 8/22/2019
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/epoch-times-coronavirus-bioweapon-1.5548217 – 4/29/2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/white-house-reviews-incident-involving-epoch-times-photographer-handing-a-folder-to-trump/2018/09/18/e9d8b8ba-bac5-11e8-bdc0-90f81cc58c5d_story.html – 9/18/2018
https://www.westword.com/news/why-is-far-right-conspiracist-newspaper-epoch-times-being-stocked-at-colorado-capitol-11537390 – 10/29/2019
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-epoch-times/ – 11/9/2020
https://www.abc10.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/verify-unsolicited-paper-spreads-outlandish-covid-claims/103-9290495e-a501-44fa-b7df-0bb0e385328b – 5/20/2020

https://lostcoastoutpost.com/2020/jun/27/fake-news-what-epoch-times-and-why-did-it-arrive-m/ – 6/27/????

The Epoch Times opposes the Chinese Communist Party,[20] and promotes far-right politicians in Europe,[3][5] and backs President Donald Trump in the U.S.;[21] a 2019 report by NBC News showed it to be the second-largest funder of pro-Trump Facebook advertising after the Trump campaign.[22][23][24] The Epoch Media Group’s news sites and YouTube channels have spread conspiracy theories such as QAnon and anti-vaccination propaganda.[18][25][26] The organization frequently promotes other Falun Gong affiliated groups, such as the performing arts company, Shen Yun.[14][21]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epoch_Times

Soviet Era Communist Party power gave up the ghost at noon on December 25, 1991 when the Soviet Union officially acknowledged its dissolving in bankruptcy and Party nomenklatura (elites) turned into jackals tearing away the assets of the former state piece by piece. While the Communist Party persists in Russia, it is no longer a power there. President Vladimir Putin has made himself a “Vertical of Power” surrounded by politically enfeebled but immensely wealthy and otherwise powerful oligarchs, quite a few of which have made the sanctions list of the United States government.

Regarding China’s Communist Party: it has proven helpful in the minting of billionaires.

Posted to YouTube September 29, 2019.

Loyalty to Party | Loyalty to Putin | Loyalty to Trump

The most important loyalty of all: the worship of money.

Where are The Communists?

China’s zeitgeist — from predatory international lending to its passion for totalitarian political, religious, and social control — is troubling for the west, and I will have a post out on that soon. In the meantime, true American conservatives would do well to shift their talk away from communists and globalists and a horde of made-up and talked-up bogeys and move toward engagement with more authentic and challenging domestic and global issues and themes.

China produced nearly four in every 10 new billionaires this year, outpacing the number of new faces in the US and allowing Shanghai to leapfrog Hong Kong for the first time in terms of the number of super-rich, Hurun Report Inc said.

The world’s second-largest economy added 182 of 479 new billionaires, taking the tally in China to 799, according to the latest Hurun Global Rich List 2020. The US minted 59 new ones to raise its total to 626.

SCMP – “China produces 182 new billionaires, triple the new faces in the US, while Shanghai overtakes Hong Kong for the first time: Huron Report” – 2/26/2020

Klett said that during his stint at the Epoch Times, he had a front-row seat to the epistemic crisis triggered by Trump’s ascendancy, one that has made distinguishing truth from political fiction increasingly difficult. “In that first interview, I was being honest when I said I could be neutral. I really believed that was possible,” Klett admitted, hands shoved deep into his pockets as we walked down a Brooklyn street in search of a quieter bar. “By the time I left, just a few days before the election, I realized what everyone is still coming to terms with.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“That there’s no difference between the news and propaganda. That objectivity is about who has power.”

https://magazine.atavist.com/stranger-than-fiction-epoch-times-falun-gong-trump-election-2020 – 10/23/2020

–33–

FTAC: “An Unbounded Narcissism . . . .” A Comment on Absolute Power

23 Sunday Sep 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Religion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

It’s a bit preachy keen, but someone “Liked” it, and so I’ve elected to share it.

In the faith communities referencing Moses, competition for power and wealth through subscription and the many demonstrations of devotion and loyalty have produced some bloody “competitions” across time and space. The pious have long fought among themselves — schisms will do that — as well as taken aim at external enemies.

Has as much not been the way of the world?

This day is a little different: we may see one another through what we have to say, and hearing and seeing more, we may think a little more as well.

Moses challenged politically absolute power and with the guidance and power of God removed from it the Jews and the “mixed multitude” that would join them. Not much has changed. No one likes to be tyrannized.

The Jewish liberation story and much else about Judaism proved potently attractive enough to inspire uptake — give Hillel the Elder some credit — by the “restive of Rome”, i.e., those tiring of the brutality and excesses of the powerful. Even with eased conversions, the tribal ethnolinguistic culture (perhaps) could not begin to absorb the numbers, and the Romans looking for a new answer may have had other cultural needs better addressed by Jesus / Paul.

With Christianity in place, General Constantine finds his mission, and about 300 years later, General Muhammad develops his.

The Jews: they appear to worry much less about subscription, power, and wealth, and it’s pretty clear where and how the Hebrews have settled.

Aside: in 12th Century Hungary, laws designed by a Christian government to discriminate against Jews were upon activation applied equally to Muslims (ref. Raphael Patai’s _The Jews of Hungary).

This may be the best time to get off the medieval merry-go-round by looking forward while leaving some attitudes and beliefs plus archaic doctrines and methods far in the past where they belong.

–33–

FTAC: Despots – Different Talks –> Same Walk!

05 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics, Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

Different talks — same walk! When it comes to dictators, all are malignant narcissists.

Many want to keep repeating old arguments, especially, yawn, “communism v capitalism” but the truth is more like “sweet words — foul deeds”.

Add incitement, the role played by anti-Semitic cant and libel by despots through the ages.

In the eastern tradition too — I have in mind the Golden Horde — there appears to have been no difference in treatment between persons and property, and, in fact, for some (reference Richard Pipes books on Russian history) proof of sovereignty might be made to lie in the senseless destruction of either with impunity. And I would cite as another characteristic of the “authoritarian” breed the ability to visit suffering on others at will and with impunity.

On the street, they’re bullies; in office, presidents for life.

–33–

Also in Media: Speckhard on Torture

25 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Just as the authors identify the factors that are predictive of those individuals and situations that are most likely to give rise to torture, they also identify the psychosocial sequelae of engaging in torture. These include dissociative personality splinters, social isolation, avoidance of reminders, self-condemnation with guilt and shame, intrusive thoughts and flashbacks, nightmares and sleep disturbances, high arousal states with the inability to concentrate or sleep well, and drug and alcohol abuse to forget and painful emotional states upon remembering. Lastly, the authors identify the practices that can be put in place to protect individuals from crossing the line into perpetrating abuse, atrocities, and torture upon those placed in their custody. Torture, as noted by Article 1 of the United Nations Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatments (United Nations, 1984; 1987):

Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Speckhard, Anne and Charles Figley and Ardian Shajkovci.  “Psychosocial Drivers, Prevention and Sequelae of Engaging in Torture.”  International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism, April 17, 2017.

. . . the thoughtful individual needs to examine some core questions—the first being—does torture in any of it’s forms, including “torture lite” work? The answer appears to be a resounding no. Torture for the most part fails as a tactic because it does not leads to credible information, is problematic later for anyone we wish to prosecute, and may actually contribute far more to terrorism recruitment rather than to curbing terrorism. When dealing with al Qaeda for instance we must understand that most hardened terrorists who have blood on their hands have committed themselves to the idea of “martyrdom” and may be adept at misleading us when we believe they have cracked under torture. And when we resort to anything that is morally bankrupt they will later use it against us to show their constituents and potential recruits our “true colors”.

By contrast, interrogation that relies on rapport building has shown itself to yield positive results . . . .

Speckhard, Anne.  “Zero Dark Thirty — And the Real World of Torture, Enhanced Interrogation, Rendition and Prolonged Detention.”  Anne Speckhard, Ph.D, March 4, 2013.

Among other topics expertly engaged, Dr. Anne Speckhard has been working the issues on the subject of torture for many years.

If the repercussions are so bad and the results so thin, why do we persist with the same in practice?

BackChannels may suggest that engagement in torture represents the power of ownership of another experienced by the malign narcissist and is in the end, always, an expression of unbridled absolute power, i.e., the power to inflict suffering on others with impunity.

In his classic Russia Under the Old Regime, scholar Richard Pipes remarks on the meaning of sovereignty in the recession of Mongol power and subsequent princely Russian attitude toward property and persons as being alike — the power to destroy either the demonstration of sovereign ownership (approximate pages 70-80).

Note: between age, interests, and sedentary lifestyle at the desktop, your BackChannels editor is tiring and has two choice regarding loose scholarship: read less and slowly with pen, foolscap, and note cards at hand; continue remembering generally; or move off to a different kind of writing.  As regards Pipes, he’s masterful with analysis, complexity, and detail, and he will take the reader into the locking mechanisms between political exigency, political evolution in language, and the projection of political power.

For the purposes of this blog, the editor believe Moscow has deeply narcissistic issues supporting “absolute power” and all of the horror rightly associated with the demonstration of the complete absence of conscience in relation to the suffering of others.

On a more near historic note, author Anna Funder relays the testimony of a former Stasi prisoner arrested first for seditious leafleting and then again — having been motivated by the former imprisonment — for having attempted a crossing into then West Germany.  The form of torture during the second stay was sleep deprivation.  Here’s how that went down:

On the eleventh night, Miriam gave them what they wanted.  ‘I thought, “You people want an underground escape organisation?”  Well, I’ll give you one then.”

Fleischer had won.

‘There,’ he said, ‘that wasn’t so bad now, was it?  Why didn’t you tell us earlier and save yourself all this trouble?’  They let her sleep for a fortnight, and gave her one book each week.  She read it in a day, then started memorising the pages, walking up and down in the cell with the book to her chest.

‘In retrospect it’s funny,’ Miriam says, ‘but at the time it was pure, unalloyed frustration.  I cooked them up a story I would not have believed myself, even then.  It was utterly absurd.”

‘Miriam’ was on the far side of sixteen at the time she “cooked them up a story” in exchange for a little sleep.

Additional Reference

Funder, Anna.  Stasiland: Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall.  U.S. Edition, paperback.  New York: HarperCollins, 2002.

Pipes, Richard. Russia Under the Old Regime: The History of Civilization. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974.

Additional Reading Online

Bukovsky, Vladimir.  “Torture’s Long Shadow.”  The Washington Post, December 18, 2005:

One nasty morning Comrade Stalin discovered that his favorite pipe was missing. Naturally, he called in his henchman, Lavrenti Beria, and instructed him to find the pipe. A few hours later, Stalin found it in his desk and called off the search. “But, Comrade Stalin,” stammered Beria, “five suspects have already confessed to stealing it.”

This joke, whispered among those who trusted each other when I was a kid in Moscow in the 1950s, is perhaps the best contribution I can make to the current argument in Washington about legislation banning torture and inhumane treatment of suspected terrorists captured abroad. Now that President Bush has made a public show of endorsing Sen. John McCain’s amendment, it would seem that the debate is ending. But that the debate occurred at all, and that prominent figures are willing to entertain the idea, is perplexing and alarming to me. I have seen what happens to a society that becomes enamored of such methods in its quest for greater security; it takes more than words and political compromise to beat back the impulse.

Fair for Look-Up

“Abu Ghraib”

“Evin Prison”

“Saydnaya Prison”

Through torture, it would seem the torturer learns most of all about himself, if he learns anything, and when it’s over, he may be treated to the sight of himself in media as ever deranged, infantile, sadistic, and tyrannical.

–33–

 

 

Yuri Dmitriev Goes Home, But Trial Remains Open

30 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Russia

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

Dmitriev2007ByMediafond-522x-2President Vladimir Putin’s paranoid and punitive Russian state had taken Soviet Era type action against the fellow to the left, Yuri Dmitriev, in apparent retaliation for Dmitriev’s investigations of Stalin Era mass graves, the final evidence of the mass murdering that must have filled them.  The manner of action taken: “kompromat” — pictures of his undressed daughter framed by the regime as illicit for a show trial and consignment, for a while, to a psychiatric facility for evaluation.

Excerpt from the latest press release circulated by human rights advocate Elizabeth Childs:

His attorney, Victor Anufriev, says that Dmitriev is not out of danger yet. The date of the next hearing in the trial has not been announced, and it is not known if the Serbsky Institute also assessed whether nine photographs of Dmitriev’s daughter submitted in evidence should be considered pornographic in nature — a sticking point in the trial, as the prosecution has failed in several attempts to have expert analysts deem them as such. “I am sure that the prosecutor’s office will continue to pursue its goal of imprisoning Dmitriev at any cost and find some grubby organization that will give them the results they want,” Anufriev told the 7×7 news site.

Husband and Father Yuri Dmitriev at Home

DmitrievAtHome

Included with the Childs’ press release: Anna Artemyeva’s photo for Novaya Gazeta, January 27, 2018.

Previously in BackChannels

Dangerous History: Russia Slides Backward: A Note on Yuri Dmitriev and Moscow’s Return to Politically Directed “Punitive Psychiatry” (Jan. 11, 2018).

Additional Background and Update

Nechepurenko, Ivan.  “Gulag Historian Ordered to Undergo Psychiatric Testing in Russia.”  The New York Times, January 11, 2018:

At the end of December, an expert group found no pornographic content in the pictures, and the court, in Karelia, a region in northwestern Russia, refused to extend his detention beyond Jan. 28.

But at the same time, the court took a chapter from the Stalinist past, ordering that Mr. Dmitriev be sent to Moscow for psychiatric tests while also asking for a new review of the photographs by other experts.

Reuters.  “Russian Stalin-era Great Terror exposer freed from jail pending trial.”  January 27, 2018.

Memorial Human Rights Center (Old Web):

The Human Rights Center “Memorial” is a self-governed noncommercial civil organization, whose members are united by humanistic and moral principles and the aspiration to assist the defense of human rights and the formation of people’s civil dignity.

Foundation date: April 1st , 1993.

European Network: Remembrance and Solidarity.  “Russian society “Memorial”.  October 16, 2014.

Further Reference Ongoing

English language updates: The Dmitriev Affair 

Faceook: Free Yuri Dmitriev (English)

Twitter: @FreeYuDmitriev

MEMORIAL: An International Historical, Educational, Human Rights And Charitable Society

Related on site: “Yuri Dmitriyev Released from Detention.”  January 1, 2018.

–33–

Dangerous History: Russia Slides Backward: A Note on Yuri Dmitriev and Moscow’s Return to Politically Directed “Punitive Psychiatry”

11 Thursday Jan 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Free Speech, Journalism, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics, Psychology, Russia

≈ Comments Off on Dangerous History: Russia Slides Backward: A Note on Yuri Dmitriev and Moscow’s Return to Politically Directed “Punitive Psychiatry”

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 

Dmitriev2007ByMediafond-522x

Yuri Dmitriev by Mediafond (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons.

ManuPsy-1974-App-VI-524

Bukovsky, Vladimir and Semyon Gluzman.  A Manual on Psychiatry for Dissenters. (URL is to PDF). 1974.

The BackChannels editor has to wear “readers” too, but to spare some squinting here’s the most critical pull from the small print in the above image:

Dissenters, as a rule, have enough legal grounding so as not to make mistakes during their investigation and trial, but when confronted by a qualified psychiatrist with a directive from above to have them declared non-responsible, they have found themselves absolutely powerless.

Kafka comes to mind.

So does Milan Kundera’s famous statement: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

President Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship has chosen for Russians the erasure of their memory and gone after the culturally healing human rights organization Memorial.

While Yuri Dimitriev’s dark adventure into Putin’s Hell gains traction in the western human rights community, another Memorial notable has been apparently framed (here relayed in shortest form):

Oyub Titiev

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/01/russia-rights-defender-arbitrarily-arrested-in-chechnya/ – 1/11/2018
–
https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2018/01/276951.htm – 1/11/2018
–
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/10/chechnya-under-fire-after-human-rights-activist-held-for-drugs-possession – 1/10/2018

BackChannels wishes not to dilute the singular and stunning insult to the world that is the “Dmitriev Affair”, but it’s evident the Phantom of the Soviet has in mind the planting and rooting of Old Totalitarian Poison even with the world’s entire New Intelligentsia taking notice.

A Loose Note on Related Poli-Psy

Expressed as a personal trope: “Absolute Power” becomes inevitably the power to visit suffering on others with impunity.

Expressed as a personal trope: according to Richard Pipes (and now I shall have to relocate the reference), as the power of the Mongols receded, Russian princes had nonetheless internalized the idea that property and person could be (and should be) treated as the same thing, and proof of sovereignty was to be found in the permit to destroy either at will and without consequence.

For the malignant among narcissists, it would seem the suffering of another should have no consequence other than to affirm the power of the narcissist’s own blind will.  All the techniques of theater — for controlling family, if small; for controlling nations, if large — may apply to the artifice of presenting “reality” with the intention of framing and creating popular — and a neither too bright nor curious nor politically empowered — perception.

Reference Related to Yuri Dmitriev

ABC News.  “Fears Russian historian who exposed Stalin’s crimes may be falsely declared insane.”  January 10, 2018:

Some of Russia’s leading cultural figures say Mr Dmitriev was framed because his focus on Stalin’s crimes — he found a mass grave with up to 9,000 bodies dating from the Soviet dictator’s Great Terror in the 1930s — conflicts with the latter-day Kremlin narrative that Russia must not be ashamed of its past.

The narrative has taken on added importance ahead of a March presidential election, with polls showing incumbent Vladimir Putin, who uses his country’s World War II victory when Stalin was in charge to bolster national pride, is on track to win.

Mr Putin asserted last year that what he called an “excessive demonisation of Stalin” was being used to undermine Russia.

Activatica.  “The Arrest of Karelian ‘Memorial” Head Yuri Dmitriev: What is Known.”  March 22, 2017:

In general, the situation in Karelia is complex. On one hand, Karelia is a region where many exiles are left, the whole region was filled with camps and exiles, and the memory of this is alive at the personal level. And the authorities of Karelia have, for a rather long time, supported the activities of “Memorial” and various structures for perpetuating memory. When Dmitriev discovered the Sandarmokh burial site, the Karelian authorities cooperated and held a contest to landscape this place. But at the same time, there were efforts to conceal and obstruct the receipt of information on the side of the secret services. They also tried to pressure Dmitriev six years ago. On one side the authorities helped, but on the other side, some power structures interfered. And in the past couple years, pressure on Dmitriev has intensified, as an independent historian.

Ayres, Sabra.  “An outspoken research of Stalin’s crimes fights for his own fate and freedom in Russia.”  Los Angeles Times, July 24, 2017:

A small clearing in a dense northwestern Russian forest marks the site where, 20 years ago, Yuri Dmitriev discovered a group of mass graves containing victims of Josef Stalin’s Great Terror.

Using detailed documents uncovered in KGB archives, Dmitriev was able to piece together the location where Stalin’s execution squads killed and buried more than 9,500 people from 1937 to 1938. The documents contained the dates and names of those killed, as well as the executioners’ names. During the next two decades, Dmitriev worked meticulously to document every victim’s story.

Bukovsky, Vladimir.  “Punitive Psychiatry (1977).”  The Bukovsky Archives.  Vladimir Bukovsky’s foreward to Russia’s political hospitals (1977) by Sidney Bloch and Peter Reddaway.

Luhn, Alec.  “Gulag grave hunter unearths uncomfortable truths in Russia.”  The Guardian, August 3, 2017:

“For our government to become … accountable, we need to educate the people,” Dmitriyev said of his efforts to uncover details of Soviet repression.

But not everyone wants to remember this forgotten history, especially amid Russia’s current patriotic fervour. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said in June that “excessive demonisation” of Stalin has been a “means of attacking the Soviet Union and Russia”, and several branches of Memorial have been declared “foreign agents” in recent years.

U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Russia.  “U.S. Mission to Russia Concerned with Charges Against Yury Dmitriev.”  May 31, 2017:

The U.S. Mission to Russia is concerned by what appear to be politically-motivated criminal charges against prominent human rights activist and historian Yury Dmitriev. Mr. Dmitriev is a respected historian whose work has been instrumental in uncovering mass burial sites and founding the Sandarmokh Memorial Complex in Karelia. We call on Russia to transparently uphold the rule of law and respect human rights and fundamental freedoms enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We also call on Russia to respect its international human rights obligations, including those related to the prohibition on arbitrary arrest or detention and respect for fair trial guarantees.

Osborn, Andrew.  “Russian historian who exposed Stalin’s crimes faces enforced psychiatric testing.”  Reuters, January 9, 2018:

A previous psychiatric evaluation declared him to be of sound mind and a court-sanctioned expert group found no pornographic content in nine photographs of his daughter that are at the center of the case against him, overturning the earlier findings of other experts commissioned by prosecutors.

Yarovaya, Anna.  “The Yuri Dmitriev Affair”.  The Independent Barents Observer.  March 11, 2017:

What always struck me about Dmitriev was his enthusiasm, which materialized less in the help he gave me and more in his attitude to history, to events that had occurred many years ago. For example, in the same cemetery where I shot the film, he found the remains of a POW. None of the local authorities was in a hurry to bury the exhumed “youth,” as Dmitriev called him. So Dmitriev put the bones in his garage. A while later, he secured a spot in Peski Cemetery, found a sponsor to help him buy a gravestone, and asked the philologist Valentina Dvinskaya to translate the phrase “To the victims of war, disappeared but not forgotten” into German so that it could be engraved on the headstone. He did all this for an unknown man who had been killed over sixty years ago.

It was only later I realized that Yuri Dmitriev was the same Yuri Dmitriev who had founded the Sandarmokh Memorial Cemetery, who was involved in investigating the Krasny Bor Forest NKVD execution site in Karelia, who had catalogued over 13,000 names of victims of the Great Terror of 1937–1938 in Karelia and published them in The Book of Remembrance, which runs to thousands of pages.

Wikipedia.  “Memorial”.

The Dmitriev Affair (Website)

–33–

Excerpt: “. . . First Political Terrorist Organization in History . . .”

16 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Russia, United States of America

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Pipes, Richard.  The Russian Revolution.  P. 142. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1990.

Below: bold type added.

The author noted with dismay the effects of radical propaganda on the peasants:

How curiously our speeches, our concepts were interpreted by the peasant mind! . . . their conclusions and comparisons utterly astonished me.  “We have it better under the Tsar.”  Something struck me in the head, as if a nail had been driven into it . . . .  There, I said, are the fruits of propaganda!  We do not destroy illusions but reinforce them.  We reinforce the old faith of the people in the Tsar.”

The disillusionment with the people pushed the most determined radicals to terrorism.  While many of the disappointed Socialists-Revolutionaries abandoned the movement and a handful adopted the doctrines of German Social-Democracy, a dedicated minority formed a secret organization called the People’s Will (Narodnaia Volia).  The mission of its thirty full-time members, banded in an Executive Committee, was to fight the tsarist regime by means of systematic terror: on its founding, it passed a “sentence” of death on Alexander II.  It was the first political terrorist organization in history and the model for all subsequent organizations of this kind in Russia and elsewhere.  Resort to terror was an admission of isolation: as one of the leaders of the People’s Will would later concede, terror

requires neither the support nor the sympathy of the country.  It is enough to have one’s convictions, to feel one’s despair, to be determined to perish.  The less a country wants revolution, the more naturally will they turn to terror who want, no matter what, to remain revolutionaries, to cling to their cult of revolutionary destruction.

The stated mission of the People’s Will was to assassinate government officials, for the twin goal of demoralizing the government and breaking down the awe in which the masses held the Tsar.  In the words of the Executive Committee:

Terrorist activity . . . has as its objective undermining the fascination with the government’s might, providing an uninterrupted demonstration of the possibility of struggling against the government, in this manner lifting the revolutionary spirit of the people and its faith in the success of the cause, and finally, organizing the forces capable of combat.

The ultimate political goal of the People’s Will was the convocation of a National Assembly through which the nation would express its wishes.  The People’s Will was a highly centralized organization, the decisions of the Executive Committee being binding on all followers, known as “vassals.”  Members were expected to dedicate themselves totally to the revolutionary cause, and if called upon, to sacrifice to it their properties and even their lives.

I have for months spent a good deal of time each day passing along the “Hey, Martha’s” of breaking or recent news, primarily using the BackChannels reader page on Facebook to do it.

That ain’t writing, and even with highlighting and juxtaposing stories (“Related:” appears in the first one or two comments pointing to additional reading), it’s not really opining either.  At best, the method shares this blog’s editor’s interests and outlook of the day.  Much on the web becomes media passing along other media.  With that in mind, both internal reflection and weather — and aesthetic charm — seemed to point toward 19th Century time and the luxury of long reading.

Well, lookee up there — and into the pages wrought by the extraordinary historian Richard Pipes.

Fair use?

Fair advertising and advisement:

Having delved into other of Pipes’ work a short while ago with Russia Under the Old Regime, I felt the present volume its companion – and what a rich companion it is turning out (with 684 pages left to read).

To be fair, one cannot share the whole book, technically, at least, except by recommending it or joining others in classroom or colloquy to discuss it.

As much characterizes a process in democratic and responsible governance in which the general public may follow good advice — buy the book or take it out of the library — but what portion does becomes no longer the “general public” but an enlightened public cleaving away from former peers.

Putin’s game with election hacking favoring our President Trump?

While collusion would seem a possibility that the most determined of ongoing investigations may well dredge up and beat into reality, one might consider the alternative of interpreting Moscow as cynically narcissistic and malign in using methods still related to the “People’s Will” to disparage our noble democracy by seeing elected to head it a bullying businessman and entirely inexperienced politician.

With that interpretation for a base, Moscow (and Tehran) would seem to believe they have figured out how to divide us and undermine our confidence in our democratic integrity and the related institutions and processes that guaranty American justice (truly for all) and robust internal as well as external security.  However, now that that possibility may be seen — 🙂 — BackChannels is starting to like this latest in Presidents of the United States of America.

Go Trump!

And tackle Putin in his nasty dash back to Russia’s imperial glory and apparent future without the benefit of conscience.

Make America Great Again.

–33–

FTAC: After the Cold War – An Observation

09 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

We may have misinterpreted the Cold War and most certainly misrepresented it as an ideological war predicated on the spread of “Communism” when, in fact, the tension has been always about autocratic / authoritarian political culture.

Open democratic systems strive to balance and limit the power of any one organization, party, or person to impress will on others without consent.

Dictatorships inherently represent police states, and the end of that kind of power becomes inevitably the power to visit suffering on others with impunity.

The “Empire” was Russia.

When the Cold War ended, the west may have opened its doors, its hearts, and its wallets to encourage democracy and the open market systems, and in some ways it started to work: the posture helped produced Kremlin adversary Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a part of the starting-gate mafia (to whom key state assets were sold) whose wealth transformed him into a modern and moderate capitalist politician.

The it’s-all-mine emperor-to-be (so today it seems) in the Kremlin disagreed with both liberalism and westernization and appears to have turned instead to building a feudal network of power to be distributed through the wealth of a massively enriched elite worldwide.

I have heard that Russia has exported as much as $3 trillion into western (rule-of-law) assets (I don’t have the time frame for that history of capital flight and seemingly quite compulsive and mad spending, the kind that doubles Trump’s money on a property and goes on to raze the mansion, thereby producing a $92 million undeveloped luxury beach front lot — it would be only money were it not also an investment tied to foreign wealth).

It would seem our businesses and properties may be working to benefit “Moscow” — Putin’s nobility — after all.

Richard Pipes book, referenced below, suggests that Russia’s princes adopted the outlook of the Mongols as regards power, property, and persons as the power of the same diminished over the land.  That early and traumatic experience with the Golden Horde appears then to have left its mark within the political culture that came to stand in its place.  By about 1702, the relationship between the powerful and the ruled had produced sufficient resentment and related insecurity for Tsar Peter I to issue a decree installing Russia’s first secret police organization:

According to its provisions, the head of the Preobrazhenskii Prikaz had the right to investigate at his discretion any institution and any individual, regardless of rank, and to take whatever steps he thought necessary to uncover pertinent information and forestall seditious acts . . . .  No one — not even the Senate which Peter had set up to supervise the country’s administration — had the right to inquire into its affairs.  In its chambers thousands were tortured and put to death, religious dissenters and drunks overheard to make disparaging remarks about the sovereign.  The uses of the police, however, were not confined to political offences, broadly defined as these were.  Whenever the government ran into any kind of difficulty, it tended to call upon its organs for help.  Thus, the complex task of managing the construction of St. Petersburg, after various unsuccessful attempts was in the end entrusted to that city’s police chief.

The Preobrazhenskii Prikaz seems to have been the first institution in history created to deal specifically and exclusively with political crimes.  The scope of its operations and its complete administrative independence mark it as the prototype of a basic organ of all modern police states.

Pipes, Richard. Russia Under the Old Regime: The History of Civilization.  P. 130.  New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974.

Related in Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oprichnik
Era: Ivan the Terrible

Modern theories suggest that the motivating purpose for the organization and existence of the Oprichniki was to suppress people or groups opposed to the Tsar. Known to ride black horses and led by Ivan himself, the group was known to terrorize civilian populations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhrana
Era: Alexander II, Alexander III / 1881-1917

Formed to combat political terrorism and left-wing revolutionary activity,[2] the Okhrana operated offices throughout the Russian Empire and satellite agencies in a number of foreign nations. It was concerned primarily with monitoring the activities of Russian revolutionaries abroad, including Paris, where Pyotr Rachkovsky was based (1884–1902).

The task was performed by multiple methods, including covert operations, undercover agents, and “perlustration”—reading of private correspondence. Even the Foreign Agency served this purpose. The Okhrana was notorious for its agents provocateurs, including Dr. Jacob Zhitomirsky (a leading Bolshevik and close associate of Vladimir Lenin), Yevno Azef, Roman Malinovsky and Dmitry Bogrov.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_Soviet_secret_police_agencies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_rulers

The Russian Section of the editor’s library offers additional and in-depth reading for those on the edges of Russian Studies, which were necessarily a big deal during the Cold War but another element much diminished when the end officially arrived on December 25, 1991.

–33–