Tag Archives: authoritarianism

FTAC: MEC: Russia’s Earlier Influence of the Palestinians

13 Thursday Jul 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia

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I’ve harped on this answer around Facebook, and may have gotten a bad rep for it, but I stand behind what I have found in relation to the middle east conflict and the political history of the 20th Century:

The west and the Palestinians (together) have been duped by Moscow!

Repeat it twelve times — because it’s true.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/

I know that Arafat and Abbas are deeply admired figures in the Palestinian territories, but I / we also know that the Palestinians have been deeply controlled by the powerful management of their information space accompanied by political repression.

None may have peace without integrity and none may have integrity without full acknowledgement and comprehension of how Russia’s history and political culture contributed to Nazism and to the later formulation of Palestinian “liberation” rhetoric — and then the raiding of the proceeds of the business.

Regarding the path of the forged “Protocols” and their transfer into Germany in the 1920s:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/27/excerpt-1920s-the-spread-of-hate-russia-germany-laqueur/

The Palestinians may not know it, but they’re in good position, professor Dajani especially, to become the world’s leaders in bona fide intellectual history IF they can get The Bear off their backs.

That’s something to think about.

In the interest of peace, one may also lend consideration to whether evolving and modifying the systems of infantilizing disinformation (for “the masses” who would fare better being treated like human beings) and related loyalty and patronage should be changed quickly or slowly — but they have to be changed IF the Palestinians and their advocates (or interlocutors) genuinely wish for better lives — real dignity, real freedom, honorable prosperity — all the way around.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/12/ftac-tip-to-the-kgbs-amplification-of-middle-eastern-anti-semitism/

Repressive, selfish, and totalitarian regimes hide what they do by shielding their followers from cogent and legitimate information. They basically keep their own in order — loyalty to powerful narcissists — by keeping them deprived of knowledge.

The officials who continue to harp on Mein Kampf, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and countless rumors that serve as “blood libels” should be of another day a long time ago.

Those who sustain such practices with their mouths should be regarded as phantoms by Israelis and Palestinians equally.

The prompt for the rant had been reference to a Palestinian Authority “leader” talking up the forgery that was The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the question raised was what to do today about that kind of baldfaced lying.

BackChannels shorter answer: drag it out into the sun where all may see it.

–33–

Also in Media: “War Against the West” by Ian Buruma – Project Syndicate – March 13, 2017

20 Monday Mar 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media

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There is at least one good test of where people stand: their view of the international investor and philanthropist George Soros. Like Kolnai, Soros is a Hungarian-born Jew, and has lived his adult life in Britain and the US. After the collapse of the Soviet empire in the late 1980s, Soros has done more or less what US government agencies did after World War II. He has spent large chunks of his personal fortune on the promotion of liberal democratic values in former Communist countries. One of the many beneficiaries of his largesse is the current prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, who studied at Oxford on a Soros scholarship.

Now, biting the hand that fed him, Orbán recently called Soros’s “trans-border empire” a vicious threat to Hungary’s national identity. Soros, in his view, is a “predator” backed by “tons of money.” Orbán is a fiery advocate of “illiberal democracy,” as are other elected autocrats in former Soviet satellites. “In every country, they will want to displace Soros,” he declared in December.

Orbán is right about a few countries at least . . . .

Read what comes before and after the excerpt: War Against the West by Ian Buruma – Project Syndicate

Also in Media: “How to lose a constitutional democracy” – Vox – February 21, 2017 

22 Wednesday Feb 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Politics

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The most important reason the sudden collapse of democracy is rare — and a key reason it is unlikely in the US — is that a sudden derogation of democracy simply isn’t necessary. Would-be autocrats have a cheaper option to hand, one that is far less likely to catalyze opposition and resistance: the slow, insidious curtailment of democratic institutions and traditions.

Source: How to lose a constitutional democracy – Vox

FTAC: Why Ain’t You Special?

16 Thursday Feb 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Philology, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Russia, Turkey

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https://youtu.be/hFJjanlfr3k

The modern west is fighting the feudal past.

Where feudalism appears as though it might prevail, those invested in their most parochial definitions of culture — x gender x race x religion — take license to express views congruent with their view of power.

Our world has come to naturally combine states founded on ethnolinguistic traditions (our inventory stands below 7,000 living languages with several lost to disuse annually), and most have come to recognize the legitimacy of that course, with the existence of accommodating but still assertive mixed states. Baloch, Hebrews, Kurds, Pashtun, and Russians 　 have coherence in legacies far predating the uptake of Christianity or Islam, and one may wish for each such some more peaceful survival and co-evolution in the world. The English — the British Empire and the surviving Crown System states — have taken a more heterogeneous course founded in “modern” or more recently established post-Enlightenment ideals and values.

Moscow begs to object, but in deeply hypocritical fashion, and often criminal, it cuts deals before the immense force of “realpolitik”. Kadyrov, Moscow’s tribal anchor for Chechnya, has validated honor killing and imposed (I think) the wearing of traditional “Islamic” dress in his state. The authoritarian minerets-are-our-helmets Erdogan needs little description as regards his sense of mission. And Mahmoud Abbas . . . alas, KGB — he doesn’t represent “The Palestinians”: he represents political absolutism.

In our lovely all-mixed-up democratic estate, the “absolutists” whom I conflate with “malignant narcissists” appear to have similar ideas about their exceptional character in the history of the world.

The mention of a white supremacist organization serves as a topic starter.  The conversational partner wanted to know whether the same related to Russian ultra-nationalism.

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FTAC – Trump and America’s Broadest Divisions

25 Wednesday Jan 2017

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

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I’m not going to jump all over Trump’s case. We in the United States have become a deeply polarized people given to extremes.

The general layout:

“Brown” – New Nationalism – Conservative – Far Right

“Red-Green” – Old Comrades and Neo-Islamists – Far Left

Neither “Brown” nor “Red-Green” should be defining classically liberal American politics, but those color codes have made deep inroads into both of our political parties, and that’s leaving the middle and moderate ranks anemic, or at least looking so.

I’m remaining stuck in the middle!

🙂

As always, and also, I want to follow what actually happens over a little bit of time — the famous “First 100 Days” may do — before becoming strident about predictions — and I hope never to confuse “political conservatism” with “conservatism in research”, i.e., careful data collection and thoughtful analysis over time.

BackChannels does not want to practice writing the same article over and over; however, with repetition of some ideas comes increased compression for the same.

If nothing else, this post — and this blog — advocate for empiricism and high integrity in journalism matched by some breadth in knowledge and insight.

Critical reading and reasoning abilities also count in the politics we American have either dealt ourselves or allowed to overtake us.  If en masse we’re subconsciously intent on becoming, keeping, or aligning ourselves in brutal, vicious, and vulgar mobs, then power may become the permanent province of an immensely wealthy business and political elite, i.e., our democracy will simply melt away into just another authoritarian, capricious, feudal, and spirit crushing nightmare.

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Also in Media: “András Kósa: The speech of the chief, Őszöd ten years later, Part III” – Hungarian Spectrum – December 24, 2016

26 Monday Dec 2016

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

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. . . it has to be noted that in the mid-to-late 2000s, the European Union and the Obama administration viewed Putin as a leader who was democratizing cautiously. During his first visit to Berlin, the entire Bundestag gave him a standing ovation. Then, in the Russian parliamentary elections in the fall of 2011, he had to pilfer 17 percentage points to be able to win. In the spring 2012 Presidential election, he again needed to cheat to attain a “victory,” though less so this time. I think these things have changed Putin. He realized that the policies he had pursued up until then did not automatically expand his power, so he launched a campaign of harsh repression at home (including the killing of journalists and political rivals, remaking the Russian criminal code, and restricting the freedom of assembly), and again began to assert the conquering pursuits of Great Russia.

Reading highly recommended!

András Kósa: The speech of the chief, Őszöd ten years later, Part III – Hungarian Spectrum – 12/24/2016.

FTAC – Anti-Semitism – Horseshoe Theory – Amplification of Far Left / Far Right Politics

26 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Russia

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An Israeli with weight on the Left foot swung Right and noted the presence of anti-Semitic thought in both in quarters outside of the Jewish community.

BackChannels felt some explanation due.

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

The encouragement and promotion of anti-Semitism may be viewed as an emblem of the medieval world, for it has been used to control mobs and, sadly, thieve from and murder Jews.

Today, Moscow may represent the major remnant analog for the “medieval political absolutism” that exploits such tools, and while President Putin appears to have been friendly toward Israel, KGB history, .e.g., https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/12/ftac-tip-to-the-kgbs-amplification-of-middle-eastern-anti-semitism/ and Moscow’s anti-western turn in Syria, replete with, at minimum, “talk-to” relationships with PFLP, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Tehran may suggest another story running at the same time.

KGB-style political theater may be also a part of the Syrian tableaux:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/09/syria-assad-isil-background/

“Allahu Akbar” Terrorism has encouraged patriotic nationalist responses wherever it has taken place, and so has heightened both a “New Nationalism” and a corresponding Far Left reaction to that. On my blog, Back-Channels, I refer to to “Brown” (Nationalists) vs “Red-Green” (Old Comrades, Neo-Islamists). In effect, Islamic terrorism has opened a large crack (right down the center of the aisle in U.S. politics) in the cohesion of EU and NATO states.

Notably, Putin has encouraged both Far Left and Far Right political movements, organizations, and personalities and his choice of partners beyond “Assad-Khamenei” may include Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orban, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan. I’ll leave Donald Trump out of this for the time being, but, in essence, Putin, himself rather medieval, has encouraged conditions for amplifying the medieval worldview — and it’s on display in Syria.

I have been following these post-Cold War politics for some time and feel the Big Picture perception — not conspiracy or fear mongering but analysis backed by strong sources and careful reasoning — may be helpful.

–33–

FTAC – ‘The Masses’, Putin, and News Awareness

13 Sunday Nov 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Politics, Russia

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I generally don’t use the term “the masses”, and when I do, it’s to note how dehumanizing a term it really is.

Regarding Putin’s methods in ascent: one might credit Berezovsky and perhaps the Moscow Apartment Bombings.

On the chess pieces:

http://rbth.com/business/2016/03/09/where-does-the-russian-orthodox-church-get-its-money-from_574079

http://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-resurrects-the-kgb-moscow-security/

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/110-oligarchs-own-a-third-of-russias-wealth-8869725.html

Of course, the citizens of every state needs must care about their own lives first — biological, familial and otherwise social, financial, emotional, spiritual. Security and stability in those aspects of life are generally part of everyone’s quality of living.

That Putin has been able to sustain and transform many aspects of the defunct Soviet Union tells a story about the kind of political power exercised in relation to malignant narcissism. In effect, he has got Russia revolving around himself, and for the discomforts he has caused, the Russians have channels today for faith and patriotism. The “Communists” are gone but the essence of the old nomenklatura has been transformed into an ultra-nationalist and neo-imperial enterprise.

The public that has wished to take an interest in foreign affairs has plenty of information — responsible, valid, and reliable — for working, but large constituencies may only attend to so much in aggregate. I would not think of such as “ignorant masses” but rather people with families and jobs and struggles and worries of their own. They may find what they need to know WHEN it matters to them, when the dots circle back to their own interests, and they perceive that.

The stimulus for the response made note of the people voting Putin into power.

Mention had already been made of Berezovsky and the Moscow Apartment Bombings.

Perhaps “Russia’s state-controlled press” should have been added to the “chess pieces” –Russian Orthodox Church, KGB Revival, Oligarch Aristocracy — section of the above response: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/vladimir-putin-russia-news-media_us_56215944e4b0bce34700b1df .  I sometimes indulge in minor revision, but not this time.

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