Nonetheless, some general American ignorance has brought us to this pass where some on the Far White Right (predominantly) believe their nation under assault by mysterious communist-globalist-socialist forces while scrimmages within Far Out Left circles believe the nation reverted to the 1930s and “race war” is on the way.
If you believe and can speak it with good conscience.
Posted to YT October 2, 2020.
Americans don’t need “Us v Them” here.
Americans need a “We” and an “Us”.
We Americans have a lot of data, ideas, and impressions within us when we wake and coming at us through media, especially online, throughout the day, and it may be important to consider not only the sources of our news but their integrity and our individual preparation as receivers of it.
Do we really believe our neighbors might turn into Nazis?
Do we really believe in “Globalists”?
Might we admit that for competitor “superpowers” and others, democracy proves unattractive and America is only a prize to be plundered (“by any means necessary”)?
Might we from time to time review what is in our hearts and lay that against not only what we read but HOW we read?
Do we read to feel good about ourselves and how we prefer to see the world?
Do we read for something called “truth”?
Had President Trump proven a better character throughout his life and proven a dispassionate fighter in defense of America and one more deeply engaged in issues than the promotion of his own image, I’d have chosen a different tack for this election eve. However, my own concern for the nation has to do with an apparent abandonment of “the aisle” and keen, knowledgeable, and moderate approach to domestic and foreign policy certain of America’s political ethics, ideals, instructions, tenets, and values.
Those who have normalized their own extremes would be wise to reconsider the validity of their fears and put in place a demand for ever clear, accurate, complete — plus valid and reliable — information about everything — and if certain of their own certainty (and belligerent about it) reconsider their own methods in research, reasoning, and rhetoric.
Fascists viewed the purging of leftists from Spain as the political reaction that was required in order to re-establish the monarchy in place of the Second Republic. The Francoist Repression was motivated by the right-wing notion of a limpieza social, a cleansing of society. This meant the killing of people viewed as enemies of the state began immediately upon the Nationalists’ capture of a place.[7]:98 Ideologically, the Roman Catholic Church legitimized the killing by the Civil Guard (national police) and the Falange as the defense of Christendom.[7]:88–9[10]
Trump’s support of Israel is about respect for tribal identification and the narcissism related to it. It matches Putin’s views of a renewed and sustained feudal world — a feudal modernity — featuring absolute authority, fated and unquestionable, placed in the future rather than left to history.
Accompanying that vision: a low-intensity war of re-conquest in Crimea, Ukraine and the tragic obscenity that has been made of Syria.
Most of us carry what we value of our pasts with us through life, but we try also to leave our futures open for good things to come.
These “malignarcs” (malignant narcissists), by comparison, wish to force the future forward into the past. Their personal visions — and behavior — have been dreadful, myopic, selfish as have been the habits, in lesser and greater measures, of caliphs, dictators, emperors, and feudal lords through time: for the mafia-type power and wealth, their methods, willful and thuggish, have been more known to history than those of democracy. However, our Mr. Trump has a powerful employer and a job defining his position, and whether he personally likes it or not, he is duty-bound to promote democracy — the systems of checked and distributed power — against the political absolutism known to dictators.
As has been my habit with BackChannels, the titles promise greater and lengthier articles while format and inclination keep the verbiage down to a paragraph bloc.
With the public focused on the air assault of “9/11” (see the gems placed in reference) and numerous “Allahu Abkar” attacks worldwide across many years, the patriotic reaction has permanently altered the west’s political and security societies — and yet we wish to defend authentic democracies against the potential for the rise of the Orwellian police state and with it, indeed, a “new nobility”, an invisible, unimpeachable, unquestionable (“military-industrial”) aristocracy.
Omar first heard about the graffiti at morning recess. It was winter, he was 14, in the middle of 10th grade, and his friends said it was just a prank. The day before, just after school, a handful of Omar’s classmates found some red paint and scrawled, “Your turn doctor,” on the school’s wall. Under most circumstances, in most places, such behavior might provoke a slap on the wrist — perhaps a stern visit from the police. But in Daraa, Syria, in February 2011, those words could get you killed.
The local secret police soon arrested 15 boys between the ages of 10 and 15, detaining them under the control of Gen. Atef Najeeb, a cousin of President Bashar al-Assad.
In a gloomy interrogation room the children were beaten and bloodied, burned and had their fingernails pulled out by grown men working for a regime whose unchecked brutality appears increasingly to be sowing the seeds of its undoing.
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 . . . .
Evola became a darling of Italian Fascists, and Italy’s post-Fascist terrorists of the 1960s and 1970s looked to him as a spiritual and intellectual godfather.They called themselves Children of the Sun after Evola’s vision of a bourgeoisie-smashing new order that he called the Solar Civilization. Today, the Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn includes his works on its suggested reading list, and the leader of Jobbik, the Hungarian nationalist party, admires Evola and wrote an introduction to his works.
Source is as presented above.
Note: BackChannels’ editorial stance is pro-democracy, pro-“American Wildness”, pro-creativity (the editor may have had more fun writing fiction or playing music). 🙂
BackChannels believes that by way of “Reflexive Control”, Moscow has manipulated “Allahu Akbar Terrorism” to promote patriotic nationalism wherever it has been able to get a manipulated “lone wolf” or more organized terrorist attack to take place. In keeping with that hypothesis, it observes some politically psychological similarities between Le Pen, Orban, Erdogan, and Trump, if not others (the “New Nationalists”), if not others.
Given President Putin’s drive to reestablish the feudal mode in EU/NATO states, it seems less than surprising to find online these articles involving renewed interest in fascism.
Three factors led to Russia’s defeat and any outside actor will have to deal with these factors should they wish to drastically change the Afghan reality in a lasting way.
To change Afghanistan, an outside power must do the following:
install a national leader who is a Pashtun but who is recognized by, and able to make lasting deals with, the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara ethnic groups;
effectively co-opt the most significant tribal players;
cut off sanctuary to any insurgent element exploiting the porous border with Pakistan.
The Cold War ended on December 25, 1991, and although the Phantoms of the Soviet would seem to haunt Moscow as the revived capital of a persistent KGB State under the guidance of President Putin, the axis of east-west competition has been both profoundly changed and clarified.
Throughout the Soviet Era, Washington promoted the virtues of Capitalism against Communism, and for most Americans, that argument between “centralized economic planning” and the “free enterprise system” appears to have sufficed for explaining east-west hostilities.
Perhaps there was more to it then — something more about the soul of historic Russian politics in the mix — but the public — or perhaps only this editor, lol — would not seem to have been able to “get it” until now:
Medieval Political Absolutism
v
Modern Democratic and Checked Distribution of Power
In the process of developing his own political stance, Sebastian Gorka, the son of a fiercely anti-communist, anti-Soviet father — one Paul Gorka betrayed by the infamous spy Kim Philby and subsequently captured by communist officials in Hungary and imprisoned and tortured — appears to have focused on Moscow’s continuing totalitarian aspect but not on the medieval aspects that may characterize his own authoritarian response to challengers of American democratic principles and values (including America’s classically liberal outlook).
Instead, perhaps in reflexive response to Islamic Terrorism, Gorka may have played precisely into Moscow’s feudal worldview, preferring to amplify the forces of Islamic Jihad as part of the Trump Administration’s sense of mission while missing the observation that the threat of Islamic terrorism has served Putin quite well.
By focusing perhaps overmuch on “Islamic Terrorism” — a deus ex machina that generally targets for slaughter those Muslims who seem the first to be in its way — Sebastian Gorka has perhaps missed the necessity of putting to rest the yesterday that was the medieval world and its worldviews while further widening the scope of connectivity and cooperation that has brought us our modern world, boosted international trade beyond imagining, and far promoted the secular humanist ideals and values associated with democracy and its defense of community and individual belief.
As now long demonstrated by the Syrian Conflict and Tragedy as well as continuous warfare in Ukraine, the existence of Putin’s world and worldview depends mightily on the validation of authoritarian nationalism and its indulgence in barbarism.
Encountered earlier today: fragments from the web involving Sebastian Gorka.
Note: Gorka’s own misplaced emphasis on loyalty to an elected official, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, and by extension himself would seem part of the medieval formula and precisely that which personal and political insight would now do well to address.
My father spent 6 years in a communist prison, two years in solitary. Not two months, two years. Two years in a prison coal mine where each prisoner – hold on to your seats – without machinery or explosives was required by the communist wardens to break ten tons of anthracite off the coal face every day. But, a few years later, in the cold, cold autumn of 1956, something happened that was monumental. Not as monumental as Wednesday morning, but monumental. The group of young Hungarian students and manual laborers, believe it or not — quite a coalition, think about Wednesday. Yeah? Think about the blue-collar rural vote. Some students and some manual laborers decided to have a demonstration in Budapest, the silent demonstration. That silent demonstration devolved into the first freedom fight against communism, the October revolution of 1956, 60 years ago this year. As the result of that revolution, my father was liberated from prison by a revolutionary commander who had captured a Soviet tank.
Posted by The Majority Report With Sam Seder, February 9, 2017.
There has been an incredible amount of interest in “our” Sebastian Gorka. I say “our” because Hungarian Spectrum was the first internet site to deal at some length with Gorka, who, by the way, is turning out to be a much more important character in the Trump White House than we first realized.
It was on January 31 that I wrote “Sebastian Gorka’s Road from Budapest to the White House” and on February 2, “Sebastian L. von Gorka’s encounter with the Hungarian National Security Office.” Subsequently, with the help of Eli Clifton, who wrote a fascinating article titled “Why Is Trump Adviser Wearing Medal of Nazi Collaborators?” I ascertained that I was wrong in assuming that the “v.” in Sebastian L. v. Gorka’s name stands for “von.” I came to the revised conclusion that the medal on Gorka’s “bocskai” is the symbol of the “vitézi rend” or “Order of Heroes” and that the “v.” stands for “vitéz.” Clifton’s article is a real gem, which should be read by everyone who wants to know more about Gorka’s right-wing roots.
The White House’s omission of Jewish victims of the Holocaust in its statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day raised objections from Jewish groups across the political spectrum but the Trump administration’s combative defense was perhaps the most surprising move by a presidency facing record low approval numbers. Last Monday, Deputy Assistant to the President Sebastian Gorka refused to admit that that it may have been poor judgment not to specifically acknowledge the suffering of Jews in the Holocaust.
Gorka was an odd choice of proxies for the White House to put forward in defense of its Holocaust Remembrance day statement.
He has appeared in multiple photographs wearing the medal of a Hungarian group listed by the State Department as having collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.
On February 7, 2017, Gorka asserted that the White House would continue to call all media criticism of Trump “fake news” until the media let go of its “monumental desire” to destroy the President.[26]
&
Gorka is a member of the Order of Vitéz (Vitézi Rend), an hereditary order of merit which was founded by Miklós Horthy in 1920.[29][30][31] Although required to list and renounce his membership in the Vitézi Rend, an order prohibited along with other Nazi-linked organizations, on his N-400 Application for Naturalization in 2012 when he sought U.S. citizenship, Gorka appeared on FOX News on Inauguration evening dressed in the uniform and wearing the badge, tunic, and ring of the Vitezi Rend.[32][33]
What editors and writers seem to be detecting in their presentation of Sebastian Gorka is a latent fascism that would appear to mirror Moscow’s character. As much surfaced with Trump’s choice of Paul Manafort, consultant to Ukrain’s corrupt and piratical Viktor Yanukovych (among other of the world’s dismally kleptocratic personalities) as a campaign manager. By now, the White House should be figuring out that it needs to change public perception of its own authoritarian bents or continue eroding the confidence of the electorate, and that across Party lines.
Clifton does not bother to report why the order was awarded then, or even why the “Hungarian diaspora” existed in the first place; he shows no interest in the order as an anti-communist symbol, merely noting that the Soviets banned it.
And of course Clifton offers no evidence — none at all — that Gorka, or his antecedents, had any kind of empathy for the Nazi regime or its views.
Clifton could have consulted Gorka’s book, Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War, to know more about his background. His father grew up during the Nazi siege of Budapest and later joined the anti-communist resistance. He was betrayed by Kim Philby, a British double agent for the Soviet Union, arrested and tortured.
Gorka says journalists have deliberately misrepresented Trump’s intentions, and that on occasion it provides comic relief at the White House.
“I come in every day and with my colleagues we have a good old laugh because we open the newspapers, the ones that are supposed to be the leading authorities in America, and they write about issues where we were in the room the day before, and their reportage has absolutely no resemblance to what is actually happening inside the White House,” he says.
Gorka says the White House is not in disarray and denies its officials are sending mixed signals on policies including Washington’s stance on Ukraine and Russia. But contradictions are apparent.
Generally speaking, “If it bleeds, it leads” has been the working rule in journalism, but if nothing much happens — perhaps as when the FBI publicizes a sting — it may well be met with a shrug.
One may flip the question and leave it rhetorical: what conflicts and acts of terror (on BackChannels, “Allahu Akbar Attacks”) have the major media overlooked?
Imagine turning one economically challenged and environmentally troubled middle eastern state into a complete theater of politics and war.
Imagine producing every element in that state and managing the same for political gains in the world beyond its borders.
Then put a label on the production:
Assad vs The Terrorists & Assad OR The Terrorists
Why put on such a show?
To assert the power of absolute power and demonstrate the maniacal ability to visit suffering on innocents with impunity.
To produce a terrorism center that helps goad the west toward patriotic but autocratic and xenophobic nationalism in a way that divides states and encourages the abandonment of core values, especially cultural pluralism and religious tolerance.
To blackmail the west toward choosing to having in power a tyrant as opposed to an equally criminal and tyrannical movement.
To threaten the west — the European Union and NATO — with the monetary, security, and social costs associated with mass migration infused with criminal elements.
To produce a useful tool — “The Terrorists” / ISIL and other al-Qaeda type bands and organizations — with which to demonstrate military prowess in line with a fascist state script.
Herewith, a brief listing of citations building up to the image, quite correctly, of a murderous totalitarian mentality in action in Syria.
The regime continued losing ground over the summer of 2015, provoking a direct Russian intervention in September 2015 that was explained, quite falsely, as an effort to destroy IS. Moscow trained its firepower on the mainstream armed opposition, systematically targeting the parts of the opposition supported by the West, which actually opened space for IS to expand. In July 2016, Russia even attacked US-supported forces that only fight IS.
Rather than counterterrorism, the actual Russian intention was to secure Assad militarily and then extinguish all workable alternatives, thereby rehabilitating Assad politically. To disguise this fact and rewrite the narrative of the intervention as one of anti-extremism, Russia’s ruler, Vladimir Putin, sought to end the major offensive phase of the intervention in March 2016 by pushing IS out of Palmyra.
Echoing Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal scandalous post-September 11, 2001, remarks, global jihad by groups like Al Qaeda also elicited Western guilt from School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Dean Vali Nasr. After 9/11, “Islamophobia, in a way, was a policy deliberately pushed from the very top of the U.S. administration” as indicated by President George W. Bush’s use of “Islamo-fascism,” Nasr stated. “Islamophobia was a way of passing the blame back to the Muslims, put Islam itself on trial for its responsibility in promoting terrorism rather than put U.S. foreign policy on trial for creating some of the problems.”
BackChannels 