• Home
  • About
  • Concepts, Coins, and Terms
    • Anthropolitical Psychology
      • Civilizational Narcissism
      • Conflict – Language Uptake – Social Programming and Scripting – A Suggestion
        • Language Uptake – Programming – On Learning to Listen
        • Mouth –> Ear –> Mind –> Heart System
        • Social Grammar
      • Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy
      • Malignant Narcissism
      • Narcissistic Scripting
      • Normative Remirroring
      • Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation
    • FTAC – “From The Awesome Conversation”
    • God Mob
    • Intellectual Battlespace
    • Islamic Small Wars
    • New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left
    • Political Spychology
    • Shimmer
    • Syndicate Red Brown Green
  • Library
    • About Language
    • Alpha by Author
    • Dicks and Spooks – Political Spychology
    • Judaism and Jewish Culture and Life
    • Russian Section
  • Comments and Contact
  • X of Interest
    • A-Z Links
    • Alpha – Zulu
      • Associated Articles of Governance – United States of America
      • Daniel L. Everett – Reading Highly Recommended
      • Khamenei and Iran – Assorted Reference
      • Lee Smith’s Comment on ‘Media Warfare’ in the Middle East
      • Lies are Told for Only Two Reasons
      • On Being a War Journalist — Francesca Borri in Syria – 7/1/2013
      • Putin and Russia — Assorted Reference

BackChannels

~ Conflict, Culture, Language, Psychology

BackChannels

Tag Archives: political history

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

16 Saturday Dec 2017

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

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

absolute power, conscience in politics, dictatorship, medieval v modern, origin of modern political terrorism, People's Will, political absolutism, political history, Putin's Game, revolutionaries, Richard Pipes, Russia, terrorism

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–

“Current Communist Goals – 1963 – Herlong’s Remarks

29 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philology, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

45 Communist Goals, Herlong's remarks, political history, totalitarianism

BackChannels readers will find the piece in several forms around the web as it has caught the fancy of partisans of various stripe.

It might be fund to annotate each of the 45 remarks (anyone want to write the paycheck?), for each appears to resonate today with two egregious large movements in east-west politics: Putin’s politically absolute position as the leader of a now ulra-nationalist neo-imperial Russian state and, sigh, the American Far Right’s penchant for mirroring Moscow with a correspondingly stiff accusation.

On the reading of  Skousen’s book — still in print and ever popular! — BackChannels feels overstocked, underfunded, and out of shelf space.

The bookends of Horseshoe Theory: strident communism and socialism on the Left | rabid libertarian fascism on the Right: may God visit the pox on both their houses.

BackChannels has reset the layout to suit the medium.  Forgive any awkward typographica spacing for a while (the editor’s ageing).


Current Communist Goals
EXTENSION OF REMARKS
OF
HON. A. S. HERLONG, JR. OF FLORIDA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Thursday, January 10, 1963

Mr. HERLONG. Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Nordman of De Land, Fla., is an ardent and articulate opponent of communism, and until recently published the De Land Courier, which she dedicated to the purpose of alerting the public to the dangers of communism in America.  At Mrs. Nordman’s request, I include in the RECORD, under unanimous consent, the following “Current Communist Goals,” which she identifies as an excerpt from “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen: [From “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen]

CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS

  1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
  2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

  3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament by the United States would be a
    demonstration of moral strength.

  4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless
    of whether or not items could be used for war.

  5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

  6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

  7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

  8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise
    in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

  9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed
    to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

  10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

  11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand
    that it be set up ‘as a one-world government with its own Independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

  12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

  13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

  14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

  15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

  16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

  17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current
    Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations.  Put the party line in textbooks.

  18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

  19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

  20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing,  policy making positions.

  21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

  22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression.
    An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”

  23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness,
    repulsive, meaningless art.”

  24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.

  25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity
    in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

  26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity, as “normal, natural, healthy.”

  27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit
    the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”

  28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression n the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”

  29. Discredit the America Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of
    step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

  30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”

  31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American
    history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more
    emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

  32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture-education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

  33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist
    apparatus.

  34. Eliminate the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities.

  35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

  36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

  37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

  38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all
    behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand or treat.

  39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of
    gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

  40. Discredit the family as an institution.  Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

  41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents.
    Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence
    of parents.

  42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of
    the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.

  43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self government.

  44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

  45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World
    Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and Individuals alike.

Source: http://nwlibertyacademy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/communist_goals.pdf

Related on the Web

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Cleon_Skousen:

After losing his police job, Skousen founded a group called the All-American Society, which Time magazine described in 1961 as an “exemplar of the far-right ultras.”[17] Throughout the 1960s, Skousen was also admired by members and leaders of the John Birch Society, although members of the more mainstream conservative movement and the American Security Council[4] snubbed him out of fear that his controversial views would hurt the credibility of the conservative movement. Skousen used Birch Society magazines as source and reference material,[7] and was pictured on the cover of its magazine, American Interest. Although he was never officially a member of the organization, he was a member of its speakers’ bureau and lectured at John Birch Society events throughout the United States for many years. A 1962 FBI memo described Skousen as affiliating with an “extreme right-wing” group which was promoting “anticommunism for obvious financial purposes”.[4] Skousen authored a pamphlet titled The Communist Attack on the John Birch Society, characterizing criticism of the Society as incipient communism.[12]



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

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1561529/posts (about the same thing as here).  🙂

–33–

Also in Media: “When The Left Longed For Russian Political Interference” – The Daily Beast – January 29, 2017

29 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by commart in Also in Media

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Cold War, defense of democracy, Donald Trump, political cohesion, political history, Ted Kennedy, United States, Vladimir Putin

Today, tweets from the President of the United States Donald J. Trump seem to suggest both trust of and a growing friendship for today’s Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Of course, Putin was himself a former KGB agent, who obviously learned well the methods of disinformation and propaganda taught him in KGB school decades ago. Now he used these techniques to, as the CIA report put it, to order “an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.”

Source: When The Left Longed For Russian Political Interference – The Daily Beast

–33–

  • Compassion
  • Empathy
  • Justice
  • Humility
  • Inclusion
  • Integrity
____________

Caution: The possession of anti-Semitic / anti-Zionist thought may be the measure of the owner's own enslavement to criminal and medieval absolute power.
___________

Diane Weber Bederman Recommends BackChannels on Facebook!

"If you want to read great ideas and great prose, check out this FB page: BackChannels. James S. Oppenheim is a brilliant writer Get a glass of wine or a cup of coffee, sit down and enjoy."

Recent Posts

  • FTAC Verbatim: American Laziness & Intellectual Poisoning
  • FNS (For Freedom): Cancel Culture, Dictatorship
  • FTAC: Dumb Americans and Racial Herding
  • FTAC: A Quick Comment on Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms
  • Authoritarianism, Feudal ‘New Nationalism’, Criminal Interests – An Erosion of Press Freedom
  • Bolton on Biden and Renewal of the JCPOA

Categories

  • 21st Century Feudal
  • 21st Century Modern
  • A Little Wisdom
  • Also in Media
  • American Domestic Affairs
  • Anti-Semitism
  • Asides
  • BCND – BackChannels News Day
  • Books
  • Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology
  • COVID-19
  • Epistemology
  • Events and Other PSA's
  • Extreme Brown vs Red-Green
  • Fast News Share
  • foreign aid
  • Free Speech
  • FTAC
  • FTAC – From The Awesome Conversation
  • International Development
  • Islamic Small Wars
    • Gaza Suzerain
  • Journal
    • Library
  • Journalism
  • Links
  • Notes On Reading BackChannels
  • Philology
  • Philosophy
  • Poetry
  • Political Psychology
  • Political Spychology
  • Politics
  • Psychology
    • Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy
  • Referral
  • Regions
    • Africa
      • Central African Republic
      • Kenya
      • Libya
      • Mali
      • Morocco
      • Nigeria
      • South Africa
      • Sudan
      • Tunisia
      • Zimbabwe
    • Asia
      • Afghanistan
      • Burma
      • China
      • India
      • Myanmar
      • North Korea
      • Pakistan
      • Turkey
    • Caribbean Basin
      • Cuba
    • Central America
      • El Salvador
      • Guatemala
      • Honduras
      • Mexico
    • Eastern Europe
    • Eurasia
      • Armenia
      • Azerbaijan
      • Russia
      • Ukrain
      • Ukraine
    • Europe
      • France
      • Hungary
      • Poland
    • Great Britain and United Kingdom
    • Iberian Peninsula
    • Middle East
      • Egypt
      • Gaza
      • Iran
      • Iraq
      • Israel
        • Palestinia
      • Jordan
      • Kurdistan
      • Lebanon
      • Palestinian Territories
      • Qatar
      • Saudi Arabia
      • Syria
      • United Arab Emirates
      • Yemen
    • North America
      • Canada
      • United States of America
    • Norther Europe
    • Northern Europe
      • Sweden
    • South America
      • Argentina
      • Brazil
      • Columbia
      • Ecuador
      • Venezuela
    • South Pacific
      • Australia
      • New Zealand
      • Papua New Guinea
      • West Papua
  • Religion
  • Spain
  • Syndicate Red Brown Green
  • transnational crime
  • Uncategorized
  • Visual Data

Europe

  • Defending History
  • Hungarian Spectrum
  • Yanukovych Leaks

Great Britain

  • Stand for Peace

Israeli and Jewish Affairs

  • Chloe Simone Valdary

Journals

  • Amil Imani
  • New Age Islam

Middle East

  • Human Rights & Democracy for Iran
  • Middle East Research and Information Project

Organizations

  • Anti-Slavery
  • Atlantic Council
  • Fight Hatred
  • Human Rights First Society
  • International Network Against Cyberhate
  • The Center for Victims of Torture

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

Archives

Blog at WordPress.com.