Ideological Archeology: Rousseau's Ravages (II)

Continued from part I: "The Counter-Enlightenment"

Swiss-French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's (1712-1778) personal life is marked by traits sounding awkwardly contemporary. Self-pity and paranoia play see-saw with wrong choices and deflecting blame. Man is by nature good, it is society that is the cause of corruption and vice. Iconic for Rousseauian thought is the image of the noble savage, man in his natural state before his fall from Paradise.

There is nothing ambiguous about his ethics however: he believed his 'doctrine of two substances' to be the key to the absolute quality of good and evil [Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 2001, p., 2001, p. 719]. In an example in a classical setting he saw in Athenian decadence the degrading influence of reason. He preferred the cruder, militaristic Spartans, an unspoiled and nobler tribe. Their callous practice of exposing babies to nature - now in dispute - may well have inspired Rousseau to expose his own five illegitimate children to the hardships of the Paris orphanage.

Although Rousseau died in 1778, before the French Revolution, his justification of violence to power was the source of inspiration of the Reign of Terror that the Jacobins unleashed during the latter part of the rebellion. In 1792 the French 'citizen army' faced the Prussian forces at Valmy. In a psychological victory they prevented them from marching on to Paris to restore the monarchy. Earlier in the capital a mob had stormed the Tuilleries Palace. In the massacres over a thousand political prisoners were brutally hacked to death. Fabre d'Eglantine declared: "In the towns, let the blood of traitors be the first Holocaust to Liberty, so that in advancing to meet the common enemy, we leave nothing behind to disquiet us!" [Wildmonk]

After "the first Holocaust to Liberty" many more would follow. It is a specific feature, typical of Rousseau's constellation of ideas. The chief ingredients as expressed in "Profession de Foi" are a sweeping rejection of tradition, Revelation, and all institutionalized authority. [Radical Enlightenment, p. 718]

In Roussea's ideas we find the source of every anti-Liberal, violent revolution ever since the French Revolution went off the Lockean track. Rousseau is ultimately the father of many noxious and lethal, collectivist traditions besides: Romanticism, redistributive Socialism, philosophical agrarianism, conservative Communitarianism, Nazism, and more to the point, the Counter-Enlightenment and postmodernism (including anti-human ecofascism). Cultures, adopting Rousseauian ideas found in them a mirror of some aspect of their own identity. [Wildmonk]

Many have descended into the abyss of collectivist hell. In France his radical egalitarianism led to The Reign of Terror, in Germany to Left and Right Socialism with known result, in Russia and the Far East to communism, starvation and slaughter on grandiose scales. In China Mao Tse Tung's Great Leap Forward resulted in the greatest mass murder in human history and in Cambodia the Khmer Rouge's extermination campaign to establish Rousseauian agrarianism resulted in the deaths of well over twenty percent of the population. [Wildmonk] If this is not evil, frankly I don't know what is.

Why Rousseau is different
Rousseau stands apart in many respects. He marks the fault-line in Western tradition between Anglo-American and Continental lines of thought, and forms the point of departure from the Enlightenment because he is essentially anti-modern [Wildmonk]. While loosely following the traditional path of Enlightenment thought, his radical stance differs notably on the crucial issues of anti-individualism [Isaiah Berlin, "Against the Current", 2001], anti-capitalism and against private property ("Radical Enlightenment", p. 273), anti science and technology, his radical egalitarianism, and the inherent mindset in which the means are justified by the perceived noble end.

Rousseau is often quoted as the iconic philosopher of the Enlightenment, but it is quite clear he fiercely rejected all its tenets and values. No doubt, here we have the ground zero of the Counter-Enlightenment.

He was certainly no believer in mutually beneficial interaction, or the beneficial effects on society of self-interest (Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733), "The Fable of the Bees"), asserting that "society hardly needs to feed man's love for himself and his desire to be first among men." ["Radical Enlightenment", p. 273].

His radical egalitianism is echoed in the notion that rational and industrious man with dehumanizing machines would replace royalty as an enslaver of the common man, being better and more ruthless on the aggregation of material goods. He argued that the separation of the progress and dissemination of science and art from political and religious control are hazardous for society and for the virtue of the people [Bloom, 1990]. But it gets worse."

Common will" instead of freedom
In Rousseau we see the first social contract at the price of freedom and the birth of a notion called the "common will". The latter is a concept that in Rousseau's approach requires state intervention. This should not be confused with the 'common good'. It is a far more developed conception which, and unlike the former, can only be realized in the context of civil society under the state ["Radical Enlightenment", p. 720).

For the creation of a society of common will, "freedom of all the people", they need only accept the dictates of the state. This was Rousseau's essence of "true civilization." The struggle between rich and poor would then rise to a moral experience of self-restraint. [Wildmonk] With the faculty of moral choice thus abdicated and forfeited to the state, people would be free from lowly - earthly desires and reach full - ideal potential. Man is thus divorced from the social and economic context in which he lives and interacts with others. The ideal state of heaven, separated from earthly considerations.

This totalitarian approach to freedom, an abomination in every sense, was later further developed by Marx, who wrote that "capitalist, individual liberty is the most complete suppression of all individual liberty and total subjugation of individuality to social conditions" [Wildmonk: Marx, "Grundnisse", pp. 131]. "Freedom can only consist in socialized man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of their human nature." [Wildmonk: Marx, "Selected Writings", pp. 496].

In this way man's separation from his nature and morality began. Never in human history were their worse judges of human character than Rousseau and his followers: all seek some degree of formal control over individual freedom for the purpose of creating material conditions deemed necessary for "true freedom", moralectomy in precise equal measure. Rousseau's concept of "common will" became the most savage, bloody instrument of social engineering in the history of mankind.

The Atlantic Ridge
In the United States Thomas Jefferson was the most prominent supporter of the French revolutionary achievements. Nevertheless, property rights and Enlightenment liberties were set in stone in the spirit of Locke, Montesquieu and Adam Smith. The present Democratic Party is being diverted further and further from that tradition as the sway of the postmoderns intensifies. Rhetorical style and attitude betray their influence.

While National Socialist and Communist ideas have swept America to some extent in their haydays - notwithstanding the counter culture, a product of the latter - these Rousseauian inspired ideologies remained by and large a marginal affair. Rousseau entering Locke's territory by the back- door may come as a surprise to some Americans - the wrong brand of revolution is encroaching on its most basic principles.

In Europe the situation was markedly different, as we shall see. Locke's influence remained on the whole limited to the British Isles. France and Germany have both Rousseau traditions, not Lockean. Today of great long-term concern is a possible return to some form of Rousseau inspired extreme ideology. It is chilling to see the rise of an unelected governing body on the European continent. The post-democratic elitism, combined with postmodern ideological chaos understood in the philosophical context, is an even more disquieting prospect.

Counter-Enlightenment projection* is on the order of the day and may even be consciously used as a tactic. Rousseau's brand of radical and revolutionary ideas, combined with the notion that civilization is so corrupt that it must be considered beyond salvation, makes him the father of all violent struggle in the last two and a half centuries.

Americans, tending to confuse Locke's revolution with Rousseau's, occasionally fall into the trap of supporting the wrong causes: initially the Russian Red Terror, and more recently, the covertly Islam inspired call for independence in the middle of Europe's powder keg, the Serbian province of Kosovo in the heart of the Balkans, thus providing a foothold in Europe for similarly based and equally pernicious radicalism.

The zero-sum game approach to economics also originates with Rousseau, which is giving rise to the annual media talking point that "a new report is suggesting that today's rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer". This is incorrect propaganda, some reason requiring regular public re-affirmation, perhaps for that reason alone.

Rousseau and Religion
The great minds of the Enlightenment proper - Spinozists excluded - never saw Christianity as their mortal enemy. To them Church and the Enlightenment were natural allies. Rousseau was no exception, but he had only a passing acquaintance with the Christian political tradition. Therefore he dismissed the role of Christianity as a moderating force in society. He saw the faith as entirely a spiritual undertaking, occupying itself only with "heavenly things."

Rousseau's Christians are so detached from reality that they can hardly be recognized: a people so spiritualized that they display a profound disinterest if their earthly pursuits are successful or not. Rousseau's call for transcendent values to harness the energies of men towards the 'common will', coupled with the rejection of Christianity as a engine of these values, made it a central tenet of all the Rousseauian ideologies [Wildmonk].

To Rousseau religion was an imperative. "... the state cannot ... pursue a policy of toleration for disbelievers, or view religion as a matter of individual conscience. It absolutely must, therefore, reject dangerous notions of toleration and the separation of church and state." and "so fundamentally important is religion that the ultimate penalty is appropriate for disbelievers ..." [Stephen R.C. Hicks, "Explaining Postmodernism", Scholargy Press, 2004, p. 98].

Despite being so enamored with force-feeding religion, after the publication of his work "Emile" he was driven into temporary exile in Bern after a warrant for his arrest was issued. "Emile" was widely denounced as irreligious and seditious.

The Legacy
The loather of civilization, Rousseau was nevertheless greatly admired by the early Counter-Enlighteners, as he is by today's postmodernists. His followers mostly selected from his work what they could use to prop up their ideologies. Marx accepted Rousseau's critique of Locke's economic man but stood solidly by the Enlightenment in his appreciation for science and technology. Marx even went so far as to describe his ideology as Scientific Marxism, basically a pseudo scientific rationalization of his aggregate of ideas.

Hegel as well as Rousseau inspired Marx' theory of dialectic materialism, in which the theme is the dichotomy of the Oppressor versus the Oppressed. Now clearly a tactic of this dialectic, Rousseau's vista of a noble, primordial world destroyed by man's egoism, might well also have sired the epidemic of Western self-loathing.

Irony
Ironically, while Rousseau was convinced that civilization was the cause of moral degradation, little did he know that his followers, by rejecting objective reality, would drop morality along with it. Despite two and a half centuries of genocidal legacy in pursuit of Rousseauian ideal society, it enjoys considerable support among the Western intelligentsia, specifically in the humanities departments of academia, the media, all levels of education, contemporary arts, the political elite, advisory boards, government ministries and departments and what is loosely described as 'the corridors of power.'

The postmodern heirs remain committed to undermining free-market democracy, casting misty eyes upon the Rousseauean atrocities. 110 million dead are not vile enough to discredit 'the Party of Humanity' in the views of some of the most stubborn apologists. Considering that totalitarian societies are today's version of the tribal community he so admired, the Rousseau ideal society could well be described as an agrarian totalitarian state.

Another point of irony is that Rousseau's conviction, that reason engenders egocentrism has been falsified by every non-government sponsored humanitarian organization on the face of the planet, while Rousseau's faithful follower Hegel is responsible for the subjectivism that saw the birth of egocentrism gone mad, the 'Master of the Universe' syndrome (each individual creates his own personal version of reality: If I die overnight, will the sun still rise tomorrow?).

In France, Rousseau's ideal of small, intimate villages and a peaceful, agricultural society built on the consent of the common will has resulted in France becoming a by-word for centralized statism. Rousseau's tenet that reason caused man's fall from paradise may well be the basis of the later Counter-Enlightenment's political ideals, modelled on the re-creation of 'paradise on earth', Utopias which usually turn out to be dystopias instead.

Postmodernism or Rousseauism?
Rousseau can certainly be traced back as the source of all members of the postmodern coalition: environmentalists, third-worldists (Baran-Wallerstein), feminists, anarchists, 'gender, identity and sexual orientation' theorists, traditional socialists of various plumage, and 'classical' postmodernists. It is a true gathering of Rousseauians that has largely remained uninvestigated, underreported and certainly undeclared.

In the chaos of the total postmodern bankruptcy in the wake of mayhem, moralectomy and grandiose failure, there is but one purpose left. A resolve that brings these ideologies together with a tradition with which it has so much in common. We are witnessing a spontaneous feast of recognition with radical Islam.

It is truly remarkable that every prior held conviction and allegiance has by now been jilted in favour of furthering the causes of the intolerant: it's back to the Rousseau basics. The grant plan: a strategy to deconstruct Western, democratic, liberal capitalism by critical theory, and 'irrational means of the will.'

Up next: Emmanuel Kant: "I found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith."

* If you think of yourself as a peaceful, loving person, while actually you are full of wrath and hatred, the psychological coping device of projection - as if by magic - transforms the object of that wratch into someone who is hateful, devisive, full of vitriol and bile, bigoted, intolerant and hatemongering.

Related dossiers

- "Postmodern Ravages"

- "The Dialectics"

- "Pomo Lingo"

- "The Unholy Alliance"

- "Science as a Narrative"

- "Justice, Pomo Style"

The Obama: the Marxist, Anti-Colonial African Colonial - Update

L.E. Ikenga is hot on the trail of D'Souza's wanting analysis in "The Obama Agenda and the New Global Elite". The Left were quick to categorize the article as "highbrow birtherism" (their assault themes are really getting quite worn at this stage). Ikenga deals with it without throwing around labels ad hominem:

Mr. D'Souza fails to understand is that post-colonialism ceased being a cantankerous "cause" or a "crusade" a long time ago. Instead, it now identifies a new way of thinking about the world in global terms. Post-colonialists have long since stopped attending "Reparations Now!" rallies and academic "roundtables" on race and politics. They are now the heads of liberally backed NGOs, Ivy League Institutes, or countries like the United States. (...) >>>

Read it all ...

September 14, 2010

Dinesh D'Souza is once again doing what he does best: narrowly missing at target practice. He gets the general drift and then dashes off after some red herring.

In an analysis on Forbes, "How Omaba thinks" he's bringing up a number of flabbergasting policy decisions by the Obama administration and concludes on that basis: "The President isn't exactly a socialist" and "Obama is a socialist--not an out-and-out Marxist, but something of a European-style socialist" to finally conclude Obama is actually an anti-colonialist.

D'Souza could do with a few courses Objectivism or perhaps study a tome on non-contradictory thought.

All Obama's policy decisions are perfectly explained by the Marxist narrative, which to a more or lesser degree and intensity follows the same simplistic, dialectical world view, broadly reading as follows:

The world is made up of two groups of humans: oppressors and oppressed. The battle is to entice away as much value as possible from the oppressors and hand it over to the oppressed. Since this is serious warfare and the ethical goal outweighs any other consideration, the end justifies the means.

The battle has been raging for almost two centuries.

In turn Marxism rests on the false theories of the German Idealist thinkers, notably Immanuel Kant and his follower Hegel who pushed the fallacy that the outside world - reality - for its existence is somehow dependent on man's mind (thought creates reality, or subjectivism). This is the basis of Progressivist thought.

While others have noted that Obama doesn't share the 'slave blood' of African Americans, the notion that Obama's background should be seen against the light of a black African, was first laid out in June of last year in an article on American Thinker by Nigerian born L.E. Ikenga. In the article the author explains the mental makeup of the typical African colonialist.

Ikenga's 'African colonials' have adopted a Western consciousness and took colonial thought and ideologies in order to advance the anti-colonial agenda, usually to the detriment of the former colony. All Obama is doing, is projecting the anti-colonial Dreams From His African colonial Father.

The same is true of Obama's 'Christianity'. On the basis of Islamic doctrine the case could be made Obama is formally a Muslim. But the fact remains, he's been sitting for over twenty years in the pews of the fire and brimstone emitting Reverend Wright, a typical exponent of Black Liberation Theology.

The tenets of postmodern Liberation Theology are in fact nothing more than a slightly Christianized version of the Marxist dialectic based on the Frantz Fanon's anti-colonial Sorelian myth, "The Wretched of the Earth".

Any doubts of Obama's Marxist root could be laid to rest by his early political exploits in the Marxist New Party (photos also here and do read all the Obama files on New Zeal).

That ultimately brought Obama to the highest office, where he's been redistributing value from his own quintessential 'oppressive' country - the USA - to those nations that share the Marxist dialectical world view, to wit Iran and its proxies, Brazil and a number of other Neo Marxist caudillo countries, the Chicoms, autocratic Russia, and the rest of the laundry list of beneficiaries, of allies thus far thrown "Under the Obama Bus".

Related

- Forbes: "How Obama Thinks", by Dinesh D'Souza
- American Thinker: "Obama, the African Colonial", by L.E. Ikenga
- Key Wiki
- Discover the Networks

Related dossiers

- "The Dialectics"
- "The Pomo Presidency"
- "Under the Bus"
- "Ruled by the Mob"
- "The Obama Civil Defense Force"
- "Stop The Obama Constitutional Crisis"
- "Obama's Radical Connections"
- "Postmodern Ravages"
- "The Pomo White House"

May Day, Mayday! They're Deleting the Borders!

Anyone with a brain the size of a pea can figure out that multiculturalism, driven on by postmodern identity politics and the 'delete the border' crowd (amongst others made up by the mainstream Common Purpose), will lead to balkanization and fracture, with all the consequences that entails.

They don't care. They may have no principle or morality to speak of (they even deny it exists) but to them, this is a matter of ethics. Borders aren't a natural thing, so this hateful, artificial divide has to go. By definition the nation state discriminates against those who don't belong to it. It is therefore an evil thing that must be torn town. Everything must bow for the great equalizer.

If that sounds fringe and a bit extreme to you, realize then it is that notion that propels forward the transnational progressives in the UN and the EU. The North American Union (NAU) is a less known entity, but it is caught up with the Native American Aztlan myth, the Chicano movement and the racist organization of La Raza (and now, the Tequila party). The axis with radical Islam is now open source material. From Hamas and Hezbollah we know where community organizing eventually may lead.

- Caption: mural in the Aztlan Community Center makes no secret of its affiliations -

Ever since Rousseau declared that the natural state is superior to the man-made, anything 'artificial' is damned by his essentially anti-modern followers. Current postmodernists are merely the latest cohort to enforce nature over culture.

The Soviet Union after its inception started annexing neighboring countries, because unlike Nazi Germany, which was an exclusive collective, Leftism is an inclusive hive: it aims to assimilate the entire globe and bask it in the love and warmth of global Socialism.

Naive witnesses of history like myself, thought the Left had conceded defeat after the fall of the wall. But the print of Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History and the Last Man" wasn't dry when they started plotting a come-back. We should have known. "We shall get there through the institutions" threatened a follower of Gramsci's cultural Marxism (I forgot who). His fellow travellers are as good as their word.

The 'illegal' Bush wars and the ensuing agitation and rage, rage, rage created sufficient momentum for a huge chunk of the moderate electorate to vote in Barack Obama and his agenda of deception.

They looked no more when the charismatic wave of dope and chains overwhelmed them. None had any doubt whatsoever that "this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal (Barack Obama Nomination Victory Speech 3rd June 2008). The rest, as they say, is history.

In the Netherlands, which is bracing for a momentous election, old new Left is slowly coming out of the closet. Apart from Labour saying their goodbyes to the third way in which the Left embraced pro free-market elements, now pejoratively referred to as 'neo liberalism', no one as yet has openly declared the nameless stance. But there is talk of a coalition of no less than four Leftist parties. They've been trying to launch Obama style (thought creates reality) a thoroughly uncharismatic Labour leader, so far to little avail. But then, they don't need to declare themselves anymore.

We can see the havoc that is wrecked on the country by the Obama administration. We know welfare is about creating an underclass that is forever dependent on the state; we know the dumbing down of education is about the debilitation of the mind; we know that climate alarmism is a control mechanism and a shake-down of the developed world perpetrated by watermelons (green outside, red inside) to fund transnational entities.

The Obama, who as a President is supposed to be above the parties, has declared war on Republican, Conservative and Libertarian citizens in the Tea Party, and now even on the entire state of Arizona (well within the scope of Aztlan). Reversed racism and identity politics is used to divide the country against itself. It's an outrage which if left unchecked, will be the end of America as we've known it! (Article by David Limbaugh on Obama's unpresidential demeanor.)

The old, authoritative Left is finally crawling out of the woodwork in the Netherlands too: last week a real Marx Festival was held and today, May Day sees the presentation of a new translation of Karl Marx' signature work, Das Kapital. The media simply report and do not even venture an unbiased opinion, let alone pass moral judgment on an ideology that according to conservative estimates, is responsible for over 110 million dead world-wide (more accurate is probably 149,469,610).

Selective memory and evasion deals with the historical record, causing at times quite a bit of cognitive dissonance leading to staggering bouts of projection. Yeah, some leaders like Pol Pot and Uncle Joe were a bit misguided, but that doesn't taint in any way Marxism's moral superiority, which - according to former adherents - is to this day considered an admittedly outdated, but nevertheless 'scientific' piece of work.

We've only  to look at India to see what havoc capitalism may wreak in its early stages. That country is finally pulling itself up by the bootstraps out of the squallor caused by Socialism, but Leftist narrative can deal with any fact or reality. Of course they can hardly deny that people aren't worse off today, but real postmodernists actually manage that too.

The translator is obviously a true believer and proudly touts the sales figures in Germany for the newly translated 'bible of socialism'. All told, he says, putting it into perspective, some 7,000 copies have been sold. But don't kid yourself just yet. A relatively small group disseminating powerful memes into global society can do a lot of harm over time. Like a radio talk show host singing the praises of East Germany's touching national anthem which he can't get out of his head and is so much better than our own boring tune.

Over time, stuff like that has a real impact on the perception of people's reality. Ideas matter, because one bit of fallacy may have huge implications in another context. The drip of disinformation, going on for at least a decade, continues and may at some point open the floodgates. We're fed a steady stream of deception and the generations born after 1970 have no inkling what's going on and where it leads. We can but brace ourselves and inform the world that once again, freedom is at stake.

The translator of Das Kapital and a former CP member offer a brief insight into the Marxist mind. Following Rousseau, Marxism turns against reason and the fruits of the Enlightenment, technology and the Industrial Revolution. They are in essence, regressive Luddites. It should come as no surprise that a true believer is actually claiming that scientists have known for 200 years that CO2 is causing greenhouse gases: as it happens, that would be around the time of the Industrial Revolution. Marxists are very susceptible to conspiracy theories.

If that seems harmless enough, ignore it at your peril! There a reason the Irish struggle simply collapsed and the Bask ETA has become next to obsolete. The same motive underpins why Israel is now seen as quintessential evil. National identity, self-determination and the autonomous state no longer fit the paradigm. The new template is "delete the borders".

Mark Steyn, on the madness that has this crowd in its grip:

IBD: "Smart Guys In Limos Able To Flee Dangerous World That They Made", by Mark Steyn

As I write, I have my papers on me — and not just because I'm in Arizona. I'm an immigrant, and it is a condition of my admission to this great land that I carry documentary proof of my residency status with me at all times and be prepared to produce it to law enforcement officials, whether on a business trip to Tucson or taking a 20-minute stroll in the woods back at my pad in New Hampshire. Who would impose such an outrageous Nazi fascist discriminatory law? Er, well, that would be Franklin Roosevelt. (...) >>>

Update

While the Obama and his minions are having feigned apoplexy over the Arizona law and its infringements on 'human rights', Michael Posner - one of Hillary Clinton's underlings with links to the 'delete the border' crowd, is apologizing to the Chinese commies for the law. Over the Mexican border meanwhile ...

Washington Times: "EXCLUSIVE: Hezbollah uses Mexican drug routes into U.S. - Works beside smuggler cartels to fund operations", by Sara A. Carter

Related articles

- Follow the Networks: "FAIR IMMIGRATION REFORM MOVEMENT (FIRM)"
- PJM: "The Truth about the Redgraves and the ’60s Left: Kudos to journalist Nick Cohen", by Ron Radosh
- PJM: "When They Call You a Nazi, You’ve Won the Immigration Argument", by Jack Dunphy

Related posts

- "Of the Goodness of Nature and the Evil of Men"
- "The Re-re-re-invention of Socialism"
- "Transnational Progressivism: an Inexplicable Presumption"
- "Enter the Cabal (II): Transnational Progressivism" (series on Common Purpose)

Related dossiers

- "The Pomo White House" (the Obama campaign file)
- "The Political Pathology Asylum"
- "Greenism"
- "Transnational Progressivism"

Of Cultural Marxism, Blue Helmets and the "Pink Army"

A Dutch lobby group for gays in the military, "Pink Army" is livid! An American General has told the US Senate Armed Services Committee, that the sacking of the Bosnian enclave Srebrenica in 1995 occurred as a result of the Dutch policy that allowed gays in the military. At least, that is what the MSM, and fuming liberal politicians after them have been paroting for days. The chaps in the Pink Army are pondering a law suit.

But what General Sheehan has actually said was that European armies deteriorated after the collapse of the Soviet Union and focused on peacekeeping because they did not believe the Germans were going to attack again or the Soviets were coming back.

Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and other nations believed there was no longer a need for an active combat capability in the militaries. They declared a peace dividend and made a conscious effort to socialize their military — that includes the unionization of their militaries, it includes open homosexuality. 

- Caption: Serb General Mladic and the Dutch Commander Karremans -  

Dutch troops serving as U.N. peacekeepers and tasked with defending the town of Srebrenica in 1995 were an example of a force that became ill-equipped for war. The battalion was understrength, poorly led, and the Serbs came into town, handcuffed the soldiers to the telephone poles, marched the Muslims off, and executed them.

Truth is, that the haphazardly declared enclaves were impossible to defend. The Bosnian Muslim army continued to conduct raids into Serb territory from this 'neutral zone'; one day the Serbs decided to act. But worst of all it was the UN that had the lead in the war. They provided the peace keeping forces with light arms, throwing in 1 (one) tank between them for good measure, so as not be 'provocative'!

General Sheen is right, but he is missing the full picture. The 'socialization' of the military to which he's refering happened during the Den Uyl government, who - like Obama today - was conducting a program of "fundamental transformation" (code for a bloodless revolution).

This government vowed to reform society based on the "democratization" of private corporations and governmental institutions - higher education, police and the army amongst others - and 'nivellation', the redistribution of wealth with a view to an equality of outcome. The military and civil servants were allowed to unionize and obtained the right to strike.

Ideally corporations and institutions "mirrored" minorities in society - the early form of what is now termed 'diversity'. Reverse sexism and racism was the result. The last remaining vestiges of that era are the military unions and now, the "Pink Army".

- Caption: the case of the long haired Rinus Wehrman - 

But the scope of the New Left's bloodless revolution was much wider and took place all over the Western world. Only now, years after the events do we know that some years prior, McCarthy wasn't that far off the mark as is often claimed. The West was riddled with Soviet moles, fellow travelers and useful idiots. The Frankfort School was the incubator and director of this onslaught of cultural Marxism.

The peace movement was infested with agitators and agents provocateurs. They were protesting against the same cruise missiles that eventually necessitated the Soviet Union to drop out of the arms race. It was however a fatal mistake to think that after the collapse of the USSR, the Left had conceded defeat. Now they're back with a vengeance.

Looking back on history from satellite height one can discern the pattern of the postmodern dialectic. This narrative builds on the Marx dialectic, that created the dichotomy of oppressors versus oppressed. This narrative  goes as follows: "the" truth does not exist; all oppressed minorities - genders, races, ideas, religions and cultures - are equal in value and validity ... except the West's which are uniquely evil. The group oppressors consists in affluent, white, heterosexual males. (Read or watch Isabel Allende's "The House Spirits" which embodies this drama like no other.)

Gays in the military are a part of this dialectic. Also peruse our dossier "Socialist Causes Explained". Despite all this talk of equality there is a certain hierarchy of victimhood: some are definitely more equal than others. But whoever has the audacity to outgrow one's victimgroup, is inviting the fulll wrath of socialist curse. More on this subject in part II of our series on progressive cosmology.

- Caption: Condoleezza Rice lost her black victimhood status because she is a Republican i.e. political color trumps race - 

If you fail to see the logic or common sense in a certain position the Left is taking, just ask yourself the question, what course of action would hurt the West most, and you've got your answer. That is the ultimate goal, also of gays in the military. The sacking of Srebrenica wasn't because of gays in the military, but it happened as a result of the demoralization program, of which they are part and parcel..

Related

- "Socialist Causes Explained"
- "The Dialectics"
- "The Cosmology of the Progressive Narrative"
- A Soviet defector tells about how he was just doing his job
- "Postmodern Ravages"
- "Pomo Lingo"
- "The Case of Neo Communism"

- Discover the Networks

- "Horowitz on Alinsky: the Postmodern War on Reality"

- "Atbashian on Commie Agit-Prop and Info War-Fare"

- KeyWiki Blog - KeyWiki

Insanity Rules

In a post "Some home truths for men" James Higham on nourishing obscurity comes out in defense of the traditional relationship. He writes:

“Society’s moved on since then,” is one of the worst constructs trotted out, the idea that not trying at all is somehow modern, in keeping with our onwards and upwards path, that commitment, fidelity, genuinely trying, great tolerance and willingness to be elastic enough because you want it to work – that that is somehow old-fashioned, something your grandparents did and then you convince yourself [or let others convince you] that they weren’t happy, on the grounds that you know of strife they had in their marriages."

- Caption: Hat Tip: Mindart - 

Yes, that is an appalling construct, but it goes even further than that: the thinking class of humanity has evolved on an ethical level beyond the mere mortal of say, the onset of the Age of Aquarius. The Darwinian notion is pushed on a more physical level in television series as The X-men and Mutant X.

It is somehow suggested that reality itself has evolved. That the laws of ordinary physics somehow no longer apply. This is possible because the postmodern mind rejects objective reality. Rather, they reason from the premise that each human being lives in his own subjectively created reality: to each his own 'narrative', everyone his own Master of the Universe, the New Reality of "the smart set".

Since then we have emotive creaters of pseudo realities. This is all good and proper for companies selling cars and lipsticks, but when politicians are embarking on a conscious quest to manipulate the voters' perception, things tend to get a wee bit problematic in the real world.

Third way politicians like Tony Blair and Bill Clinton tried to manipulate the perception of voters with rhetoric and mild NLP techniques. Since then, things only gotten exponentially worse. We have witnessed the Obama campaign, in which styrofoam Ionian columns and other postmodern kitch superficially created the pseudo reality of the celebrity saint, the Obama, and the young, upcoming statesman, the Obama.

Everything in the artificial Obama reality serves as a prop. Projection is rife in the subjective world of the perceptionists. This is how they unwittingly reveal what they are doing, simply by accusing the other side of same. The omnibus Obamacare Bill wasn't the physical manifestation of the subject matter, but "a prop".

The pliable, fleeting reality of the subjective Obama universe was made audible this week when he uttered the undying words: "I'm an ardent believer in free markets". In the face of blatantly doing and saying everything that is in contrast with that, truly a chutzpah of staggering proportions! But he wasn't lying - it was merely his "truth of the moment".

As we have seen in "The O Team: Mental Babies With Razors" the postmodern, subjectivist mind is quite literally insane, not in any physical or psychological sense, but on a philosophical and mental level.

Dr Sanity illustrates the matter in her post "What a Joke", relating to the Obama budget. She quotes the authority on postmodernism, Stephen Hicks:

"(...) unmasking means interpreting or investigating to a literal meaning or fact of the matter. The process of unmasking is cognitive, guided by objective standards, with the purpose of coming to an awareness of reality. For the postmodernist, by contrast, interpretation and investigation never terminate with reality. Language connects only with more language, never with a non-linguistic reality...." 

Stephen Hicks' book "Explaining Postmodernism" is now entirely online available.

A similarly constructed reality is climate alarmism. We can see the narrative under construction as they change the labels from "global warming", to the blanket cover of "climate change". Subjectivists really believe that changing the labels, will change the reality. As I heard a journalist exclaim the other day concerning an issue that was exposed as a scam, "But they changed the name, didn't they?" In other words, that should have restored its validity.

Do not ever believe that their insane, sentimental and enfantile ravings are innocent blather. As Dr Sanity points out in yesterday's post:

God help us from their ministrations, as the moldering bodies of the millions upon millions they have destroyed with their perfectionistic techniques. 

When objective reality no longer exists, quite literally anything goes!

Updated:

Politics Daily: "Obama on Health: Stunning Arrogance or the Edmund Burke Theory of Leadership?"

Related:

- Glenn Beck: "Progressives by another name..."
- Hicks: "Scientific fraud and politics"
- PJM: "Narcissism and Denial in the Obama Administration"

- Caption: doctors (or probably actors) as props - 

Related dossiers: 

- "Postmodern Ravages"
- "Pomo Lingo"

Related articles by Zemanta

• Imploding UN Global Warming Forecasts on Front Page of Washington Post (newsbusters.org)
• Second Generation Postmodernism (teabreak.pk)

New Year's Movie Theater: "The Truth About Communism"

Happy New Year, everyone!

The cultural blog, The Light House, is showing "The Truth About Communism", a documentary launched two years ago, on the Anniversary of the 90th October Revolution.

It presents the violent rise of the Soviet Empire from the chaos of Revolution to the terror of the Cold War and is charted using remarkable footage of actual events. Special interest is the subject of the Spanish Revolution.

It is the best collection of historical film footage on the topic of World Communism ever assembled. It is narrated by Ronald Reagan in 1962. Here's the link >>>

Honduras: No Second Chile

Attempts to recreate another "Chilean Sorelian myth" in Honduras and making a martyr out of populist Leftist totalitarian "Mel Zeliar" is shipwrecking on the Internet, blogs and the 24/7 news cycle.

One man's efforts, a gringo with feet on the ground in Tegucigalpa, is proving particularly effective (Hunter Smith and his blog "Honduras Abandoned").

The latest, since yesterday's post:

- An "officer claims that protesters [on Sunday besieging the airport] had wire cutters (I did see protesters with wire cutters) and began cutting the chain link fence and ripping it down. The crowd convened onto the fence, ready to rush onto the tarmac at the airport. Shots were fired from the military, however as of right now it is uncertain whether the casualties were the result of a military issued weapon."

- The national commissioner for Human Rights, Ramón Custodio, said it wasn't the soldiers that shot the young man who died yesterday.

- As the rally came to a close, the police arrested 20 Nicaraguans from the crowd, who were armed with .357 pistols. 

- A total of 96 Nicaraguan citizens have been detained.

- Commissioner Hector Ivan Mejia said they have identified in the demonstrations supporting Manuel Zelaya foreign nationals from Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

- The Nicaraguan Army rejected claims by  President Roberto Micheletti that they have not mobilized their troops to the Honduran border.

- Yesterday throughout the cities of Honduras, there were protests for peace and democracy. Organizers were preparing for the demonstration in Tegucigalpa, hanging banners and setting up audio equipment for today's protest. 

- And finally, today Smith poses an almost rhetorical question: 

Did Chavez have an influence on Sunday's violence? Ferdsblog has a new post up on El Heraldo's story "Chavez planned a slaughter in Honduras".
While events were unfolding at the airport, Telesur was broadcasting live from Chavez's office. There are military messages on the white board that seem to indicate Chavez had an influence on Sunday's violence.
I do not have time to provide my own translation of this article because I am heading to a meeting, but Google or Yahoo's translator program can provide a rough translation.

- Filed on Articles in "Socialist Utopia Redux" - 

The Axis of Pomo

The New York Times for once conformed to reality in palpably painting the atmosphere of melancholy that has descended on the city of Tehran like a suffocating blanket. Reuters relays Human Rights Watch reporting that "paramilitary Basij forces stage nightly raids in Tehran, invading private homes and beating residents in an attempt to stop protests against Iran's disputed election."

"Witnesses are telling us that the Basijis are trashing entire streets and even neighborhoods as well as individual homes trying to stop the nightly rooftop protest chants," Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said in a June 26 report by the New York-based group.

State terrorism has been part of Marxist revolutionary theory from the outset. One might translate the justification into what Alexander Solzhenitsyn called "the lie": the ethics of our goal is so noble, that all live by the convention to pretend we reached "cosmic achievement", if not .... 

Reality is incontrovertible, but lies and pretence can be extorted. The pretence of having reached the culmination of human makeability never fails to sharply contrast with the reality of poverty, misery, oppression, and amorality followed by spiritual death.

This is all made possible by the fallacy that thought creates reality (leading to pretence, wishful thinking and make-believe), resting in turn on the omission to distinguish between metaphysical reality and man-made reality (notable exception: global warming).

We've written extensively about the relationship between coercion and Utopian ideology in a series entitled "The Left's* Default Position: Coercion" of which the third part is yet to be posted. 

Not all may have gotten the picture at the time, but the Islamic Revolution in Iran was heavily injected with the serum of Postmodernity. The result is a highly corrosive potion of Islamism, Socialism and Fascism, also known as the Unholy Alliance. Waller R. Newell explains it brilliantly in "Postmodern Jihad" in The Weekly Standard.

But back to updating the situation, there's some breaking news vying with events involving President Zeyala of Honduras, yet another Postmodern, Chavist President displaying the usual contempt for the Constitution of his country, and whose army doesn't intent to wait till freedom has been forfeited altogether (we'll pick up that story elsewhere; Fausta has more on what is by now is a full blown coup; WH reiterating polylogistic Prime Directive).

CNN: "Iran allows demonstration despite weekend clampdown"

It may well be a ploy, but the regime will allow a demonstration at Tehran's Ghoba mosque Sunday, CNN has confirmed.  The gathering is officially meant to honor Mohammad Beheshti, a hero of the 1979 Islamic Revolution who was killed in a bombing on this date in 1981. (...) A post on a Web site associated with opposition leader Mir Hossein Moussavi urged people to go to the rally. (...) >>>

Also, local staff members of the British Embassy in Iran have been arrested. (...)  "The Foreign Office did not confirm the number of people held. Last week, Tehran expelled two British diplomats. London responded by booting two Iranians. Iran then recalled its ambassador to Britain, saying it would reconsider its diplomatic ties with the United Kingdom."

- Caption: first image from Ghoba Mosque. Also watch Twitcaps for the latest tweet pictures. First video on YouTube - 

! The latest: AP: "Iranian police clash with up to 3,000 protesters"

The reports could not immediately be independently verified because of tight restrictions imposed on journalists in Iran.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.EDITOR'S NOTE: Iranian authorities have barred journalists for international news organizations from reporting on the streets and ordered them to stay in their offices. This report is based on the accounts of witnesses reached in Iran and official statements carried on Iranian media.

The reason why the golden opportunity to steer Iran off its nuclear collision course with history was squandered, is that it sadly coincides with a Postmodernist currently occupying the White House. Enough has been commented on the failed Iran policy over the last few weeks. But no mistake: this is a wake-up call. It is not all that difficult to peek into the future by the art of extrapolation. If so, do Gird Your Loins! The forces of retrogression are gathering.

* "the Left" here stands for Leftist and Rightist Socialists

The Western Press and Their False Consciousness

This post was first published on Modern Conservative on December 30, 2008

~~-:-~~

Last Sunday we heard the BBC's reporter on the ground in Israel, Jeremy Bowen, utter the momentous words: "Gazans have a strong ideology for resistance and martyrdom."

Let's analyze this assertion for a moment. Ideology - as in Islamism; resistance - as in insurgence against 'occupation'; martyrdom - as in suicide bombing. Isn't that the 'narrative' of the Gaza belt and those other places where the scions of peace hold sway?

Increasingly we hear evidence of Western reporters taking on - what is termed in their anti-philosophy - a 'false consciousness'. That needs clarification for those not versed in Critical Theory. With false consciousness Carl Marx meant the downtrodden thinking and talking within the reference frame of their oppressors. With some imagination you might also explain it, as living in another, subjective 'reality'.

Postmodernists have taken the notion a step further and believe quite literally in parallel existences of the various minority collectives, be they gays, blacks, women, Muslims, the masses, the Chinese ... whatever the inequal group, it has its own parallel reality in which the inhabitants have their own 'narrative'. (Here's the Wiki explaining polylogism somewhat further.)

The Western press show evidence of having voluntarily taken up an Islamist 'consciousness'. (Caution: do not try this at home without the proper medical attention: psychosis or split personality syndrome may ensue. This seems to be happening frequently to North Africans living in Europe, who fail to assimilate.)

As if taking on a 'false consciousness' is not enough, the MSM now rely for their reporting on locals on the ground in Gaza, emphasizing that "the IDF won't allow them to go there" themselves (as if this were Mugabe's Zimbabwe).

Despite the 2007 bloody Hamas coup in Gaza - an Islamofascist thuggocracy - on the phone we have a range of professionals making the impression Gaza is actually a normally functioning democracy: human rights activists, business consultants, university professors, and representatives of civic organizations are painting the reality on the ground in terms of flowery Arabic rhetoric, the narrative of the mother of all massacres, of holocausts on women and babies under the age of ten.

During the prolonged US Presidential campaign we saw the press entirely giving up the pretense of objectivity. Subsequently the combined SMS mutated into a fully fledged member of the Obama campaign team. In the reporting of operation "Cast Lead" we witness them unashamedly taking up the consciousness and 'narrative' of the party that consistently spouts anti Western hatred. Postmodern dialectic is communicated in an idiom of self-loathing, reverse morality, and false equation with the aim to alter perception.

As far as can be discerned from the comfort of the armchair, Western consumers are still paying for the advertisements that are the lifeblood of cable television? Or are we? Come to think of it, the overbearing AIG commercials haven't hit the screen now for some time. Whatever happened to the rallying statements emanating from the sub-prime bundler that used to be CNN's prime sponsor [sarc off]?

Footage comes to us increasingly in unfiltered, raw technicolor in the tradition of the Middle East - yet more evidence of a cultural shift. Whereas not so long ago a dead body was deemed too realistic for the after-dinner evening news, today we get the bits and pieces raw for breakfast, courtesy of Al Jazeera's Western competitors and their correspondents on-the-ground.

What's more, a brand new Postmodern 'rhetorical' technique has hit the media: pundits and commentators who rather specifically and emphatically self-identify as political moderates, or even claim to be politically agnostic or independent, then confessing they "really need to tell you the truth", followed by unabashed leftist or pro Islamist narrative.

A win-win situation is created. The pundit gets out the perception that even moderates think this (whatever the subject happens to be) is far beyond the pale; the media creates an impression of moderation and even-handedness. A more dishonest lot than the followers of subjectivism is yet to walk the earth.

At this stage it is as yet unsure where the culture war will take us next. One thing is for sure however: we are looking at a guerrilla-of-the-mind that is unprecedented in recorded history.

- Filed on Articles in "The Press from Hell" - Digg it!

SMS Recover Objectivity Mode, Descend on UIC

Continued from Part I: "CNN Recover Objectivity Mode: Obama Lies"

In part I we reported, that after months of pushing the issue within the blogosphere, yesterday finally CNN's Anderson Cooper's program shot into action over Obama's years long relationship with unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers.

Today the Obama campaign reacts.

Obama's campaign manager David Axelrod now admits Obama did have a relationship with Ayers, that they served together on CAC boards and Ayers throwing the coming out coffee party in 1995. But Barack Obama ... "didn't know about Ayers' history", his violent past.

It's a bit like asking, Oswald who?

CNN also checks back with Obama campaign strategist Robert Gibbs, who is still in denial mode despite his colleague's admissions: "This is somebody who the New York Times said Barack Obama’s not close to," that Barack Obama has condemned Ayers, that this is a "dishonorable, dishonest, despicable smear campaign".

Here's a news flash for the postmodernists on the Obama campaign: facts don't qualify as smears - they are well ... truth (fallacies on the philosophical level prevent them from telling the difference between fact and opinion).

Ed Morrisey on Hot Air: "Ayers was hardly quiet about his life and his aspirations. He wrote a book about it in 2001. Chicago Magazine did a lengthy profile of him at the time, complete with pictures of Ayers standing on an American flag thrown on the ground in an alley. Nevertheless, Obama continued to work with Ayers at the Woods Fund and work together on public events. Either Obama liked what Ayers did, or he’s the most clueless politician to have ever reached the US Senate, and neither commends itself as a recommendation for a presidential candidate. (...)

In the following vid we hear about the MSM descending on the University of Illinois library, going through the papers pertaining to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge project: more than 50,000 documents, 148 boxes, approximately 946 files, together some 70 linear feet. So much for "just a guy who lives in my neighborhood" ... we'll be looking forward to their reports.



Hat Tip: Judge Right

Update: Apparently Joe Biden went on the record this morning that the McCain-Palin attacks are inciting hatred - that's rich, after the appalling slurs against Palin:

Political Punch: "Son of Democratic Politician Indicted for Hacking Palin's E-mail"

- Filed on Articles in "The Pomo White House" -