Listen to Uncle Harold’s first Brandenburg Lecture in today’s Radio Free Northwest podcast, starting in minute 44:46 (here).
Author: C .T.
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“I’m not a Nazi” —Linder
Last month I added two provocative entries quoting Alex Linder, who has been labeled a “neo-Nazi” by ex pro-white activists. But Linder is not a Nazi. These are some recent excerpts taken from his VNN forum:
The swastika can’t be falsified into pro-jew, but it can be worn falsely by jews (see Frank Collins), and it is also associated with Nazism. I don’t wear a swastika because I’m not a Nazi. There’s also the problem that most people, including most declared Nazis, do not understand what Nazism is. I’d include myself among that number. The reason for this is that a very good deal of bad or misleading information out there hides what NS [National Socialism] actually is. I’ve tried to clear this up lower down on the forum. It’s complicated by the fact that the junkmedia call anyone who criticizes jews, much less those, like me, who make a main point of it, “Nazis,” even if those people, like me, aren’t Nazis.
I don’t agree with an all-powerful central state. I support, as I’ve written lower on forum, in a monofunctional overstate focused on defending the race, defined as broadly as needed. Beneath that racial umbrella, I believe in decentralization. Hitler did most emphatically not believe in decentralization.
Just as jews routinely mislabel me a Nazi, WN [white nationalist] enemies routinely mislabel me a libertarian. I don’t know what to do other than simply continue to make the case for the arrangement I think best. I don’t have a cool symbol. Personally I don’t like jewelry and symbols of any sort. Of course one is needed at some point, but that point is not now.
What is needed, so far as WN put forward a positive vision, rather than a critique of AmeriKwa, a ZOG production, is, in my opinion, to stress that our solution is the only one in which you have the independence that befits a white man, and you can exercise your whitemaniacal creativity and intelligence in the white context most suited to its flourishing.
Imagine a country in which you could be both white and a man. Under ZOG, you can be neither white nor a man. Under NS you can be white but not a man. Under libertarianism you can be a man but not white.
I want to be both white and a man, and I think about half of WN feel the same way I do; the rest are either outright NS or social-democrats (European type) or welfare-statists (American type).
Men can agree that we need all-White nations without agreeing on the scope and role of the government within that all-White nation. This is fairly obvious, that there’s no agreement on the deeper how-we-live-together stuff, that there’s a basic split, but it gets confused because so many WN come from conservatism and essentially just add race to their politics, leading outsiders and insiders alike to think that WN is just another petty party political option on the democratic-electoral menu rather than a fundamentally different and all-orienting worldview. Which is why I’ve insisted against all others, basically, that our practical political goal in this period ought to be attacking conservatives and replacing them in the eyes of the people rather than mixing with them and trying to influence them as MacDonald and James Edwards do.
My view is that altho KM and Edwards call themselves (as far as I know) White Nationalists, or at least don’t mind being called that, they are better viewed as implicit conservatives (IC). Because functionally that’s just what they are—conservatives. Their mindset is defending/appealing, not attacking and attracting. While many of the ICs’ positions overlap with WN/NS, the mindset is completely different. I see them as simply repeating failure patterns of the past without ever putting any conscious thought to why the Lindbergh on their party actually failed.
Back to my own view, WhiteMania, WhiteManistand, whatever you want to call it…
In the setup I describe, no one is free to question or undermine the racial basis of the state—if they don’t agree to it, they leave. If they feel they can only be men by living amid third worlders, they have either fought to prevent the birth of our new state, been killed, or fled abroad. If any of these are left after Whites take power, they will be dealt with in one way or another, but in no way will anyone ideologically opposed to the racial basis of the new states be allowed to remain within it.
Race is not a matter that can be compromised, but it is a matter worth killing over. The same goes for Catholics, or other goddists. If their religious weltanschauung demands race mixing, or race-neutralism at all levels, and they are actively going to teach and incite on that demand, then they too will be forced out of the new state. If they can live within the confines of the new founding on an explicit racial basis, then perhaps they can set up a neo-Maryland microstate for their type beneath the umbrella. But it must be absolutely clear that absolutely no political opposition to the basis of the new state will be tolerated. And if it is discovered, the leaders will be executed and the followers expelled or executed. Call it sicut catholicus non.
Beneath that federal level—the collective racial defense umbrella—white men may group themselves as they like, and build such subcommunities as they see fit. They could be welfare-statists, they could be libertarians. They could be 1001 other things I can’t imagine. But they will be responsible for building their own intermediate institutions if they feel they need them. In this way their freedom, honor, need to assume responsibility and manliness are preserved. The central state provides the drainage: keeping anti-White shit on the other side of the borders and out of the streets. The dreams are the responsibility of the men themselves.
To me, what I describe is both possible and desirable. I fancy it is hard where needs hard, and loose where needs freedom. It takes into account both racial laws and economic laws. For the great truth of our time, which has not yet been realized in minds and matter, is that the state is outmoded for nearly all, if not all, purposes. That means the state is the worst way of accomplishing almost any given task. I recommend WN take some time to educate themselves in the limits of politics (read Burke, Kirk, and other classic conservative thinkers) and get up to speed on the latest triumphs made through private, voluntary arrangements (read lewrockwell.com). And then you’ve got VNNF for tying it all together through the insights of the best racialists on the ‘net. Or at least a few dozen good smart white men on the same page seeking the same basic thing.
One counter view to mine is that genuine National Socialism has all the answers any white men need (adapted to their particular nation and circumstances), and we should simply don the swastika with pride and make our way forward.
I don’t agree with that view, which I take to be the view of NSM [NS movement], but it is psychologically right and strong, whereas the whining, remonstrating, complaining approach of, for example, the A3P [American Third Party] ICs is psychologically wrong and weak—mere conservatism with a racial veneer.
That sums up my position. I don’t wear swastika because I’m not a National Socialist. If I were a NS, I would wear it. I’m not NS because I don’t believe the government should be running White men like children. I don’t believe White men need public schools, socialized health care, or anything but collective racial defense out of their central government.
Under the pseudonym of Ulick Varange, Francis Parker Yockey’s two-volume Imperium was published ten years before I was born and was dedicated “To the hero of the Second World War,” about whom some reviewers speculate was Hitler.
The following excerpts come from a subsequent edition: an introduction authored by Dr. Revilo Oliver. They resonate with Greg Johnson’s thoughts in a recent entry critical of the universalism in Christianity. No ellipsis added between unquoted paragraphs:
Yockey in 1960
Dimly, I could make out the form of this man—this strange and lonely man—through the thick wire netting. Inwardly, I cursed these heavy screens that prevented our confrontation. For even though our mutual host was the San Francisco County Jail, and even though the man upon whom I was calling was locked in equality with petty thieves and criminals, I knew that I was in the presence of a great force, and I could feel History standing aside me.
Yesterday, the headlines had exploded their sensational discovery. “MYSTERY MAN WITH THREE PASSPORTS JAILED HERE,” they screamed. A man of mystery—of wickedness—had been captured. A man given to dark deeds and—much worse—forbidden thoughts, too, the journalists squealed. A man who had roamed the earth on mysterious missions and who was found to be so dangerous that his bail was set at $50,000—a figure ten or twenty times the normal bail for passport fraud. The excitement of the newspapers and the mystery of it all seemed to indicate that this desperado was an international gangster, or a top communist agent.
At least, this is what the papers hinted. But I know now that it erred in many ways, this “free press” of ours. I know now that the only real crime of Francis Parker Yockey was to write a book, and for this he had to die.
Yockey was a concert-level pianist; he was a gifted writer. He studied languages and became a linguist. As a lawyer, he never lost a case. He had an extraordinary grasp of the world of finance—and this is surprising, for we learn that in his philosophy economics is relegated to a relatively unimportant position. And it is as the Philosopher that Yockey reached the summit; it is this for which he will be remembered; he was a man of incredible vision. Even so, his personality was spiced by the precious gift of a sense of humor.
Like the great majority of Americans, Yockey opposed American intervention in the Second World War. Nevertheless, he joined the army and served until 1942 when he received a medical discharge (honorable). The next few years were spent in the practice of law, first in Illinois and subsequently in Detroit, where he was appointed Assistant County Attorney for Wayne County, Michigan.
In 1946, Yockey was offered a job with the war crimes tribunal and went to Europe. He was assigned to Wiesbaden, where the “second string” Nazis were lined up for trial and punishment. The Europe of 1946 was a war-ravaged continent, not the prosperous land we know today. Viewing the carnage, and seeing with his own eyes the visible effects of the unspeakable Morgenthau Plan which had as its purpose the starvation of 30 million Germans, and which was being put into effect at that time, he no doubt found ample reinforcement for his conviction that American involvement in the war had been a ghastly mistake.
It was late 1947 when Yockey returned to Europe. He sought out a quiet inn at Brittas Bay, Ireland. Isolated, he struggled to begin. Finally, he started to write, and in six months—working entirely without notes—Francis Parker Yockey completed Imperium.
The formidable task of publishing it was the next step. Here, also, Yockey ran into serious problems, for no publisher would touch the book, it being too “controversial.” Hungry publishers of our advanced day know that any pile of trash, filth, sex, sadism, perversion and sickness will sell when wrapped between two gaudy covers and called a book, but under no circumstances may they allow readers to come into contact with a serious work unless it contains the standard obeisances to the catchwords of equality, democracy and universal brotherhood.
Finally, however, Yockey was able to secure the necessary financing, and production began.
The first edition of Imperium was issued in two volumes. Volume I has 405 pages and three chapters. Volume II has 280 pages and also three chapters. Both were published in 1948 in the name of Westropa Press. Volume I was printed by C. A. Brooks & Co., Ltd. and Volume II by Jones & Dale—both of London. Both volumes measure 5 x 7 1/4 inches in dimensions and have a red dust jacket with the title in black script on a white held. The cover of Volume I is tan and that of Volume II is black.
It is known that 1,000 copies of Volume I, but only 200 copies of Volume II, were finished. The discrepancy in quantity and the change in printers point to the difficulty in financing the job. Copies of the first edition are, of course, virtually unobtainable today.
* * *
And as I peered through the thick screens in the San Francisco Jail, and made out the indefinite shape on the other side, that tenth day of June, 1960, I knew that I would have to help the prisoner as best I could. I could do nothing else.
“I have read your book,” I said to the shadow, “and I want to help you. What can I do?”
“Wait,” he said. “Wait, and do as your conscience tells you.”
The following week was full of news of Yockey’s appearance before Rabbi Joseph Karesh, the U.S. Commissioner.
Twice, I attended the hearings, and each time was fascinated by this man, Yockey. In stature he was about five feet, ten inches. He was light of weight, perhaps 145 pounds, and quick on his feet. His hair was dark, and starting to grey. The expression on his face—pensive, sensitive, magnetic—this was the unforgettable thing. It was his eyes, I think. Dark, with a quick and knowing intelligence. His eyes bespoke great secrets and knowledge and such terrible sadness. As he turned to leave, one time, those eyes quickly searched the room, darting from face to face with a sort of desperation, though the expression on his face of a determined resignation never wavered. What was he looking for? In that lions’ den, what else but a friendly countenance? As his gaze swept across, and then to me, he stopped and for the space of a fractional second, spoke to me with his eyes. In that instant we understood that I would not desert him.
Friday morning, June 17, I arose as usual. I heard the radio announcer pronounce words that stunned me.
Yockey was dead.
It was like a certain wise, old reporter whispered to one of Yockey’s sisters as she slumped tearfully and quietly in her solitude. “Your brother is a martyr—the first of a long line of them if we are to take back our country from those who have stolen it from us.”
* * *
There is much in Imperium which can be easily misinterpreted. There is something for everyone to agree with. And there is something for everyone to disagree with. This is a distinguishing characteristic of every truly vital and revolutionary departure.
It is important to seek the origins of Yockey’s philosophy. [Oswald] Spengler published Decline in July, 1918, and we are still being washed in the very first breakwaters of that titanic event. For The Decline of the West was fully as revolutionary to the study of history in 1918 as Copernicus’ theory of heliocentricity was to the study of astronomy in 1543.
What, we may ask, is the main cause of resistance to accepting Spengler aside from the fact that he is a massive roadblock to the total victory of the marxist-liberal “intellectual”? The main difficulties, I think, are two: the necessity of acknowledging the essentially alien nature of every cultural soul, and the apparent necessity to reconcile ourselves to the dismal fact that our own Western organism must, too, die as have all those [civilizations] which have passed before.
As for the first specific difficulty, the acknowledgment of the essentially alien nature of each cultural soul, it follows that if every culture has its own inner vitality, it will be uninfluenced by the spirit of any other. This also runs against the very deepest grain of Western man who, for five hundred years and more, has been proselyting men all over the world in the vain hope of making them over into his own beloved image.
This psychological block runs deep in the West—so deep that it is an error which is apparent in all philosophical strata, certainly not only the leftist variety. Name any philosopher, economist or religious adept of Western history, except Hegel (yes, even including Spengler) and you are virtually certain to find a man who sought to lay universal laws of human behavior; who, in other words, saw no essential difference between races. This error is so fundamental it is usually unconscious.
The Roman Catholic Church is a case in point. Tradition-minded Westerners rightly speak of the Church as being a bulwark of the West, but sometimes go so far as to identify the Church as the West. Unfortunately, the compliment is not returned. The Holy Roman Church is a universal Church—one Church for all men—which sees all people, wherever they are and whoever they be, as equal human souls whose bodies are to be brought to the holy embrace of Vatican City. It is the first to reject the impious suggestion that it owes a primary loyalty to the West. Scientific and philosophical demonstrations that men and cultures are, nevertheless, different in many fundamental respects and that it is unhealthy—unethical—to mix them are sure to meet with the same inhospitable reception that the Church earlier gave to Copernicus and Galileo. In April of 1962 three Catholics in New Orleans were excommunicated for daring to stand on this heretical Verity.
The zeitgeist is always reflected in definitions, so it is the height of insult for a White man today to be labeled an “isolationist” or “nationalist.” White folks must all be “free traders,” “internationalists” and “cosmopolitan” in our outlook, and how we admire the “citizen of the world,” whatever that is.
Our view is intently focused away from our marches; it is far easier, we have discovered, to solve the problems of total strangers than to solve our own. Non-Western peoples are not so enlightened as we, and it is eagerly excused, utilizing a newly-discovered Christian double standard which is a mark of modern moral superiority, like belonging to the Classics Book Club or contributing to the Negro College Fund. What, asks Nietzsche, has caused more suffering than the follies of the compassionate? It is good for colored peoples to be nationalistic; we encourage it, in fact, and snap up Israel Bonds with a warm feeling of self-righteousness. We are joyful when colored peoples and Jews exhibit “race pride,” the cardinal sin and taboo of our own puritanical environment. Incidentally, why is it that every subject except one can be discussed in our enlightened age? Atheism is now a dull subject. Marxism is even duller, after one hundred years of popularity. A step further has taken us past plain sex to sadism and perversion; the Marquis de Sade is even becoming jaded. What racy topic is left to discuss since the equalists have brought democracy’s blessings? Only one thing cannot be discussed in polite company: race.
If we are to draw analogies between cultures and organisms we must agree that the soul of the organism dies only because of the death of the body. The soul can sicken—the soul of the West is now diseased and perhaps mortally ill—but it cannot die unless the organism itself dies. And this, point out the racists, is precisely what has happened to all previous cultures; death of the organism being the natural result of the suicidal process of imperialism.
A word on the racial view of history before proceeding further. Today, of course, history is written from the Marxist standpoint of economics, linear progress and class warfare—and Yockey explains this triple error well. Previous to the first World War history was written largely from the racial point of view. History was seen as the dramatic story of the movements, struggles and developments of races, which it is. Suppression of the racist point of view reached its apex about 1960.
Perhaps the biggest reason for a growing tendency of White folks to look at the races objectively is, paradoxically, precisely because they have been forced to look at them subjectively! It is no problem to maintain a myth in ignorance. Negro equality, for example, is easier to believe in if there are no Negroes around to destroy the concept. In a word, internationalism in practice quickly metamorphoses into racism. To turn from experience to academic matters, how many Americans or Britons are acquainted with the stupendously elemental fact that they are—in the historical sense—Germans; that they are, like it or not, a part of that great Teutonic-Celtic family which—millenniums before the dawn of Rome or even Greece—was one tribe, with one language?
Further, there is a correlation too perfect to be a coincidence in that in every case on record of the death or stagnation of a Culture there has been simultaneously an abortive attempt to digest large numbers of cultural and racial aliens into the organism. In the case of Rome and Greece death came about through imperialism and the resulting, inevitable backwash of conquered peoples and races into the heartland as slaves, bringing exotic religions, different philosophies; in a word, cultural sophistication first, then cultural anarchy. In the case of Persia, India and the Amerindian civilizations, a race of conquerors superimposed their civilization upon a mass of indigenous people; the area flourished for awhile, then the Culture vanished or, in the case of America, was on the verge of vanishing, as the descendants of the conquerors became soft, fat and liberal and took on more and more of the accoutrements and blood of the subject population. In the case of Egypt, the alien blood was brought in over the course of many centuries by the importation of Negro slaves. The inevitable racial mongrelization followed, creating the Egypt we know today.
We thus see the real reason underlying the “inevitable” decline and destruction of a cultural organism. It is because, at a certain stage, a Culture develops a bad case of universalism. Speaking pathologically, unless this is sublimated to harmless channels by proper treatment, it will inevitably kill the organism through the absorption of a resulting flood of alien microbes. It is, therefore, the natural by-product of universalism which kills the organism; the death of the organism itself is neither natural nor necessary!
This conclusion comes by a synthesis of the Spenglerian and the racial point of view. Each tempers the other; together a comprehensive and hopeful theory of history can be developed which holds a deep meaning to Westerners of this day. At all costs, the imperialistic phase of our development must be avoided, and we must guard against the digestion of alien matter we have already partially absorbed.
What is the significance of Imperium? In one respect, Imperium is akin to Das Kapital, for Karl Marx gave to the conspiratorial Culture Distorter the necessary ideological mask to hide its mission of ruthless, total destruction. He provided an ugly and invalid theory of man, cloaked in putrifying equality, mewling hypocrisy, the disease of undiscriminating altruism and the “science” of economics.
Francis Parker Yockey has done the same thing for those who are constructive-minded and who have the intellectual and moral courage to face reality and seek and speak truth. This is why, although Yockey’s plan for the West may not be perfect, it contains atomic power. If only one man reading this book is influenced to lead, and if others are made to see the world a little more clearly than they do now, then Yockey’s life of suffering and persecution and his monumental accomplishment in spite of all has not been in vain.
—Revilo P. Oliver
Categories
Quotable quote
“When I think of Western cities to be nuked in priority in order to save the white race, Paris is first on my list, together with New York.”
This is the corollary of my previous email exchange about Latin America. Ever since I read Will Durant’s book on Greece, my opinion about Alexander the Great changed dramatically:
When, in 399 b. c, Socrates was put to death, the soul of Athens died with him, lingering only in his proud pupil, Plato. And when Philip of Macedon defeated the Athenians at Chaeronea in 338 b. c, and Alexander burned the great city of Thebes to the ground three years later, even the ostentatious sparing of Pindar’s home could not cover up the fact that Athenian independence, in government and in thought, was irrevocably destroyed.The domination of Greek philosophy by the Macedonian Aristotle mirrored the political subjection of Greece by the virile and younger peoples of the north. The death of Alexander (323 b. c.) quickened this process of decay. The boy-emperor, barbarian though he remained after all of Aristotle’s tutoring, had yet learned to revere the rich culture of Greece, and had dreamed of spreading that culture through the Orient in the wake of his victorious armies. The development of Greek commerce, and the multiplication of Greek trading posts throughout Asia Minor, had provided an economic basis for the unification of this region as part of an Hellenic empire; and Alexander hoped that from these busy stations Greek thought, as well as Greek goods, would radiate and conquer.
But he had underrated the inertia and resistance of the Oriental mind, and the mass and depth of Oriental culture. It was only a youthful fancy, after all, to suppose that so immature and unstable a civilization as that of Greece could be imposed upon a civilization immeasurably more widespread, and rooted in the most venerable traditions.
The quantity of Asia proved too much for the quality of Greece. Alexander himself, in the hour of his triumph, was conquered by the soul of the East; he married (among several ladies) the daughter of Darius; he adopted the Persian diadem and robe of state; he introduced into Europe the Oriental notion of the divine right of kings; and at last he astonished a sceptic Greece by announcing, in magnificent Eastern style, that he was a god. Greece laughed; and Alexander drank himself to death.
This subtle infusion of an Asiatic soul into the wearied body of the master Greek was followed rapidly by the pouring of Oriental cults and faiths into Greece along those very lines of communication which the young conqueror had opened up; the broken dykes let in the ocean of Eastern thought upon the lowlands of the still adolescent European mind. The mystic and superstitious faiths which had taken root among the poorer people of Hellas were reinforced and spread about; and the Oriental spirit of apathy and resignation found a ready soil in decadent and despondent Greece.
In antiquity a change of the magnitude that we are living through is summarized also in The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity. Like Will Durant, James Russell claims that:
From whatever point of view Alexander’s campaigns are judged… their consequences were profound and irrevocable… The number of Greek settlers was, in absolute terms insignificant… Despite [these] intentions the ultimate result was not cultural conformity but… cultural confusion, and the loss of cultural identity by native and immigrant alike… Native Greek culture was gradually transformed and “de-Hellenized.”
Going back to the American continent.
The right way to conquer land was the way the English did in the New World, emigrating with their whole families instead of bachelor soldiers conquering the Aztecs and marrying Indian women, as the Catholic Spaniards did. If an adolescent, proto-nation like New Spain absorbs what it conquers it becomes what it colonizes.
If a future Northwest Republic is ever created later in this century, let’s not repeat the mistakes that my Spaniard ancestors committed. Only ethnically cleansing the whole land (as the English did from the 17th through the 19th centuries), whether Aztlán or still further down the South to the border of Antarctica—sparing Iberian white countries like Uruguay or Argentina—, would prevent the blunders of Alexander and Cortés that eventually overwhelmed both the Hellenic and the Iberian empires.
My dream is that Kendall’s communication to Andrew Jackson telling him that someday Anglo-Saxons will be majority in Mexico becomes a reality after the Holy Race Wars that are coming ahead in this century.
I am curious though: Why do I love your race more than you do…?
Categories
Greg Johnson on Christianity
The following are responses of Greg Johnson to Christian sympathizers at Occidental Dissent right after the Breivik incident (slightly edited):
Kievsky,
Before you draw conclusions about the usefulness of Christianity as a vehicle for White racial preservation, you need to read the Breivik manifesto.
First, in the name of Christian Universalism, for instance, he advocates treating all Christians as Europeans, no matter what their race, and even bringing non-White Christians into his Templar Crusade.
Basically, Breivik’s concern for preserving Nordics is trumped by his Christian universalism. If all the Muslims in Norway converted to Christianity, he would have no objection to them.
Second, in the name of Christian universalism, Breivik envisions crusades into the Middle East to help the local Middle Eastern Christians. So Europeans will spill their blood to help the genetic first cousins to Europe’s Muslim invaders, so long as the beneficiaries are Christians.
This is the logic of Christian universalism at work. Blood is particular. But Christianity is universal. Blood is natural. But Christianity aims higher than nature. Thus Christian brotherhood always trumps and undermines blood brotherhood.
Spooky,
It is possible to hold conflicting values without problems as long as they are merely in one’s mind, as abstractions never tested in the real world. The problems emerge when you try to live by them, then they actually do come into conflict, and you actually do have to decide which value trumps which.
Say that you are a devout Christian, and your daughter wants to marry a devout Black Nigerian Christian. You now have a conflict between blood-based values and Christian universal values.
Which is more important to you: maintaining genetic distinctness or honoring the universal community of the church? If a Black man is worthy of sharing heaven with you, through accepting Jesus Christ as his savior, then why should he not be worthy of sharing the same neighborhood with you, the same public transportation, the same church, the same water fountain—or holy wedlock with your sister? Or do you think that there will be Jim Crow in heaven?
Hunter,
Christianity will not be dead until its secular offspring, liberal universalism, is dead as well. But you know that, don’t you?
Christian fanatics are precisely the ones who believe that blood differences don’t matter. One can work with lukewarm or confused Christians, or people who are racists first and Christians second. But you can’t work with real Christians, because they take their supernatural universalism seriously, which pits them against blood brotherhood wherever and whenever it conflicts with the supernatural brotherhood in Christ which is the Church.
Judaism is an ethnocentric religion. Racism is just a form of ethnocentrism. Christianity is a universalistic religion. Paul, who is part of the Bible and therefore part of Christianity, makes it clear that the differences of blood and nation make no difference once one enters into the universal brotherhood of the Church. Christianity is therefore anti-ethnocentric, anti-xenophobic, and anti-racist—even if “racism” was not a word at the time.
This means that all kinds of men can share heaven. Again, if a black Christian is good enough to share heaven with you, on what grounds [he can’t] enter holy matrimony, one of the sacraments of the church, with your daughter?
Kievsky (again),
Good luck to you. There is nothing we need more than a Racial Reformation of the Church, and only practicing Christians can provide it.
The Churches have always been willing to compromise with the Zeitgeist because ultimately their kingdom is not of this world. Once a racialist Zeitgeist re-emerges, we will hear less and less about Christian anti-racism.
But if we get that genie back in the bottle, we will always have to be eternally vigilant, lest it escape again. Because Christian universalism is, in fact, opposed to racialism and thus will always pose a danger.
Update of 3 May 2012:
Johnson has now commented at The Occidental Observer:
[Christianity] did undermine racial exclusivity for nearly 2,000 years. Racial and subracial differences were no bar to marriage, as long as both parties were Christian. Christianity spread in the racially and culturally mixed seaports around the Mediterranean, to the lowest strata of society, which included slaves and freedmen of all races. Of course we do not have records of these people’s marriages, but surely the church blessed many miscegenating matches from the very beginning.
We have better records from later times, when Christianity was the dominant religion of Europe. Here are just a couple of random examples. In the 8th century, the Byzantine Emperor Constantine the V married Irene of Khazaria, a daughter of the Khazar Khagan. Their son, Leo IV, also called Leo the Khazar, ruled the empire from 775 to 780. But Constantine himself was no Greek or Roman. His family were from Syria, but they married into the Byzantine ruling class. Because of Christianity, the Byzantine Empire had lost its ethnically Roman and Greek character by the early 8th century, taking on instead a heavily near-Eastern (Armenian and Syrian ethnic composition). The later Phyrigian and Macedonian dynasties were actually Armenian, and they married their sons and daughters to the Frankish and Russian aristocracies. Indeed, Grand Duke Vladimir of Kiev Christianized himself and the Rus in order to marry Anna, the daughter of Romanos II, in the late 10th century.
Race mixing has, of course, increased with the greater mobility of populations. But wherever Christians of different races and subraces existed together in the past, the Church has been willing to bless their matches.
Jews, of course, are not Europeans, yet the Church has blessed marriages between Jewish converts to Christianity and European Christians, and these sorts of matches must have been quite common in the early years of the Church.
And of course the Crusades, in which Europe spilled the blood of generations of its finest and fairest Frankish nobles for the freedom of Near Eastern Christians, could hardly be said to be in the genetic interests of Europeans.
Update of 27 March 2013:
Johnson has now commented at Counter-Currents:
Where are the WN Christians in your little scenario? Apparently they have no agency whatsoever. The Left has conquered the churches, and New Right pagans argue that this is no accident on tiny websites and in the pages of low-circulation books and magazines. But where are the pro-White Christians?
Oh, wait, they are here, trying to shut down anti-Christian discourse on the Right. Because that is what you are saying: shut up; stop agreeing with the Left that Christianity is a universalistic, egalitarian, individualistic religion. Which it is.
Again, I have to ask: show me evidence that you are actively combatting anti-white hate in the churches and I will take you seriously as a white advocate rather than merely a christian apologist.
As for the either/or: that comes from the Bible. Yahweh is the only god, and all the others are false. Christianity actively wiped out paganism. Those Christians who incorporated elements of paganism killed it before they ate it.
I regard Christianity as part of my cultural heritage too. But I don’t regard it as true. I try to focus on the things the Christians created, rather than the things they destoyed. And I look at Christian art as merely the ideological channel through which white genius was forced for a long time to flow.
Update of 29 May 2013:
Johnson has now commented at Occidental Dissent:
Here’s my breakdown of the ultimate causes of our plight:
1. Whites are prone to universalism: the idea that there is one humanity and one moral law that transcends differences of race and culture. This tendency is pre-christian. One finds it in the Ancient Greek philosophical schools, and Stoicism is perhaps the most striking expression of it. Whether this plight is genetic in any meaningful sense or not is an open question. I hope it is not genetic, because we don’t have time to change our gene pool to fight it.
2. Christianity, which is a universalistic religion grafted on the trunk of Jewish tribalism, and infected with Jewish fanaticism and intolerance, came to dominate the West, which pretty much explains why whites are open to everyone, but Jews are somehow more equal than everyone else.
Of course, Christians who take the New Testament seriously and who remember the early history of the Church, made a distinction between the old holy Jews and new, unholy Jews who crucified and reject Christ, and imposed legal restrictions on the latter that lasted until the Enlightenment. (That distinction is lost on today’s mouth-breathing Christian Zionists.)
3. Enlightenment liberalism pretty much secularizes Christan axiology, and since it discarded Christianity, it discarded Church-based impediments to Jewish emancipation, opening the doors to Jewish hegemony. To secular liberals, however, Jews (and blacks) are more equal than others because they believe that they suffered from intolerance to unique degrees.
Any group that practices rigorous ingroup nepotism in a liberal society while demanding that the rest of the society treat them with tolerance and fairness has a built in advantage that will cause them to accrue power and wealth at the expense of the rest of the society. South Asians and East Asians in the US are now using the same techniques, with similar results.
Categories
Vanguardist retort
“I’m openly intolerant. If someone doesn’t follow my line, he’s the enemy. Not like it’s a hard standard to meet: openly White and openly anti-jew. That’s all. Within that framework, we can do business. Outside it, we’re enemies. Simple, clear, effective.” (Alex Linder’s dual litmus test)
The following is Linder’s deconstruction at VNN Forum of what Leon Haller said at Majority Rights. It exemplifies my view about why the mainstreamer side of white nationalism is deluded. No ellipsis added between unquoted sentences:
Leon Haller: The primary strategic question is always, therefore, who is your base?
Alex Linder: Wrong, quite wrong. First you must answer a pre-strategic question: who are “we”? Yeah. That basic. Once that is answered, and you know what you mean by “we” and “our” (the VNN answer is we are Whites, and jews are our enemy), then the strategic question becomes: how do we gain sovereignty from a System in which jews control the money, the mass media, and the military?
Haller: The base of any movement to save the white race—the minimum of which in my view consists in stopping nonwhite immigration everywhere, followed by repatriating nonwhites from Europe, and, in the US, Canada, Australia, NZ, 1) ending white judicial and legislative oppression, and 2) reestablishing white cultural hegemony—is going to be found among conservatives. Who else could it be? Occasional NS [National Socialist] Euros think that some labourite working class somewhere will constitute it, but I think that view is decades out of date, if it was ever valid.
Linder: Wrong on two levels.
Our cause isn’t truly a political position but a species-representation: We are a biological party, not a political party. White society by default, on a far deeper level than mere petty politics, is what white nationalism represents. We aren’t representing or appealing, we are the thing itself—the thing itself defending itself, in the biosphere. We don’t need to appeal to anybody, we not only represent them already, we are them. We’re just open about it. That is the only real difference between us and the vast majority of fellow whites: we are open about it.
The reason people don’t join their formal political behavior with their informal unspoken feelings and behavior is fear. The jews have divorced our external from our internal by means of fear. It is fear, above all else, that we must overcome, in ourselves and in our people, if we are to regain sovereignty.
Only bravery gets out fear. We don’t need to appeal to people, Leon. We need to lead them. Lead them means not making arguments that people already believe in but, at this point, not showing fear, and striking back at the enemy, verbally and, if we have the guts, like Breivik did, physically. [Chechar’s note: Cf. the recent entry Linder on Breivik]
People will only join us when they see 1) we are not afraid (like the cowardly conservatives and Republicans) and that 2) we strike real blows against the enemy. It starts verbally by using slurs. Truly, the continental verbal-political-strategic divide is the use of the term nigger. If you won’t use it under your real name, you are not involved in serious politics. You are merely a conservative. Either use “nigger” or be a niggler, to make a phrase of it.
We gotta be gross large powerful and scary as all fuck, Haller, like a great white shark maw coming up out of the water at the slick black jewmud-seal.
Haller: Speaking as an American, though on this issue I can’t believe matters would be much different in Canada or England—or perhaps any white nation today, given the postwar convergence of governing structures, economies and lifestyles—, it is perfectly obvious to me that our base is among conservatives (I’m tempted to add, “duh”).
Linder: You are inside the box, Haller. You need to get out of the box.
We don’t need to appeal to voters, Leon, we need to attract White men. We don’t do that by our silly positions, we do it by what we are.
We only have one agenda item: whites living normally among whites in a white country under White control. If our cause isn’t negotiable, if it isn’t a matter of voting because it’s deeper than that (our existence is not up for debate) then talking about appeals and who and how we need to alter our position smorgasbord is actually obscene, if you think about it. It reduces our cause to cheap trifling. It makes petty what is profound. Don’t do that. Our cause is not conservative. Appealing to middle-class cowards never has and never will get racialism anywhere. Selfish, cowardly bourgeois won’t fight for anything but lower taxes. They’ll join us all right: when we’re on the verge of winning. So it was with Hitler, and his Germans were a hell of a lot more serious, intelligent and less sketchy than AmeriKwans in 2011.
Haller: My point is that white preservationists will only find allies, if at all, among conventional, as yet “unawakened”, conservatives. So the real question, for those who actually want to do some racial good in the world, for those, that is, for whom intellectual work is not an end in itself, but a guide to desired social change, is, how can we best appeal to the broader world of conservatives?
Linder: If you use the word appeal, you don’t get it. Your mindset is trapped in a petty political world that has nothing to do with deep, real politics—where nothing is off the table. I mean, that’s how we got here.
The jews don’t play fair. Our petty right-wing politics have faced the jews for a hundred years and the jews have won every single time. Maybe we should try something different. Of course we should. What is new and different is using slurs, following a principled, impersonal political line, and attacking everyone not meeting our litmus test as the enemy, with the end goal of destroying the petty right, the stupid, cowardly, lazy conservatives, en route to polarizing the public for the real and final battle between Whites and jews.
The conservative approach has been tried for decades. It has failed. Let’s try a different route.
Haller: As I have argued vociferously and ad nauseam, the answer to this question is “subtly” —not in terms of outspokenness, but intellectual content. In democracies whose (still) white majority populations are remarkably psychologically and thus politically stable, that which is seen as too far outside the mainstream will fail. But the “mainstream” comprises a number of different “streams”, so to speak. If we are going to challenge the racial status quo, which, if left unchallenged, will in the normal course of things destroy us, then we need to be as mainstream as possible in every other way apart from the foundational ideological challenge.
Linder: Wholly wrong. Indeed, comically wrong. You just don’t get it, Haller: the enemy controls all the devices that determine what is normal and who has authority. That’s tv, mostly. But also public schools, preachers, the presidency. A subtle, moderate appeal to cowardly conservatives is going to create an invincible racial radicalism? You can’t be serious. Loud, gross, unsubtle, clear, simple, but above all strong… is what is called for. Strong is the only thing whites understand.
The masses are feminine, Leon. They respond to strength, like a woman. Not niggling weakness. They want to be bowled over, not reasoned with. If they’re scared of ZOG’s penalties for siding with the politics they really want, no rational argument will win them over—only showing there’s a new sheriff in town, and he might just be on the way to kicking ZOG’s ass. Elemental stuff. It always is. Who’s the big dog in the room? Hint: itz never a bunch of conservative faggots. Never. We’re not in an argument. We’re not in a debate. We’re not playing a game. We’re in a fight. And a fight with no rules. Humans are animals, and that is the bottom-line fact. Whites lost their countries through intimidation, and they will only get them back through bravery.
Haller: People like David Duke and especially Jared Taylor came to understand that unconventional grooming habits, wearing funny “uniforms,” indulging in strange gestures or forms of speech, or adhering to bizarre or repugnant (conspiracy) theories and/or ideologies, was simply less effective than appearing “clean-cut” and as culturally and psychologically normal as possible.
Linder: Yeah, and I’m an average white guy watching Polished Turd get abused off his own paid-for podium by a bunch of teenage pussies [see here]. Yeah, I’m signing up with kosher racialism real quick. Looks like fun. We whine and niggle (what Jerry calls gentlemanliness), and get our ass kicked.
No strength? No power. Where’s the strength in conservatism? Just some arguments. Arguments without heroes to champion them do nothing. As Hitler said—and he was a winner, unlike conservatives— “it is not enough that you believe: you must fight.” Truth shall not prevail without a sword at her side.
Why did people follow Hitler, Haller? Was it his arguments? Or was it that they knew he meant what he said and would back it with his life? You can’t even find among your cowardly conservatives a leader with the guts to use “nigger” in public. And you’re going fuck The People with that dick?
Haller: This emphasis on conventionality ought to extend to ideology. Thus, in assessing how to get a hearing for WP [White preservationist] concerns from conservatives…
Linder: Real men lead. They don’t “appeal” or “try to get a hearing.” Passive, passive, passive, wimpy, wimpy, wimpy, loser, loser, loser.
I hate to use a niggerism, but either go big or don’t go at all. This wimpy democratic-electoral appeal to lazy, cowardly, selfish middle-class khaki wearers is ridiculous. You can’t take crap like that and escher it into revolutionary warriors. That ought to be obvious. What we need to do is be the Conans, and by our sheer powerful awesomeness attract the barbarians. Then the lamenting women—an apter description of conservatives could hardly be devised—will follow us. “Appealing” to the conformist middle-classes is the political equivalent of putting women on a pedestal. It doesn’t work except to produce misery. Only ideological racial fanatics can do that. Accept it. Help generate those fanatics.
Haller: …our only possible mass base, we need to understand conservatives, and try to show that WP—and the policies it requires: ending immigration, ending the anti-white racial spoils system, building white consciousness as an aspect of conservative consciousness—is a natural outgrowth of conservatism (which, in fact, it is).
Linder: Race is the basis of what you’re going to preserve, since culture springs from it. The culture comes from the race. Not the other way around.
To ordinary people, conservatism is whatever comes out of Bill O’Reilly’s mouth, or Rush Limbaughs’. And that’s liberalism on the most basic thing—race. People don’t think, they parrot. You don’t persuade them, you become the authority. To people, who are almost all women, authority is the argument.
Haller: This means in part, especially in America, demonstrating the ethical compatibility between Christianity—the belief system of a clear majority of American conservatives, extending far beyond just the noisier and narrower Bible-thumping Christian “Right”—and policies of white preservation.
Linder: Try this instead: “Niggers are flash mobbing our neighborhoods? Let’s go flash mob some niggers.”
Yeah. That crude. Necessarily. People are not intellectuals. People do not think. We don’t need to argue, we need to bulk up. Verbally and physically—simultaneously.
How did Whites act when they were free and sovereign? They used racial epithets and lynched troublemakers—jew, mud and white. By degree jews stole to power, and made those healthy actions “hate” crimes and enforced taboos against even noticing racial differences, let alone acting on them. We don’t get back to where we were by playing along with the rules of the New Racial Order.
Haller: In much larger part, it means jettisoning, or at the very least muting, those aspects of WN which conservatives will find anathema.
Linder: So crazy it beggars belief. We are to suck up to weaklings to gain political power. How is that possibly a winning strategy? The jews didn’t get power by appealing to people but by kicking their ass, in every possible way. We will only get that power back by kicking their kikey ass. Appealing to mouthbreathing Foxtards as a strategy is, again, so far past ridiculous it makes one question your motives in suggesting it.
Haller: Force a conservative to choose between Christ and Hitler, and 99% of the time, he will choose the former. That is a fact that needs to be dealt with, even by atheist or NS WNs.
Linder: Planted axiom: that it matters what christians or conservatives think. It does not. They’re stupid, scared dogs, and will support who they’re told to by their bought bosses, as all evidence shows. They are irrelevant to the struggle between Whites and jews until the Fox-faux-right, the controlled opposition, is destroyed and the real parties doing battle are seen by everybody, from the 10-watts to the 100-watts, to be WHITES and JEWS. And then the christian-conservative cuntlings will side with the white side because as bad as evil-nazis might be, jew commies are worse. Until that point, what the christ cultists think is irrelevant. They’re just dumb tools and safely ignorable.
Haller: But even if racial fascism is where the Euroright needs to get to, the present paradox is that it will not get there by advertising this fact openly. The key for all white nations is, as I’ve stated previously, gradual radicalization, the insinuation of white consciousness and pro-white policy advocacy into conservative discourse.
Linder: “Gradual radicalization”… Haller, it just doesn’t work like this.
Imagine any successful revolutionary saying the stuff you’re saying. Imagine Hitler talking about subtly influencing people, gradually radicalizing them. Either you’re leading and loud and laughing, or you’re limping, lingering and lamenting. Nothing sneaky or superficial, shallow, subtle can work. It must be plain and strong.
Again, this is so obvious it is hard to believe you actually believe what you’re typing. You’re going insinuate and gradually radicalize conservatives? Really? Maybe if you controlled Fox News. Otherwise, no. And even if you did control Fox, why would you go by degree? You’d just flip policy overnight, and your audience would follow cluelessly.
There’s not one hundredth of Fox viewers who can define conservatism in a way Burke would recognize. They’re intellectual niggers. Conservatism is simply whatever a publicly labeled conservative just said, even if he said the opposite yesterday. And since you don’t have any major media outlets, and every official vector is controlled by the enemy, a policy of insinuation is utterly impossible.
Haller: We must be as moderate as possible.
Linder: And with that, you’re taking over my job. Good friggin’ grief.
Hi Chechar,
You were born in Mexico, right? Is it worthwhile to distribute anti-ZOG propaganda to Spanish-speaking Latin Americans? Anti-Americanism seems popular enough in Latin America, but do they know who is secretly in power? Even if they aren’t white, do you think we could gain “allies” in Mexico?
Venezuela seems to be predicting a showdown with ZOG. They have recently begun trying to move their gold reserves back into the country and have condemned the overthrow of the Libyan government.
Do you have any thoughts?
Regards,
Sam Davidson
* * *
Dear Sam,
Sophisticated Latin Americans don’t know almost anything about ZOG (in my life I’ve only met a handful of them conscious of the Jewish Question). I like what Chávez is doing with the gold, but like Evo Morales he’s a rabid anti-white. Indians, mulattos and mestizos can be our allies only in the sense that Arabs can be allies in our common war against Jewry. Most criollos (Iberian whites living here) have become as body-snatched pods as their northern, WASP counterparts. Mexico is beyond repair unless…
1) the dollar crashes and the US goes down, down, down…
2) desperate niggers start behaving pretty naughtily in a crashed America
3) an ethnostate is formed somewhere in Northam after a bloody war and, finally,
4) the new Aryan nation grows strong enough—e.g., as in Covington’s latest novel, Freedom’s Sons—to conquer Mexico with the ease that Cortés conquered the Aztec Empire half a millennium ago.
I’ve translated to English a couple of my articles about Mexico, and although I am translating MacDonald’s CofC the Spaniards are my main target audience in my blog in Spanish. Latin America in general and Mexico in particular have degenerated so horribly after my childhood that my only hope is to escape from this hell as soon as possible.
C.
Michael O’Meara’s long 2004 article in The Occidental Quarterly, “Boreas Rising: White Nationalism and the Geopolitics of the Paris-Berlin-Moscow Axis,” has been published online at Counter Currents (here, here and here). I’m reproducing only some basic excerpts. No ellipsis added between unquoted paragraphs:
For a half century, we nationalists stood with the “West” in its struggle against the Asiatic Marxism of the Soviet bloc. There was little problem then distinguishing between our friends and our foes, for all evil was situated in the collectivist East and all virtue in the liberal West. Today, things are much less clear. Not only has the Second American War on Iraq revealed a profound geopolitical divide within the West, the social-political order associated with it now subverts our patrimony in ways no apparatchik ever imagined. Indeed, it seems hardly exaggerated to claim that Western elites (those who Samuel Huntington calls the “dead souls”) have come to pose the single greatest threat to our people’s existence.
For some, this threat was discovered only after 1989. Yet as early as the late forties, a handful of white nationalists, mainly in Europe, but with the American Francis Parker Yockey at their head, realized that Washington’s postwar order, not the Soviet Union, represented the greater danger to the white biosphere. Over the years, particularly since the fall of Communism, this realization has spread, so that a large part of Europe’s nationalist vanguard no longer supports the West, only Europe, and considers the West’s leader its chief enemy.
For these nationalists, the United States is a kind of anti-Europe, hostile not only to its motherland, but to its own white population. The Managerial Revolution of the thirties, Jewish influence in the media and the academy, the rise of the national security state and the military-industrial complex have all had a hand in fostering this anti-Europeanism, but for our transatlantic cousins its roots reach back to the start of our national epic. America’s Calvinist settlers, they point out, saw themselves as latter-day Israelites, who fled Egypt (Europe) for the Promised Land. Their shining city on the hill, founded on Old Testament, not Old World, antecedents, was to serve as a beacon to the rest of humanity. America began—and thus became itself—by casting off its European heritage.
Then, in the eighteenth century, this anti-Europeanism took political form, as the generation of 1776 fashioned a new state based on Lockean/Enlightenment principles, which were grafted onto the earlier Calvinist ones. As these liberal modernist principles came to fruition in the twentieth century, once the Christian vestiges of the country’s “Anglo-Protestant core” were shed, they helped legitimate the missionary cosmopolitanism of its corporate, one-world elites, and, worse, those extracultural, anti-organic, and hedonistic influences hostile to the European soul of the country’s white population.
Our present malaise, I would argue, stems less from these ideological influences (however retarding) than from a more recent development—the Second World War—whose world-transforming effects were responsible for distorting and inverting our already tenuous relationship to Europe. For once our motherland was conquered and occupied (what the apologists of the present regime ironically refer to as its “liberation”) and once the new postwar system of transnational capital was put in place, a New Class of powers with a vested interest in de-Europeanizing America’s white population was allowed to assume command of American life.
Whether pursued by Republicans or Democrats, this liberal internationalist agenda, with its emphasis on the antitraditional and anti-Aryan forces of free trade, free markets, and open societies, has been a bane to white people everywhere—for it wars against “the fundamental value of blood and race as creators of true civilization.”
America’s future
Germany was virtually remade by the Americans after 1945 and throughout the Cold War remained subservient to them.
Since the rise to world power of the United States, white America has been in decline. For most of the twentieth century, but especially since the end of the Second World War, the country’s overlords have taken one step after another to de-Europeanize its white population. To this end, white culture and identity have been socially re-engineered. White communities, schools, and businesses have been forced to integrate with races previously considered inferior and inimical. And, for the last forty years, whites have been expected to replace themselves with Third World immigrants.
The small, isolated pockets of white resistance confront a seemingly impossible task—similar to the one King Canute faced when he tried to hold back the ocean tide. Because of this, I would argue that only a catastrophe will save white America. Only a catastrophic collapse of the political, institutional, and cultural systems associated with imperial America—call it the managerial state, liberal democracy, corporate capitalism, the NWO, or whatever label you prefer—holds out any possibility that a small, racially conscious vanguard of white Americans will succeed in defending their people’s existence.
The real dangers threatening the country are totally ignored: the dangers posed by the mestizo and Asiatic colonization of our lands, the growth of U.S. Muslim communities, the denationalization of the economy and the looming fiscal crisis of the state, the Zionist domination of the political and information systems, the replacement of truth with propaganda and disinformation, the deculturation and miscegenation of our people. That for the first time in American history Europe is not the focus of U.S. strategic thinking, but rather Israel, should say it all.
However this crisis plays out, America and Europe seem set on a collision course. If the Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis continues to affect the continent and shift power out of the Atlanticist camp, this cannot but destabilize the United States, for without its omnipotent dollar and its domination of global markets, it will no longer be able to consume more than it produces, to live on credit, to afford the social-welfare measures that buy off the Africans and tame the Mexicans, to sustain the social-engineering schemes discriminating against the talents and energies of its white majority, to afford the police, the drugs, the TVs, and the computer toys that narcotize its cretinized masses.
The American, German, and French states—none of these entities any longer represent the descendants of those who founded them. As Sam Francis puts it, “the state has become the enemy of the nation.” And as a thousand years of European history demonstrate, whenever the state and the nation come into conflict, the latter inevitably proves the stronger. I think it is no exaggeration to claim that only on the ruins of the existing political order will white America be reborn—and reborn not as another constitutional “nation-state” which elevates abstract rights above biocultural imperatives, but as a northern imperium of white peoples who, as Bismarck exhorted, “think with their blood.”
Let us prepare for the coming collapse.
Categories
Ron Paul’s House speech
The February 15, 2006 speech from Ron Paul (R) before the US House of Representatives gives insight into how the dollar evolved to become the world’s fiat currency. Since five years later the situation is far worse, considering the recent stock exchange news Ron Paul’s speech is worth re-listening (here, here and here). Once the dollar crashes the Wilsonian World Order will very probably fall apart. The US won’t be anymore the unchallenged superpower or world police.
The bad news: China will be number one, an extremely shocking and humiliating discontinuity for the white psyche that has never been experience by Western civilization, not even by the Romans after the fall of the Roman Empire.
The good news: Since the US is the most serious enemy of the white race (see e.g., one of O’Meara’s articles here), after the dollar crashes the US troops will have to leave Germany, and a major overhaul of our values and myths of World War II will be in order.
But I am getting ahead of the story… For the moment let’s just pay attention to the text of Ron Paul’s speech:
The End of Dollar Hegemony
A hundred years ago it was called “dollar diplomacy.” After World War II, and especially after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, that policy evolved into “dollar hegemony.” But after all these many years of great success, our dollar dominance is coming to an end.
It has been said, rightly, that he who holds the gold makes the rules. In earlier times it was readily accepted that fair and honest trade required an exchange for something of real value.
First it was simply barter of goods. Then it was discovered that gold held a universal attraction, and was a convenient substitute for more cumbersome barter transactions. Not only did gold facilitate exchange of goods and services, it served as a store of value for those who wanted to save for a rainy day.
Though money developed naturally in the marketplace, as governments grew in power they assumed monopoly control over money. Sometimes governments succeeded in guaranteeing the quality and purity of gold, but in time governments learned to outspend their revenues. New or higher taxes always incurred the disapproval of the people, so it wasn’t long before Kings and Caesars learned how to inflate their currencies by reducing the amount of gold in each coin—always hoping their subjects wouldn’t discover the fraud. But the people always did, and they strenuously objected.
This helped pressure leaders to seek more gold by conquering other nations. The people became accustomed to living beyond their means, and enjoyed the circuses and bread. Financing extravagances by conquering foreign lands seemed a logical alternative to working harder and producing more. Besides, conquering nations not only brought home gold, they brought home slaves as well. Taxing the people in conquered territories also provided an incentive to build empires. This system of government worked well for a while, but the moral decline of the people led to an unwillingness to produce for themselves. There was a limit to the number of countries that could be sacked for their wealth, and this always brought empires to an end. When gold no longer could be obtained, their military might crumbled. In those days those who held the gold truly wrote the rules and lived well.
That general rule has held fast throughout the ages. When gold was used, and the rules protected honest commerce, productive nations thrived. Whenever wealthy nations—those with powerful armies and gold—strived only for empire and easy fortunes to support welfare at home, those nations failed.
Today the principles are the same, but the process is quite different. Gold no longer is the currency of the realm; paper is. The truth now is: “He who prints the money makes the rules”—at least for the time being. Although gold is not used, the goals are the same: compel foreign countries to produce and subsidize the country with military superiority and control over the monetary printing presses.
Since printing paper money is nothing short of counterfeiting, the issuer of the international currency must always be the country with the military might to guarantee control over the system. This magnificent scheme seems the perfect system for obtaining perpetual wealth for the country that issues the de facto world currency. The one problem, however, is that such a system destroys the character of the counterfeiting nation’s people—just as was the case when gold was the currency and it was obtained by conquering other nations. And this destroys the incentive to save and produce, while encouraging debt and runaway welfare.
The pressure at home to inflate the currency comes from the corporate welfare recipients, as well as those who demand handouts as compensation for their needs and perceived injuries by others. In both cases personal responsibility for one’s actions is rejected.
When paper money is rejected, or when gold runs out, wealth and political stability are lost. The country then must go from living beyond its means to living beneath its means, until the economic and political systems adjust to the new rules—rules no longer written by those who ran the now defunct printing press.
“Dollar Diplomacy,” a policy instituted by William Howard Taft and his Secretary of State Philander C. Knox, was designed to enhance U.S. commercial investments in Latin America and the Far East. McKinley concocted a war against Spain in 1898, and [Teddy] Roosevelt’s corollary to the Monroe Doctrine preceded Taft’s aggressive approach to using the U.S. dollar and diplomatic influence to secure U.S. investments abroad. This earned the popular title of “Dollar Diplomacy.” The significance of Roosevelt’s change was that our intervention now could be justified by the mere “appearance” that a country of interest to us was politically or fiscally vulnerable to European control. Not only did we claim a right, but even an official U.S. government “obligation” to protect our commercial interests from Europeans.
This new policy came on the heels of the “gunboat” diplomacy of the late 19th century, and it meant we could buy influence before resorting to the threat of force. By the time the “dollar diplomacy” of William Howard Taft was clearly articulated, the seeds of American empire were planted. And they were destined to grow in the fertile political soil of a country that lost its love and respect for the republic bequeathed to us by the authors of the Constitution. And indeed they did. It wasn’t too long before dollar “diplomacy” became dollar “hegemony” in the second half of the 20th century.
This transition only could have occurred with a dramatic change in monetary policy and the nature of the dollar itself.
Congress created the Federal Reserve System in 1913. Between then and 1971 the principle of sound money was systematically undermined. Between 1913 and 1971, the Federal Reserve found it much easier to expand the money supply at will for financing war or manipulating the economy with little resistance from Congress—while benefiting the special interests that influence government.
Dollar dominance got a huge boost after World War II. We were spared the destruction that so many other nations suffered, and our coffers were filled with the world’s gold. But the world chose not to return to the discipline of the gold standard, and the politicians applauded. Printing money to pay the bills was a lot more popular than taxing or restraining unnecessary spending. In spite of the short-term benefits, imbalances were institutionalized for decades to come.
The 1944 Bretton Woods agreement solidified the dollar as the preeminent world reserve currency, replacing the British pound. Due to our political and military muscle, and because we had a huge amount of physical gold, the world readily accepted our dollar (defined as 1/35th of an ounce of gold) as the world’s reserve currency. The dollar was said to be “as good as gold,” and convertible to all foreign central banks at that rate. For American citizens, however, it remained illegal to own. This was a gold-exchange standard that from inception was doomed to fail.
The U.S. did exactly what many predicted she would do. She printed more dollars for which there was no gold backing. But the world was content to accept those dollars for more than 25 years with little question—until the French and others in the late 1960s demanded we fulfill our promise to pay one ounce of gold for each $35 they delivered to the U.S. Treasury. This resulted in a huge gold drain that brought an end to a very poorly devised pseudo-gold standard.
It all ended on August 15, 1971, when Nixon closed the gold window and refused to pay out any of our remaining 280 million ounces of gold. In essence, we declared our insolvency and everyone recognized some other monetary system had to be devised in order to bring stability to the markets.
Amazingly, a new system was devised which allowed the U.S. to operate the printing presses for the world reserve currency with no restraints placed on it—not even a pretense of gold convertibility, none whatsoever! Though the new policy was even more deeply flawed, it nevertheless opened the door for dollar hegemony to spread.
Realizing the world was embarking on something new and mind boggling, elite money managers, with especially strong support from U.S. authorities, struck an agreement with OPEC to price oil in U.S. dollars exclusively for all worldwide transactions. This gave the dollar a special place among world currencies and in essence “backed” the dollar with oil. In return, the U.S. promised to protect the various oil-rich kingdoms in the Persian Gulf against threat of invasion or domestic coup. This arrangement helped ignite the radical Islamic movement among those who resented our influence in the region. The arrangement gave the dollar artificial strength, with tremendous financial benefits for the United States. It allowed us to export our monetary inflation by buying oil and other goods at a great discount as dollar influence flourished.
This post-Bretton Woods system was much more fragile than the system that existed between 1945 and 1971. Though the dollar/oil arrangement was helpful, it was not nearly as stable as the pseudo gold standard under Bretton Woods. It certainly was less stable than the gold standard of the late 19th century.
During the 1970s the dollar nearly collapsed, as oil prices surged and gold skyrocketed to $800 an ounce. By 1979 interest rates of 21% were required to rescue the system. The pressure on the dollar in the 1970s, in spite of the benefits accrued to it, reflected reckless budget deficits and monetary inflation during the 1960s. The markets were not fooled by LBJ’s claim that we could afford both “guns and butter.”
Once again the dollar was rescued, and this ushered in the age of true dollar hegemony lasting from the early 1980s to the present. With tremendous cooperation coming from the central banks and international commercial banks, the dollar was accepted as if it were gold.
Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, on several occasions before the House Banking Committee, answered my challenges to him about his previously held favorable views on gold by claiming that he and other central bankers had gotten paper money—i.e. the dollar system—to respond as if it were gold. Each time I strongly disagreed, and pointed out that if they had achieved such a feat they would have defied centuries of economic history regarding the need for money to be something of real value. He smugly and confidently concurred with this.
In recent years central banks and various financial institutions, all with vested interests in maintaining a workable fiat dollar standard, were not secretive about selling and loaning large amounts of gold to the market even while decreasing gold prices raised serious questions about the wisdom of such a policy. They never admitted to gold price fixing, but the evidence is abundant that they believed if the gold price fell it would convey a sense of confidence to the market, confidence that they indeed had achieved amazing success in turning paper into gold.
Increasing gold prices historically are viewed as an indicator of distrust in paper currency. This recent effort was not a whole lot different than the U.S. Treasury selling gold at $35 an ounce in the 1960s, in an attempt to convince the world the dollar was sound and as good as gold. Even during the Depression, one of Roosevelt’s first acts was to remove free market gold pricing as an indication of a flawed monetary system by making it illegal for American citizens to own gold. Economic law eventually limited that effort, as it did in the early 1970s when our Treasury and the IMF tried to fix the price of gold by dumping tons into the market to dampen the enthusiasm of those seeking a safe haven for a falling dollar after gold ownership was re-legalized.
Once again the effort between 1980 and 2000 to fool the market as to the true value of the dollar proved unsuccessful. In the past 5 years the dollar has been devalued in terms of gold by more than 50%. You just can’t fool all the people all the time, even with the power of the mighty printing press and money creating system of the Federal Reserve.
Even with all the shortcomings of the fiat monetary system, dollar influence thrived. The results seemed beneficial, but gross distortions built into the system remained. And true to form, Washington politicians are only too anxious to solve the problems cropping up with window dressing, while failing to understand and deal with the underlying flawed policy. Protectionism, fixing exchange rates, punitive tariffs, politically motivated sanctions, corporate subsidies, international trade management, price controls, interest rate and wage controls, super-nationalist sentiments, threats of force, and even war are resorted to—all to solve the problems artificially created by deeply flawed monetary and economic systems.
In the short run, the issuer of a fiat reserve currency can accrue great economic benefits. In the long run, it poses a threat to the country issuing the world currency. In this case that’s the United States. As long as foreign countries take our dollars in return for real goods, we come out ahead. This is a benefit many in Congress fail to recognize, as they bash China for maintaining a positive trade balance with us. But this leads to a loss of manufacturing jobs to overseas markets, as we become more dependent on others and less self-sufficient. Foreign countries accumulate our dollars due to their high savings rates, and graciously loan them back to us at low interest rates to finance our excessive consumption.
It sounds like a great deal for everyone, except the time will come when our dollars—due to their depreciation—will be received less enthusiastically or even be rejected by foreign countries. That could create a whole new ballgame and force us to pay a price for living beyond our means and our production. The shift in sentiment regarding the dollar has already started, but the worst is yet to come.
The agreement with OPEC in the 1970s to price oil in dollars has provided tremendous artificial strength to the dollar as the preeminent reserve currency. This has created a universal demand for the dollar, and soaks up the huge number of new dollars generated each year. Last year alone M3 increased over $700 billion.
The artificial demand for our dollar, along with our military might, places us in the unique position to “rule” the world without productive work or savings, and without limits on consumer spending or deficits. The problem is, it can’t last.
Price inflation is raising its ugly head, and the NASDAQ bubble—generated by easy money—has burst. The housing bubble likewise created is deflating. Gold prices have doubled, and federal spending is out of sight with zero political will to rein it in. The trade deficit last year was over $728 billion. A $2 trillion war is raging, and plans are being laid to expand the war into Iran and possibly Syria. The only restraining force will be the world’s rejection of the dollar. It’s bound to come and create conditions worse than 1979-1980, which required 21% interest rates to correct. But everything possible will be done to protect the dollar in the meantime. We have a shared interest with those who hold our dollars to keep the whole charade going.
Greenspan, in his first speech after leaving the Fed, said that gold prices were up because of concern about terrorism, and not because of monetary concerns or because he created too many dollars during his tenure. Gold has to be discredited and the dollar propped up. Even when the dollar comes under serious attack by market forces, the central banks and the IMF surely will do everything conceivable to soak up the dollars in hope of restoring stability. Eventually they will fail.
Most importantly, the dollar/oil relationship has to be maintained to keep the dollar as a preeminent currency. Any attack on this relationship will be forcefully challenged—as it already has been.
In November 2000 Saddam Hussein demanded Euros for his oil. His arrogance was a threat to the dollar; his lack of any military might was never a threat. At the first cabinet meeting with the new administration in 2001, as reported by Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, the major topic was how we would get rid of Saddam Hussein—though there was no evidence whatsoever he posed a threat to us. This deep concern for Saddam Hussein surprised and shocked O’Neill.
It now is common knowledge that the immediate reaction of the administration after 9/11 revolved around how they could connect Saddam Hussein to the attacks, to justify an invasion and overthrow of his government. Even with no evidence of any connection to 9/11, or evidence of weapons of mass destruction, public and congressional support was generated through distortions and flat out misrepresentation of the facts to justify overthrowing Saddam Hussein.
There was no public talk of removing Saddam Hussein because of his attack on the integrity of the dollar as a reserve currency by selling oil in Euros. Many believe this was the real reason for our obsession with Iraq. I doubt it was the only reason, but it may well have played a significant role in our motivation to wage war. Within a very short period after the military victory, all Iraqi oil sales were carried out in dollars. The Euro was abandoned.
In 2001, Venezuela’s ambassador to Russia spoke of Venezuela switching to the Euro for all their oil sales. Within a year there was a coup attempt against Chavez, reportedly with assistance from our CIA.
After these attempts to nudge the Euro toward replacing the dollar as the world’s reserve currency were met with resistance, the sharp fall of the dollar against the Euro was reversed. These events may well have played a significant role in maintaining dollar dominance.
It’s become clear the U.S. administration was sympathetic to those who plotted the overthrow of Chavez, and was embarrassed by its failure. The fact that Chavez was democratically elected had little influence on which side we supported.
Now, a new attempt is being made against the petrodollar system. Iran, another member of the “axis of evil,” has announced her plans to initiate an oil bourse in March of this year. Guess what, the oil sales will be priced Euros, not dollars.
Most Americans forget how our policies have systematically and needlessly antagonized the Iranians over the years. In 1953 the CIA helped overthrow a democratically elected president, Mohammed Mossadeqh, and install the authoritarian Shah, who was friendly to the U.S. The Iranians were still fuming over this when the hostages were seized in 1979. Our alliance with Saddam Hussein in his invasion of Iran in the early 1980s did not help matters, and obviously did not do much for our relationship with Saddam Hussein. The administration announcement in 2001 that Iran was part of the axis of evil didn’t do much to improve the diplomatic relationship between our two countries. Recent threats over nuclear power, while ignoring the fact that they are surrounded by countries with nuclear weapons, doesn’t seem to register with those who continue to provoke Iran. With what most Muslims perceive as our war against Islam, and this recent history, there’s little wonder why Iran might choose to harm America by undermining the dollar. Iran, like Iraq, has zero capability to attack us. But that didn’t stop us from turning Saddam Hussein into a modern day Hitler ready to take over the world. Now Iran, especially since she’s made plans for pricing oil in Euros, has been on the receiving end of a propaganda war not unlike that waged against Iraq before our invasion.
It’s not likely that maintaining dollar supremacy was the only motivating factor for the war against Iraq, nor for agitating against Iran. Though the real reasons for going to war are complex, we now know the reasons given before the war started, like the presence of weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein’s connection to 9/11, were false. The dollar’s importance is obvious, but this does not diminish the influence of the distinct plans laid out years ago by the neo-conservatives to remake the Middle East. Israel’s influence, as well as that of the Christian Zionists, likewise played a role in prosecuting this war. Protecting “our” oil supplies has influenced our Middle East policy for decades.
But the truth is that paying the bills for this aggressive intervention is impossible the old fashioned way, with more taxes, more savings, and more production by the American people. Much of the expense of the Persian Gulf War in 1991 was shouldered by many of our willing allies. That’s not so today. Now, more than ever, the dollar hegemony—it’s dominance as the world reserve currency—is required to finance our huge war expenditures. This $2 trillion never-ending war must be paid for, one way or another. Dollar hegemony provides the vehicle to do just that.
For the most part the true victims aren’t aware of how they pay the bills. The license to create money out of thin air allows the bills to be paid through price inflation. American citizens, as well as average citizens of Japan, China, and other countries suffer from price inflation, which represents the “tax” that pays the bills for our military adventures. That is until the fraud is discovered, and the foreign producers decide not to take dollars nor hold them very long in payment for their goods. Everything possible is done to prevent the fraud of the monetary system from being exposed to the masses who suffer from it. If oil markets replace dollars with Euros, it would in time curtail our ability to continue to print, without restraint, the world’s reserve currency.
It is an unbelievable benefit to us to import valuable goods and export depreciating dollars. The exporting countries have become addicted to our purchases for their economic growth. This dependency makes them allies in continuing the fraud, and their participation keeps the dollar’s value artificially high. If this system were workable long term, American citizens would never have to work again. We too could enjoy “bread and circuses” just as the Romans did, but their gold finally ran out and the inability of Rome to continue to plunder conquered nations brought an end to her empire.
The same thing will happen to us if we don’t change our ways. Though we don’t occupy foreign countries to directly plunder, we nevertheless have spread our troops across 130 nations of the world. Our intense effort to spread our power in the oil-rich Middle East is not a coincidence. But unlike the old days, we don’t declare direct ownership of the natural resources—we just insist that we can buy what we want and pay for it with our paper money. Any country that challenges our authority does so at great risk.
Once again Congress has bought into the war propaganda against Iran, just as it did against Iraq. Arguments are now made for attacking Iran economically, and militarily if necessary. These arguments are all based on the same false reasons given for the ill-fated and costly occupation of Iraq.
Our whole economic system depends on continuing the current monetary arrangement, which means recycling the dollar is crucial. Currently, we borrow over $700 billion every year from our gracious benefactors, who work hard and take our paper for their goods. Then we borrow all the money we need to secure the empire (DOD budget $450 billion) plus more. The military might we enjoy becomes the “backing” of our currency. There are no other countries that can challenge our military superiority, and therefore they have little choice but to accept the dollars we declare are today’s “gold.” This is why countries that challenge the system—like Iraq, Iran and Venezuela—become targets of our plans for regime change.
Ironically, dollar superiority depends on our strong military, and our strong military depends on the dollar. As long as foreign recipients take our dollars for real goods and are willing to finance our extravagant consumption and militarism, the status quo will continue regardless of how huge our foreign debt and current account deficit become.
But real threats come from our political adversaries who are incapable of confronting us militarily, yet are not bashful about confronting us economically. That’s why we see the new challenge from Iran being taken so seriously. The urgent arguments about Iran posing a military threat to the security of the United States are no more plausible than the false charges levied against Iraq. Yet there is no effort to resist this march to confrontation by those who grandstand for political reasons against the Iraq war.
It seems that the people and Congress are easily persuaded by the jingoism of the preemptive war promoters. It’s only after the cost in human life and dollars are tallied up that the people object to unwise militarism. The strange thing is that the failure in Iraq is now apparent to a large majority of American people, yet they and Congress are acquiescing to the call for a needless and dangerous confrontation with Iran. But then again, our failure to find Osama bin Laden and destroy his network did not dissuade us from taking on the Iraqis in a war totally unrelated to 9/11.
Concern for pricing oil only in dollars helps explain our willingness to drop everything and teach Saddam Hussein a lesson for his defiance in demanding Euros for oil.
And once again there’s this urgent call for sanctions and threats of force against Iran at the precise time Iran is opening a new oil exchange with all transactions in Euros.
Using force to compel people to accept money without real value can only work in the short run. It ultimately leads to economic dislocation, both domestic and international, and always ends with a price to be paid.
The economic law that honest exchange demands only things of real value as currency cannot be repealed. The chaos that one day will ensue from our 35-year experiment with worldwide fiat money will require a return to money of real value. We will know that day is approaching when oil-producing countries demand gold, or its equivalent, for their oil rather than dollars or Euros. The sooner the better.