Category: Politics

By Caitlin Johnstone

Ultimately what separates the anti-imperialist left from mainstream liberal “humanitarians” is whether you’re in it for humanity or for yourself.

For the liberal, wanting peace and justice is more of an abstraction than a desire to fight the concrete power structures responsible for the lack of peace and justice in our world.

If you’re a liberal you oppose the idea of children being killed and starved in the abstract, because thinking of yourself as a moral person allows you to feel nice feelings about yourself, but you have no interest in taking a well-defined stand against the empire which routinely kills and starves children via genocides, wars of aggression, and siege warfare.

You don’t want families living in poverty because it would make you feel like a bad person if you did, but you also don’t take a concrete stand against the capitalist system whose very existence depends on the perpetual creation of poverty and scarcity.

You kinda-sorta want everyone to have happy and plentiful lives free from fear and tyranny, but you don’t want to consider the possibility that your own country is responsible for abusing, terrorizing and exploiting the global south. Because that would make you feel uncomfortable feelings.

It’s not about wanting to actually help humanity and fix the world’s problems, it’s about you and your feelings.

Those who oppose the capitalist empire are actually interested in bringing health and harmony to our species. They do not shy away from uncomfortable truths about their own government’s abuses, the dystopian nature of western civilization, or the way their own creature comforts are built on the backs of workers in impoverished countries. Because for them it’s not about feeling nice feelings, it’s about creating a better world.

The western anti-imperialist has no problem recognizing that their own society is the main villain on the world stage, because they’re actually looking at the sources of the abuses and injustices in our world. The liberal “humanitarian” prefers to see evil only in foreign regimes, because being the bad guy doesn’t feel nice.

The western anti-imperialist recognizes that both mainstream political parties in their country promote the warmongering, militarism, capitalist exploitation and imperialist extraction which sustain the western empire, and they oppose the abuses of both parties whoever happens to be in office. The liberal “humanitarian” only recognizes wrongdoing in one mainstream political faction while proudly supporting and voting for the other, because this allows them to feel like they’re helping.

The western anti-imperialist accepts that standing on the morally correct side means eating loss after loss and receiving disappointment after disappointment, because the push for revolutionary change is swimming directly against the current imposed on every institution in our society. The liberal “humanitarian” feels nice feelings about their position because their side wins elections half the time, while smugly sneering at those to their left who never get their people into office.

The western anti-imperialist will stare unflinching into the carnage from Palestine, Lebanon and Iran, feeling all the anguish and rage from witnessing those atrocities supported by their own nation. The liberal “humanitarian” tries to avoid looking at those things, because their entire worldview is built upon psychologically compartmentalizing away from reality in order to prioritize their own feelings.

Basically it’s the difference between actually being a good person and just wanting to feel like you’re a good person. The former is hard, while the latter is easy.

Which one do you want to be?

Texter av Catelina Johnstone

Riktigheten av mina korta kommentarer om Orbán och Ungern för snart fem år sedan ser kanske nu ut att i mycket ha bekräftats, även om det verkar litet oklart exakt vilken väg den nya regeringen kommer slå in på.

I andra delen av min serie inlägg under rubriken Invandringspolitik och världspolitik skrev jag:

“När det gäller Europa är Ungern för många av de populistnationalistiska högerfrontsanhängarna den främsta förebilden. Liksom andra fall i Centraleuropa skiljer det sig från Västeuropa därigenom att en ledande politiker ur den “vanliga” högern, Orbán, själv tagit steget att anamma en invandringspolitik motsvarande de västeuropeiska populistnationalisternas. De historiska skillnaderna gör dock att detta fall långtifrån är helt jämförbart med det block som nu är på väg att formas i Sverige. Orbán har, så här långt, kunnat nå avsevärd framgång, och det återstår att se hur länge den kan fortsätta, hur långt han kan nå, hur beständiga resultaten blir. Men grunden även för hans politik framstår redan från början som otillräcklig och riskabel, såtillvida som den förutsätter en ganska stark fortsatt anslutning till NATO, Israel, och, noga taget, det vanliga övernationella atlantdominerade kapitalistiska systemet, oaktat hans goda relationer med Ryssland och de selektiva restriktioner han upprätthåller mot George Soros.

Givetvis kan Ungern justera kursen. Men hittills tycks regeringen exempelvis behöva stödja detta systems fortsatta politik i Mellanöstern, vars våldsamma uttryck ju orsakat en stor del av migrationen. EU:s utrikesministrar kunde inte enas om ett gemensamt uttalande om Gaza-Israel i maj, eftersom Ungern på grund av stödet för Israel inte ställde sig bakom kravet på eldupphör. Långsiktigt förefaller Ungerns paradigm ingalunda fullt tillfredsställande och inte heller generaliserbart. Det representerar inte i tillräcklig utsträckning den självständiga europeiska linje som är vad som verkligen behövs. Att populistnationalisterna i övriga Europa kan sätta sådan tro till Ungern beror på att de anser, eller väl snarare hoppas, att invandringsproblematiken kan lösas inom dess ram, att Soros är en abnormitet, ett undantag som går att komma till rätta med utan att överskrida det, och, djupast sett, att det ekonomiska system paradigmet är en del av verkligen är det riktiga och normala, som de inte har några problem med. De tror inte bara på de för den modifierade och utvecklade populistnationalismen väsentliga konservativa värdena, utan också på högern i allmänhet.”

Alla tre delarna av Invandringspolitik och världspolitik finns också samlade i ett inlägg, och ger tillsammans den nödvändiga bakgrunden till och sammanhanget för denna bedömning.

Mckay och Kit Klarenberg förklarar det hela närmare i senaste avsnittet av deras program Decline and Fall, och Mckay har följt upp med två avsnitt på sin egen kanal (1, 2) som går på djupet om de problem den nationalborgerliga kapitalismen oundvikligen ställs inför under de förhållanden dagens euroatlantiska generalimperialism eller globalism, vår tids utvecklingsstadium av kapitalismen, erbjuder. En tredje del utlovas, som jag också kommer posta här.

Problematiken uppkommer givetvis i vad Wallerstein i sin världssystemteori kallar de semiperifera länderna och genom deras av Samir Amin analyserade beroende, i övriga delar av världen. Men den föreligger även i det europeiska sammanhanget, och Mckay beskriver i detalj hur så sker i fallet Ungern. Vi har att göra med en problematik som också all populist- och radikalnationalistisk politik i Europa ställs inför, i synnerhet i de mindre länderna, och som de helt enkelt inte kan lösa inom sina nuvarande ideologiska ramar.

Jag kan inte se att något sådant parti har eller någonsin har haft en politik för den nödvändiga typen av hantering av västs megaföretag och finansiella institutioner, att dessa partier kan vinna en tillräcklig maktbas för att genomföra en sådan, eller att de ens har en tillnärmelsevis adekvat teoretisk förståelse av problematiken.

Så länge de inte starkt vidareutvecklar den socialkonservatism de i bästa fall åtminstone tenderar att omfatta, förblir det enda de åstadkommer en ineffektiv och ytterst helt harmlös, mer eller mindre vild gestik inom ett system som uppställer principiellt oöverstigliga gränser och hinder för dem. De blir meningslösa. De reduceras till medel för det oförstådda systemets avledning, oskadliggörande och absorption av den legitima popoppositionen. Ja, de kan i detta stadium av sin korruption eller inskränkthet låta sig användas för systemets än mer sinistra åtgärder mot denna.

By Caitlin Johnstone

The most common pro-war talking point about Iran is that they massacred tens of thousands of protesters in January of this year -  but what’s funny is that they never cite the same number. Because it’s a completely fictional story, they can just make up any number they want.

In online discourse with empire apologists these past few months I’ve been told that the number of dead protesters is thirty thousand, forty thousand, fifty thousand, sixty thousand, seventy thousand, eighty thousand, ninety thousand, and a hundred thousand. 

They really do seem to just throw out whatever number feels believable in a given moment. I recently saw an exasperated Glenn Greenwald ask an interlocutor on Twitter, “How do you decide when to claim that Iran killed 30,000 protesters, or 45,000, or 70,000? Does it depend on the day of the week or lyrical flow or something else?”

Iranian regime change muppet Reza Pahlavi claimed in January that 50,000 protesters had been massacred by the Iranian government that month.

Notorious Korean propagandist Yeonmi Park put the number at 40,000.

In February, President Trump said it was 32,000. By April he had inflated that number to 45,000, and then later climbed it up to 60,000.

Last month I saw The Australian’s Cameron Stewart swelling the number to 80,000.

In February there was a viral tweet by a propaganda account called The Persian Jewess asserting that “90,000 protesters have been killed to date,” while right wing influencer Nicholas Lissack said it was actually 100,000.

The other day someone commented on a post of mine telling me “Iran killed over 40k protesters standing up for freedom,” and when I dismissed that claim another empire apologist came in and adjusted the number to 30,000.

The reason they can’t settle on a number is because it’s all made up. 

Nobody denies that thousands of people were killed in the January unrest; the Iranian government itself has stated that 3,117 people were killed in the violent clashes, including large numbers of security forces. Given that the US Treasury Secretary has repeatedly admitted that the US deliberately fomented the unrest in Iran, and given that Trump has admitted to sending weapons into the country with the goal of arming the protesters, and given that Trump’s previous secretary of state has suggested that Mossad was intimately involved in the so-called “peaceful protests”, it was inevitable that people were going to be killed.

But the war propagandists couldn’t be content with a few thousand deaths. They needed something more spectacular. Something sensational. So they started circulating thinly-sourced reports by shady individuals claiming the body count was much higher than acknowledged, and then further inflating the numbers in those reports.

And when they did this it made it clear that they’ve been lying about the whole thing, because anyone can see the numbers going all over the place depending on who happens to be speaking and what kind of mood they happen to be in. They made a classic blunder in fiction writing, as explained in a viral post that was doing the rounds on Tumblr a few months ago:

“speculative fiction writers i am going to give you a really urgent piece of advice: don’t say numbers. don’t give your readers any numbers. how heavy is the sword? lots. how old is that city? plenty. how big is the fort? massive. how fast is the spaceship? not very, it’s secondhand.

“the minute you say a number your readers can check your math and you cannot do math better than your most autistic critic. i guarantee. don’t let your readers do any math. when did something happen? awhile ago. how many bullets can that gun fire? trick question, it shoots lasers, and it shoots em hard.

“you are lying to people for fun. if you let them do math at you the lie collapses and it’s no fun anymore.”

If you’re going to write fiction, it’s important not to disrupt the illusion and snap the reader out of the imaginary world you are creating for them. The narrative about tens of thousands of dead Iranian protesters is fiction, and everyone’s waking up to the lies.

Texter av Catelina Johnstone

Utdrag från avdelningen för politik på Contents-sidan:

Den nödvändiga komplexifieringen av Burkeförståelsen

Om Charlie Kirks omprövning

Rockhill och den kompatibla vänstern

Xi på SCO-mötet

Diesen: Intervju med Wagenknecht

Att förstå atlantsystemet

Mer fredsteater?

SSU och NATO

“Rule by the Rich”

By Caitlin Johnstone

It used to be hard to help westerners see the depravity of the US empire. Now it’s just right in everyone’s face with raw genocide footage and insanely evil warmongering of direct economic consequence.

It took a lot of work to help the average westerner understand that NATO aggressions actively provoked the war in Ukraine, or that western interventionism played a major role in the violence and chaos in Syria, or that US economic warfare was largely responsible for the suffering of Cubans and Venezuelans. The murderous savagery of the empire was hidden behind layers of obfuscation, allowing the propagandists to frame the western power structure as a passive witness to the abuses of foreign regimes.

Now the propagandists have very little to work with, so those obfuscations can no longer take place. There’s no way you can spin a school full of children blown up by an American double-tap airstrike as anything other than what it is. There’s only so much narrative manipulation you can exert on raw video footage of a western-backed genocide playing out in full view of the entire world day after day for years. There’s no way to propagandize westerners into believing they want to pay a lot more more money for their fuel and groceries.

I saw former EU parliament member Luis Garicano complaining on Twitter that Trump’s actions are making it look as though leftists have been correct about the US empire this whole time, saying “Many of us, liberal Europeans, spent decades pushing back against the European extreme left’s cartoon version of America (it’s all oil/ imperialism/getting rich at the expense of others) and then one dumb administration walks in and performs the caricature to perfection.”

Garicano’s entire worldview depends on his ability to avoid recognizing the obvious truth: that the so-called “extreme left” has always been correct, and that the empire he worships has always been evil. It’s just having a harder and harder time masking its true nature, because of the very evils it has tried to conceal.

Everything’s becoming more and more revealed. More and more transparent. What was once done solely by whistleblowers, investigative journalists, activists and dissident media is now being done by the empire itself, because there’s only so long you can hide the truth about something so malignant. An empire that is held together by lies, corruption and endless slaughter was never going to remain unseen. The brutality necessary to dominate the planet had to come out into the light eventually.

“May all be revealed” has been my prayer for our world for many years now. That dearly held wish is now being answered, and the truth is looking every bit as ugly as expected.

May all be revealed. May all that is hidden become seen. In the empire. In our governments. In our culture. In our community. In our interpersonal relationships. In ourselves.

All abusiveness ultimately boils down to a lack of clear seeing. Governments are able to abuse people because the dynamics of corruption and tyranny aren’t clearly seen by the public, who would violently revolt if they truly understood what their leaders are doing to them and to their world. Domestic violence and family sexual abuse can only continue when the rest of the community doesn’t see and understand what the abuser is doing. Our own abusive tendencies can only persist for as long as our trauma responses and maladaptive coping mechanisms remain hidden in the shadows of our subconscious mind.

All of these dysfunctional dynamics will lose their durability as we become more and more conscious of what’s really going on, in ourselves and in our world. Things look ugly now because the truth is ugly, but it is only by truth revealing itself that we can move toward health and harmony as a species.

If you’ve ever done deep inner work on your own psychology you have seen this play out in your own personal experience. You can heal your inner woundedness if you can gather up the courage to plunge into your own darkness and face with uncompromising honesty the uncomfortable realities you’ve been avoiding within yourself throughout your entire life  –  but you kept those things unconscious for a reason. They’re scary. They’re painful. They’re shameful. Facing them can feel like the end of the world. Yet it is only by coaxing them into the light of consciousness that they can be fully seen, reconciled, and healed.

The whole world is like that. Humans as a collective cannot fix problems which we don’t clearly see and understand. Our rulers pour so much energy into maintaining influence operations like news media propaganda, Hollywood psyops, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation and government secrecy in order to obstruct our clear seeing and understanding. 

But it’s all coming tumbling out into the cold light of day now. More and more is becoming visible. 

May the lies and obfuscations continue to unravel. May the truth continue to reveal itself.

Texter av Catelina Johnstone

Kirk. Hur de liberala ekonomiska inslagen i hans burkeanism ledde honom till att försvara en samtida höger vars version av denna ekonomiska politik, tvåhundra år efter Burke, var urmodig och med tiden med obestridlig historisk evidens kom att visa sig enbart destruktiv för de viktiga konservativa värden och insikter han i övrigt ville värna. En inbyggd, konstitutiv motsägelse i all anglo-amerikansk konservatism, som ju varken kan eller vill avvisa de förutsättningar och villkor som är givna med den allmänna modernitet inom vars ramar den rör sig.

Men vad Nash kallade den konservativa intellektuella rörelsen i USA under efterkrigstiden såg ändå ut att delvis vara något helt annat och mer: inte bara den gamla vanliga och med kalla kriget förnyade och intensifierade kapitalistiska antikommunismen, utan en djupare, såväl historiskt som metafysiskt förankrad humanistisk-kulturell, moralisk och andlig kritik även av den västerländska liberalismen och dess demokrati, ja i väsentliga avseenden även av just kapitalismen och hela moderniteten. Av den amerikanska imperialismen i Babbitts mening, atombombningarna av Hiroshima och Nagasaki, exempelvis. Försvaret av överordnade värden var reellt och förblir angeläget. Även om Nash också räknade libertarianer, fusionister och neokonservativa till rörelsen, fanns där också en rad åtminstone i anglosfärens sammanhang mer distinkt konservativa profiler som Kirk. Det är det som är det intressanta med den. Det är det som äger bestående värde.

Russell Kirk: Prospects for Conservatives

Viktig intervy med Gabor Maté om sionism, antisemitism och relaterade ämnen, i historiskt perspektiv men också med fokus på dagens situation, på Pascal Lottaz’ kanal Neutrality Studies.

Foto: Gabor Gastonyi

“Felix Marquardt speaks with physician and trauma expert Dr. Gabor Maté about anti-Semitism claims, Zionism, colonialism, Gaza, French and European politics, censorship, Israeli dissent, and the push to criminalize anti-Zionism. They also discuss trauma, propaganda, victimhood, media silence, and the wider crisis inside Western power and public debate.”

Long Live Innovationism!

Independently published, 2024

Amazon.com

Publisher’s description:

In this book, Caleb Maupin explains that, while he remains committed to his principles of anti-imperialism and the belief in a rationally organized economy, he no longer identifies as a “communist” nor seeks to align with the Marxist movement. The text explores why the Center for Political Innovation now describes its outlook as “Innovationist” rather than socialist or communist, highlighting where the organization diverges from Marxist-Leninist ideology while still upholding certain core principles. The book offers a thorough critique of the current “Communist” movement in America, arguing that it must be abandoned to effectively pursue anti-imperialist goals. Maupin explains that the Center for Political Innovation seeks to create a government of action that to fights for working families, while opposing the rise of a low-wage police state, and preventing the drive toward a new world war.

By Caitlin Johnstone

Whenever Israel is killing tons of civilians the western media always start churning out articles about “antisemitism” and Jewish feelings.

“Jews Begin to Wonder: Is Anywhere Safe?” blares a recent headline from The Wall Street Journal, subtitled “‘It feels like the 1930s again.’ Hostility against Jews surges in Western countries where they felt safe in recent decades.”

An article for The Atlantic titled “Canada’s Polite Pogrom” bizarrely tries to argue that “tolerance for zealotry” is somehow “purging Jews from public life.”

A Washington Examiner headline proclaims that “Jewish voters feel ‘politically homeless’ as antisemitism rises on both sides.”

A headline for The Telegraph asserts that “Many Jews are sensing frightening echoes of 1930s Germany in 2020s Britain.”

War Criminal Tony Blair writes an article for The Free Press titled “Why the West Fails to Stop Antisemitism”.

Meanwhile, in real life, people are being mercilessly butchered in Iran, Lebanon and Palestine by Israel and its allies. The uglier it gets, the more aggressive the concern-trolling about “antisemitism” becomes.

The Jewish Chronicle has published an article by Maureen Lipman titled “Does the world have any idea of how tired the people of Israel are?”, subtitled “A dear friend told me that his grandchildren have needed to enter their safe room more than 200 times since the current battle began.”

“The BBC and reporters worldwide do not go into the shelters where children are trained to lie on the floor when the sirens go off,” writes Lipman. “Neither do they report on the closure of schools. Most Israeli kids have missed some school every day since Covid. Are the media even aware of the fear of the elderly in Israel?”

Absolutely incredible. She writes as though Israelis are the only people on earth whose country is being bombed. Only Zionists could drop bombs on neighboring populations every single day for years and then go “nobody in the world can imagine what it’s like to live in fear of airstrikes!”

Western news reporters face so much pressure to pad Israel’s image and advance Israeli information interests that the Associated Press just ran an editorial titled “AP is calling Israel’s attack on Lebanon an invasion. What does that mean and why does it matter?” justifying its decision to call what is self-evidently and indisputably an invasion the thing that it is. 

You never saw them do this with Ukraine. You never saw the media holding long internal deliberations about what to label it and then publishing editorials going “We’re going to call this a Russian invasion, we’re pretty sure that’s what this is called, please don’t be mad at us!” That’s how cowed they are by Israel’s supporters, and how much pressure they feel to toe the imperial line no matter what.

At the same time in the Israeli press we’re seeing op-eds like The Jerusalem Post’s “Long-term deradicalization in Gaza faces major hurdles,” which argues explicitly for the total ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian territory.

The article’s author Martin Sherman dismisses claims that the people of Gaza can be “deradicalized” -  as though the radicalization of Palestinians is the problem, and not the radical political ideology of the people who’ve been waging an extermination campaign upon them. Instead, Sherman argues, everyone must accept the “harsh reality” that only annexation and ethnic cleansing can lead to a lasting peace in the Gaza Strip.

“The only way Israel can ensure how the Gaza Strip will be governed, and who will govern it, is to govern it itself,” writes Sherman. “Moreover, the only way Israel can govern the Gaza Strip without becoming an external oppressor of ‘another people’ is to remove ‘the other people’ from the confines of the Gaza Strip itself.”

“This is not radical right-wing radicalism. It is merely sound and sober political science,” Sherman writes.

If it isn’t right-wing radicalism to advocate the mass purge of a colonized indigenous population from their homeland for being the wrong ethnicity, then right-wing radicalism does not exist. That’s pretty much as right-wing extremist as it gets.

And this is an entirely mainstream Israeli publication.

If anyone on earth needs to be deradicalized, it’s the Israelis and their supporters.

Texter av Catelina Johnstone

Från avdelningen för Politics-kategorin på Contents-sidan, alltså sidan med klickbara rubriker på inlägg med enbart, huvudsakligen eller till väsentlig del mitt eget skrivande, och liksom där med de senaste först eller högst upp:

Trotskijs Stalin

Polska högernationalister förbjuder konservativa partiet

Örebropartiet

Ylva Vinberg och RKP

Mer konservativ revolution

Kapitalismen, fascismen och nationen

Revolutionära Konservativa Internationalen?

Ukraina, Israel och atlantväst

Tradcons

Dissidentpodden

Att offra och förstöra Europa