The Enduring Schism

One reader asked for my comment on Ralph Raico's essay on the Great War, recently posted on the Mises Institute site, and featured on Antiwar.com. It is the same essay that Justin Raimondo mentioned in late June, which I addressed in my column three days later.

Though I have written about the Great War before - here, for example, also here and here - I've decided to do it again, because I've just noticed something that's been there all along. Namely, for all their mutual enmities, the Western Europeans - Catholics, Protestants or secularized descendants of both - always seem to have a common attitude towards the Orthodox Europeans (Serbs, Russians, Romanians, Greeks, and even Bulgarians). Even while fighting the Muslims - from the Seljuks and Arabs of the Crusades to the Ottomans and Mamelukes later - the West continued trying to crush the Orthodox, sometimes even prioritizing it (e.g. 1204).

"Serbia must die" - Austrian cartoon from 1914

I've written a lengthy essay about this for Antiwar.com, which should be posting today. It goes over the Balkans Wars, the history of Catholic persecution of the Orthodox before, during and after the Ottoman conquest, and ends with the Great War. It's an issue that needs to be clarified, because what we're seeing today is the same sort of pattern coming from the West: Russia is the enemy, the Other - and the Serbs are Russians Lite, who need to be crushed because their stubborn resistance might give others ideas.

I don't know whether Raico's tendency to blame Russia and Serbia for daring to resist Teutonic aggression is a function of this othering of the Orthodox, or the inexplicable sympathy for Austria-Hungary that many libertarians have, probably originating with Ludwig von Mises.  In any case, both Raico's arguments and the language he uses (not qualifying "Greater Serbia" as a canard, for example) suggest that he swallowed the Austro-Hungarian narrative hook, line and sinker.

And we're still dealing with the legacy of Austro-Hungarian identity politics. Croatian identity, for example, was set up under Habsburg aegis as Catholic and militantly Serbophobic. This eventually led to the genocide perpetrated by the Croatian state between 1941-45, with the blessing and participation of Catholic clergy.

Serb leaders involved in the creation of Yugoslavia in 1918 did not understand that those who identified as Croats and Muslims did not consider the Serbs their kin, but rather their inferiors. Becoming Catholic (in Austrian-held lands) or Muslim (in Turkish-held lands) meant escaping the life of oppression and contempt in which the Orthodox Serbs were held by both empires.

Whether it was called "one people, three faiths" (under the Kingdom) or "brotherhood and unity of nations and nationalities" (under Tito), it was a lie. Close to a million Serbs paid with their lives for believing that lie in 1941-45, while another million was displaced and tens of thousands died in the 1990s. Yet all too many believe it even now, just as they continue to fawn at the West that rejects them as the Other. Such people are beyond help.

The rest? The choice they have is the same today as it ever was: renounce their identity and embrace another (Croat, Bosniak, Montenegrin, "Kosovarian", "Vojvodinian", etc.) to be accepted by the current imperial powers, or stay true to their roots and be oppressed. But oppressors come and go, and those who give up their identity never seem to gain happiness that way. Only hatred.

Case in Point

Reactions to my essay about the upcoming "Belgrade Pride" have been typical - from diatribes against homosexuality to diatribes against "homophobia." Both miss the point.

I stand by my contention that attempts to organize a parade in Belgrade have little or nothing to do with persons of alternate sexual proclivities, and everything to do with humiliating Serbia and furthering the agenda of social engineering intent on destroying that country. At the very least, it's a distraction for other things.

You want evidence? Here's a screenshot from the Facebook page of Predrag Azdejkovic, a notorious professional "GLBT" activist:

He "dreams of being fisted by Nick Vujicic."

Vujicic, a man who has devoted his entire life to helping others (rather than whining about his condition), has no limbs.

How is that for tolerance, acceptance, human rights and fighting "H8"?

Conquerors on Parade

Two years ago, a "Pride Parade" turned into a day of anti-government riots, as some 6,000 police protected a handful of professional activists and their foreign sponsors as they strolled through occupied Belgrade. I speculated at the time that the police was inching towards mutiny; though no hard evidence came forth to corroborate the guess, the following year the parade was canceled as a security risk.

In May this year, within days of the quisling regime losing the presidential vote, the "LGBT activists" announced they would parade on October 6. The date is absolutely not accidental: October 5 is the date of the "revolution" in 2000 that brought in a government loyal to foreign interests. More militant of the quislings have since invoked "October 6" as a symbol of the need to "finish the job" - which, according to them, is to strip the Serbs of all the "regressive" values: religion, tradition, nationhood. Once the Serbs stop being Serbs, they cease to be a "factor of disturbance" for various foreign powers with designs on the strategic territory they oh-so-inconveniently inhabit.

I've explained this last year, but it bears repeating: the way its organizers are going about it, the "Pride" isn't about anyone's human rights - including those in Serbia who define themselves through their sexuality - but rather a tool of social and political engineering. While much of the resistance and resentment is driven by a dislike of homosexuality, it is the engineering aspect that actually drives the violence and threats thereof.

Having a country blockaded, bombed, demonized in the media the world over - all without a chance to defend itself - then handed over to a gang of thieves for a dozen years, is not going to make anyone particularly tolerant, forgiving or civil. How anyone can think that foreign-funded activists demanding special rights, while insulting everyone around them, could conceivably advance any cause of acceptance or tolerance is beyond me as well.

And now celebrities from the West, past and present, are getting involved - as if their stardom gave them any special standing to preach to people they know nothing about (and what they think they know is wrong). It's the "Pussy Riot" affair all over again - except that over the past week, the hypocrisy of it became even more apparent in the Western response to Muslim riots around the world. Apologetic statements seeking to placate the rioters only reinforce the conclusion that the West only listens to the argument of force, rather than the force of argument. The inescapable - though unfortunate - lesson of the riots is that rage gets results, while reason only results in more mockery.

Instead of fighting for life, liberty, and property - concepts that would actually encourage tolerance and acceptance of their lifestyle - the professional alt-sexuals demand the "right" to parade down the streets of Belgrade like a conquering army. That's not supposed to endear them to the general public - but perhaps that's precisely the point. "Tolerance" is seldom the objective of those who demand it the loudest. The Parade is a stick with which to beat the Serbs until they submit. Don't be surprised if they hit back.

That September Day

From the Gray Falcon archives:

"I remember that Tuesday morning the way I remember much of the Bosnian War: in vivid detail. The confusion, the shock, the horror of the burning and crumbling towers, the pillar of black smoke coming from the Pentagon. But the world didn't stop turning. And nothing actually changed that day." 

(9/11, September 11, 2011; Read the rest)

Empire's Values

"Hypocrisy," wrote the great French writer Francois de La Rochefoucauld, "is the homage vice pays to virtue."

Today, vice is what passes for virtue, and hypocrisy seems to have become the principal value of the Atlantic Empire and its satellites.

It's bad enough that the Empire has internalized the belief that killing people is somehow "saving" them, due to the miraculous transubstantiation of anyone killed by Imperial ordnance into an "enemy combatant." But when a country that routinely invades others, overthrows governments by force or subterfuge, and sponsors terrorists (e.g. Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, KLA, Libyan and Syrian "freedom fighters) is setting up a committee for "atrocity prevention," what is one to conclude other than that it has left logic a few exits back?

The "Pussy Riot" tempest in a teacup is a perfect example of hypocrisy that simply rampages throughout every layer of society in the Empire. Sure, the desecration visited upon an Orthodox temple by the three orgy-loving "activists" pales in comparison to the oeuvre  of those paragons of tolerance and freedom in Kosovistan (under NATO's loving gaze no less). But don't you see, that just shows how oppressive Russian autocracy truly is! In a truly free, democratic society, all the churches would be razed and evil Orthodoxy abolished - or so reason the Marxists.

Wait a second, isn't America supposed to have fought the "long, twilight struggle" against Marxism and Leninism for forty-odd years? And didn't the collapse of the Soviet Union and the abolition of Communism usher in the End of History? Well, sure - but that's beside the point, since we're all Marxists now.

Let me explain. Karl Marx argued that life had been better in "noble savage" times without private property. Sure, people lived in caves, had but rudimentary tools, starved more often than not and died of old age at thirty - but they were just! Because his vision of an egalitarian world ran up against the notion of objective truth or virtue - something valued not only by Christian and Jewish philosophers but the Greeks and Romans before them - Marx railed about religion being the "opiate of the masses" and posited the existence of "communist truth", i.e. whatever was useful to the communist cause. Half a century later, his disciple Vladimir Ilyich Ulanov (better known as "Lenin") distilled this to a simple dichotomy: "Who-Whom".

While Marxism-Leninism was officially retired about two decades ago, cultural Marxism remained alive and well. And at its foundation is the relativistic logic proposed by Marx and championed by Lenin: it doesn't matter what is done, but who does it to whom. When "we" do something, that is by definition good, and when those Other People do the same thing - or even something considered virtuous under the wretched old "normative" logic  - it is by definition evil. Isn't it wonderful to have a moral compass that always points exactly where one wants it to?

Imagine the existence of an "activist group" funded by a foreign government, with a lewd name rendered only in a foreign language (e.g. Пизда Бунт), specializing in public acts of indecent exposure they call performance art, and therefore protected free speech. Imagine them barging into the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. Or wold it have to be a mosque? Or maybe an abortion clinic? One never knows what's actually considered sacred by the Imperial establishment these days. In any case, do you honestly think those very same media that cried crocodile tears over the fate of "Pussy Riot" wouldn't be leading the lynch mob, torches and rope in hand, in this instance?

Or do you think they'd sing them praises as brave pioneers of tolerance, diversity and freedom of expression - as they've done with "Pussy Riot"?

The answer to that question pretty much determines whether you're a cultural Marxist - i.e. believe in that relativistic pseudo-logic of who/whom - or not.

Now, standing up for the downtrodden workers exploited by the Industrial Revolution's robber barons is a good thing. But the bright shining future Marx envisioned for them involved caves. They were concrete instead of stone, but that's hardly the point. The equality he envisioned turned into a coerced equality of misery for most, and a life of plenty for a few. How exactly was that a good thing? I've lived in a Marxist society, and I've seen how quickly and easily it morphed  into the worst version of pagan nihilism. When you make people believe they are no better than animals, don't be surprised when they bite.

To be fair, cultural Marxism is no more an American value than original Marxism was a Russian value. Both were imposed on their host nations, if by different means. And it isn't just a thing of the "left" (democrats, reformers, progressives, whatever), either. The "right" is hardly different, amounting to at best a caricature opposition. They say they are defending tradition, but are no longer capable of articulating what that tradition is, much less why it's worth fighting for. (See the just-finished RNC convention in Tampa for a host of examples). To a 1950s liberal, a typical "conservative" of today would seem to the left of Stalin.

Besides, targets of Imperial "do-gooderism" worldwide certainly don't care whether their murderers wear ties or tie-dyes. Dead is dead.

Whatever you want to call the ideology currently dominating the West (Transnational Progressivism, Globalism, One-Worldism, Secular Humanism, etc.), its basic philosophy is Marxist and neo-pagan. It loathes tradition, family and kinship, property and commerce. It extols coercion, violence, welfare and conflict. And it disguises itself with pleasant-sounding words whose meaning has either been reversed or eliminated entirely: equality, democracy, freedom, diversity.

Not content with dismantling their own countries in this manner, the followers of this ideology  desire to remake the world as well. In that, they are aided by veritable cults of fanatical followers,  drawn by promises of riches and power but find fulfillment only in the feeling of smug self-righteousness: the "human rights activists" and "NGOs" (funded by foreign governments, ironically), professional revolutionaries and their spear-carriers, useful idiots and true believers.

They target Christianity and Judaism, though for the time being they seem to have a love affair with Islam. It isn't a cozy relationship; both the riots in Europe and the bloodbaths in Iraq and Afghanistan offer object lessons in what happens when Islam and cultural Marxism mix. Not surprisingly, the cultural Marxists refuse to acknowledge the problem exists, since that would clash  with their narrative.

Fight back, and the mainstream media - as well as the twitterati and blogger brigades serving the Cult of Death - declare you uncivilized, primitive, retrograde, repressive. Pure projection, all of it - for it is they who desire to abolish civilization, extol force as the arbiter of all, wish to reverse the history of humanity and repress anyone who dissents. Much as they loathe the naive evangelicals who believe their actions can bring about the Rapture, the secular cult is exactly like them, in that they seek to "immanentize the Eschaton", bringing about the End of History by obliterating all competing thought.

Their ultimate objective is not universal happiness. Nor is it diversity, equality, freedom, democracy or justice. Those are but flowery phrases that are mere means to an end. And that end is "all the kingdoms of this world, and the glory of them." This is why they hate Christianity, for its unequivocal rejection of that offer. And why they attack Orthodoxy in particular: because, unlike most other branches of Christianity, it still persists in upholding that rejection.

Not Just A River in Egypt

An acquaintance of mine is vacationing on Cyprus, and recently posted this to her Facebook page:

The people of Cyprus are pretty religious and very Orthodox Christian. They keep icons on their desk in business offices, including the bank. Wednesday, the 15th, is dedicated to the Mother of God and it's a national holiday. Everything is closed.

But the cheapest satellite network here is the Nile Network [NTN], which the British here subscribe to for their holiday rental apartments and houses so that people on holiday have something to watch and they don't have to pay much. The Nile Network includes both Al Jazeera and CNN, and breaks 5 times a day for Muslim prayer. In the middle of an old American action movie (in English, with Arabic subtitles), an imam will come on and preach Islam - with English, Russian or Greek subtitles, depending on which holiday makers he is in the mood to hit today - for 15 minutes. The Nile Network tells you when a movie will be on, not as "Tuesday the 14th at 6 PM", but rather as "The Second Day (or 3rd) day of Ramadan at 6PM", so you have no idea when this movie is going to be on unless you check the Islamic calendar.

This place is pretty amazing. Most Greek Cypriots just basically ignore it all, never would subscribe to the Nile Network even for their holiday rentals, and kind of think that the British are a bit nuts.

A beach in Cyprus

The Cypriots might be onto something here. What else should one think of a tourist who pays good money to visit Cyprus, and instead of enjoying the local charms - food, landscapes, people, culture, etc. - they sit at their rental  and watch American action movies, with breaks for Islam?

Nile's Wikipedia page lists the network's goals thus (emphasis added):

• Address foreign viewers in Egypt and all over the world with regard to culture, economy, tourism, and art, and to initiate a constructive dialogue between different cultures in foreign languages. 
• Present the views of the Egyptian government and people on various issues concerning the Arab World and the Middle East, as well as global issues. 
• Reflect the image of modern Egypt, and all its concrete achievements in the form of national projects in the fields of education, women's rights, health care, and the establishment of a democratic atmosphere. 
• Broadcast news events from Egypt and the Arab World, and analyzing and discussing them with officials, politicians, analysts and cultured Egyptians, Arabs and foreigners in foreign languages. 
• Present objective news on international events, analyzing and discussing those events to help foreign viewers understand the truth about the Egyptian and Arab stances on the current international events in order to protect foreign viewers from falling prey to biased media. 
• Present images of Egypt and reflect its religions and values, humanitarian and tolerance. 

All the standard buzzwords and catchphrases are there. When you distill the verbiage, you're left with an understanding that Nile is an Egyptian propaganda channel. There's nothing wrong with that, mind you. But it's very interesting that they wrap that propaganda in American action movies - hardly a reflection of Egyptian "religion and values." 

I've observed a similar phenomenon in Serbia, where a network called B92 injects its propaganda (also called "news") into a stream of American entertainment programming. Not surprisingly, B92 was directly funded by the Empire for years - and may still be; though the station's ownership has supposedly changed, its slant hasn't changed in the slightest. The difference here is that NTN is spreading Egyptian propaganda abroad, while B92 is spreading Imperial propaganda at home (sometimes with hilarious results). Yet they have the same modus operandi: come for the fun, stay for the indoctrination.

Needless to say, this kind of propaganda works best on a thoroughly disoriented audience: people whose own culture, heritage, identity and values have been systematically stripped away. That way, when someone else's ideas and values are presented to them, they are embraced as a breath of fresh air. Earlier this year, indie Finnish satire Iron Sky played this for laughs in a subplot where a PR wizard earnestly brands an electoral campaign with ideas from actual Nazis (from the Moon!). 

Have the British been so tenderized? Brendan O'Neill seems to think so, illustrating the claim with examples of reactions against the people who dared dislike the opening ceremony of the Olympics. He also argued that the arrest of a boy who sent a nasty tweet to a British diver showed a "culture of intolerance" that has developed in the UK - paradoxically, in the name of imposing "tolerance" and "diversity." British tourists are already showing an alarming lack of judgment by choosing to watch TV while vacationing in what is by all accounts an exceptionally beautiful country. So, who knows?

Nile TV is merely exploiting an opening provided to it by culture warriors in the West. Serbs at least have a cause to be angry at B92, as it both creates and exploits the confusion in their society. If the British tourists fall for any of Nile's propaganda, it will be nobody's fault but their own. 

Hostile Actions

The online edition of Albuquerque Journal ran a story today, almost entirely based on a New Mexico National Guard press release, that three Guard members are scheduled to receive Purple Hearts, "for injuries they received during hostile actions in Kosovo on Sept. 27, 2011."

What was it that happened in Kosovo on September 27 last year? Oh, yes: the Americans opened fire on unarmed Serb demonstrators, injuring several. I wrote about it then, and another blogger has helpfully collected a selection of video clips, stills and background information.

But to hear the ABQJ tell the story, "New Mexico troops helped prevent a Serbian mob from breaking through a border crossing and potentially killing a group of German soldiers on the NATO team, the Journal reported last December."

NATO's actual mission (from The Weight of Chains)

First of all, that was no "border crossing," but a checkpoint on the road between (the occupied Serbian province of) Kosovo and (the rest of) Serbia. Granted, the U.S. government believes that "Kosovia" is an independent state, and has tried to impose this belief on the rest of the world. But the very least a journalist could do is acknowledge that there is in fact a dispute. Secondly, the "Serbian mob" consisted of unarmed civilians. The German soldiers had body armor, rifles and tanks. Who was really a threat to whom? But since one can hardly have a story of heroism involving Our Boys ("New Mexico troops," to be precise) shooting at unarmed people whose land they are occupying, these inconvenient facts had to go.

At the time of the incident, KFOR claimed some of its troops were injured. They never offered any evidence for that, however - unlike the Serbs, who documented their injuries with photos and unedited video footage. But the ABQJ helpfully explained that the "The Purple Heart is awarded to members of the U.S. Armed Forces who are wounded by an instrument of war in the hands of the enemy and is specifically a combat decoration." (emphasis added)

There is no mention what the "instruments of war" allegedly used on the New Mexicans might have been. But note that the said instruments have to be wielded by "the enemy" in a combat situation. So by the NMNG's own admission, the Serbs of Kosovo are "the enemy" and NATO's "peacekeeping" mission is really a combat mission. Judging by KFOR's operational activities, the objective of that mission is to finalize the ethnic cleansing of Serbs begun in 1999, thus creating and securing a 100% Albanian "independent state of Kosovo."

Closing up the story, the ABQJ paraphrases a statement by former Guard commander, Maj. Gen. Montoya, who reportedly said that New Mexicans' handling of the situation was praised by U.S. "military leaders around the world" (?!) for "potentially stopping a new Kosovo war by managing conflict situations without lethal force."

Whoa. First we had the deliberate shooting of unarmed civilians re-told as Saving Gefreiter Gruber, and now it has morphed into "potentially stopping a new Kosovo war"? I used to wonder how the U.S. government and military could make embarrassingly stupid decisions; now that I know how divorced they are from objective reality, I wonder no more.

Final question: if live ammunition isn't "lethal force," General Montoya, what, pray tell, is? Unarmed Serbs, perhaps?

Footnote

From a regular reader:

"If New Mexico troops have now been granted Purple Hearts for routine crowd control duties, isn't it that much more imperative that NATO military authorities track down the identity of, and award the highest existing medals for bravery to, those daring NATO pilots who, dropping cluster bombs from a high altitude, risked their lives in a daring confrontation with enemy troops who would pass by the area unarmed thirteen years in the future?  Never have so many owed so much to so few."