A snag in the Global North's global domination?

Much of the Western press and leadership are portraying the East-West conflict over Ukraine as a temporary issue that will be quickly remedied by regime change against what they see as problematic leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin. In some ways, they are correct. 

Since the end of the original Cold War, the main tension in the world was emerging in the North-South relationship, not the East-West conflict, making the current geopolitical situation something of an anomaly. Except for direct contests over hegemony, the main struggle in the world has always been between the exploiter and exploited, or the ruler and the ruled.

War against the Global South

With wars mainly being "interventions" targeting Global South nations like Iraq and Libya, and the Global North having a distinct advantage, able to project the image of itself as a global policeman under the authority of the United Nations Security Council, for a time it seemed as if a simmering North-South conflict was becoming the accepted reality.

The alterations to the language of war in the 1990s and early 2000s to speak of humanitarian intervention, rogue states, terrorism and global policing showed a shift, conscious or otherwise, to waging wars on the economically undeveloped nations. Military technology and wargames changed to target lightly armed resistance groups, rather than peer opponents.

What is happening now, with the renewal of conflict between the West and Russia, is an unexpected hiccup in the dominance of the Global North and especially the Western powers. Russia had essentially been considered a solved problem and a defeated enemy for over thirty years, and the West had moved on to other targets. Russia refusing to be dead, and being capable of challenging the West again, is a potentially fatal impediment Western goals.

The wrong battle

For the West to now be bogged down in a contest with Russia essentially means that the Global North is unable to fight the battle it wanted to fight, namely a battle to maintain dominance over the Global South. The West is mainly responsible, failing to create Global North alliance structures that would include Russia and potentially even China in a world order that would see the North dominate the South.

The selfishness of, very probably, individual politicians and thought leaders in the United States and United Kingdom is most likely to blame for the failure of the Global North to form a united front against the Global South (a godsend for the peoples of the latter). It seems like the idea of having Russians and Chinese as part of the club was just unacceptable to English-speaking elites, who would prefer that the "civilised" world and its economically vital activity are only led by people who look and sound like them.

Russia and China are essentially too "developed" now to be considered an economic periphery that can be conquered or exploited by the West. Countries like India, Pakistan and Iran can also increasingly be considered "developed" and don't really fall into the "Third World" stereotype either, as they may have done in the past.

What next?

While there may be attempts by the East and West to use the Global South as a proxy battlefield again, like they did in the original Cold War, the degree of resistance there against all such interference will likely increase. The Global South was on the rise in its own right, with an increasing willingness of local regimes to defy any expression of global authority or global good, and instead take possession of their own resources. Leaders such as Chavez, Morales, Gaddafi and others were not anomalies but part of a trend that was sure to continue, and will continue.

Even if Western regimes are not impeded much, or Russia and China are quickly disposed of and the Global North falls under Anglo-Saxon authority, their attempts to police and control the Global South will still go severely awry. We will still see terrorism, devastating wars and refugee flows that, in addition to climate change, will complicate Western dominance. They will be unable to pacify the populations of the Global South, who will continue to elect leaders who defy foreign exploitation and dominance. As such, even the most optimistic forecast for the West is one of war, waste, misery and the defeat of global hegemony in the long term.

The thousand cuts to the globally dominant Western powers were already going to be a death sentence for it, even without the West encountering a resurgent Russia and having to fight an intra-North battle.

While the war in Ukraine may be sad for people with blonde hair and blue eyes, it offers much-deserved relief for some people of the Global South. Perhaps they may be spared, for a time, from being the focus of murderous rampages by the supposedly civilised West. The situation in Ethiopia seems to have calmed around the time the conflict grew in Ukraine. We should be mindful, however, that the Western-inflamed humanitarian disaster in Yemen is unabated. As the wars in Bosnia showed us, violence may briefly return to the Global North, but is almost continuously exported to the Global South.

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Should Jamaica become a Republic of Reparations?

If the Jamaican people vote to become a republic, this is their right and cannot be denied. These people deserve to be a fully independent nation if it is their desire, established in a referendum.

Jamaica ‘doesn't want’ Prince William amid slavery protests. However, does pleading for reparations really begin a country on a path to greatness and independence. Others would think self-sufficiency is a better path than such dependency and the request for financial lifelines from the colonial power.

Britain can afford to pay reparations to Jamaica, and such a gift would be good for relations between the countries. However, the idea can be quite easily disputed by those of us inclined, perhaps, to overthink things.

Everyone is an injured party

Reparations for historical injustices of this type are hard to justify, and the arguments for such a thing expose themselves to compelling counterarguments. Does Jamaica want all of Britain's actions to be undone, which would include the territory's creation and population in the first place? Will Spain pay its share of reparations for the period 1509–1655 when slaves were moved there and exploited by them? The UK could argue that removing Spanish rule helped to pave the way for getting rid of slavery eventually, and can try to assign a value to this action as part of the reparations that should be deducted.

What of the indigenous people, the Arawak? Are they not a wronged party, and will they not receive their own reparations from the current majority of the population for being usurped by them? The Jamaican population were victims of history and didn't have any choice but to usurp these people, but then neither did people in the UK have any choice about being citizens of an imperial power. The indigenous people may deserve an autonomous region in a federated state, so they can properly assert any demands they might have.

The Scots make the case that they were colonised, and many Irish in Northern Ireland still consider themselves colonised by Britain. Should their taxes also help compensate Jamaica? What if the United Kingdom eventually dissolves or parts break away? If we break up as a country, is there any party left to pay the reparations? Should we all hunt down descendants of the Norman colonisers who started the pattern of conquest and exploitation back in 1066, to demand reparations from whatever personal estate they own?

Many British people are Black, and the identity of the British has profoundly changed over the centuries. Are their taxes equally going to go on reparations? If not, can others be exempt on the basis of genetics test results? Or will someone have to judge each person in some sort of test, and decide if they look or sound enough like an imperialist?

Jamaica should choose greatness

If Jamaica becomes independent, it should set itself on the path of greatness, not the path of begging. They should ask for nothing from the British, because asking just reaffirms their place as the colonised and sets them up for greater dependency. A financial lifeline to a population of victims can be cut off at any moment, and is hardly a blessing. Does Jamaica want to be vulnerable to British sanctions in the event that we decide to meddle, and does it want to rely on us and our own American masters for defence and security too?

Perhaps there is an irreconcilable contradiction between being a country created and populated by Britain as a political entity, and then accusing Britain of being at fault for woes it needs to compensate for. We are talking about a country that's value arose during British rule, and trying to ascertain what part of it was stolen by not repaying people for their labour. But if you calculate that value, is it not offset by the rest of the value (buildings, infrastructure, the financial value of having links to the British Empire, et cetera)? Much of what the British government has already given could be considered invaluable reparations already. The immeasurable value of letting the country exist at all goes beyond the value of any possible reparations. There are infinite numbers of nations that cannot gain any reparations simply because Britain did not allow them to exist, for example, all the countries the UK could have created in India rather than leaving it as one territory.

One could divide almost all of Britain's imperial wealth and splendour and all things that were derived from ill-gotten gains, and give it to every nation wronged by Britain, and every country could be accused similarly and ordered to compensate this or that country, and we would tie ourselves in knots. It is easier to have a fresh start on the basis that what is done is done, and cannot be undone.

A newly formed nation makes a clean break with the past, entering the world as a new player with a world to win, like so many others. The United States, for example, received no compensation from the British whatsoever, and yet we ended up being indebted to them for the abundance of help the United States gave us. If the United States is the master of slave Britain today, should not Jamaica approach them rather than us?

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Could the West be suddenly converted to Nazism?

Noam Chomsky asserted in his book, Media Control, that the corporate media had an ability to trigger totalitarian behaviour in people, stating "the educated masses goose-step on command and repeat the slogans they’re supposed to repeat".

America's history of making excuses for fascist types in Latin America and Eastern Europe, coupled with the veneration of police state figures at home and panic among elites at their collapsing economic and military power, could lay a path for our nations into actual fascism.

Sanitising fascism

As evidence accumulates that we in the West are supporting Nazis in Ukraine, such that even NATO itself is unable to avoid sharing evidence of these Nazis and then hurriedly deleting it, we may see excuses made for radical nationalism and fascism. It is accompanied by our own anti-Russian propaganda, sometimes rivalling the work of the Nazis, as we become enamoured with the monsters we support.

Nazism in Ukraine, however explicit, is uniquely weaponised and directed against the local ethnic Russians, such that Jews in Ukraine are seemingly able to avoid being hurt by it. But, as anyone who was properly educated at school knows, the selected scapegoat makes no difference to whether fascism is fascism. Portraying the West's declared enemies such as Russians, Muslims or the Chinese as subhuman is as wrong as anti-Semitism.

Unfortunately, as Chomsky points out, educated people in the West seem able to forget their entire moral code and education when the media simply claims that things are different this time, and that fascistic sentiment is now necessary. They are then okay with calling for the death or silencing of those who oppose us. Making special exceptions where it is okay to censor or even murder people when we are told is a masterclass in turning a peaceful person into a monster.

The subconscious drift to fascism

Part of the reason for fascism is the feeling that one's country was meant to be the most successful, the best of them all, but that traitors and fifth columnists are hampering it. In the past, that was the essence of anti-communism. Today, the communists are simply "Russians", the word used for essentially anyone on the internet who contradicts the narrative, despite no evidence of any link to Moscow.

There has been a tragic history of the United States relying on fascists to secure its goals in South and Central America, and the US is typically aligned with the most reactionary forces around the world. This is no different in Ukraine, where, from the beginning, the US took as its allies the most violent nationalists and fascists it could find, and portrayed them as liberals to gullible audiences at first. Now, though, the audience is actually becoming illiberal, drawn more and more into pure hatred and flag-waving.

As the West declines in the face of a rising China, and is confronted by the unprecedented failure of its sanctions policy, statements from Western journalists and politicians can only be expected to become more deranged. As economic and financial punishments fail against rival countries for the first time, a new ideology that justifies the magnification of military force, terroristic violence, and the creation of vast armies may be demanded. As refugees flee Ukraine, many still with sympathies to fascism, and are lionised, it is possible that the Western media will engage in revisionism and justifications for a for at least a few variants of fascism.

Ukraine to be the model for the declining West?

Russia has been afraid for some time that World War Two could be rewritten by the West, in a way that puts all the blame on the Soviet Union. It could get worse. As Russia is increasingly vilified, Ukrainian Nazi collaborators are redeemed in Western eyes, and the usefulness of fascist thugs becomes increasingly attractive to Western elites, not just abroad but potentially at home.

Because the US is okay with bans on media in Ukraine, it is okay with bans on media at home. Because the US is okay with a war on terror abroad, it is okay with a war on terror at home. Does the US's support for fascist thugs on the streets in Ukraine mean that fascist thugs will be accepted on the streets at home?

Now, some will want to stop me here and attempt to make the case that groups like Black Lives Matter (BLM) or Antifa are the local variants of fascism. They are similarly lionised to the Ukrainian nationalists, and excuses are made for their violence in the US. Others will say this is different, because these are the anti-fascists. But are they? Anti-fascists may be expected to use reason, and explain exactly why fascism is wrong. The BLM and Antifa movements are not rationalist movements. Their followers are just addicted to the dopamine rush they get from being supported in the media and in the currents of social media. The ideology matters not.

Swastikas of freedom

It is not unrealistic to estimate that if the media began to fly the swastika, at first pitching it as a maligned anti-Russian "freedom" symbol, a fair majority of the self-styled advocates of BLM, Antifa and other social justice causes would steadily convert not just to fascism but to Nazism. Moreover, the amount of effort needed to convert a majority of Western society to Nazi ideology would require one week to one month of television broadcasts, social media hashtags, and some entertainment and education-related boycotts and products being cancelled by certain key companies. In total, it would only require the staff at the top of several organisations such as CNN, Facebook and Twitter to collaborate on achieving it.

What if Western policy elites responsible for backing extremists abroad should now decide that establishing full fascism at home is the way to mobilise the United States and the West to defend their hegemony? They are disturbingly well-equipped to do it. They have so far been able to pressure the previously mentioned types of organisation into adhering to their strategy. The informal hierarchy placing the US foreign policy elites and spooks over the media lackeys is obvious in the shocking speed at which propaganda is disseminated everywhere, and, as Chomsky said, we can be made to goose-step on command.

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The real reason Russia scares us in Britain?

Behind the false moral outrage of British killers at Russian killers, there may be a fear that Russia is still the Second World War victor we merely pretend to be.

After the Second World War, the victors became the United Nations Security Council, the top dogs effectively set up to rule the post-war world order by approving international peacekeeping missions and interventions and providing the military power to enforce them. This was a convenient compromise between brute military realities and the easily corrupted rule of international law.

Powers of the Second World War

Some fools compared the US and UK's pointless lynching and destruction of small Iraq with the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two. Similar such fools here now belittle the Russian war in Ukraine as somehow inferior to the West's displays of power, despite it being something undertaken against a powerful enemy with heavy foreign support and modern weaponry. It is no exaggeration to say that Ukraine is the most heavily-equipped and powerful opponent to have been confronted by one of the Security Council powers since World War Two. The UK simply doesn't dare wage war on large or heavily-equipped nations, no matter how much it hates them.

Western militaries remain too skittish to attempt anything similar to Russia's war in Ukraine when it comes to countries they complain about, and the reason may have nothing to do with either morality or military astuteness. It could be cravenness on the part of our country, which only attacks the most dilapidated, isolated, small nations where an easy victory can be claimed to much fanfare, and backs away from threats that could actually imperil Western troops.

The Russians evidently do not suffer the above problem, being willing to dive into perilous battles against their enemies as they did in the Second World War, and the resulting perceived difference in the character of our countries may be what actually scares us in the West. What Russia is doing in Ukraine could be an almost precise re-enactment of operations against Nazi Germany. It is fought on some of the same battlefields as that original "Great Patriotic War", as the Russians call it.

Propaganda and reality

The Second World War is certainly on many minds in Great Britain when we think of the conflict in Ukraine. Propaganda coverage and government statements in the UK somewhat resemble those of the Second World War, and the UK kept making World War Two references in the days leading to the outbreak of hostilities. Amid these continuous comparisons, there is likely to be a subconscious comparison between the craven modern Britain and the power that helped win the Second World War.

The unflattering reality is that the UK is not the same power it was in the Second World War. At that time, the UK was independent and played a leading role, devising its own strategies and pursuing its own interests. The US intervened to support the UK, which had entered into the war without any real need for a coalition. Now, the UK is merely led by lackeys of the United States.

Pretend power

Britain's attempts to look tough are now based on the cosplay of our leaders, who model themselves on iconic politicians of the past because they have no identity of their own. At the same time, many in the UK are likely to possess a kind of football hooligan envy of Russia, because that country is acting like the same beast it used to be in the past, whereas the UK is now nothing much more than a weak accomplice. Rather than acknowledge our country's inferior position and microscopic influence, they will claim the Russians are cheats or dishonourable in some way. This way, our subconscious awareness of our own weakness and inferiority is exploited to encourage hatred of the other country.

Where the UK and Russia are similar lies in the dismantlement of their broader empires, both voluntarily. However, where one began to live in its own empire's shadow and compensate with bombast, the character of the other may have remained the same, able to demonstrate its status with the resolve and steel that made it a victor in the Second World War.

The UN Security Council represented a compromise between the reality of military power and the desire for the rule of international law. By painting a member of it as our enemy, when they still have the military power, we risk seeing a military reality that is misaligned with our pronouncements about international law. This will make us like a police officer who can't arrest anyone or even get up from his chair.

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Asylum seekers holding political office isn't good

Someone being a political refugee from abroad gives them excellent qualifications to be welcomed into a new society, and equally good qualifications to have no influence over foreign policy.

A community of Cuban exiles who reside in the United States are essentially anti-communist hard line politicians who are not averse to demanding Americans be sent to war against a regime they dislike, as a result of their own family grievances. Many of those people fleeing Ukraine for Europe are likely to demand an aggressive line or even an open conflict with Russia by European countries.

If political or war refugees are allowed to hold political office, they will use it to make war speeches and basically pursue a vendetta at the expense of their adoptive country, and even their children are likely to also grow up to attempt the same.

Conflict of interest

One could argue that Cuban exiles and their descendants in the US, like Commonwealth residents present in the  UK, are from territory formerly administered by the host country, and therefore we have some responsibility to listen to and act on their grievances. This argument, however, does not hold when those who were adopted are clearly putting their family interests over the interests of the adoptive country.

If someone is still loyal to the imperial power and re-joined its rule, e.g. if a Commonwealth resident is loyal to British rule, they should accept that the British know best and keep their heads down until we ask their opinion as part of an initiative launched by us, rather than claiming to know better and trying to pursue some form of authority over the British.

Let us consider another response. One could argue that indeed asylum seekers have taken their new nationality, and that it is therefore unfair of the country adopting them to point to them as different or less deserving of authority. However, the adoptees are the ones labelling themselves as different. If someone begins using their identity as a Cuban or a Jamaican to make their arguments regarding those lands, we can take it that they are giving up their new identity as American or British. They are forsaking our interests in favour of their own. They are therefore expressing conflicting loyalties, and if they have fewer rights as a result, they should have only themselves to blame.

Lobbying for revenge

It is important for a country to not be held hostage by another country or group from another country. It should be fine if the values and culture of the country change because of migration, and that some foreign sympathies arise because of it, but known individuals trying to manipulate our policy to support foreign interests should be distrusted. For this reason, foreign lobbies are inherently problematic because they call into question whether we are really allied to the other country or our representatives are merely being pressured by a hostile actor into supporting that other country.

Those who flee because they have no other homeland, and to whom we have historic or cultural obligations, should be welcome. If we have reason to think someone came to our country to advocate or lobby for a war or change to our policy regarding another country, though, then some thought should should be given to deporting them, and certainly they should not be given any kind of authority.

For those who want a moral liberal solution, rather than banning from office or deportation, a better course may simply be to examine these individuals who may advocate a foreign conflict. We should examine their loyalties with greater suspicion than we might examine others, in order to rule out a conflict of interest that causes them to secretly manipulate our country to achieve revenge against another country.

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Let us consider Macron's attack on "anti-Zionism"

On 21 March, French President Emmanuel Macron was reported to have absurdly claimed that opposing Israel is treasonous, referring to "anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism" as "enemies of the Republic", according to France 24.

Macron's statement is unfortunate for him, if anyone of a reasonable mind is to read it, for a variety of reasons. For one thing, despite how stupid and evil it is, racism (and the specific variants of it, such as anti-Semitism) is absolutely not any form of treason. Racism is more likely to be a trait of people with staunch national loyalty than those who would become traitors, so even the seemingly good part of Macron's statement is factually incorrect. If you doubt me, consider whether virtually every national hero in French history is likely to have shared modern sensibilities that allow us to reject racism. Saying racists are enemies of France would be a drunken and illogical remark.

What country is Macron loyal to?

The especially bad part of Macron's reported statement is his own expression of intolerance toward the criticism of Israel (anti-Zionism). Here, he accidentally fails to expose any traitorous behaviour other than his own. Demanding some form of allegiance to a foreign government by condemning all criticism of it would make Macron himself the enemy of the Republic.

Even impolite, more objectionable criticisms of Israel, statements that Israel is an enemy and must be bombed, and so forth, would not be incompatible with being loyal to France. Those statements may be incredible irresponsible, and they could even be criminal, but being loyal to France is solely defined by one's relationship to France and not to other countries supported by Emmanuel Macron.

America forcing loyalty to Israel

What Macron was trying to do, and what other French politicians are likely trying to do, is something that has also been done in the United States and has been advocated in Germany by some lawmakers. In the United States, people are forced by law in some states and government bodies to pledge their allegiance to Israel. US Conservative politicians see supporting Israel at all costs as essential to America, and their blind fervour drives them to extreme hostility towards Muslims.

Muslims are unable to accept Al-Quds as the capital of a hostile country that undermines their rights, and their religion would require them to be anti-Zionist. Trying to criminalise belief and brand millions of Muslims as internal enemies is not only unjustified but may put the people doing this on the same moral footing as anti-Semites, specifically the 1930s anti-Semites who created the Nuremberg Laws.

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What makes a country better than others?

Any metrics according to which countries are deemed better or freer than others are entirely arbitrary, set by countries that happen to have the most influence and want to glamorise themselves.

The creation of such charts proves nothing, and tells us more about the people who would make them than any of the countries on them. You would only engage in that sort of measuring contest because your own regime has a serious problem - its obsession with the others - which is bad enough behaviour for us to write off your regime as the worst of the lot. I will not need any analysis of these Indians who have been shot by the cowboy, to be able to tell that the cowboy is the worst person present.

Who makes these charts?

The defenders of the economic core basically define success into existence, manipulating the structures of knowledge so that our very perception of success is favourable to their national and class interests. At present, the world's economic core is still largely based in Western countries, even if it is slowly shifting towards China.

Few will deny that it is a pleasant life in the West, when compared with many other countries. However, this is the result of centuries of stable police-order and the continuous economic plunder of weaker nations. We deny other countries the ability to enforce or normalise the sort of internal order that our countries achieved long ago, instead sanctioning or destroying countries that threaten to become powerful or more state-like before they can join the club. Countries that undergo a necessary nation-building process but violate human rights along the way, rather than being seen as being in a developmental stage to true statehood, are treated as abominations by us at some opportunistic moment such as a civil war. We plunge them back to the state of nature, as in the case of Libya in 2011, forcing them to have to develop into a polity all over again.

Interrupting the story of another nation

A supreme irony of Western bombardments of other countries is that our own standards of civilised behaviour are the result of the most brutal enforcement of order in our countries, and our own perfection of the art of mass murder. Somehow, we seem to believe that a country like Syria needs no Lincoln in its own history, its civil war is unacceptable, and it should instead have suddenly become a fairly developed capitalist country with no intermediate stage. In reality, the evolution of Western states relied on fairly authoritarian methods and incredibly deadly weapons to get to where we are. The main reason we deal with mass protests and avert civil conflicts better than our supposed moral inferiors in poorer countries like Libya and Syria is simply due to having developed (through murderous experience) safer technologies of repression like teargas and rubber bullets, along with better-trained security forces.

The West's talk of the faults of other countries is dishonest, anyway, and just a set of lines for the West to play its role of gunslinger in a conflict. We discuss "democracy" during the course of an intervention, only as a cynical deception aimed at our own population. There is no truth to the idea of our countries spreading democracy, whatsoever, as democracy by definition originates from a sovereign people and not from a foreign power or alliance structure. Any intervention, as occurred in Libya and Syria, is an offense against democracy.

Goalposts are moving

Metrics of success can be altered in order to pursue new aims. This was one of the goals of the Great Reset, advocated by those who gather at Davos. They wanted responsibility to the environment and society to be somehow measured as criteria of success, rather than just something like economic growth. One could see this as an attempt by Western countries to shift the goalposts, realising that they are being overtaken by China, so that they desire to alter the meaning of success so that they can go on convincing everyone that they are still more successful than China.

The adjustment of the metrics of success, in fact, discredits indexes that that try to portray some country or group of countries as better than others or more ahead. If one can simply convince people that other things are more important or better indicators of success and happiness than GDP, for example, then why is GDP cited to prove anything? A country like Cuba certainly will rank ahead of the US in a number of ways (healthcare, anyone?), so why does the US not surrender to the superior nation?

To conclude, what (or rather who) makes a country successful is the person writing the criteria that will be used to assess success. It has nothing to do with preventing armies of homeless people on the streets, reducing child mortality, providing free healthcare, or any other thing that might be most pleasing to people.

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The dead tree theory of civilisation

Regardless of the passing novelties of culture, falling like leaves in the autumn, there are indispensable riches that transcend even a dead civilisation or social order, to persist. The essential heirlooms of a civilisation are protected and planted again, like acorns.

The origin of the term "radical" came from the Latin word for "root". Those who were radical would hack at the root, or get to the root of the problem. They would, to use an expression favoured by Jean-Paul Marat, bring the hatchet (or ax) to their root.

Inevitable moral decay?

Far from needing to be hacked down, trees eventually die by themselves. If nothing else brings illness to the tree, its death can occur when it becomes so large that it can no longer support its own weight. Then, however majestic it may seem, it will collapse. A tree may even rot while it stands, such that its great size and apparent triumph over other trees may mean nothing.

There have been successive civilisations that were at the centre of the economic life of the world. Sumeria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and the more vaguely defined "Western civilisation" of the present day, with its multiple centres in London, Washington DC, Paris and elsewhere. There is no disputing that each of them collapsed, nor can we dispute that the collapse was necessary for the continued excellence of humanity, although the modern one cannot countenance its own ultimate fate as anything similar.

Many people of a conservative persuasion believe they see things rotten about our society, things that are continuously changing for the worse. They may point to increased sexual liberty and rights that were not typical of the higher and more accomplished stages of a civilisation. It has been argued that a higher civilisation adopts puritanical moral structures and a focus on scientific and artistic accomplishments in order to impress, and that denying excessive sexual liberty assists in this because it helps to keep humanity focused on human excellence rather than primitive joy. Those of a liberal persuasion, on the other hand, welcome any increase in personal liberty, and will only laugh at the above, but their response likely isn't any newer than the views of people during other declines.

It is difficult to form a rational case in relation to the idea of the moral corruption of society, because the outcome depends on one's pre-existing values. The very process of analysing flaws in the moral character of society requires first of all adopting values without rational justification, such as the view that excellence and intellect are better than laziness and pleasure.

How to detect decadence

Decadence, the steady loss of what gave a culture its value, may manifest in worsening cultural products and art forms that are not worth saving, in contrast to the creations of what would have been considered the works of a higher civilisation in its golden age. Everything is just a passing, worthless thing. This may result in a decreased ability to identify with any kind of culture and eventually, with other people in society. Even still, we may still have powerful governments, reminiscent of empires of old, dependent on the inertia of past accomplishments, up until the moment of their failure.

The idea of decadence implies that those who succumb to it either don't recognise it or don't recognise a problem with it, maybe instead being pleased with it. The concept suggests that a society can become sick without even realising it, because its own capacity to recognise goodness or judge itself is also being corrupted, succumbing to the same cultural and intellectual sickness it cannot see.

Decadence also signifies age. If it is a real sickness, it is inescapable and everyone is somewhat infected. Where the conservative is wrong might, then, not be in his dismay at the diminishing of moral or cultural value, but in his delusions that he can do anything to reverse it. A dead tree cannot be restored to a living one, and the clock cannot be turned back on society. Only a fresh acorn, planted elsewhere, has any potential after that.

To fell the tree

It is possible to appreciate both the progressive and the conservative, to see their roles in history.

The believers in progress perform a necessary role in the life of a civilisation, allowing the adoption of new ideas, new scientific models, and new technologies, but any kind of utopia may ultimately prove impossible or harmful, and so the reactionaries also have a valid role. If indeed a civilisation collapses, those who depended on its present state are not going to be the seeds of a new tree; only conservatives could create new civilisations or establish the next outposts of progress. Think what you like of them, but they bear with them a tried and tested formula for how to construct a society and civilisation, whereas the modern liberal only bears faith in the progress of the existing model and will refuse to go back to past traditions or simplicity.

The conclusion that necessarily follows from identifying what is considered decadent is that a thing is unworthy of respect or loyalty, once it is sufficiently debased that you no longer identify with it. It follows that a decadent culture or civilisation imperils those outside of it, like a rotten tree that threatens to fall when it might be inconvenient and should therefore be felled with all urgency. Its destruction, like that of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible, can eventually be justified.

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Can societies really become decadent and collapse?

The notion of decadence, the eventual degeneration of a society or civilisation due to its own failings, once fascinated scholars. However, such a notion is now virtually unheard of except to some conservatives.

Interest in the idea of civilisational deterioration and collapse could have diminished because the idea was offensive to believers in the creed of perpetual social progress and development. Western campuses have, for a long time, been unfriendly to any idea that could align with reactionary rhetoric, such as a theory about moral decline, so most eminent thinkers in the West will avoid the topic completely.

Those of us most likely to talk about some form of civilisational decadence or moral deterioration gripping the developed and so-called "civilised" countries, namely the West, are likely to be of the reactionary mindset. This was not always the case.

There was a Marxist-Leninist notion of decadence, although it had no social or moral meaning and was only an economic observation. This was simply the theory that the epoch of capitalism could come to the end of its life, as capitalism could exhaust itself as a model of progress and from then on, only destroy its own accomplishments through war or turn into imperialism.

Civilisational longevity

In liberal and secular humanist thought, there seems to be no heed given to the longevity of one's culture or civilisation at all. All rational discourse is focused on the welfare, happiness and rights of individuals in the here and now. There is no thought for the morrow, as everything is invested in just doing what is right today. This is miraculously subverted when the issue of human survival is brought up. As soon as scientists suggest building settlements on Mars as a long-term investment against an extinction on Earth, the modern liberal is likely to support that endeavour, apparently forgetting that it does nothing for the welfare or rights of the individual.

People of the liberal persuasion are inhibited from investing in civilisational survival as any kind of priority, because it entails a kind of collectivism that could clash with individual rights. If investing in the distant future of humanity or our civilisation is made into any kind of priority, it could result in restrictions on behaviour that are offensive to individual liberty. It could, for example, result in social pressure to reproduce, which the liberal ideology prefers to treat as being solely the concern of the individual, not of the society or species.

It could be that a civilisation with a liberal monoculture could persist indefinitely, because it might gain traction with everyone on our planet, and hence there would be no threat from inside or outside. However, against a civilisation that has a sense of its own survival and longevity, a liberal civilisation may be an inadequate competitor.

While the Chinese civilisation could have a very strong awareness of itself and its needs, a liberal civilisation in the West may simply be a swarm of wandering individuals who are increasingly disparate, self-interested, and have no thought for whether their own civilisation could or should survive to tomorrow. Invariably, there will be those who will cry out now and claim that the Western liberal civilisation must be defiantly preserved and fought for, but is that not contrary to its own thesis, placing the focus on the individual's happiness? By being synonymous with liberalism, the West is unable to cast off its liberal preferences or put the civilisation's longevity ahead of the individual.

Cultural liberalism as decadence

Perhaps the granting of inordinate liberty to people is indeed decadence, a celebration of vice, which undermines the bonds that held society together and once made it anything worth fighting for. That is certainly what those of a conservative religious mind will tell us. There will always be those of that mind, and their greater moral certitude and reliance on a proven path of tradition may be a kind of inoculation against any peril that could originate from the excessive fixation on individual liberty.

The answer as to whether our current society or civilisation is destined for collapse due to moral decay cannot be asserted by me, but such a situation, even if real, may not be as troubling as it sounds. There are enough reasons to suspect some sort of civilisational collapse could occur, but it is unlikely to happen on a truly global scale or simultaneously in multiple countries.

Despite the globalisation, the world is actually becoming too fragmented for any kind of global failure of society and civilisation, and may even be too fragmented for a shared economic collapse. Countries and regions even within the West are taking quite different courses socially (the French and British approaches to how to manage cultural diversity, or the differences between individual US states on LGBT rights and birth control, for example, are very different).

If conservative worriers about a moral collapse are right, then, to use the metaphor of the Titanic, there is still reason to think the West is large enough and divided into enough compartments to stay afloat in some form. It won't be going down, in whole, even if the worst predictions of moral decay are valid.

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Why refuse nuclear energy in a climate emergency?

Despite a recent U-turn, Germany's Green Party long opposed nuclear energy, holding this view even though nuclear power plants do not contribute to climate change. In the UK, the Scottish National Party (SNP) continues to reject nuclear energy.

There is a climate emergency, we are told. That means that we must radically change course immediately, or it will be too late.

Competing with other nations is hard to balance with saving the climate

The creation of an absolutely eco-friendly future, living fully in adherence to the philosophy of the environmentalists, is not something we actually have time for if we are in an emergency due to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming specifically. The idea of a grand new war of waste and economic competition by Western regimes and their ideological structures, against Russia and China, is not compatible with addressing a climate emergency.

In 2018, the United Nations was saying we have only until 2030 to avert an actual climate disaster (an event that will put serious strain on our countries, such as unprecedented refugees and threatening food shortages). The idea that the West can focus on eliminating energy dependence on Russia and economic reliance on China (that means accommodating an explosion of dirty industry and energy to accomplish such goals and waging conflicts throughout the world), and at the same time avert a climate disaster, is folly. Food shortages alone will be completely unmanageable, when added to the potential loss of a third of the world's wheat supply due to conflict in Ukraine.

If the West is going green, it is not going to defeat Russia or China in time to make the switch. At this point, hegemony really is incompatible with survival. Once a climate disaster really starts to have serious consequences, it is clear where all the world's refugees will be heading (the European Union and the United States). It would be game over for the Western side in this "Cold War" at that moment, as the West will be swamped by these refugees and unable to even feed them, perhaps being forced to beg for food aid from those we labelled as enemies.

Is it a lie?

Many reading the above would probably like to interject by saying that the barrage of contradicting statements (there is this climate emergency, yet we must wage this war of waste, and yet also we can scrap nuclear power stations even though they are not adding to that emergency and in fact mitigate it), means a major lie is being told somewhere. Many conspiracy theorists will probably reject the idea that there is a climate emergency at all, because of so many contradictions.

The consensus of the world's governments and the international panels of experts compels us to accept the reality of a climate emergency, whereas only a few would have us adopt declarations that conflict with this reality. Clearly, political partisans are interfering with a united response to the emergency, dependent as they are on having something to debate about.

The position of the German Greens up until their U-turn was absurd. They agreed with the idea of a climate emergency, yet they wanted to sabotage the response to it by trying to hobble our efforts to stop it, by condemning nuclear energy. They likely agree that hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is a dirty and polluting process, yet they want to buy the resulting American LNG so that they can avoid gas supplies from Russia. So, what looks like a commitment to save the Earth quickly crumbles in the halls of power, replaced with familiar and ugly realpolitik.

Is the SNP's continued rejection of nuclear energy in the UK more acceptable than some, because the SNP desires independence for Scotland and Scotland likely has enough energy sources to support its small population without any nuclear plants? Yes, but someone who is truly concerned about a global warming emergency, believing we only have eight years left to solve it, would likely still want to generate nuclear energy and sell it to their neighbours, to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.

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