"since Russia was unable to seize the whole of Ukraine (falsely imputing this to have been Moscow’s objective, from the start)"
There are two problems with that neocon plan and with Crooke's comment:
1) The war isn't over yet, and the Russians aren't interested in a freeze. What happens when the Russians really do go to the Polish border? Biden's "we stopped Russia" goes out the window - although I suppose he can claim that when Russia doesn't take Poland he can claim it again. If I were Putin, I'd take Poland just to prove Biden wrong. :-)
2) Assuming Russia didn't want to seize all of Ukraine is a persistent Crooke failure, much like everyone else in the pro-Russian camp. I do think Putin and Lavrov wanted an early end to the conflict in March-April, 2022, but subsequently Plan B went into effect and now Ukraine gets taken off the board permanently -- no "rump state" crap.
As for Israel, they just compounded their error of assassinating a Hamas official in Lebanon by assassinating a HEZBOLLAH commander in Beirut. Nasrallah will have to take the gloves off now. Hezbollah severely damaged an airbase with some sixty missiles, which is 0.06 percent of what they can drop on Israel. Huffington Post has an article citing some "US officials" saying "no one can rein in Biden" as his crowd plans a wider Mid-East war.
"Yes, it may seem dark before the dawn; but, that dawn will come and conquer the darkness."
And that light at the end of the tunnel is the express train roaring toward you. :-)
You make an interesting point. And one which takes up the Crooke idea that the West will need a new narrative to account for its failures in Ukraine. One that refers to Walsh's song too.
Let me explain: the "West" that seemed superior, in a different league from the rest of the world and destined-effortlessly-to win. Despite its continual mistakes and follies (Vietnam, Chile, Apartheid South Africa and Israel even then) was a polity that had emerged from the Secod World War. Its most obvious and attractive feature was the high living standard of its populace. In Europe and the UK high living standards were bolstered by a full range of welfare state benefits which, inter alia, enabled regular and large scale social mobility.
The situation in the USA was different- it lacked most of the welfare state systems of Europe, though it inherited, inthe University Education systems of the states, for example, many features of the egalitarianism of the C19th, together with thr fruits of World War Two and New Deal
In both cases the inter-related driving forces were, firstly, the strength of the Unions emerging from the war which forced capitalism to compromise (in an era when it was easy to do so) with Labour. And secondly the very real fear-particularly felt in France and Italy- in all capitalist societies that communism has many attractive features, which it was necessary to compete with in order to protect the status quo.
By 1981, as Karl notes, the reaction had set in: Thatcherism/Reaganism was driving back the popular and populist advances of the previous thirty years. The long and sustained ideological warfare against socialism in all its forms had begun to produce generations with no attraction to the ideas which underlay the welfare state: Generation X was an easy mark for the new rightwing politicians. A reaction against the verities of the post war consensus had set in: all the nonsense regarding the Nazis and their equation with communists, followed by narratives in which the epochal crimes of Hitlerism were trivialised or downplayed (with the Israeli Holocaust narrative being a solitary exception- and even that was sugar coated with the invention that communists were anti-semitic) and Operation Barbarossa began to be described as a defensive measure necessitated by (entirely mythical) soviet aggression.
In other words the Nazis, who had carefully kept their organisatin intact and their powder dry in emigration, began to become respectable again.
Hence in Ukraine NATO's open and unashamed alliance with fascists acting as fascists- eradicating opposition, celebrating Nazis, wiping out cultures, reviving untermenschen doctrines of racial superiority even reproducing the old SS tropes about slavs.
The obvious narratve way out for the West, now, is to blame the Nazis in Ukraine- blame them for killing morale by dividing the people, ethnically and selling out on living standards- blaming them for the corruption and the cronyism etc.
But that way out obvious enough cannot be taken now because the West has become indistinguishable from the enemy it defeated and took legitimacy from having defeated in 1945. Look at Israel in Gaza, at the culmination of a steady adoption of ever more extreme versions of fascism, beginning with Jabotinsky's revisionism.
Which leads one to a question which none of us has looked at yet, which is what limit can there be to the de-Nazification that Russia insists is its war aim? Wipe out the Ukrainian Nazis-despatch them back to Montreal and Edmonton- and there will still be scads of them dominating politics in the Baltic countries, eastern Europe. And, increasingly in the west: Mussolini's heritage has been revived in Meloni's government. Petain's in Macron's-with LePen waiting in the wings. Francoism is back in a big way in Spain and there are similar stories to be told of all the EU's members And the EU (hello von der Leyen) itself.
Maybe the Rest of the World has to start thinking in terms of a cordon sanitaire around the golden billion.
As for DeNazification, I advanced the idea that it include the entire West last year at some point. It would be very wise for the Global majority not to agree to anything proposed by the West, no matter how harmless or helpful it may appear as the West simply cannot be trusted now.
great commentary bevin.. i especially liked this paragraph i quote again below
"But that way out obvious enough cannot be taken now because the West has become indistinguishable from the enemy it defeated and took legitimacy from having defeated in 1945. Look at Israel in Gaza, at the culmination of a steady adoption of ever more extreme versions of fascism, beginning with Jabotinsky's revisionism."
The fundamentals of realignment likely are in trade relations and the actual monetary value of that trade, perhaps best expressed as a percent of GDP of imports and exports with various parties. To me that will be the best tell even with less than accurate data.
As an example of the latter, the Russians would unload diesel in Boston harbor because the North East does not believe in the construction of pipelines. Closed eyes and maybe no data taking on that one. I have also seen pics of US Tankers unloading diesel in Ukraine, a while back. I saw a Russian tanker in St. Nazaire over the summer and took its picture. No point telling Janet who cooked up the sanctions in November well before the SMO.
So, the slogan - from Plato to NATO is from here……..
What’s more, as Mac Sweeney acknowledges straight away, her premise is hardly original. In popular understanding, the history of western civilisation, from Plato to Nato, is one of superior ideas and practices (Liberty! Democracy! Free Speech!) whose origins lie in ancient Greece, and have since been refined, extended, and transmitted down the ages (through the Renaissance, the scientific revolution and other supposedly uniquely western developments), so that we in the west today are the lucky inheritors of a superior cultural DNA.
I have read and listened to all three...and it depressed me so much! As for Zweig’s book - not sure if you are familiar with Hannah Arendt dismissing Zweig’s argument and this particular book? I just wish there was a space to talk about this. I still think that from Plato to NATO is not the only trajectory that we have inherited. This particular one might also be seen as the privileging instrumental rationality, which is/was a disaster. But it is not the only heritage of the Western philosophy and the Western thinking. Anyway, going to finish reading your post. Thank you for your work!
No, I'm not familiar with either. There's a massive body of written works I've not read nor will ever read as it's just not possible, and that's a lament since there's much of importance that I won't gain. Plato to NATO is an old term, the title of a 1998 book by David Gress, but possibly coined before then.
Thank you! I am going to look it up. Yes, I know - so much writing and we are finite human beings. What I like about your site is that it makes me think. I still believe that what is the heritage of Western philosophy is not only what expired from the 17th century onwards. And, of course, not was “ pragmatic”, to use the concept from later on. The Enlightenment is an example of trying to think through the turn to instrumental thinking. And there is a difference between colonial/economic (capitalism) etc histories and the intellectual one. I do not deny that those were built or extended the intellectual ideas into the practical domain... but I think we have a lot to preserve and revive against this onslaught of militarisation......SORRY. so much to think about.
Thank you! For me, I am with Alastair Crooke. We are not a ‘product’ of the environment, we are ‘shaped by the history of ideas, even though they are now in subterranean layer of our tradition. But what was said here, reminded me of Socrates in Apologia: “‘Men of Athens, I am grateful and I am your friend, but I will obey the god rather than you, and as long as I draw breath and am able, I shall not cease to practice philosophy, to exhort you and in my usual way to point out to any one of you whom I happen to meet: Good Sir, you are an Athenian, a citizen of the greatest city with the greatest reputation for both wisdom and power; are you not ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation and honors as possible, while you do not care for nor give thought to wisdom or truth, or the best possible state of your soul?’” (Plato, 1997, 29d–e)
Trying to play it....it is not going.... I have just looked up Bret Weinstein. I am just not so sure that I can subscribe to evolutionary biology as an explanatory horizon. It seems to me that it is another scientism. But I will watch first. Thank you!
thanks for drawing my attention to the arendt - zweing argument... i was unfamiliar with it, but have read one of arendts books, so i was curious.. it seems what you are touching on is captured some in this link...
I just checked my copy and I cannot see Arendt mentioning there Walter Benjamin or Stefan Zweig. She was, of course, very fond of Benjamin. She has carried his manuscript to the USA and was instrumental with its publishing. As for Zweig, she mentioned him in her comments on (I think, if I remember correctly) as a representative of ‘culture of celebrities’. That is why I remember it. I am not sure where she discussed it. I can looked it up, if you are interested.
“He had never under stood the world he lived in, she wrote, and, moreover, he showed no understanding for the past he now brought to life with inflamed nostalgia in The World of Yesterday. He confused political dignity with personal and social privilege; such had been his own undoing. In his writing, he confused the aesthetic and aestheticizing claims of Habsburg Vienna with social and political reality. He took his models from the stage and thought that the world of the Burg the after carried a revival of democratic Athens….”
thanks lubica... hannah arendt is a brilliant mind... i read eichmann in jerusalem.. i do have to read another of her books.. do you have any recommendations?
She has her limitations too, but she is good. I would suggest to read, if you are interested, first, her *Human Condition*, and then, if you are willing to invest time, her three volumes of *Totalitarianism*. If you want something shorter, her *Between Past and the Future* contains 8 essays (the original had 6 essays). I would also suggest Jan Patočka who builds on Arendt’s argument (and, of course, changes it substantially): *Heretical Essays*. I hope this helps.
from a historical point of view, when did the propaganda end with nazi germany? right at the end of ww2? or? i realize the west has continued on in the same tradition, and it is especially obvious and rampant today, but was the end of the age of propaganda really quick and short with regard to nazi germany?
or did it mutate into something else? at no time in our history have we had so much access to information and so little ability to tell right from wrong.. it is every person for themselves! it is this way because we have no leadership as such! instead we have propaganda here to make us feel good, until reality catches up with everything and the propaganda is shown for what it is..
remember early in the ukraine war when we were told russia is running out of bombs? people ought to be reminded of these giant bloopers on a regular basis if for no other reason that it allows them to reflect on the nature of propaganda - if they would be so interested!!! thanks karl..i get the substack articles from simplicius..
It's yet to end, james. That's what the revision of WW2's all about. Indeed, propaganda has existed before the word was coined, and in the case of Germany and Europe, the tales have very deep roots. Being an objective historian is hard work because the effort demands viewing a great number of primary sources, some of which are hard to obtain while others require deciphering. So, where does one begin when one's assaulted by all sorts of narratives both true and false from birth? A discussion of this topic could become an article unto itself.
Lately, the Battle of Kadesh has been referred to as the first fully documented war and first use of written propaganda, e.g., the Ramesseum. That event led to the first known peace treaty, a copper replica of the Kadesh Peace Treaty between Hattusilis and Ramses II was donated to the UN in 1970.
I think it is important to understand that the "narrative" is part of the information war, and designed to overthrow opponents and secure and create new allies. The problem with this theory is that most of the world is not listening, and certainly not Russia who have their own counter-vailing information weapons. Allied to the failure of sanctions, this always meant IMHO that a military defeat of Russia would be required, something that most here would think unlikely in the extreme and certainly the opposite is now in progress.
However the narrative is now directed at western publics who drink deeply from the cup that is offered. 99% of the population in my view are oblivious to the likely real facts. However worse than that, the decision makes and influencers have now convinced themselves. Arguably the narrative is designed as a sop blanket to their intellectual and policy failures, and helps avoid a painful period of collective mental readjustment and cognitive dissonence.
"since Russia was unable to seize the whole of Ukraine (falsely imputing this to have been Moscow’s objective, from the start)"
There are two problems with that neocon plan and with Crooke's comment:
1) The war isn't over yet, and the Russians aren't interested in a freeze. What happens when the Russians really do go to the Polish border? Biden's "we stopped Russia" goes out the window - although I suppose he can claim that when Russia doesn't take Poland he can claim it again. If I were Putin, I'd take Poland just to prove Biden wrong. :-)
2) Assuming Russia didn't want to seize all of Ukraine is a persistent Crooke failure, much like everyone else in the pro-Russian camp. I do think Putin and Lavrov wanted an early end to the conflict in March-April, 2022, but subsequently Plan B went into effect and now Ukraine gets taken off the board permanently -- no "rump state" crap.
As for Israel, they just compounded their error of assassinating a Hamas official in Lebanon by assassinating a HEZBOLLAH commander in Beirut. Nasrallah will have to take the gloves off now. Hezbollah severely damaged an airbase with some sixty missiles, which is 0.06 percent of what they can drop on Israel. Huffington Post has an article citing some "US officials" saying "no one can rein in Biden" as his crowd plans a wider Mid-East war.
"Yes, it may seem dark before the dawn; but, that dawn will come and conquer the darkness."
And that light at the end of the tunnel is the express train roaring toward you. :-)
You make an interesting point. And one which takes up the Crooke idea that the West will need a new narrative to account for its failures in Ukraine. One that refers to Walsh's song too.
Let me explain: the "West" that seemed superior, in a different league from the rest of the world and destined-effortlessly-to win. Despite its continual mistakes and follies (Vietnam, Chile, Apartheid South Africa and Israel even then) was a polity that had emerged from the Secod World War. Its most obvious and attractive feature was the high living standard of its populace. In Europe and the UK high living standards were bolstered by a full range of welfare state benefits which, inter alia, enabled regular and large scale social mobility.
The situation in the USA was different- it lacked most of the welfare state systems of Europe, though it inherited, inthe University Education systems of the states, for example, many features of the egalitarianism of the C19th, together with thr fruits of World War Two and New Deal
In both cases the inter-related driving forces were, firstly, the strength of the Unions emerging from the war which forced capitalism to compromise (in an era when it was easy to do so) with Labour. And secondly the very real fear-particularly felt in France and Italy- in all capitalist societies that communism has many attractive features, which it was necessary to compete with in order to protect the status quo.
By 1981, as Karl notes, the reaction had set in: Thatcherism/Reaganism was driving back the popular and populist advances of the previous thirty years. The long and sustained ideological warfare against socialism in all its forms had begun to produce generations with no attraction to the ideas which underlay the welfare state: Generation X was an easy mark for the new rightwing politicians. A reaction against the verities of the post war consensus had set in: all the nonsense regarding the Nazis and their equation with communists, followed by narratives in which the epochal crimes of Hitlerism were trivialised or downplayed (with the Israeli Holocaust narrative being a solitary exception- and even that was sugar coated with the invention that communists were anti-semitic) and Operation Barbarossa began to be described as a defensive measure necessitated by (entirely mythical) soviet aggression.
In other words the Nazis, who had carefully kept their organisatin intact and their powder dry in emigration, began to become respectable again.
Hence in Ukraine NATO's open and unashamed alliance with fascists acting as fascists- eradicating opposition, celebrating Nazis, wiping out cultures, reviving untermenschen doctrines of racial superiority even reproducing the old SS tropes about slavs.
The obvious narratve way out for the West, now, is to blame the Nazis in Ukraine- blame them for killing morale by dividing the people, ethnically and selling out on living standards- blaming them for the corruption and the cronyism etc.
But that way out obvious enough cannot be taken now because the West has become indistinguishable from the enemy it defeated and took legitimacy from having defeated in 1945. Look at Israel in Gaza, at the culmination of a steady adoption of ever more extreme versions of fascism, beginning with Jabotinsky's revisionism.
Which leads one to a question which none of us has looked at yet, which is what limit can there be to the de-Nazification that Russia insists is its war aim? Wipe out the Ukrainian Nazis-despatch them back to Montreal and Edmonton- and there will still be scads of them dominating politics in the Baltic countries, eastern Europe. And, increasingly in the west: Mussolini's heritage has been revived in Meloni's government. Petain's in Macron's-with LePen waiting in the wings. Francoism is back in a big way in Spain and there are similar stories to be told of all the EU's members And the EU (hello von der Leyen) itself.
Maybe the Rest of the World has to start thinking in terms of a cordon sanitaire around the golden billion.
You'll want to read the Sergey Karaganov interview here as it adds to your sketch, https://globalsouth.co/2024/01/06/russias-european-journey-is-over/
As for DeNazification, I advanced the idea that it include the entire West last year at some point. It would be very wise for the Global majority not to agree to anything proposed by the West, no matter how harmless or helpful it may appear as the West simply cannot be trusted now.
great commentary bevin.. i especially liked this paragraph i quote again below
"But that way out obvious enough cannot be taken now because the West has become indistinguishable from the enemy it defeated and took legitimacy from having defeated in 1945. Look at Israel in Gaza, at the culmination of a steady adoption of ever more extreme versions of fascism, beginning with Jabotinsky's revisionism."
The fundamentals of realignment likely are in trade relations and the actual monetary value of that trade, perhaps best expressed as a percent of GDP of imports and exports with various parties. To me that will be the best tell even with less than accurate data.
As an example of the latter, the Russians would unload diesel in Boston harbor because the North East does not believe in the construction of pipelines. Closed eyes and maybe no data taking on that one. I have also seen pics of US Tankers unloading diesel in Ukraine, a while back. I saw a Russian tanker in St. Nazaire over the summer and took its picture. No point telling Janet who cooked up the sanctions in November well before the SMO.
So, the slogan - from Plato to NATO is from here……..
What’s more, as Mac Sweeney acknowledges straight away, her premise is hardly original. In popular understanding, the history of western civilisation, from Plato to Nato, is one of superior ideas and practices (Liberty! Democracy! Free Speech!) whose origins lie in ancient Greece, and have since been refined, extended, and transmitted down the ages (through the Renaissance, the scientific revolution and other supposedly uniquely western developments), so that we in the west today are the lucky inheritors of a superior cultural DNA.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/23/the-west-by-naoise-mac-sweeney-review-history-rediscovered
I have read and listened to all three...and it depressed me so much! As for Zweig’s book - not sure if you are familiar with Hannah Arendt dismissing Zweig’s argument and this particular book? I just wish there was a space to talk about this. I still think that from Plato to NATO is not the only trajectory that we have inherited. This particular one might also be seen as the privileging instrumental rationality, which is/was a disaster. But it is not the only heritage of the Western philosophy and the Western thinking. Anyway, going to finish reading your post. Thank you for your work!
No, I'm not familiar with either. There's a massive body of written works I've not read nor will ever read as it's just not possible, and that's a lament since there's much of importance that I won't gain. Plato to NATO is an old term, the title of a 1998 book by David Gress, but possibly coined before then.
Thank you! I am going to look it up. Yes, I know - so much writing and we are finite human beings. What I like about your site is that it makes me think. I still believe that what is the heritage of Western philosophy is not only what expired from the 17th century onwards. And, of course, not was “ pragmatic”, to use the concept from later on. The Enlightenment is an example of trying to think through the turn to instrumental thinking. And there is a difference between colonial/economic (capitalism) etc histories and the intellectual one. I do not deny that those were built or extended the intellectual ideas into the practical domain... but I think we have a lot to preserve and revive against this onslaught of militarisation......SORRY. so much to think about.
Thanks for your reply. Same goes with videos; I'm very choosey and don't watch many. That said, here's one about 9.5 minutes long that delves into serious stuff, https://globalsouth.co/2024/01/08/tuckercarlson-and-bret-weinstein-has-the-west-already-fallen-comparison-alastair-crooke/
Thank you! For me, I am with Alastair Crooke. We are not a ‘product’ of the environment, we are ‘shaped by the history of ideas, even though they are now in subterranean layer of our tradition. But what was said here, reminded me of Socrates in Apologia: “‘Men of Athens, I am grateful and I am your friend, but I will obey the god rather than you, and as long as I draw breath and am able, I shall not cease to practice philosophy, to exhort you and in my usual way to point out to any one of you whom I happen to meet: Good Sir, you are an Athenian, a citizen of the greatest city with the greatest reputation for both wisdom and power; are you not ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation and honors as possible, while you do not care for nor give thought to wisdom or truth, or the best possible state of your soul?’” (Plato, 1997, 29d–e)
Trying to play it....it is not going.... I have just looked up Bret Weinstein. I am just not so sure that I can subscribe to evolutionary biology as an explanatory horizon. It seems to me that it is another scientism. But I will watch first. Thank you!
thanks for drawing my attention to the arendt - zweing argument... i was unfamiliar with it, but have read one of arendts books, so i was curious.. it seems what you are touching on is captured some in this link...
https://publicseminar.org/2016/09/the-tragic-enduring-relevance-of-arendts-work-on-statelessness/
this appears to be a link to the actual essay itself - relatively short - "we refugees"
https://amroali.com/2017/04/refugees-essay-hannah-arendt/
I just checked my copy and I cannot see Arendt mentioning there Walter Benjamin or Stefan Zweig. She was, of course, very fond of Benjamin. She has carried his manuscript to the USA and was instrumental with its publishing. As for Zweig, she mentioned him in her comments on (I think, if I remember correctly) as a representative of ‘culture of celebrities’. That is why I remember it. I am not sure where she discussed it. I can looked it up, if you are interested.
the exchange between arendt and zweig is mentioned in the first link.. it is okay, but thank you..
Here is Dr Google’s suggestion RE Arendt and Zweig.
https://hannah-arendt-edition.net/texts/03/text
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40972129
“He had never under stood the world he lived in, she wrote, and, moreover, he showed no understanding for the past he now brought to life with inflamed nostalgia in The World of Yesterday. He confused political dignity with personal and social privilege; such had been his own undoing. In his writing, he confused the aesthetic and aestheticizing claims of Habsburg Vienna with social and political reality. He took his models from the stage and thought that the world of the Burg the after carried a revival of democratic Athens….”
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/527580/summary
thanks lubica... hannah arendt is a brilliant mind... i read eichmann in jerusalem.. i do have to read another of her books.. do you have any recommendations?
She has her limitations too, but she is good. I would suggest to read, if you are interested, first, her *Human Condition*, and then, if you are willing to invest time, her three volumes of *Totalitarianism*. If you want something shorter, her *Between Past and the Future* contains 8 essays (the original had 6 essays). I would also suggest Jan Patočka who builds on Arendt’s argument (and, of course, changes it substantially): *Heretical Essays*. I hope this helps.
from a historical point of view, when did the propaganda end with nazi germany? right at the end of ww2? or? i realize the west has continued on in the same tradition, and it is especially obvious and rampant today, but was the end of the age of propaganda really quick and short with regard to nazi germany?
or did it mutate into something else? at no time in our history have we had so much access to information and so little ability to tell right from wrong.. it is every person for themselves! it is this way because we have no leadership as such! instead we have propaganda here to make us feel good, until reality catches up with everything and the propaganda is shown for what it is..
remember early in the ukraine war when we were told russia is running out of bombs? people ought to be reminded of these giant bloopers on a regular basis if for no other reason that it allows them to reflect on the nature of propaganda - if they would be so interested!!! thanks karl..i get the substack articles from simplicius..
It's yet to end, james. That's what the revision of WW2's all about. Indeed, propaganda has existed before the word was coined, and in the case of Germany and Europe, the tales have very deep roots. Being an objective historian is hard work because the effort demands viewing a great number of primary sources, some of which are hard to obtain while others require deciphering. So, where does one begin when one's assaulted by all sorts of narratives both true and false from birth? A discussion of this topic could become an article unto itself.
Lately, the Battle of Kadesh has been referred to as the first fully documented war and first use of written propaganda, e.g., the Ramesseum. That event led to the first known peace treaty, a copper replica of the Kadesh Peace Treaty between Hattusilis and Ramses II was donated to the UN in 1970.
I think it is important to understand that the "narrative" is part of the information war, and designed to overthrow opponents and secure and create new allies. The problem with this theory is that most of the world is not listening, and certainly not Russia who have their own counter-vailing information weapons. Allied to the failure of sanctions, this always meant IMHO that a military defeat of Russia would be required, something that most here would think unlikely in the extreme and certainly the opposite is now in progress.
However the narrative is now directed at western publics who drink deeply from the cup that is offered. 99% of the population in my view are oblivious to the likely real facts. However worse than that, the decision makes and influencers have now convinced themselves. Arguably the narrative is designed as a sop blanket to their intellectual and policy failures, and helps avoid a painful period of collective mental readjustment and cognitive dissonence.