2,871 words
Part 3 of 3, Part 1 here, Part 2 here
Communism is gone, but the cultural Cold War continues, now packaged as the “liberation” of states deemed not suitably “democratic.” America has its own version of Trotsky’s “permanent revolution” which US strategists call “constant conflict.” Maj. Ralph Peters, a prominent military strategist, formerly with the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, appears to have coined the term. Peters has written of this in an article by that name. Peters’ statements definitively show “culture distortion” to be a contrived strategy for global domination; he reminds us that the regime of the culture distorter now has at its disposal technology far more powerful and pervasive than the cinema and literature of Yockey’s time:
We have entered an age of constant conflict. . . .
We are entering a new American century, in which we will become still wealthier, culturally more lethal, and increasingly powerful. We will excite hatreds without precedent.
Information destroys traditional jobs and traditional cultures; it seduces, betrays, yet remains invulnerable. How can you counterattack the information others have turned upon you? There is no effective option other than competitive performance. For those individuals and cultures that cannot join or compete with our information empire, there is only inevitable failure. . . . The attempt of the Iranian mullahs to secede from modernity has failed, although a turbaned corpse still stumbles about the neighborhood. Information, from the internet to rock videos, will not be contained, and fundamentalism cannot control its children. Our victims volunteer.[1]
Peters is stating that this “global information empire” led by the USA is “historically inevitable.” This “historical inevitability” is classic Marx, just as “constant conflict” is classic Trotsky. This is a “cultural revolution,” which is buttressed by American firepower. Peter continues:
It is fashionable among world intellectual elites to decry “American culture,” with our domestic critics among the loudest in complaint. But traditional intellectual elites are of shrinking relevance, replaced by cognitive-practical elites–figures such as Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, Madonna, or our most successful politicians–human beings who can recognize or create popular appetites, recreating themselves as necessary. Contemporary American culture is the most powerful in history, and the most destructive of competitor cultures. While some other cultures, such as those of East Asia, appear strong enough to survive the onslaught by adaptive behaviors, most are not. The genius, the secret weapon, of American culture is the essence that the elites despise: ours is the first genuine people’s culture. It stresses comfort and convenience–ease–and it generates pleasure for the masses. We are Karl Marx’s dream, and his nightmare. (Emphasis added).
Peters’ zealous messianic prophecies for the “American Century” are reminiscent of Huxley’s Brave New World where the masses are kept in servitude not by physical force but by mindless narcosis, by addiction to the puerile, everything that is, in a word, “American” since the “Second American Revolution of 1933.” Peters continues:
Secular and religious revolutionaries in our century have made the identical mistake, imagining that the workers of the world or the faithful just can’t wait to go home at night to study Marx or the Koran. Well, Joe Sixpack, Ivan Tipichni, and Ali Quat would rather “Baywatch.” America has figured it out, and we are brilliant at operationalizing our knowledge, and our cultural power will hinder even those cultures we do not undermine. There is no “peer competitor” in the cultural (or military) department. Our cultural empire has the addicted–men and women everywhere–clamoring for more. And they pay for the privilege of their disillusionment. (Emphasis added).
The “constant conflict” is one of world Cultural Revolution, with the armed forces used as backup against any reticent state, as in the cases of Serbia and Iraq. The world is therefore to be kept in a state of flux, with a lack of permanence, which Peters’ calls Americas’ “strength,” as settled traditional modes of life do not accord with the aim of industrial, technical, and economic Darwinian linear historical “progress without end.” Peters continues:
There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing.” (Emphasis added).
Peters refers to certain cultures trying to reassert their traditions, and again emphasizes that this universal culture distortion that is being imposed is one of Huxleyan “infectious pleasure.” The historical inevitability is re-emphasized, as the “rejectionist” (sic) regimes will be consigned to what in Trotsky’s term is the “dustbin of history.” What Yockey called “culture distortion” is even more forcefully described by Peters as an “infection.”
Yes, foreign cultures are reasserting their threatened identities–usually with marginal, if any, success–and yes, they are attempting to escape our influence. But American culture is infectious, a plague of pleasure, and you don’t have to die of it to be hindered or crippled in your integrity or competitiveness. The very struggle of other cultures to resist American cultural intrusion fatefully diverts their energies from the pursuit of the future. We should not fear the advent of fundamentalist or rejectionist regimes. They are simply guaranteeing their peoples’ failure, while further increasing our relative strength. (Emphasis added).
Michael Ledeen (formerly a consultant with the US National Security Council, State Department and Defense Department, now with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, another outfit that works for “regime change”) in similar terms to that of Peters, calls on the USA to fulfill its “historic mission” of “exporting the democratic revolution” throughout the world. Like Peters, Ledeen predicates this world revolution as a necessary part of the “war on terrorism,” but emphasizes also that “world revolution” is the “historic mission” of the USA and always has been. Writing in the “neo-conservative” National Review, Ledeen states:
. . . [W]e are the one truly revolutionary country in the world, as we have been for more than 200 years. Creative destruction is our middle name. We do it automatically, and that is precisely why the tyrants hate us, and are driven to attack us. (Emphasis added).
Like Peters, Ledeen is affirming a fundamental principle of cultural morphology as the study of the life of a culture as an organism, when he refers to the “destructive mission” of America as being something that it does “automatically” (sic); that is to say, that it is the innate characteristic of the American cultural organism to behave in such a manner; an inner organic imperative.
Freedom is our most lethal weapon, and the oppressed peoples of the fanatic regimes are our greatest assets. They need to hear and see that we are with them, and that the Western mission is to set them free, under leaders who will respect them and preserve their freedom.
Ledeen refers to a mission, hence it is seen in such quarters as being of a messianic nature, but of course Ledeen like all other apologists for the global hegemony of culture distortion describes this as a “Western mission,”(sic) which is a complete misnomer, and one calculated to deceive, just like the USA was heralded as the leader of the “Western world” in opposing “communism” during the Cold War when in fact its strategy was to spread Bolshevism in its most destructive — Trotskyite — sense.[2] Ledeen refers to the exporting of revolution as one would think an old Trot die-hard would exhort, yet he claims to speak for American “conservatism,” a phenomenon that Yockey would describe as being an element of “Culture retardation,” of a bankrupt “leadership” stratum, in a nominal sense, that becomes the hireling of the culture-distorter. American neo-conservatism, it should be noted, is itself being a metamorphosis of Trotskyism that had undergone an alchemical change in the distillery of Cold War anti-Stalinism.[3]
Ledeen refers hence in Bolshevik terms to exporting a “democratic revolution” and gives credit to the American regime for having toppled both the Soviet bloc and White rule in South Africa, regimes that in their own way were anachronisms in the “new world order” and therefore had to be removed, as in the case of the Islamic states today, in the interests of what crypto-Mason George H. W. Bush overtly termed the “new world order” in direct reference to the first war against Iraq. Note Ledeen mentions America’s “historic mission” and American’s “revolutionary burden,” again messianic expressions reflecting the same mentality as Marx and Trotsky, and as if to confirm the nature of this mission Ledeen pointedly uses the term “chutzpah” to describe the outlook of the American neo-messianists.
. . . [I]t is time once again to export the democratic revolution. To those who say it cannot be done, we need only point to the 1980s, when we led a global democratic revolution that toppled tyrants from Moscow to Johannesburg. Then, too, the smart folks said it could not be done, and they laughed at Ronald Reagan’s chutzpah when he said that the Soviet tyrants were done for, and called on the West to think hard about the post-Communist era. We destroyed the Soviet Empire, and then walked away from our great triumph in the Third World War of the Twentieth Century. As I sadly wrote at that time, when America abandons its historic mission, our enemies take heart, grow stronger, and eventually begin to kill us again. And so they have, forcing us to take up our revolutionary burden, and bring down the despotic regimes that have made possible the hateful events of the 11th of September.”[4]
American palaeo-conservative, Jospeh Sobran, remarked in 2001 of this world situation that:
Anti-Americanism is no longer a mere fad of Marxist university students; it’s a profound reaction of traditional societies against a corrupt and corrupting modernization that is being imposed on them, by both violence and seduction. Confronted with today’s America, then, the Christian Arab finds himself in unexpected sympathy with his Muslim enemy.”[5] (Emphasis added).
The “Bolshevism of Washington” can today just as easily be called “neo-conservatism.” While this might seem a paradox, even an absurdity, the nature of this can be readily understood by those who have the higher perspective provided by Yockeyan cultural morphology, which refers to the spirit or inner imperative of doctrines, rather than superficialities. “Bolshevism” in such a context might be used to describe anything of an organically destructive nature involving manipulation of the masses. Hence Yockey saw the “democratic” principles of America as fundamentally communistic, both being forms of materialism arising from the same 19th-century Zeitgeist:
The leading values of communism are identical with those of liberal democracy. . . . The sole difference between liberal-democracy and communism in practice was that communism was an intensification of those beliefs where they became political . . . [6]
The American apologists for global hegemony who now call the same principles that were inaugurated by the “1933 Revolution,”[7] “neo-conservatism,” often indeed come from a Bolshevik or a Menshevik background, as distinct from — indeed antithetical — to what the American philosopher Paul Gottfried has coined “palaeoconservatism.” The “neo-conservative” movement had major input from Trotskyism, often via the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and has remained basically neo-Trotskyite. I have attempted to trace this back from the Trotsky-Stalin split or what Yockey early perceived as a dichotomy of Slavic Bolshevism versus Jewish Bolshevism, through to factions within the American Left led by CIA operative Sidney Hook, and in particular by the Trotskyite factionalist Max Shachtman, these tendencies within the American Left becoming so obsessed with opposing Stalinism that they ended up providing the basis for Cold War ideology and operations, which have been transformed into other methods for the post-Soviet era, continuing to spread what is called the “global democratic revolution.”[8] Indeed not only did Hook and Shachtman end up supporting Cold War US strategy, so did Trotsky’s widow Natalia Sedova, who broke with the Fourth International and commended the USA for its actions in Korea, while positing, like Shachtman, the USSR as being the primary obstacle to world socialism.[9]
From this background emerged the previously mentioned National Endowment for Democracy, taking the place of the redundant Congress for Cultural Freedom in the aftermath of the Cold War, to continue the “Bolshevism of Washington” in new directions. This was founded in 1983 by Shachtmanite Tom Kahn of the AFL-CIO, who had developed a network of contacts with social democrats throughout the Soviet bloc, Africa, and Latin America. Another Shachtmanite, Carl Gershman, became the first president in 1984, and was a founder of the Social Democrats USA. The NED was introduced to Congress by George Agree, and thus gets Congressional funding for its world revolutionary operations.[10]
When Yockey published Imperium in 1948 he viewed Russia as alien to and incompatible with the Western cultural organism and thus as an “outer enemy,”[11] a view that persisted in his final essay, “The World in Flames: An Estimate of the World Situation,” written in 1960, the year of his death. Yockey continued to advocate a neutralist position for Europe in the event of a US-Russian conflict, although had long considered Russian occupation of Europe to be less damaging to the cultural organism than the US occupation, and saw the possibility of Westernising a Russian occupier. He saw the increase in neutralist states as one of the few positive development in the world situation, and in particular the rise of Arab Nationalism, at that time epitomized by “a great and vigorous man,” Nasser.[12] He saw a resurgent Islam as providing a bloc that diminished World Zionism without augmenting “Russian-Chinese power.” Here Yockey was significantly in error in seeing China-Russia as a bloc. There was no Sino-Soviet bloc during Yockey’s time, and there is not one now, despite a temporary pragmatic alliance. The US and China will more likely form a bloc to contain Russia, just as they did during the 1970s. Such a conclusion is within the scope of cultural morphology, although the Russo-Chinese conflict only became apparent shortly after Yockey’s death.[13]
However, as with the emergence of Islam, Yockey also saw that a Latin American bloc would likewise pose a nuisance to plutocracy, and he used the example of Cuba at that time. In recent years Chavez’s Venezuela has actively encouraged the formation of a Bolivarian bloc across Latin America, while repudiating both the USA and Zionism, and significantly has the support of Russia in doing so.[14]
Russia is pregnant with possibilities, and retains the only semblance of a “barbarian horde” with the cleansing power to sweep away the filth of decay that pervades the “West” in its cycle of decline. Russia continues to show itself impervious to “democracy” despite the hapless efforts of the “culture retarders” Gorbechev and Yeltsin. The Russian is eternally a “peasant” as Yockey stated, immune from the decadence of the megalopolis. The way the Russian regime deals with oligarchs is a sign of cultural health. While an organic Russo-Western Civilization may or may not be possible, such a conception is not unheard of, De Gaulle proposing a “united Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals”[15] while another French geopolitical thinker, Olivier Vedrine, considers in contrast to Yockey, Russia to be “European,” calling for a united front.[16] The world situation as it now stands has changed since Yockey’s time, but Yockey’s analytical method remains legitimate, even if it leads to conclusions regarding Russia, China, and the US that differ from Yockey’s own. But, as his reaction to the 1952 Prague Treason Trial shows, Yockey was above all a realist who was able to radically revise his thinking based on changing circumstances.
Notes
[1] Ralph Peters, “Constant Conflict,” Parameters, Summer 1997, 4–14. http://www.usamhi.army.mil/USAWC/Parameters/97summer/peters.htm
[2] K. R. Bolton, “America’s ‘World Revolution:’ Neo-Trotskyite Foundations of US Foreign Policy,” Foreign Policy Journal, May 3, 2010.http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/05/03/americas-world-revolution-neo-trotskyist-foundations-of-u-s-foreign-policy/
[3] K. R. Bolton, “America’s ‘World Revolution.’”
[4] Michael Ledeen, “Creative Destruction: How to Wage a Revolutionary War,” National Review online, September 20, 2001. http://old.nationalreview.com/contributors/ledeen092001.shtml
[5] Joe Sobran, conservative Catholic columnist, “Why?,” SOBRAN’S — The Real News of the Month, vol. 8, no. 11 (November 2001).
[6] Yockey, “Proclamation of London,” 13.
[7] Couldn’t it be considered that it was with Woodrow Wilson that the “American Revolution” was inaugurated?
[8] As President Bush referred to it in 1983 before a conference of the NED, when stating that just as the Soviet bloc had been “liberated” under Reagan, he would inaugurate the “liberation” of the Muslim world. Fred Barbash, “Bush: Iraq Part of ‘Global Democratic Revolution’: Liberation of Middle East Portrayed as Continuation of Reagan’s Policies,” Washington Post, November 6, 2003.
[9] Natalia Sedova Trotsky, May 9, 1951, Mexico City, letter to the leadership of the Fourth International and the U.S. Socialist Workers Party, Labor Action of June 17, 1951. http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/socialistvoice/natalia38.html
[10] Bolton, “America’s ‘World Revolution.’”
[11] Imperium, 586.
[12] Yockey, “The World in Flames: An Estimate of the World Situation,” VI.
[13] Bolton, “Russian and China: An Approaching Conflict.”
[14] Bolton, “An ANZAC-Indo-Russian Alliance? Geopolitical Alternatives for Australia and New Zealand,” India Quarterly, vol. 6, no. 2 (August 2010), 188.
[15] Yockey regarded De Gaulle as a “cretin” yet saw him as embodying the European desire for neutrality, and stated that “an idiot might save Europe,” having “accidentally alighted” upon this “spiritual force.” Yockey, “The World In Flames,” VI.
[16] Olivier Vedrine, “Russia is indeed a European country,” September 2009. Cited by Bolton, India Quarterly, 188–89.