It is very often a small step, a small decision and the course of history runs in a different direction. If the past has anything to offer, it is – among other things – a series of social experiments that have been conducted and yielded particular results. Admittedly, we cannot repeat a historical experiment in a laboratory, factoring in the same circumstances. That’s why history is not – strictly speaking – referred to as one of the sciences. Yet, historical experiments are performed and it would be unwise not to learn a lesson from them.

Before World War One both Imperial Germany and Imperial Russia had a number of political movements or parties. One of the most pronounced were the social-democratic parties. True, whereas in Germany social-democrats could act openly, in Russia it was usually not the case. Social democrats – like today’s environmentalists, proponents of Third World immigration to white man’s countries and activists of homosexual movements – sought to uproot the political system, cost it what it may. They saw nothing positive in the world they lived in: all they wanted to do was to destroy it and transform it. No picturesque towns located in picturesque landscapes could ever make them reconsider: they believed that the world was rotten and it needed revamping.

Like their modern political counterparts – the said environmental, homosexual and pro-immigration movements – social democrats were internationalists (in today’s parlour: globalists), anti-nationalist (or, better: anti-patriotic) and they wanted to protect and elevate the downtrodden, the unhappy, the exploited as they were used to defining the poorer sections of society. They saw exploitation and injustice everywhere. They recruited gifted writers who produced novels and stories that described societal ills, thus fuelling general discontent. They had followers among the young and the intellectuals, among people who not being talented enough to assert themselves in a branch of economy, science or agriculture, strove to assert themselves as saviours of humanity, as saviours of the poor and the needy and the downtrodden. Isn’t such a goal noble? 

Rosa Luxemburg – Leon Trotsky

In both cases – among German and Russian social democrats – there were followers of moderate or extreme views. Some members wanted a rather evolutionary change through parliamentary action, through propaganda and the like; others demanded that something be done soon or else. They only believed in violence and enforced changes. They justified the atrocities of the French Revolution of 1789 and the Commune of Paris of 1871. Anything that was believed to hasten the establishment of a new, social order, was welcome. No wonder then, that both the German and the Russian social democrats gradually underwent internal splits. With the collapse of the German and Russian Empires in the aftermath of the First World War, social democrats were voted into took power in Germany. Pretty much the same occurred in Russia: true, it was not the social-democratic party that took the power but socialists-revolutionaries, whose political agenda was close to that promoted by social democrats. That was the time when Germany and Russia stood at the political crossroads. Continue reading →

“THIS IS AN EMERGENCY. Life on Earth is in crisis. Our climate is changing faster than scientists predicted and the stakes are high. Biodiversity loss. Crop failure. Social and ecological collapse. Mass extinction. We are running out of time, and our governments have failed to act. Extinction Rebellion was formed to fix this.” This catastrophic prediction assails the reader when we visits https://rebellion.global. Up to the 20th century such ghastly, disturbing and bleak visions were conjured up by individuals who the modern man is inclined to call religious fanatics, religious fundamentalists or – more scientifically – mentally deranged. It is the proverbial Middle Ages that were fraught with itinerant preachers who would scare their listeners out of their wits, who would call on them to repent and put their life to rights or else. It is by no means different nowadays. Present-day moralizers have merely changed the religion. It is no longer imaginary hell – spiritual death – but extinction of all life; it is no longer eternal salvation but comfortable existence here and now; it is no longer Satan and his devils but technology and governments; it is no longer God and his angels but humanity in its many manifestations like “ethnicity, race, class, gender, gender identity, gender presentation, sexuality, age, income, ability, education, appearance, immigration status, belief or non-belief and activist experience” (the usual string of words); it is no longer moral sin but pollution of the environment; no longer virtuous life but life dedicated to ecology; no longer God’s wrath but nature’s wrath; no longer the Mother of God but Mother Earth.

The 21st century crusaders – operating in 75 countries and forming 568 local groups that are present at Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube – demand aggressively that governments:

1. TELL THE TRUTH i.e. declare a climate and ecological emergency;

2. ACT NOW i.e. halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025; and

3. GO BEYOND POLITICS i.e. create and be led by the decisions of a Citizens’ Assembly on climate and ecological justice.

Whoop-de-doo! Net zero greenhouse gas emissions in just four years’ time! Climate and ecological justice! What does the latter mean? An equal spread of precipitation and temperature across the globe? Wow!  Continue reading →

It is a month or so now that Canadians have been fed a sensational story about hundreds of unmarked graves found in British Columbia and Saskatchewan, graves allegedly filled with corpses of the hundreds of the children of the indigenous peoples, graves which are – as dramatically highlighted – located in the precincts of Catholic residential (boarding) schools. All the national news outlets and these from abroad seem to be obsessed with but one story: atrocities of the white man in Canada, trauma of the Indians, who today go by the name of First Nations, writ large, and the empathy offered by all decent people. The United States has its Black Lives Matter, heralding the interests of Africans, now Canada can boast its counterpart: the Idle No More movement, championing for the interests of the descendants of the primordial inhabitants of the country.

Down with Queen Victoria!

The appalling discovery was made just ahead of the national holiday – Canada Day – and prompted calls aimed at abolishing the festivity or at least changing its character to wit that Canada – at least as we know it today – needs to be cancelled. That’s at least the belief of the Idle No More movement activists. Their leaders exploit all the techniques of disrupting society that have been successfully used in Ukraine, Libya, Yugoslavia or Georgia, to name just a few countries. They

• propagate rallying calls, like No Pride In Genocide;

• apply poignant symbolism like placing large numbers of children’s shoes (memorials of shoes) or putting up small solar lights at the places marked as graves;

• call on their supporters to wear orange (in keeping with all those colour revolutions) to lend them high visibility;

• go on a rampage of pulling down monuments of white historical figures (the devastation of the Queen Victoria monument, pictured);

• create nationwide support by e.g. opening a crisis line where citizens are invited to express their support;

• stage sit-ins, service disruptions, marches, rallies, round dances, banner drops – all in the spirit of Rules for Radicals written by the old chap known as Saul Alinsky, Hillary Clinton’s mentor and guru;

• call for the empowerment of the minorities that are – of course – exploited, discriminated against, and what not;

• protest against police violence and demand that the police be defunded, and

• honour the many lives lost to the Canadian state that is (i) indigenous lives, (ii) black lives, (iii) migrant lives, (iv) women lives, (v) trans lives and (vi) 2Spirit lives (look the last term up in the internet if you have any stomach for it).

No Pride in Genocide (Source: idlenomore.ca)

Continue reading →

Humankind has since time immemorial had two categories of people: those who accept and even embrace reality and those who rebel against it and attempt to flee it or remedy it. Perhaps it is a psychological thing: there are individuals who can cope with the world as it is, whatever may happen, and individuals who cannot and need to take the sabbatical every now and again.

Every year in ever increasing numbers young, professional, mainly white Americans and Canadian zero in on Black Rock City, Nevada, somewhere in the Black Rock Desert, north of Reno, in vehicles turned into juggernauts to spend their time – eight days – pleasing themselves, doing yoga, listening to music, sharing and gifting, as they say, and bowing down to all the present-day forms of superstition. The seemingly ad-hoc created community has its ten commandments called principles of burning man and these are:

 1 radical inclusion (everyone is welcome);

 2 gifting (without expecting reciprocity);

 3 decommodification (no commercial sponsorship);

 4 radical self-reliance (reliance on the inner resources of one’s self);

 5 radical-self expression (meaning determinable by every individual);

 6 communal effort (cooperation, collaboration and – to quote the third synonym used on the Burning Man website: interaction);

 7 civic responsibility (compliance with the law);

 8 leaving no trace (cleanliness of the environment);

 9 participation (being through doing); and

10 immediacy (immediate experience). 

Continue reading →

It was eighty years ago, at about four after midnight, on a Sunday. A heavy shelling of Brest Fortress began. The place was attacked by German artillery and air force, soon surrounded by German troops, whose task it was to capture the stronghold within eight hours. Had not Belgian Fort Eben-Emael been taken within hours a year earlier? The Russians can’t be better than the Belgians, thought Hitler’s generals. Yet, Brest Fortress withheld the first, the second and many other assaults. It resisted the attacks even though the other German units had moved further east and were approaching Smolensk. It took Germans eight days to quell the obstinate resistance. Still, individual defenders remained in the recesses of the ruined fortress much longer and continued to pose a threat to the occupying forces. So it was. After the war a graffiti was found on one of the walls, reading: “I am dying, but I won’t surrender. Farewell, Motherland!”

Alexander Lukashenko delivering a speech at Brest Fortress. Russian audio here.

Precisely these words were quoted in the televised speech delivered by Belorussian President Alexander Lukashenko and occasioned by the 80th anniversary of Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union, which opened the Great Patriotic War of the years 1941-1945, a war that is still vividly remembered and commemorated in Belarus and Russia. The president’s speech, impassioned as it was, was at the same time a strong political statement and an address not only to Belorussians but the Western world. During the approximately 20 minutes, Alexander Lukashenko recalled the blitzkrieg of 1941 and compared it directly with the “colour” blitzkrieg of 2021: just as in 1941 the whole of Europe pounced on the nations of the Soviet Union, so did the whole of the European Union charge against Belarus, with the difference being that this time it was the hybrid war rather than its hot equivalent. To add insult to injury, said Belorussian President, one German Minister Maas – as President Lukashenko condescendingly put it – imposed economic sanctions on Belarus precisely at night on 22 June. Was this symbolism intended? asked the President. 

He gave his speech against the backdrop of a huge Russian soldier – or, to be precise, a huge stone head mounted on powerful stone shoulders of a 1941 defender of Brest Fortress – whose stern countenance of a formidable warrior lent gravity to the President’s words. Can it be – continued the President – that history taught them no lesson? Is the German minister – asked Alexander Lukashenko – acting in his capacity as an heir to the Nazis or as an apologizing German? Have the Germans forgotten what harm they did to the many nations of Europe? Have they forgotten how often they have apologized, shed tears, went down on their knees ever since?  Continue reading →