Georgia – repeat of Ukraine

These days there are street riots being held in Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital city. Why? Well, because the ruling Dream Party has announced a delay in joining Georgia to the European Union (does it not remind you of something?), and while Georgia’s president – Salome Zourabichvili – has opposed the ruling party and called on the citizens to protest. The protests are supported by the West – the United States and the European Union – which claims that the recent parliamentary election were fraudulent. Georgia, according to the West, ought to hold new elections till Georgians elect the pro-Western parties. Sorry, till Georgians restore democracy and human rights.

Who is Georgia’s President Salome Zourabichvili, the woman who encourages protests against Georgia’s government and parliamentary majority? For all practical purposes she is French: she was born in France, educated in France, held French citizenship and made a career in the French diplomatic corps, acting among others as French ambassador to… Georgia. Ah yes, she was born to Georgian parents, but that’s about everything that makes her Georgian. Also Zbigniew Brzeziński was born to Polish parents, yet he identified as an American. By the way, during her educational career Salome Zourabichvili attended Columbia University, where she studied under the tutelage of… yes, Zbigniew Brzeziński. That’s how much Georgian Salome Zourabichvili is. But back to the street riots.

It somehow happens so that whenever a nation elects parties, prime ministers, presidents or heads of state that are even slightly not pro-Western, such a nation immediately has a revolution on its hands and is immediately beset with accusations of running foul of democracy and violating human rights. At present, that’s the fate of Georgia. More to it. A nation that is sceptical towards the West is automatically accused of acting on Russia’s advice, Russia’s orders, for Russia’s money. At present, that’s precisely what the Georgian Dream Party is accused of. It’s all as simple as that.

Now, the street riots in Tbilisi are comparable to the street riots that took place in Kiev in 2013/2014. Precisely the same forces were at play in Ukraine’s capital as are now in Georgia’s capital. Young, impressionable people yell their demand to join Georgia to the European Union – because, as we all know, there is no salvation outside the European Union – while the police are trying to keep the rioters under control, which they fail, as did their counterparts in Kiev ten years earlier, because their orders are to handle the rioters with kid gloves (such were also the orders that the Ukrainian police took ten years earlier). Soon, if not already, the rioters will start jumping and chanting “Who’s not jumping is a Moskal*(=Russian)!” as their Ukrainian counterparts did in 2013/2014 in Kiev. Because – you did expect it, didn’t you? – the delay that their ruling party announced in joining Georgia to the European Union was dictated by – yes! yes! – Russia. How otherwise? Just as it was in 2013 in the case of Ukraine! Again this Russian serpent suggesting a poisonous apple this time to Georgians who are on the threshold of entering the Garden of Eden known as the European Union. And – who knows? – on the threshold of joining peaceful-loving, defensive NATO. The ongoing war in Ukraine and the hundreds of thousands of victims do not seem to make an impression on Georgian protesters. Evidently, they also want to sit in the trenches, to have their arms and legs torn away by bombs and grenades, to have their cities shelled, to have their cemeteries filled to overflowing with corpses of very young men, draped with Georgian national flags. No price is too high for preserving democracy and human rights, is it?

Before Salome Zourabichvili as president, Georgia had one Mikheil Saakashvili as its head of state. Do you remember him? An adventurer that very few could rival. He took power in Georgia by means of… street riots and one of the many colour revolutions, accusing the acting government of… fraudulent elections. The same script is enacted again and again around the globe, and nobody seems to take notice. As president, Mikheil Saakashvili applied a shock therapy to the nation, purging the police and the administration, raising the military budget, yet lowering social expenditure and what not. He soon ran foul of his nation and prior to the next presidential election, with no hope of being reelected, he fled the country amid accusations of having opposition activists tortured. He landed a job in… Ukraine, of all the places, becoming governor of the Odessa region. And you know what? He wholeheartedly supported the Kiev Maidan of 2013/2014!

It did not last long till Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko – surely out of gratitude for his services – deprived him of Ukrainian citizenship. To be the governor of the Odessa region Mikheil Saakashvili needed to acquire Ukrainian citizenship, just as Salome Zourabichvili needed to renounce her French citizenship prior to running for president in Georgia. Such a formality. How often and how easily the pawns at the hands of the managers of the world change their citizenship! How often they hold citizenship of two or three countries simultaneously! But then, that’s probably one of those sacrosanct “hyooman rytes”. Such individuals, those who are our and presidents, renounce or accept citizenship the way you and me change clothes from casual to professional to casual, as the circumstances dictate.

You won’t really be surprised if you learn that – I quote Wikipedia – Mikheil Saakashvili “received an LL.M. from Columbia Law School […] took classes at the School of International and Public Affairs and the George Washington University Law School [and] received a diploma from the [talk of the wolf!] International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.” What a talented guy!

We have such talented men and women across Europe and across the world. They have necessarily been raised by the powers that be at Western universities or institutes, where they have been trained in – why – democracy and human rights!

It appears Georgia – just like any country – must have rulers with the Western blessing or else. Or else, Georgia will have unruly youth in Tbilisi’s centre chanting “Кто не скачет, тот москаль!” [He who is not jumping is a Moskal(=Russian)!]. This chanting and this jumping is repeated again and again and again in various cities across the world and… nobody seems to take notice of this pattern. Strange – or perhaps admirable – how the West manages to always have crowds of people in the streets of various capital cities at the West’s beckoning. In Moscow, in Tbilisi, in Kiev, in Minsk, in Warsaw, in Budapest, in Belgrade, in the Arabic states and about anywhere in the world.

The young men are protesting today to have their limbs cut off tomorrow. They are rioting today to have their dead bodies wrapped in Georgian national flags tomorrow. They are following the bidding of the managers of the world today to be slaughtered like lambs tomorrow. They could watch Ukraine and learn from Ukraine’s fate, but learn they will not. When push comes to shove, Salome Zourabichvili will travel the world over in search of support – the way Zelensky has been doing so for the past three years – to eventually find a sanctuary in her native France or elsewhere in the West. When push comes to shove, Georgian youth will desperately pay through the nose to illegally leave the country and thus avoid conscription. Only the lucky will be able to leave, though. The majority will be drafted and will pay the price the way their Ukrainian peers have been paying the price for the last three years. The Georgian youth could learn from the fate of Ukraine but learn they will not. Sadly. They think they fight for democracy and human rights. It never occurs to them that they are tools – disposable tools – replaceable pawns – biodegradable pieces on “The Grand Chessboard” of the Brzezińskis of this world.

*Moskal (москаль) (literally: inhabitant of Moscow and the region) is an ethnic slur for a Russian.

AU10TIX or how Israelis act

AU10TIX is an Israeli identity service that verifies people or companies on the Internet. For example, people who want to earn money on Twitter (X) have their identity checked and authenticated by AU10TIX. So far, so good, but there are two appalling facts about the Israeli company:

1. AU10TIX has close ties to Israeli intelligence. It was set up by members of the Israeli elite intelligence services Shin Bet and Unit 8200. Ton Atzomm, its CEO, was a member of Unit 8200 has been committed to the surveillance of Palestinians and has been utilizing the information gained in the process to politically persecute and divide them. Edo Soroka, the Vice President for Sales in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, previously worked for the Israeli startup AnyVision, which is accused of monitoring Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Erez Hershkovitz had earlier been employed by the Israeli company Voyager Labs, which was sued by Meta for using dozens of fake Facebook accounts to collect data from more than half a million users.

2. AU10TIX suffered a serious security breach that exposed the personal data of millions of its users. Customers that fell victim to the June 2024 scandal include some of the world’s most renowned companies, such as X, TikTok, LinkedIn, Coinbase, eToro, PayPal, Fiverr, Upwork, Bumble, and Uber. Names, dates of birth, nationalities and images of identification documents such as driver’s licenses and passports, facial scans and authentication metrics for documents and photos were disclosed. It was a massive security breach with unforeseeable long-term consequences. The exposed data could be used by cybercriminals for various illegal purposes such as identity theft, financial fraud or even blackmail.

Several questions could be brought up:

1. How does all that square with the U.S.-Israeli friendship and alliance?

2. Why does the Israeli intelligence agency want to collect – manage – control the data of millions of Americans?

3. Why do the US services do not hinder such deep intrusions into the security of US citizens?

Do not sink in the quagmire of petty facts! Step back and set your sights on the broad picture!

I keep returning to the same topic again and again. Yes, reporters and journalists, analysts and politicians love dealing with petty problems of whatever is happening, has happened or is going to happen. They immerse themselves and their minds in what was said by whom and what significance is to be assigned to this or that gesture. They love discussing the legal questions like whether Volodymyr Zelenskyy is still Ukraine’s legitimate president – his term ran out on 20th of May – or how and when the war in Ukraine will end. They are currently speculating about the outcome of the elections that are planned in June for the European Union and – how otherwise! – are afraid (who told them to be afraid?) of the “far right” winning too much of the vote. They set their sights on Trump and Biden and indulge in the same speculation about the outcome of American presidential election that is to take place later this year. Lots and lots of items of petty information. The term information noise is just the right one here. But why listen to all this petty news and these petty analyses every single day? All we need to do is to step back and see the broad picture. All we need to do is to understand the whole, the overriding trends, the phenomena as such. What are these phenomena? What are these general trends? What does the big picture look like?

We are having a big war in the territory that once was a part of the Soviet Union: in Ukraine. We have been having a number of local wars in the Caucasus, that is to say, also in the territory that once belonged to the Soviet Union. We have had successful or attempted coups d’état in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Georgia and elsewhere, also in the territories that were once parts of the Soviet Union. We have been told that hundreds of people have been killed as a result, still more have been maimed, displaced, driven into poverty. We have been witnessing heightened tensions between the West and Russia, with frequent military exercises and an increasingly frequent talk about the use of nuclear weapons. Now, these are the big, hard facts. What do we do with them?

If we view them as subsequent pages of the history book that is being written and has been written since the dawn of mankind, if we – as said above – let the petty facts and data capture our attention, if we – what’s even worse – assimilate and internalize the data for the sake of assimilating and internalizing them without drawing inferences, then we are wasting our time and life energy. We behave like students who attend lectures and classes and even try to memorize and practise things but who fail to grasp the overall picture, the workings of the mechanism; students who never really let the message of the overall body of lectures, classes and handbooks sink in and work its way into their awareness.

Take a step back, rid yourself of all the petty data and useless comments of the analysts or experts. Instead, ask yourselves a few questions and try answering them.

One. Would all those wars have taken place if the Soviet Union still existed? Would all those hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, maimed or driven into poverty if the Soviet Union continued to exist today?

Two. Would the West have ever dreamed about sending troops – mercenaries – military equipment inside the Soviet Union? Would the West have interfered so rabidly with the Soviet Union if it had existed till the present day?

Would Ukraine have lost at least 50% of its population, most of its industry; would Ukraine lost (sold) much of its fertile land to Western companies had the Soviet Union existed till this day? Would the Baltic States have become depopulated as they are (being) depopulated now, had the Soviet Union existed till this day?

Three. Would the still existing Soviet Union be a communist country or, rather, would it have gone the way of China, where capitalism is the base while communism is its ideological superstructure? In other words, is it not true that the Soviet Union, if it continued to exist today, would be communist but in name?

Four. Somehow anachronistically, but still: drawing a lesson from the fate of the post-Soviet area and era, if you have had decisive power before 1991 in the Soviet Union, would you have ever, EVER surrendered to the West? Would you have ever, EVER trusted the West? Would you have ever, EVER laid down your arms to the West?

Five. Again, having done your homework concerning the years 1991-2021, having been attentive during the classes and lectures delivered within the said period, would you ever want to become a part of the global market and manufacturing, doing away with some of your industries? Or, rather, you’d cling to autarchy as much is it is feasible and never relied on one global system of makings payments? As we know it has transpired that by letting your country become a part of the global system, you render your nation very much vulnerable: they – THEY – can cut you off from your own money and they – THEY – can try to starve you out in case you displease THEM.

Six. Do you still believe in free market economy, learning now and again that the United States – an alleged paragon of free market economy, of free economic competition and all those liberties – is going berserk imposing tariffs on Chinese products because they happen to be… better and cheaper? Hey, where do we have this lauded free market economy? Ah yes, we can have it so long as it serves the West’s purposes! The moment it dos not, we cannot have it. But of course, Chinese products are not blocked because they are better or cheaper – far be it from it! Chinese products are blocked because they have been manufactured under the conditions violating the human rights, and the like clap-trap!

By the way, if tariffs are imposed by the United States and the European Union because they protect respectively the American and European markets, why then tariffs among particular European states are viewed as detrimental? Would they not protect national economies? Or national economies are not worth protecting?

Seven. Being a responsible leader of any country, a patriot of your nation, or simply a good steward of the national economy and the territory that has been entrusted to you, and the security of your people, with the knowledge of the last thirty or so years, would you have ever, EVER signed those migration pacts? As can be seen, they only serve the purpose of diluting the local populations and ultimately destroying nations and states. Why talk about yet another batch of boats reaching this or that part of the European coast? They are coming here EVERY DAY. Why getting excited about it? It’s the huge problem that is important and this is: European and national politics have been hijacked by the powers that be and if you don’t like what is happening to your country – nation – you need to strike at the decision centre. Why in heaven’s name do they do it to us?

Eight. I know, this argument is repeated here and there, but I cannot refrain from rolling it out here again: war in Ukraine erupted because Russia could not tolerate Ukraine as a member of NATO or as a country used by NATO against Russia. Now Russia is of course to blame for the unprovoked aggression, is it not? But hey, if Mexico or Canada were to join a military alliance with Russia or China, if Mexico or Canada held joint military exercises with Russia or China, wouldn’t the United States invade Mexico? Would this invasion – aggression – be unprovoked?

Nine.

[a] Why are im-migrants to the Western world stubbornly referred to as _migrants as if they were to leave the West one of these days like migratory birds? Why is this misnomer applied and why do you – yes, you, my reader – recklessly, thoughtlessly repeat this term while talking about people who have arrived in the Old Continent or the United States to stay?

[b] The powers that be keep telling us that immigrants enrich each European country or the United States or Canada. Hang on for a moment: if the immigrants enrich us, by the same token they impoverish the countries they have left! Have you ever thought about it? So, we keep helping the poor countries by… impoverishing them! Wow!

[c] The powers that be reassure us that immigrants will assimilate and integrate and in the same breath they sermonize about the many human rights some of which guarantee anybody and everybody that his ethnicity, religion, customs and language be inviolable, inalienable, sacrosanct! How then are they going to assimilate and integrate?

[d] The immigrants keep coming to the Western world because of economic reasons, sometimes political ones. They are supposed to be loyal, good, law-abiding citizens in their adoptive countries. Hang on, again! Once such individuals left their own countries – nations – in search of a better life, they will not give two hoots about leaving the adoptive country the moment they figure out there is a better life somewhere else. What kind of loyalty is that? What civic virtues are these? How valuable are they?

Ten. If uniting nations – countries – is a good thing, why then most people approve of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia? Why did the nations of the three political entities mentioned in the foregoing sentence seek to separate themselves from the union on day one only to apply for membership in another union on day two? Consider, Czechs and Slovaks did not want to live within the same political structure known as Czechoslovakia, but they BOTH entered the European Union and so ARE members of THE SAME political structure. Where’s the sense? The same is true of the nations of former Yugoslavia: they divorced in order to… marry again within a broader family. Why didn’t German Lands divorce prior to collectively joining the European Union?

Eleven. So long as the Soviet Union existed, its citizens were presented to the world as homogeneous people who may have spoken different languages or observed different traditions but who basically were Soviet people. The same was true of Yugoslavia. The country may have been made up of Slovenes, Croats, Serbs; of Catholics, Orthodox Christians and Muslims, but all in all they were known as Yugoslavians. Now it took just a few minutes (from a historical perspective) for the many nations who allegedly were not all that important to be reborn with intense national sentiments and to be at each other’s throat. The BIG question is: why does it not occur to the EU commissioners that precisely the same fate awaits this political superstructure? Why does it not occur to them that by importing Third World people by the millions they add fuel to the fire of the future civil war rampaging across the continent? Whence this hubris? The feuds between particular ex-Soviet republics and the hostilities between ex-Yugoslavian republics are within human memory! What amount of hubris does it take to make the managers of the world and to make common people think that this time things are going to be different? We have assigned ourselves the scientific description of being homines sapientes – reasonable men. Where is our reason? Where is our reasoning?

Twelve. If Ukraine had not flirted with the Western military, if it had not provoked Russia, wouldn’t it have now ALL its 1991 territory INTACT? Even more interesting: if Ukraine had had a “dictator” like Belarus has had and continues to have, would Ukraine have experienced [a] war, [b] loss of territory, [c] loss of lives, [d] massive emigration (read depopulation), and [e] destruction of its infrastructure? Answer the following question with all sincerity you can muster: would you rather have been a citizen of Ukraine or Belarus for the last twenty or so years? Would you rather have a string of “democratic” presidents and war or a “dictator” and peace? I dare you to answer!

Argentina’s President Milei successful against the Davos elites

In December last year, we wrote about Javier Milei – the recently elected President of Argentina. Now, with his recent speech in Davos, he has turned the bottom into the top.

To understand what happened and what Milei got himself into, you first need to comprehend what exactly the World Economic Forum (WEF) is and who makes it up. The WEF is the world’s elite: the CEOs of the world’s richest companies (only companies with billions in revenue are invited to the Forum), leading bankers and technology specialists, politicians, representatives of major business organizations, lobbyists, selected intellectuals, journalists and activists of all kinds. The WEF meetings are therefore full of people who use their connections and influence to try to steer the world in a direction that benefits them and not necessarily the majority of people. It’s about power and money, not about a better life for ordinary citizens.

The aforementioned elite meet every year in Davos to present their proposals on how they want to intervene in our lives. They negotiate agreements among themselves and exert pressure on the world’s most influential politicians. In the meantime, of course, there is a lot of empty talk and boring debates about the world’s social and economic problems. The founder of the forum is Klaus The-Great-Reset Schwab, who became known as an advocate of collectivism. He is credited with the famous saying: You will have nothing and be happy.

This is where Milei comes into play. In a place where the ideas of feminism, birth control and increased government intervention in the economy are supported year after year, where the foundations for Agenda 2030 and its associated eco-terrorism were laid, Milei looks the globalists in the eye and dismantles their propaganda simply and vividly by exposing the lies of the globalists.

In many of his interviews and speeches, Milei refers to the so-called culture war. In his view, the causes of Argentina’s decline are cultural problems and moral decay. Among other things, this gives rise to the deep belief that the state is the guarantor for the satisfaction of citizens’ needs. At the same time, the Argentinian president points out that state intervention is counterproductive, as it should only contribute to the opposite when trying to solve a problem.

Here we summarize the most important theses of his speech in Davos:

1. Capitalism creates prosperity and is moral

Socialism leads to impoverishment and is based on violence. Wherever socialism has been introduced, it has brought more harm than good.

“The West is in danger because it has opened itself up to socialist ideas. It was capitalism that liberated humanity from mass poverty and created unimaginable prosperity. (…) In the countries where we should be defending the values of the free market, private property and other institutions of libertarianism, parts of the political and economic establishment – some because of flaws in their theoretical approach, others out of a desire for power – are undermining the foundations of libertarianism by opening the door to socialism and potentially condemning us to poverty, misery and stagnation. It should never be forgotten that socialism is always and everywhere an impoverishing phenomenon that has failed in all countries where it has been tried. It has failed economically as well as socially and culturally. It has also contributed to the deaths of more than 100 million people.”

So capitalism, rather than today’s Western neo-Marxism, is the way to abolish poverty.

2. Socialism is a repressive and unjust system:

“(…) Social justice is neither fair nor beneficial to society. Quite the opposite. It is an inherently unjust idea because it is based on force. It is unjust because the state is financed by taxes and taxes are levied by force. Or would any of you say that you pay taxes of your own free will? In other words, the state finances itself through coercion, and the higher the tax burden, the greater the coercion and the less the freedom. Advocates of social justice assume that the entire economy is a cake that can be shared. Yet, this cake did not fall from the sky. It is wealth created by what Israel Kirzner, for example, calls the process of market discovery. If there is no demand for the goods produced by a company, that company will fail if it does not adapt to the demands of the market. If it produces a good quality product at an attractive price, then it will be successful and produce more because the market is a process of discovery in which the capitalist finds the right direction in the course of his actions. If the state, however, punishes the capitalist for his success and blocks him in this discovery process (through excessive regulation, as in the EU – author’s note), it destroys his motivation, and the result is that he produces less and the pie shrinks, which damages society as a whole. By inhibiting these processes of discovery and making it difficult to adopt what has been discovered, collectivism inhibits the entrepreneur and prevents him from flourishing.”

3. The fight for women’s rights or nature conservation is just a pretext:

“When the socialists realized that the workers were not getting poorer under capitalism, but richer, they changed their strategy. Today, the class struggle between capitalists and workers has been replaced by alleged conflicts between men and women or between man and nature. It is claimed that to save the environment, population growth must be controlled; abortion is promoted”.

4. Public opinion is the result of decades of “brainwashing” in the direction desired by the elites:

“The neo-Marxists have changed public opinion in a long process of taking control of the media, the universities and even international organizations. As everyone here knows, the WEF is one of the latter. Socialist ideas must be fought frontally and vociferously.”

5. Socialists have more than one name:

“There are many varieties of socialism in the broadest sense. Socialists are not only those who call themselves socialists, but also social democrats, Christian democrats, communists, Keynesians, Nazis, nationalists and globalists. They all share a belief in regulation and the state”.

6. The real heroes are the entrepreneurs. The state, on the other hand, is only a threat to freedom:

“The real heroes of society are entrepreneurs. They are creators of wealth who can be proud of making profits by meeting the needs of others. They should not be allied with the state, not even through the WEF. The state is not the solution. The state is the problem. The state is a threat to freedom.”

Since Milei’s speech, the number of views of his video on the official WEF channel has exceeded half a million. Is that a lot? Just look at the other “great speakers” who have lagged far behind. The conversation with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, for example, reached 56,000, the speech by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen 42,000, and the other speeches received even less attention. (As at the end of January 2024)

An interesting case is the speech by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who, as the country’s extreme socialist leader – i.e. in complete opposition to Milei – made a staid appearance and barely reached 12,000 views. In his speech, he talks about everything and nothing. He mentions the current problems and challenges, but offers no solutions. The Spanish Prime Minister’s speech was preceded by congratulations on Spain’s strong economic growth, which the Prime Minister himself also boasted about. So let us quote here the conclusions of one of Spain’s leading independent economists, Daniel Lacalle, who summarizes it as follows: ‘The reality in which Spain finds itself today is different from the one presented by the Spanish government under Pedro Sanchez. The ruling socialists are using the same techniques that the Greek socialists resorted to at the end of the 1990s. Namely, they are increasing public spending and debt to hide the fact that investment and consumption in the country have stalled and exports are falling. Taxes are being increased because/although tax revenues have been falling in recent years. The choice between because and although in the last sentence reveals what you think about the right economic policy.

Keep ’em sedated, atomized, sterile and disoriented!

Groups of people, even small ones, let alone huge ones, such as entire communities, nations, that is, citizens of (populous) states must be managed somehow. Even in a family there must be order, collision-free cooperation, some sort of hierarchy, some sort of division of tasks and responsibilities. There is nothing wrong with this in principle: it simply cannot be done otherwise. Evil occurs when the way of arranging or organizing the life of societies is carried out by wicked means, which – probably – result from the wicked intentions of people who, when exercising power, are able to create such mechanisms of ruling and managing society that are unfavorable to individual people in the long run.

Unfortunately, what we are observing in the modern world indicates that those who manage societies, who organize the unhindered life of millions of individuals, use wicked means. What is conspicuous are the four methods by which the powers that be attempt to keep people in obedience. These could be reduced to the following four slogans: Keep them (the people):

– sedated,

– atomized,

– sterile, and

– disoriented. Continue reading →

Possessed by an ideology: The re-emergence of Marxism

Ideologies possess us
Ideas do not die: they my hibernate, they may go underground, they may mutate or metastasize, adapting to new circumstances, adopting suitable trains of thoughts from other ideas, stripping themselves of some of the old ones. Yet, once they are born, they are immortal. What is more, though ideas originate in human minds, paradoxically, once they are born, as Carl Gustav Jung famously said, it is not people who have ideas; people are possessed (obsessed) by ideas.

It is the peculiarity of the human mind to create ideas about the world, life, natural and social phenomena. These can be channelled in the form of a religion or ideology or a mixture of the two, never mind the denominations. A thought has a life of its own and starts growing, ramifying and developing, now due to clashes with real, palpable problems, now due to clashes with other ideas, beliefs, thoughts. A thought evolves in the process, and at times it is more real than reality itself in that a man who believes in dragons will spend his lifetime in pursuit of them: a belief will control his activities.

Beliefs, philosophies, ideologies – you name them – are there to explain the world and to provide guidelines. A human being needs guidelines: he needs to know whether it is good or bad to lie, to cheat, to steal; whether it is mandatory to lie to some, to tell the truth to others; whether it is prudent to lie under these, but be veracious under those circumstances. A human being needs to know what is worth striving, fighting, or dying for. And a human being has little time and little capability to solve each and every problem; instead, he prefers to rely on recipes of conduct that are rooted in an ideology. That is why ready-made sets of rules and values are in such demand.

Eternal Marxism
Marxism is one of the many ideologies that explain the world and provide guidelines. It traces its origins back to the 19th century. It was not a birth of a star but rather a transmutation and coalescence of earlier ideologies: German ideal philosophy (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel), from which it took dialectics, French utopian socialism (Charles Fourier, Henri de Saint-Simon), from which it took the social concerns, and English classical economics (David Ricardo, Adam Smith), from which it took the economic thought.

In the age of thriving industrialism and the rapid development of the sciences Marxism worked out an appeal that was suited to the people of the epoch: it claimed to have discovered scientific therefore immutable and infallible laws governing the life of human societies since times immemorial to the present and well into the future. The ideology’s attractiveness was reinforced on the one hand by the promise it made that it had found the effective cure for social ills and on the other by the flattery that it extended to the down-trodden, the weak, the poor, and the outcast that they deserve better. Continue reading →

Eternal tilting at windmills

On February 18, UN Secretary General António Guterres graced the world with another of his many uplifting speeches. Of the limited range of topics that are routinely broached – climate change, discrimination, the pandemic and racism – he chose to focus on the last of the mentioned. It went something like this: Ladies and gentlemen, in case you have not noticed, (which is even absurd to assume but never mind) racism plagues our world. Then António Guterres – in the Alfred Hitchcock style: first an earthquake, then the tension rises – hyporbelised this breathtaking gambit with the usual adjectives to the tune of “abhorrent”, “ugly”, and the noun “repudiation”. Racism – despite decades of reeducating the humanity and despite the Charter of the United Nations – is !everywhere! and so it will take a long time to combat it. The top representative of humanity went on to appealing to his worldwide audience that it must – without reservation, without hesitation, without qualification – reject and condemn racism which still permeates institutions, social structures and everyday life. Furthermore, António Guterres said that although racism, a repudiation of our common humanity, is deeply entrenched in centuries of colonialism and slavery and is a complex cultural phenomenon, especially because our world is letting go of the primacy of reason, tolerance and mutual respect, leaving place for – yes, of course – growing anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim hatred (some undefined minority Christian groups have also been thrown in), intolerance and – yes, again an easy guess – xenophobia, which, again is everywhere, around the world. António Guterres coupled the above mentioned phenomena with the COVID-19 pandemic, which exposed the inequalities, systematic prejudice and discrimination against marginalized, racial and ethnic groups, against – surprise, surprise – gender, age, class, caste, religion, disability, sexual orientation as if we all did not know this string of adjectives by heart by now.

The solution? There you have it. António Guterres says that we must build a better world (since the dawn of history we are nothing but engaged in building a better world), forge a new social contract (is António Guterres another embodiment of Jean-Jacques Rousseau?) based on – now the usual fashionable buzz words – inclusivity and sustainability; we must invest in social cohesion (obviously by) making societies more and more diverse, more and more multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural. People must be made to see the benefits of diversity rather than perceiving it as a threat.
Continue reading →