Return to democratic ideals
Excerpt: Jason Stanley is certain: only if we recognize fascist politics can we resist their most harmful effects and return to democratic ideals – to do this, we must understand how fascism works

Demonstrators protest against the leader of the far-right Rassemblement National, Jordan Bardella

How fascism works
by Jason Stanley
[This foreword posted on 6/21/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.freitag.de/produkt-der-woche/buch/wie-faschismus-funktioniert/wie-faschismus-funktioniert.]

Foreword

Are we facing a return of fascism? Are liberal democracies on the way to a new authoritarian form of society? This question hangs darkly in the air. Even those who are more cautious with such vocabulary are confronted with the fact that liberal democracy is not a matter of course, but fragile and can be threatened. It is this background that motivates Jason Stanley's book (which was published in the USA in 2018). To be more precise, it was the rampant new authoritarianism of the Trump movement, the open disrespect for the democratic rule of law, the increasingly aggressive cultural struggle against emancipatory achievements, the slavering attacks against minorities, refugees and migration society – as well as the realization that, despite all the differences, populist movements are undermining the possibilities of living together in solidarity in the name of the people by using similar scenarios worldwide, such as the return of authoritarianism, the politics of discrimination and exclusion.

In Germany, the electoral success of the AfD, in particular, and the realistic threat of a party that is monitored by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution as "in parts confirmed as right-wing extremist" taking part in government, are making the question of fascism virulent. The employment of openly avowed neo-Nazis in the German Bundestag is just one – albeit the most alarming – example of the flourishing of right-wing extremist structures in all corners of democracy and the infiltration of "group-focused enmity", whether anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, racist or otherwise motivated, into all areas of life. The radicalization of fascist movements, including terrorist and murderous attacks on migrants, is becoming a problem that goes far beyond the legal prosecution of the events due to the political inability to react appropriately.

But what is fascism and when does it become fascism? History has taught us that it is not enough to point to the integrity of the rule of law and the continued existence of the formal basic elements of a democratic order. The National Socialists also came to power in the Weimar Republic through a democratic election. The strategy of abolishing democracy by democratic means is not new, especially in Germany – as CDU politician Armin Laschet reminded us at one of the demonstrations in February 2024 in an impressive review of the events of January to March 1933. We therefore need other criteria, in particular sensitivity to the mechanisms by which the fascist "politics of us and them", to which the American edition of the book already refers in the subtitle, asserts itself. What we need now is the power of judgment. Jason Stanley's book can help us with that.

How Fascism Works – it sounds like a manual, and it is meant to be. With one difference: if I understand how my coffee machine works, I can operate it properly. If I understand how fascism works, I can try to prevent it. In both cases, the aim is to achieve a practical purpose, to use analysis as a tool for practical action. What you are holding in your hands is a book that follows in the best tradition of political enlightenment literature. It fulfills the purpose that pamphlets once had; it aims to educate, warn, explain and scandalize, to challenge us to think and rethink, and to motivate us to act, a small tract, a breviary that should help us to see the political and social situation more clearly and to be able to deal with it.

How fascism works – in a nutshell, Jason Stanley establishes ten precisely formulated characteristics of fascism. And as presumptuous as it may seem to want to say something about fascism in such a short space of time, given the complexity of its causes and the diversity of its manifestations, it is astonishing how recognizable the recurring patterns are and how the elements of fascist politics – or even "politiques" in the plural, a reading that the English term allows – can be identified and distinguished. The fact that fascist politics, for example, as Stanley points out, is regularly based on conjuring up a great mythical past of one's own people, does not make Trump's "Make America great again!" Hitler's "thousand-year Reich". Nevertheless, we understand the urgency with which critical historical perspectives must be repelled by the Trump movement, despite all the differences. This explains how it came to pass that textbook raids were carried out in American libraries. Against this backdrop, it seems that the moment when enlightenment about colonialism, racism and slavery is perceived as "un-American activities" in a McCarthy-style manner is not far off. At the same time, however, we also understand what drove the then AfD chairman Alexander Gauland to the famous "bird shit" analogy, and why so-called secondary anti-Semitism – which hates the Jewish population precisely for what was done to them – is so strong in Germany: the persecution, plundering, disenfranchisement and murder of European Jews casts the "chosen nation" in a bad light.

Jewish, Muslim, black, left-wing, queer people, with their experiences of exclusion, oppression and violence, disrupt the possibility of seeing Germany as something mythically great. The recurring pattern of anti-intellectualism, the denial of reality and the hierarchization of the social world, which are on Jason Stanley's checklist, can also be easily identified in many places. And the fact that the rejection of the foreign is accompanied by sexualized projections, that the foreign and the sexually ambiguous are rejected with fascination, was already one of the insights of the Frankfurt studies on the authoritarian character and is again evident in the wild fantasies that accompany the inclusion of LGBTQ+ and the dissolution of the traditional family.

It should be noted that How Fascism Works is not a historical analysis, nor a philosophical or political theory of fascism. The book does not answer the question of what fascism is, what causes it, where it comes from, but rather: how it works, what characteristics fascist movements and tactics share, and how they can be identified. It is a handout for early detection – before it is too late. The moment of the publication of the German translation could not have been better chosen.

"Never again." As I write this foreword, I am staying as a research fellow at the Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles. Thomas Mann, the exile, who, like Jason Stanley's grandparents, was driven out of Germany by the tyranny of fascism and had to build a new life in California with his family, not only finished the Joseph novel in this room, but also thought a lot about how fascism could come about and how to counter it. It was here that he wrote fiery speeches against the National Socialists and for democracy – "stones in Hitler's window," as he once called them. I imagine that Thomas Mann must have reflected again and again on the signs that could have been recognized earlier to indicate the impending victory of fascism – perhaps even earlier than he himself finally did – and what could have been done against it before it was too late.

As I write this foreword, in February 2024, hundreds of thousands of people are gathering in Germany every week to protest against the AfD and the influence of right-wing extremist, fascist and nationalist forces. Experts are talking about the largest mobilization in the history of the Federal Republic. The immediate cause for this is the meeting of a network of leading German right-wing extremists, which was uncovered by journalists and at which deportation plans for migrants and other people who could not be integrated into the authoritarian völkisch image were openly discussed under the slogan "Project Remigration". For those who have been dealing with such associations for years, expressions like "remigration" or the propaganda against an allegedly imminent "population exchange" are not new. The open use of the term "deportation", but also the fact that the meeting took place in the immediate vicinity of the site of the Wannsee Conference, was probably the decisive factor in the sudden feeling that so many people had to make a statement – not a few of them for the first time at a demonstration – and wanted to build a "firewall against the right".

The warning "Never again fascism!" goes back to the so-called Buchenwald oath in April 1945 and has since become a code for anti-fascist commemoration. Now it is being answered with an urgent "Never again now!" That is the right, the appropriate word. But it is also not a harmless diagnosis. All too often, people in Germany have hidden behind the "Never again" as if, like a child, they could be forgiven for something that no one can forgive by promising not to do it again. And all too often, this slogan refers to a vague, indefinable point in the future, so that it no longer acts as a warning but as a reassurance.

But when is it really "now"? When is the "golden age of security", as Stefan Zweig called the years before the First World War, over? If "never again" is really now, then it is time to break through the normalizations that still lull us into a false sense of security even when the inhuman, the fascist dehumanization of the other, has already made its presence felt. To resist fascism means above all to resist normalization, to resist the pull of normalization.

Perhaps the most important considerations in Jason Stanley's book are almost at the end: "(...) the danger of a normalization of the fascist myth exists." We cannot trust our judgments about normality, about what is (still) normal. This is exactly what studying the history of fascism shows. The tendency to make the once unthinkable thinkable is too strong. "The accusation of fascism will always sound extreme; normalization means that the standards for the legitimate use of the drastic terminology are constantly shifting." That is why one should not trust the defensive attitude, including one's own, which has always considered the warning cry against fascism to be exaggerated.

Resisting normalization also means showing those politicians with whom you marched against fascism on Sunday how their own policies pave the way for fascist exclusion. When, in the weeks before the Potsdam scandal, Olaf Scholz, the German Chancellor, announced on the cover of Der Spiegel, one of the most influential political weekly magazines, that he wanted and could now "finally deport people on a large scale", he was adopting a description of the problem for which the right-wing extremists, with their "remigration plans", seemed to offer the more consistent solution and, with their talk of "flight tourism", the more consistent term. As always, the decisive factor is how the problem is framed.

But perhaps normalization begins in a much more inconspicuous way, for example with a small piece of plastic. The so-called payment card, which is currently being introduced throughout Germany, says a lot about how far this country has already succeeded in making refugees »others«. They then have hardly any cash left, but only a voucher that can be used in certain shops. This administrative procedure becomes interesting when one considers the insinuations that accompany it. Finally, "they" can no longer send money home and spend it on drugs, according to the public discourse. The fact that an important step towards exclusion is being taken here becomes clear when one considers what a powerful symbol the free disposal of money is – the medium of exchange that makes one free in this society.

The self-evident nature of an ethnically homogenous society as a starting point and the determined rejection of the reality of a migrant society is ultimately also demonstrated by the unfortunate call from the German Minister of Economic Affairs, Robert Habeck, just four weeks after October 7, 202 3. With his call for Muslims to now distance themselves decisively from Hamas and its policies, Habeck once again conveyed the impression that people with a migration background, even those with German citizenship, are only tolerated in Germany on probation. Fascism begins with the sublime distinction between first- and second-class citizens. This is perhaps the clearest criterion in Jason Stanley's book.

Normalization is a blockage of experience that prevents us from perceiving how elements of anti-democratic and inhuman behavior are seeping into our institutions and into our everyday practices. If normalization means that the boundaries between what can and cannot be said are shifting, then this process is sometimes barely noticeable. But it is already happening where flight and involuntary migration are spoken of as a "crisis" and where the drowning of thousands of refugees in the Mediterranean disappears in the background noise of the daily news. Even the description as a "refugee crisis" and not as a crisis of human rights, the welfare state or the global economy sets a context here that presents the drowning of people and their lives in the non-places of the camps as collateral damage. The shift also takes place where the realities of a migration society are repeatedly denied and is expressed in the unwillingness of primary school teachers to learn to pronounce the names of their students, which seem strange to them. It is manifested in many small injuries and many almost imperceptible exclusions.

Are we facing a return of fascism? Perhaps this question is wrongly posed. One of the inconspicuous but extremely important conceptual shifts that Jason Stanley's book makes is his use of the term "fascist tactics". What he has in mind and describes so vividly, what he warns against, is not fascism as a monolithic historically attested entity, but a multitude of elements and points of departure; tendencies that sometimes shift the public discourse space (what is sayable) almost unnoticed, but sometimes also have to be recognized as very manifest strategies of institutional and ideological power gain. If the threat of fascism triggers defensive reactions that weaken rather than sharpen our powers of judgment, then an awareness of fascist tactics should enable us to assess where we stand.

This also means that a new fascism will be precisely that: new, the result of a new political, economic and social constellation. Fascism, as Adorno and Horkheimer saw it, is a regressive reaction to crises. But today these are constituted differently, differently motivated than in their time, and therefore inspire different reactions, different opponents, new mechanisms of exclusion, new forms of violence and "violence before violence". What we then need is a training of our power of judgment that allows us to see the old in the new and the new in the old. Adjusting such a power of judgment also means regaining a sense of reality, a sense that, as Hannah Arendt so vividly showed, is always among the first victims of the fascist danger. If How Fascism Works has the effect on the German public that the author intended, it can become a signpost.

— Rahel Jaeggi, Pacific Palisades, 2024

Rahel Jaeggi is a professor of social and political philosophy at Humboldt University in Berlin and is considered one of the contemporary representatives of critical theory. She has taught as a visiting professor at Yale University, Fudan University in Shanghai, and the New School for Social Research in New York. She was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University. Since 2018, she has been director of the Centre for Social Critique in Berlin. Her most important publications are: Entfremdung (2005/2016), Kritik von Lebensformen (Suhrkamp 2014), and most recently Fortschritt und Regression (Suhrkamp 2023).

Successful analysis
Net review Voices from the web: "Jason Stanley, who teaches philosophy at Yale University, identifies ten pillars of fascist politics in his book and traces their frightening resurgence and history."

The Nazis also used the criminalization of Jews to divide society into a "us" and a "them"

"Whether it is the mythologization of a nation's past, anti-intellectualism directed against science and experts, or the criminalization of minority groups – these pillars shape the language and beliefs that divide people into a us and a them." – hr2.de
How do you recognize fascism?

"According to the rhetoric of extreme nationalists, the glorious past has been lost through the humiliations that globalism, liberal cosmopolitanism and respect for 'universal values' such as equality have brought. The latter are said to have weakened the nation in the face of real and threatening challenges to its continued existence." – perspective-daily.de

Biography Jason Stanley is a professor of philosophy at Yale. His research focuses on cognitive science and the philosophy of language. In his texts, he addresses the functioning of propaganda and the theory of fascism

EU shift to the right: a worrying lack of direction
Background "What is particularly disturbing about the disturbing results of the European elections is how little follows from them. The successes of the right in many European countries, including Germany, which are really not surprising, are often explained at the meta-level"
Jason Stanley | Democratic vs. Fascist

Video Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. Before coming to Yale in 2013, he was Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University
Why worry about fascism? | Big Think

Video Fascism is a particular ideological structure. The first pillar is the Mythic Past. Then there's Propaganda. Anti-intellectualism. Hierarchy. Victimhood. Law and order. Sexual anxiety. Sodom and Gomorrah. And then finally, Arbeit macht frei‘
Jason Stanley | Interview

Video As the child of refugees from World War II Europe and a renowned philosopher and scholar of propaganda, Jason Stanley has a deep understanding of how democratic societies can be vulnerable to fascism

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EU shift to the right: a worrying lack of direction
Background "What is particularly disturbing about the disturbing results of the European elections is how little follows from them. The successes of the right in many European countries, including Germany, which are really not surprising, are often explained at the meta-level"

The AfD reaches its voters with populist slogans

How fascism works
Jason Stanley

"That people in times of rapid change long for simple solutions. That they need scapegoats for the big problems, for example migrants. Or that armies of trolls systematically sow hatred and manipulate the electorate in the service of populists and foreign powers. All this is true, but to leave it at these findings is to give up the fight against the right-wing danger to some extent." – zeit.de
What can be done to counter the rightward shift in Europe?

"For a long time, the European project was one that people pinned their hopes on for peace and eternal prosperity. To leave nationalism behind, to cooperate across borders and to be able to act in a globalized world. The shadows have been falling over this project for some time, not just overnight." – faz.net
Struggle after the EU elections

"Le Pen had already offered Meloni a cooperation. If other parties join, such as the recently non-attached Fidesz and AfD, a very large and strong faction could result. However, this could be too 'toxic' for cooperation with the EPP." – fr.de
The great fear of the F-word

"For a long time, people were afraid to use the F-word. There was a kind of superstition about it: if you said the word, it would become real; so it was better, according to magical thinking, if you didn't say anything, then nothing could happen. The fear still exists, in the media, in politics, in private conversations. And the question is, who do you actually want to protect when you avoid calling fascists fascists?" – taz.de

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Explorer of fascist theory
Biography Jason Stanley is a professor of philosophy at Yale. His research focuses on cognitive science and the philosophy of language. In his texts, he addresses the functioning of propaganda and the theory of fascism

How fascism works
Jason Stanley

Jason Stanley, born in 1969, is Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. His research focuses on epistemology, topics in linguistics, cognitive science and the philosophy of language, and the theory of fascism. Stanley is the author of Know How, Languages in Context, Knowledge and Practical Interests, which won the American Philosophical Association's Book Prize, and How Propaganda Works, which received the Association of American Publishers' PROSE Award for Philosophy. He writes for the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Boston Review, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Stanley lives with his family in New Haven, Connecticut.

Video Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. Before coming to Yale in 2013, he was Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University
Why worry about fascism? | Big Think

Video Fascism is a particular ideological structure. The first pillar is the Mythic Past. Then there's Propaganda. Anti-intellectualism. Hierarchy. Victimhood. Law and order. Sexual anxiety. Sodom and Gomorrah. And then finally, Arbeit macht frei‘
Jason Stanley | Interview

Video As the child of refugees from World War II Europe and a renowned philosopher and scholar of propaganda, Jason Stanley has a deep understanding of how democratic societies can be vulnerable to fascism
Jason Stanley | Fascism then and now

Video In his books, Jason Stanley defines fascist structures, what they are and how their propagandists try to use them to gain power

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The strategic interests of the USA in Ukraine and the forgetfulness of the government spokesman
by Florian Warweg
[This article posted on June 21, 2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=117019.]

At the so-called "peace summit" in Switzerland on June 15, US Vice President Kamala Harris had publicly stated: "We have to tell the truth. America is not standing by Ukraine out of charity, but because it is in our strategic interest." In light of this, the NachDenkSeiten wanted to know from the German government whether it shares the US's assessment and what is more important for Germany in the case of Ukraine, the "love of one's neighbor" mentioned by Harris or strategic interests. The government spokesman's answer revealed massive gaps in memory regarding Europe's recent history since 1991. By Florian Warweg.

The statement by the US Vice President at the "peace summit" in Switzerland was by no means a faux pas. In the official transcript of the speech, published on the White House website, this statement is even emphasized and set apart:

Natural resources instead of "freedom and democracy"

The geostrategic relevance of Ukraine in the fight against Russia and China is being openly communicated in the Washington establishment. The most recent statements by Lindsey Graham, a political heavyweight in the US Senate, are a case in point. In an interview with CBS News on June 9, he stated quite openly:

"They (Ukraine) sit on 10 to 12 trillion dollars of important minerals. They could be the richest country in all of Europe. I don't want to leave that money and that wealth to Putin to share with China. If we help Ukraine now, it can become the best business partner we have ever dreamed of. These 10 to 12 trillion dollars of important mineral resources could be used by Ukraine and the West instead of giving them away to Putin and China. Let's find a solution to this war. But they are sitting on a gold mine. Giving Putin 10 or 12 trillion dollars for important minerals that he will share with China is ridiculous."

The myth of the government spokesman of "75 years of peace in Europe"

In his response to the question from the NachDenkSeiten, government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit had pointed out that Europe had supposedly known "more than 75 years of peace" before February 24, 2022. In view of the so-called Yugoslav wars from 1991 to 1995, which claimed more than 100,000 lives and involved the present-day states of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Macedonia, as well as the NATO war of aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from March to June 1999, with thousands of civilian deaths and extensive destruction of civilian infrastructure (radio stations, power plants and substations, oil and chemical plants, bridges, schools and hospitals), the Chancellor's spokesperson's answer leaves one in amazement.

However, there is much to suggest that Hebestreit is not consciously ignoring these wars, but, like a large part of the functional elite socialized in West Germany, does not actually assign the wars in the Balkans to Europe and that these acts of war, which were significantly fueled by the newly reunified Germany (e.g. by its unilateral recognition of Croatia), are not anchored in the collective memory of West Germany to this day. It is time to change that!

Excerpt from the transcript of the government press conference on June 17, 2024

Question: Mr. Warweg
Let's stay with the peace summit in Switzerland. The US Vice President publicly stated there, and I will quote only very briefly: We must tell the truth. America is not standing by Ukraine out of charity, but because it is in our strategic interest. – I would be interested to know: does the German government share this assessment of its own actions in Ukraine?

Government spokesperson Hebestreit
The German government supports Ukraine in its fight against the brutal and unjustifiable Russian war of aggression. We are doing this militarily, humanitari-ly, politically and financially, and we will continue to do so for as long as it is necessary.

Supplementary question Warweg
The US Vice President has clearly explained the motivation and said that this is happening primarily for strategic reasons. I would simply be interested to know what the German government's assessment is. What is more important, the love of one's neighbor or strategic interests?

Hebestreit
Mr. Warweg, I have a problem with the concept of charity, because it – – –

Interjection Warweg
Not from me!

Hebestreit
You just – – – I did not attack you personally, but I defined the term and said that I have difficulty with it. It is much more about the European peace order, which has been severely damaged, if not destroyed, by Russia's actions. This peace order, which has brought this continent more than 75 years of peace after many hundreds of years of war, is something that should be very dear to us, and we are helping to defend it so that the aggressor – once again, an aggressor who has invaded another country without any justification – cannot succeed with its war of aggression, not out of charity, but because it is about the security of us all. It is about the peace order, which, incidentally, Russia and its predecessor, the Soviet Union, also signed in the CSCE Act, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year. That is what this case is about.

Additional comment by Mr. Warweg
You have just spoken of 75 years of uninterrupted peace in Europe. This means that you do not consider the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, which was in violation of international law, to be a war.

Hebestreit

Mr. Warweg, I believe we have already discussed this with you from this bench on several occasions in the past, and I would refer you to that for today. I believe – – – No, I will simply refer you to that now. It is late.

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War and the mob
At its core, every war is a manifestation of the struggle between the rich and the poor.

War feeds war. This simple wisdom, taken from the second part of Friedrich Schiller's Wallenstein trilogy, leads to an equally trivial truth: peace lets war starve, but not die of hunger. At least not in a civilized society that integrates the creators, servants and profiteers of war, who are responsible for death and destruction, into the normality of life. This schizophrenia, a protective wall for the beast and a firewall against peace, keeps humanity imprisoned, like in the labyrinth of the Minotaur. The new rabble must find the way out.
by Gunther Sosna
[This article posted on 6/20/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/krieg-und-pobel.]

The figure of Albrecht von Waldstein, known as Wallenstein, is a good starting point for approaching the beast of war without emotion. Wallenstein, the central figure in Schiller's drama, fought on the side of Emperor Ferdinand and the Catholic League against the Protestant Union during the Thirty Years' War (1618 to 1648). He was twice commander-in-chief of the troops, amassed titles and wealth, and was murdered in 1634 by officers loyal to the emperor, who accused him of treason. The Bohemian generalissimo is a prime example of what drives every war: selfishness, greed for power and wealth.
The entrepreneur

In the present day, Wallenstein would certainly have a successful career in the war business. Not because the essence of the business has changed only marginally in the last 400 years, or because of his loyalty to an authority that ultimately accused him of high-handedness and betrayal. Nor do his skills in organizing murder for a holy cause play a decisive role. As the prototype of the modern war entrepreneur, Wallenstein pursued financial interests in addition to his political interests. Among other things, he introduced a war tax. This makes him particularly sexy for capitalism and parties that are geared towards war.

It is hardly surprising that Wallenstein was a kind of pioneer in building up alliances of economic criminals. Together with the banker Hans de Witte, the financier and imperial court banker Jacob Bassevi von Treuenberg, Karl I von Liechtenstein and other financiers from the ranks of the nobility, Wallenstein founded a coinage consortium in 1622. They leased the sovereign right to mint coins in Bohemia, Moravia and parts of Austria from the emperor. As the coin leaseholder, the consortium massively reduced the proportion of precious metal in silver coins, a common means of payment at the time, in a short period of time. This made it clear that inflation would be triggered, which would quickly reach the population, the rabble.

The consortium's knowledge of the devaluation of the coins – and the intention to continue the still young war – was enough for them to appropriate the goods of the dispossessed Lutheran lords by purchase before the price increases and to invest further in the war through loans. While the population was impoverished, forced to exchange their real silver for counterfeit coins, the economy was destroyed and, in tandem with the price explosion, a catastrophic supply situation led to famines and looting, the investors in the war were well fed. In the winter of 1623, the emperor declared bankruptcy. And that is just one example of the machinations behind the scenes of gunpowder and war cries.
The livestock

With this expertise in his knapsack, and I don't mean that sarcastically, Wallenstein could take off in today's military-industrial complex (MIC), where the interests of arms manufacturers, the military, bankers and politicians merge. Perhaps as a smart young global leader who revolutionizes the MIC with his variant of being a warlord, investor and politician in one, and explains to Europe's finance ministers via WhatsApp how they can get a lot of worthless money into the state coffers by leasing precious land and land, expropriation and the sale of infrastructure, to get a lot of worthless money into the state coffers, to beef up their military, to finance external wars with loans and to fatten up arms companies with orders.

The method was used during the Thirty Years' War and has not changed in principle to this day. The variants of deception have been optimized: armament creates jobs, investments in armament companies inspire the imagination of investors and growth. These are dogmas that politics and the media spread over the population like a narcotic. But the population has nothing to gain from this, as can be seen from poverty pensions, low wages, rising rents, the shrinking middle class and the dynamic increase in part-time jobs. In plain language, this means that the population is being cheated, lied to and ruined bit by bit.

The first cautious step that leads to the exit from the labyrinth of the beast is the individual admission that, in a systemic sense, one is a piece of livestock that is slaughtered indirectly or directly in a war in the interest of capitalist investors. Those who accept and digest this as a fact can ask what it means when a state structure incurs debt and becomes the main investor of the beast.
The rabble

The European nation states, unable to guarantee even the most basic needs for every citizen, are staggering precariously as they merge into an aggressive European Union in a growth frenzy, the only recognizable purpose of which is the concentration of financial and military power. The way the beast that is raging in Ukraine is being nurtured and cared for, the way all the world's war victims are being mocked in favor of the love of arms dealers, the way opponents of war and pacifists are being defamed, the way peace is being trivialized and children and young people are being poisoned with stories about the adventurous lives of soldiers are all indications of the lowest of intentions.

The EU is permeated by war because this union apparently cannot exist without war. Historical parallels can be drawn with, among other things, the rearmament of the Third Reich and the United States with their unreal military apparatus, a no less unreal pauperization and war as a business model, which leave no other conclusion. No one will pull the plug. It also makes no sense to wait for a new Mikhail Gorbachev to blow the whistle on the lost game.

The rabble, the digitalized lumpenproletariat, despised by the new feudal capitalistic elite and disregarded by the political class, must dare to invent a future without war in order to break out of the labyrinth. For these people will be hardest hit by the consequences of the wars.

But where are the role models who set the extra-parliamentary impulses in the palladium of freedom? In Germany, the political left has been assimilated by capitalism. The initiated dismantling of the welfare state, the decline of industry, the growing misery in the metropolises, the increasing anomie, the destruction of social interaction and the emerging political awakening of migrant milieus will provide the answer.

Gunther Sosna studied psychology, sociology and sports science and has worked in advertising, communications and as a journalist, among other things. He is interested in the possibilities and limitations of grassroots democracy and informal organization. He is the initiator of Neue Debatte – Magazin für Journalismus und Wissenschaft von unten (New Debate – Magazine for Journalism and Science from Below).
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Another imperialist scam by the USA

By Alfred de Zayas
[This article posted on 6/20/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://globalbridge.ch/eine-weitere-imperialistische-masche-der-usa/.]

Alfred de Zayas, professor at the Geneva School for Diplomacy and International Relations, dares to address a particularly sensitive issue of US foreign policy and to criticize its cooperation with Israel. In doing so, he makes statements about Israel that no one else dares to make quickly, because they are usually used to silence the argument of anti-Semitism. This article was published yesterday, June 19, on the US platform Counterpunch. (cm)

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Gaza in June 2024, as it has been for the past eight months: it's war – and the Western world is looking the other way...
This image was posted by the Counterpunch platform about the article by Alfred de Zayas: where once there was "NO TRESPASSING", there is now "Sham". It is intended as a symbolic image.

The US State Department's toolkit of unilateral coercive measures (UCMs) is used to blackmail, intimidate and bully states that do not willingly accept US hegemony. The inclusion of a country on the US list of countries sponsoring terrorism is intended to lend a semblance of legitimacy to the measures imposed on the targeted states.

Unilateral coercive measures are not "sanctions", because the United States has neither the legal nor the moral right to sanction or "punish" other states. Nor do UCMs meet the legal criteria to be considered "retaliatory measures" or "countermeasures" in the sense of the International Law Commission's Code of State Responsibility [1]. UCMs constitute a use of force prohibited by Article 2, paragraph 4 of the UN Charter [2], violate numerous international treaties and fundamental principles of international law, including the sovereign equality of states, the self-determination of peoples, freedom of trade and navigation, and cause economic chaos and humanitarian crises that may constitute crimes against humanity as defined in Article 7 of the Rome Statute [3]. UCMs kill.

For decades, the United Nations General Assembly and the Human Rights Council have adopted annual resolutions condemning the imposition of UCMs as incompatible with the UN Charter, which states that the only legal sanctions are those imposed by the Security Council under Chapter VII [4]. The US trade and financial "embargo" against Cuba has been condemned by the General Assembly in 31 resolutions [5], which the US has violated and continues to violate. Far from lifting the UCMs, the US has tightened the "bloqueo", the blockade. Despite the draconian regime that Cuba has had to endure for the last 64 years, the UCMs have not had the desired effect: there has been no regime change. Due to the systematic abuse of the US veto power in the Security Council, the US continues to violate international law with impunity.

The first list of countries allegedly supporting terrorism was published in 1979 [6]. The list originally included Iraq, Libya, South Yemen (disbanded in 1990), Sudan and Syria. Cuba was added to the list in 1982 under the presidency of Ronald Reagan. In 2024, the list consists of Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria, all countries that are targeted for regime change. Countries that have since been removed from the list are Iraq, Libya, South Yemen and Sudan. The US State Department maintains the list under section 1754 of the National Defense Authorization Act, the Arms Export Control Act and the Foreign Assistance Act.

Many countries have called for Cuba to be removed from the list of states that sponsor terrorism [7], and indeed Cuba was removed from a separate list of countries that do not fully cooperate with the US in the fight against terrorism on May 15, 2024. However, this is not the same as being removed from the list of “states that sponsor terrorism”, which has been and continues to be used as a pretext for the UCMs. It sounds incoherent because it is. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez tweeted: “US gov. The announcement is a small step in the right direction. This decision in no way changes the blockade, Cuba's fraudulent inclusion on the list of countries that sponsor terrorism, or most of Trump's maximum coercive measures that still affect the Cuban people." On June 15, 2024, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Group of 77 and China issued a statement [8] calling for Cuba's immediate removal from the list and also demanding a halt to the UCMs directed against the Cuban people. The statement denounced the fact that Cuba's inclusion on the terrorism list lacked any factual, legal or moral basis [9].

And why is Israeli terrorism not being punished?

The arbitrariness of the US list is obvious to any observer. In fact, none of the US's allies and friends can be found on the list. As we know from many whistleblowers, the work of the CIA and the revelations before the US Congress, the US itself is one of the main sponsors and perpetrators of terrorism. The US has supported Israeli terrorism since its inception in 1946-48. It is no exaggeration to say that Israel was born in terrorism. One need only recall the indiscriminate killings by Zionist paramilitaries, the Nakba, the terrorization of the Palestinian population in the former British Mandate, the terrorist bombing of the King David Hotel [10] on July 22, 1946 , the assassination of the mediator in the UN Security Council, Count Folke Bernadotte, by Zionist extremists on September 17, 1948, a terrorist act that was the subject of an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice in 1949[ 11] , etc.

Today, we are witnessing a continuing genocide of the Palestinian people, despite UN Security Council Resolution 242, the relevant resolutions of the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council, the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of July 9, 2004 [12] and the three separate orders for "interim measures" issued by the ICJ in January, March and May 2024 in connection with South Africa's genocide complaint against Israel [13] pursuant to Article 9 of the 1948 Genocide Convention. In fact, the United States has been the main sponsor of Israeli terrorism against the Palestinians since 1946, providing military, political, economic, financial, technical and propaganda support, which makes the United States complicit in Israeli genocide under Article III e of the 1948 Genocide Convention. Among the countries that have asked to join South Africa's complaint against Israel at the ICJ are Belgium, Chile, Colombia, Egypt, Ireland, Libya, the Maldives, Mexico, Nicaragua, Palestine, Spain and Turkey [14]. Countries that have condemned Israel as a state that sponsors terrorism include Bolivia, Iran, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey and Yemen.

US weapons and intelligence services supported Israel in the targeted assassination of four Iranian nuclear scientists, Masoud Alimohammadi, Majid Shahriari, Darioush Rezaeinejad and Mostafa Ahmadi. Another scientist, Fereydoon Abbasi, was wounded in an assassination attempt. At the time, unnamed US officials confirmed that the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) had been funded, trained and armed by Israel. If US laws had been applied objectively, this would have made Israel (and the US) a state sponsor of terrorism, as the MEK was then classified as a foreign terrorist organization.

Examples of Israeli state-sponsored terrorism include the 1954 Lavon Affair, an unsuccessful bombing in Egypt that led to the resignation of the Israeli defense minister [15]. In the 1970s and 80s, Israel was a major arms supplier to dictatorial regimes in South America, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. In Indonesia, as Noam Chomsky reports, Israel served as a proxy for the United States, providing aircraft that were used by Indonesia to massacre the Timorese [16]. More recently, Israel has been accused of sponsoring and supporting several terrorist groups in its proxy wars against Iran, Lebanon and Syria.

The U.S. has actively sponsored terrorism in Latin America, Africa and Asia, been involved in the overthrow [17] of countless governments in Latin America, Africa and Asia, supported military juntas that terrorized their own populations, and organized and funded “color revolutions” in Europe to install U.S.-friendly governments in former Soviet republics, including Ukraine and Georgia [18]. In October 1965, the U.S. supported the coup against the leader of the Indonesian independence movement, President Sukarno, and installed the genocidal regime of Suharto, who carried out widespread killings and purges that may have claimed as many as one million victims. In the 1970s, 80s and 90s, the U.S. supported Miami-based terrorist cells that carried out bombings and other terrorist acts in Cuba. The US provided safe haven to Cuban terrorist Luis Posada Carriles [19], a CIA agent responsible for the bombing of Cubana Airlines Flight 455 on October 6, 1975, which killed 73 civilians [20]. Posada later confessed to a series of bombings that took place in 1997 at Cuban hotels and nightclubs. Protected by the United States, Posada died in Miami, Florida, in 2018 at the age of 90.

There are endless lists...

In the 1980s, the United States funded terrorist groups in Nicaragua (the Contras) that used terrorist methods against the government of Daniel Ortega [21]. Also in the 1980s, the United States funded terrorist groups in Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The list of the United States' involvement with radical Islamist groups is endless.

Why was Cuba ever put on the list of state sponsors of terrorism? The State Department tries to explain this with Cuba's support for national liberation movements in Africa and Latin America. However, national liberation movements are recognized as legitimate in countless UN resolutions, for example in Resolution 2625, which states: "In the exercise of their right to self-determination, peoples have the right to seek and receive support in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter." National liberation movements are widely recognized by the international community [22] and should not be labeled as "terrorists". Article I (4) of the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions of 1977 extends protection to members of national liberation movements, including "armed conflicts in which peoples, in exercise of their right to self-determination as in the Charter of the United Nations and the Declaration on the Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, fight against colonial domination and foreign occupation and against racist regimes.” [23]

The United States has unjustly accused Cuba of supporting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which pursued the legitimate goal of national liberation against dictatorial, corrupt and thoroughly undemocratic governments that are subordinate to the United States.

On April 14, 2015, President Barack Obama announced that Cuba would be removed from the list. But on January 12, 2021, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo put Cuba back on the list because it allegedly “repeatedly supports international terrorist acts” by providing refuge to U.S. fugitives and Colombian rebel leaders. Doesn't that sound hypocritical?

In a letter to the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs, Cuba pointed out that it had enshrined the fight against terrorism in its 2019 constitution: "In the new national constitution, which was adopted by referendum on February 24, 2019, following a constitutional reform and a broad consultation of the population, Cuba's commitment to the fight against terrorism was elevated to the level of the constitution. Article 16(l) of Chapter II, which is devoted to international relations, states: The Republic of Cuba … “rejects and condemns terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, in particular state terrorism”. This decision reaffirms Cuba's long-standing rejection and condemnation of all acts, methods and practices of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, even when states are directly or indirectly involved, by whomever, against whomever and wherever they are committed, regardless of the motives. In a fair decision in 2015, our country, which has been the victim of hundreds of terrorist attacks that have cost the lives of 3,478 people and left another 2,099 disabled, was removed from the list of states that support international terrorism – a unilateral mechanism that it should never have been included in. Terrorism remains a serious challenge for the international community. We therefore reiterate that it is the duty of the United Nations to take the lead in the international fight against terrorism.” [24]

It is time for the United States to abandon its arbitrary and imperialist list of “countries that sponsor terrorism” and to rescind all UCMs based on this political and defamatory designation. Ultimately, this list is a fraud supported by U.S. propaganda that the global majority in Latin America, Africa and Asia no longer wants to accept.

To the original article by Alfred de Zayas on Counterpunch in US English. Translation by Christian Müller, who also set the two subheadings.

About the author: Alfred de Zayas is a professor of law at the Geneva School for Diplomacy and International Relations and served as an independent UN expert on the international order from 2012 to 2018. He is the author of twelve books, including "Building a Just World Order" (2021), "Countering Mainstream Narratives" (2022) and "The Human Rights Industry" (Clarity Press, 2021).

Notes

[1] https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/draft_articles/9_6_2001.pdf
[2] Alfred de Zayas, Security Council, Arria Formula meeting, 25 March 2024
[3] https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/rome-statute-international-criminal-court
[4] https://www.ohchr.org/en/unilateral-coercive-measures. GA Res 78/202 of 19 December 2023 https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n23/423/58/pdf/n2342358.pdf?token=R2W4iUoezC3VbNtjVS&fe=true
[5] Most recently Resolution 78/7 of 2 November 2023 https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n23/336/44/pdf/n2333644.pdf?token=XVrKJbxgcrfN0zgLOS&fe=true
[6] https://www.state.gov/state-sponsors-of-terrorism/
[7] https://vietnamnet.vn/en/vietnam-calls-on-us-to-remove-cuba-from-state-sponsors-of-terrorism-list-2289148.html
[8] https://www.transcend.org/tms/2024/06/nam-and-group-of-77-demand-the-exclusion-of-cuba-from-the-list-of-terrorism-sponsors-countries/
[9] https://cubasi.cu/en/news/intl-organizations-call-removal-cuba-us-terrorism-list
[10] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2016-07-23/ty-article-magazine/.premium/70-years-on-perpetrator-and-victim-recall-king-david-hotel-bombing/0000017f-e739-d62c-a1ff-ff7b96bc0000
[11] https://www.icj-cij.org/case/4
[12] https://www.icj-cij.org/case/131
[13] https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192
[14] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/6/which-countries-have-joined-south-africas-case-against-israel-at-the-icj
[15]https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/publications/the_lavon_affair_how_a_falseflag_operation_led_to_war_and_the_israeli_bomb
[16] https://archive.org/details/NoamChomsky-05-21-82-IndonesiaAndTimor
[17] Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow, America's Century of regime change from Hawaii to Iraq, Times Books, New York 2006. William Blum, Killing Hope, Zed Books, London 2014.
[18] https://chomsky.info/the-leading-terrorist-state/
[19] https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/
[20] https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/09/us/cuban-exile-could-test-us-definition-of-terrorist.html
[21] https://www.icj-cij.org/case/70/judgments
[22] https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199743292/obo-9780199743292-0072.xml
[23] https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/assets/files/other/icrc_002_0321.pdf
[24] https://www.un.org/en/ga/sixth/74/int_terrorism/cuba_e.pdf

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1. EU verschiebt wichtige Gesetze – mit Rücksicht auf die USA
   Die Europawahl war kein Grund, um ebenso wichtige wie umstrittene EU-Gesetze zu verschieben. Doch wenn die USA dies wünschen, ist es offenbar kein Problem.
   Die milliardenschweren Finanzspritzen für die Ukraine, die umstrittene Asylreform oder die neuen Schuldenregeln: All das hat die EU noch schnell vor der Europawahl verabschiedet, um es der demokratischen Entscheidung der Wähler zu entziehen.
   Daran lässt sich auch nichts mehr ändern, wie wir gerade an den neuen Defizitverfahren gegen Frankreich, Italien und andere EU-Länder sehen: die neuen Gesetze werden gleich nach der Wahl angewendet, ohne Rücksicht auf Verluste.
   Anders sieht das aus, wenn die USA eine Verschiebung wünschen: Dann folgt die EU auf dem Fuße.
   Quelle: Lost in Europe
https://lostineu.eu/eu-verschiebt-wichtige-gesetze-mit-ruecksicht-auf-die-usa/

1. Chatkontrolle: Europa als Überwachungsstaat
   Schon heute könnten Regierungen in Europa auf die Kameras und Mikrofone unserer Smartphones zugreifen. Darf der Staat in Zukunft auch all unsere Unterhaltungen mitlesen? Um ein Gesetz zur Chatkontrolle durchzusetzen, nutzten EU-Kommissare sogar Techniken der Meinungsmanipulation.
   Bei „Überwachungsstaat“ denkt man an Russland, China und Iran, nicht an die Mitglieder der Europäischen Union. Schon lange jedoch plant die EU ein Überwachungsprojekt namens Chatkontrolle. Bislang war jedoch den meisten Beteiligten klar, dass sich eine Kontrolle von Chatverläufen nicht so einfach umsetzen lässt. Doch nun wurden die Technologien dafür erneut in Betracht gezogen – trotz etlicher Skandale, darunter einer EU-eigenen Desinformationskampagne. Frankreich hätte sich umstimmen lassen können. Wenn das passiert wäre, hätte die Sperrminorität wegfallen und die Chatkontrolle in den anstehenden Trilog-Verhandlungen der EU berücksichtigt werden können.
   Quelle: Welt Online


____________________________________________________________________



"Standing Together"
[This article posted on 6/18/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.streifzuege.org/2024/standing-together/.]

Since last October, in our world torn apart by contradictions, Hamas, Israel and Iran have further advanced the "pre-war period" in the slipstream of the major powers. Instead of focusing on these threats, we would like to take a look at a counterpart, an Israeli-Palestinian movement against war, which is stirring in the country and in the diaspora and is called "STANDING TOGETHER" internationally. We quote from their "About us".

The current social reality is unbearable. The endless occupation fuels violence, fear and hatred between Israelis and the discriminated Palestinians. Economic inequality is expanding, poverty is deepening. Women, immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, the elderly and people with disabilities are socially, economically and politically marginalized. Working people are forced to work longer with stagnant wages, while the cost of living continues to rise. Our political leaders are stoking fear and racism to divide us. They are increasingly out of touch and corrupt, delivering endless wars, only looking after the rich.

Despite the deep crisis, we have hope: trade unions, the campaign against the occupation, the environmental movement and much more. However, as long as they remain separate, their power is severely limited. For peace, equality and a livable climate, we need a mass movement. NGOs and left-wing parties can no longer mobilize large sections of the population. Many people want peace and an end to the occupation, support equality and stand against racism, and resist the rule of wealth. They need a movement that unites them, inspires them to act and transforms their solidarity into a powerful force.

Standing together builds a common home for all who reject hatred and cultivate empathy. We will not ignore our differences, but will adhere to a true partnership of common interests, an equal society that serves us all, that treats every human being with dignity, that seeks peace and a good livelihood for Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs. A society in which we all enjoy real security, decent housing, quality education, good healthcare, a livable climate, a decent income and the opportunity to age with dignity.

Such a society is possible – we are building it.

Standing Together Vienna


________________________________________________________________




Regaining peacekeeping capabilities
The abyss of a third and nuclear world war is opening up before us. We can still avert the global disaster.

It all started with the delivery of helmets in 2022. Two years later, there is now open talk in Germany about sending German soldiers to Ukraine. The acceptance of a third world war is being condoned. In general, it seems to be causing little public outcry that Europe, and Germany in particular, is on the "best" way to plunging itself into total ruin for the third time. In an emotional essay, Uwe Froschauer formulated eight theses on regaining the ability to live in peace, which stands in contrast to the currently omnipresent proclaimed "ability to wage war".
by Uwe Froschauer
[This article posted on 6/21/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/friedenstuchtigkeit-wiedererlangen/]

Thesis 1: Orientation towards reason

Homo sapiens, the "knowing" or "rational human being", is considered the only survivor of the Homo genus (= human being). As a rational being, Homo sapiens has the mental ability to gain insights, to form a judgment about topics in various areas of life, to recognize the associated connections and the underlying order of what is perceived, and to act accordingly. I'm not so sure about that anymore. I wouldn't necessarily describe warmongers as rational. Quite the opposite.

Some people, such as Annalena Baerbock, who has mutated from a pacifist to a warmonger, seem to operate according to the motto "How can I know what I think before I hear what I say?" Before saying or doing something, you should think about what you are going to say or do for a reasonable amount of time. This can take milliseconds, and in some cases hours, days, weeks or even months.

Under no circumstances should you parrot what is being imposed on you by foreign powers, but rather think about a matter or a specific situation for the good of your own people, to whom you have sworn an oath. Politicians and the state have a duty to serve only the sovereign, the highest authority in a democratic state: the people – and primarily their own people, not someone else's or their rulers. If they do not, they are not democrats.

The acceptance of a world war – not for their own interests, but in the interests of the USA – is contrary to the interests of the people, who want to live in peace.

The easily seduced people are "tuned in" under false pretences with the help of proven manipulation techniques: These include constant repetition – for example, with words like war, threat of war, military preparedness, defense of democracy in Ukraine and Germany – defamatory and labeling arguments for those who think differently or clearly – such as “Putin sympathizers” – fragmentation and falsification of information – such as that Ukraine is a democracy, or that a victory over Russia is realistic – and the creation of fear, for example through idiotic claims such as: “Russia has not yet had enough after conquering Ukraine”, or: “Russia can also attack other countries in Europe.”

As if "the Russians" had nothing better to do than to attack a small country like Germany, which has no significant natural resources. Be that as it may, our contemporaries, who have been transformed from homo sapiens into homo bellicosus (belligerent man), have erased the words "never again" from their memories and are lacking the gift of reason that is said to be characteristic of homo sapiens. "Creating peace with weapons" may rhyme, but it doesn't sound very sensible – and it isn't.

Weapons are objects of utility that serve the purposes of defense and killing. Further arms deliveries are based on a military solution to the conflict, on a victory that is not achievable in this case, and lead to a war of attrition that will send orders to the arms industry skyrocketing – which may well put Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann in a state of ecstasy – and to further unspeakable suffering for the families of the dead and wounded. If the warmongers or their children were in the trenches themselves, the Ukraine conflict would be over tomorrow. Mrs. von der Leyen, you have seven children, so why don't you send them to the Ukrainian trenches?

I would like to express my utter contempt for all warmongers in Germany. Germany and all other countries do not deserve politicians like you! If you warmongers have paid attention in history lessons – which I doubt in most cases – you have still learned nothing from history. But I assume you have heard of Napoleon or Hitler, who were just as rational as you are.

Conclusion: If we do not succeed in stopping the war and returning to reason – that is, seeking a solution at the negotiating table, which we could have had five weeks after the invasion – this conflict can and will end in Armageddon.

The following theses are ultimately based on the imperative of reason.
Thesis 2: Greater independence from the USA

The USA is the most aggressive empire of all time: it has been involved in 469 military conflicts with other states since its existence (1776), in which the United States of America was directly or indirectly involved. The Russians, in comparison to the USA, can be described as moderate in their "aggressive" behavior. The Russians are no angels either, but the USA is the number one aggressor on this planet – with countless illegal wars since 1945, with more than 20 million dead in 37 countries that have fallen victim to this parasite. When we talk about "the USA", we do not mean the (manipulated) American people or the entire government, but the "evil" forces in these governments, their puppeteers – the elites – and their media prostitutes.

The elite-instructed regime of the United States of America does not take into account the completely different framework factors of its European "partners" – who are better described as its agents – such as their geographical proximity to, and economically necessary exchange relations with, the East. We could do without America if necessary, but not without Asia. However, most of the governments of the European vassals put the interests of the USA before those of their own country. Most – but not all.

At the end of May 2024, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán called on the peace-loving world population to end the chaos- and war-mongering hegemonic world order in which Washington, London and Brussels call the shots. He said that the Western world was inevitably facing a major upheaval, especially with the landmark elections in the United States and the elections to the European Parliament. Orbán addressed the world public in his impressive speech, which "strangely" received little attention in the mainstream media. Here is the most interesting excerpt from this speech in this context:

"This year, God willing, we can bring an inglorious era of Western civilization to an end. We can end the world order based on progressive liberal hegemony. The progressive liberal world spirit, as it is, has failed. It has brought wars, chaos and unrest, a collapsing economy and confusion to the world, confusion in international politics, impoverishment of families, deterioration of public safety on the streets and in the squares. It was a strange time and a strange spirit. Its adherents proclaimed that it was not their job to represent the people, but to impose their own ideals. And if the facts do not justify their ideals, then so much the worse for the facts. They divided the world into democracies and autocracies, claiming that their task was a crusade against autocracies. They went to war, they exported democracy, and eventually people were fed up with them wherever they appeared. Let's be honest: this world order has produced leaders who are incapable of leading, who are unfit for the job, who make one mistake after another and who end up running into their own demise. They say that there must be a hegemon, an ideological control to which everyone must submit. And when that happens, they say, peace will come to us and peace will come to the world. My friends, when I listen to them, I think that even the participants in a beauty contest know more about world peace than these clumsy leaders. I would like to say, my dear friends, that this is an irreplaceable opportunity to replace the declining progressive liberal world spirit with another world spirit, a sovereign world order."

There is nothing to add to that. The statements in this speech are very reminiscent of current German, French, British and US policies and their incompetent, elite-instructed politicians such as Biden, Scholz, Macron, Habeck, Baerbock and the like. Viktor Orbán has summed up the inadequacy, remoteness from reality and simplicity of the prevailing Western ideology, which is represented and led by the elite-contaminated USA.

Thank you, Mr. Orbán, for your clear words. Be careful that you do not suffer the same fate as the Slovakian President Robert Fico. The mafia-like masterminds of the "New World Order" are capable of anything.

Orbán calls for the creation of a multipolar alternative of sovereign nations in which national interests are respected, the people have true sovereignty and there is no global ideology to which the entire world must subordinate itself.

His final, defiant sentence in this impressive, truthful and honest speech:

"The time of the sovereignists is finally coming! Let's return to the peaceful and secure path that made the West great. Make America Great Again! Make Europe Great Again! Forward, Donald Trump! Forward, European sovereignists! Saddle up, put on our armor, out onto the battlefield and let the electoral battle begin!"
ORBÁN: WE WILL OVERTHROW THE WAR ELITE — HUNGARY FIGHTS FOR A SOVEREIGN WORLD ORDER
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Conclusion: The USA wants to hold on to its unipolar world order by all means and is opposing a budding and necessary multipolar world order with all its might. The fate of its NATO allies is of little concern to the American "friend" in the pursuit of its goals. Even a world war instigated and beginning on European territory is of no concern to the USA. On the contrary: a war in Europe supports the interests of the USA, which wants to prevent a Eurasia that is growing together. The USA can easily wage war in Europe, which is several thousand kilometers away from the USA, which has never had a war with foreign powers on its own soil. What happens in Europe in human terms is of only peripheral interest to the USA.

Europe must free itself from the stranglehold of the USA if it does not want to perish economically, militarily and socially, and it must reach out to its eastern neighbors. To prevent this from happening, the USA, among others, prepared the war in Ukraine well in advance.

If you would like to know more about this topic, dear readers, here and here are links to two articles, one on the proxy war of the USA in Ukraine, the other on the think tank "RAND Corporation".

European governments, especially the German government, must finally have the courage to point out the USA's geopolitical mistakes and not just let the USA criticize them.

But no, then they will pull their tails in again, as Mr. Scholz has done again in the face of the use of German weapons on Russian territory, or in September 2022, when the terrorist attack on the Nordstream pipelines was almost certainly carried out by the USA. The Chancellor has gambled away his credit with his submissive decision regarding the use of German weapons on Russian soil, at least in my opinion. It is not surprising that the Chancellor is occasionally booed at public appearances, such as at the Ukraine vs. Germany international on June 3.

The subservience of the European vassals can only be described as embarrassing and undignified. Here is an example of the poor performance in ORF, ZIB 1, on May 30, 2024:

"The weapons with which Ukraine can or may attack which targets – the decision on this ultimately rests with the USA."

Europe should stay out of the war between the USA and Russia.

The European and transatlantic warmongers must be stopped. The population should return to a "peace-oriented" state of mind.

Stand up against these warmongers and don't let yourselves be manipulated by these rat catchers any longer! Do it for the sake of yourselves and your children if you want to have a secure and good future. German democracy does not need to be defended in either the undemocratic Ukraine or in the Hindu Kush, as the then Minister of Defense Peter Struck believed on March 11, 2004, in order to justify NATO's "defense case" against the aggression of Afghanistan. Germany was also involved in Afghanistan at the time with soldiers because big brother wanted it that way.
Thesis 3: Rethinking NATO as an alleged defense alliance

Despite NATO's ninefold eastward expansion and other provocations such as the successful Maidan coup in 2014 and the failed coup in Belarus in 2020, Russia remained calm until 2022. At the end of 2021, Putin was still seeking dialogue with the West and demanding security guarantees regarding Ukraine's neutrality. He demanded the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine, as well as the right of self-government for the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. To this end, Russia presented the United States and NATO with a draft agreement between the United States and Russia on mutual security guarantees, as well as a corresponding agreement between the Russian Federation and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, at a meeting in Moscow on December 15, 2021. It was a draft that would undoubtedly have demanded too much of NATO. But that is how it is at the beginning of every negotiation: each party comes to the table with exaggerated ideas, and then negotiations take place and a compromise is agreed upon. A draft agreement is merely a starting point.

The US and NATO rejected the offer of talks and the draft agreement at the time, apparently without closer examination. Instead, at the Munich Security Conference from February 18 to 20, 2022 – six days before the Russian invasion – the rhetoric against Russia was intensified, not least by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who called for his country to be armed with nuclear weapons. In my opinion, NATO, aka the USA, wanted this war. My negative assessment at the time was confirmed by the failed negotiations in Istanbul.

The war could have been settled by the end of March 2022 if the USA had joined in.

The question is who is the aggressor here. Vladimir Putin crossed a red line with the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. NATO and the United States under Barack Obama crossed a red line with the Maidan coup they staged in 2014, and even before that with NATO's eastward expansion. The Kiev government crossed a red line with the shelling – more than 14,000 dead – the cutting off of food supplies and the financial isolation of eastern Ukraine since 2014. It is also interesting in this context that Zelenskyy found the desired autonomy of eastern Ukraine in order during his 2019 election campaign. However, this was not in the interests of the USA – and thus NATO, the army of the United States – which wanted to maintain this untenable situation for Russia-friendly eastern Ukraine and Russia in order to ultimately force Russia to take military action.

As early as 1997, the then US President Joe Biden said of the planned NATO provocation against Russia:

"The only thing that could provoke a Russian reaction would be the expansion of NATO to the Baltic states."

And that is exactly what happened. But Russia held its peace in the face of this and the many subsequent provocations. If the situation had been reversed and Russia had provoked the USA to this extent, there would have been another world war long ago, and I might not even be able to write these lines.

Conclusion: NATO is the real aggressor, not Russia. It is not the one who takes the first step who should be called the aggressor, but the one who forces this step. And that is NATO, or the USA and its military colonies.

In view of the events of recent decades, can NATO still be described as a defensive alliance?

Many people already see NATO as an offensive alliance. Decisions such as the most recent one regarding the use of NATO weapons on Russian soil support this view.

Russia does not want war with Europe. The USA, on the other hand, would have no objection to a war between Europe and Russia, as the laughing third party.

The collective way of thinking and acting of NATO, led by the USA, should be reconsidered and reformed accordingly. Even leaving NATO should be considered if it does not stop its bellicose activities.
Thesis 4: Clear stance of peace-loving nations towards bellicose nations such as the USA, Great Britain and Israel

As mentioned in the last thesis, imperialistic, warmongering power cravings – such as those of the United States – should be stopped. But not only the United States, but also other nations that once looked back on an empire – such as the British – apparently still find it okay to fuel war and, if necessary, to wage it.

The following brief historical review should give you a better understanding of the relationship between Russia and Great Britain.

The relationship between the Russians and the British is historically very diverse. In the mid-18th century, Russia and Britain worked together successfully when France, Prussia and Spain decided to wrest some parts of their empire from the Habsburgs. Through their intervention, the Russians and the English helped the Habsburgs to maintain the general status quo in Europe. In the Coalition Wars (1792–1815), the Russian and British empires fought together against France and its “revolutionary” ideas for almost twenty years. However, their cooperation during this period was interrupted when both powers went from being allies to being adversaries (1800–1801) and later even to being warring parties (1807–1812).

The British were seriously concerned when they saw their British Empire, especially in India, under threat. At the beginning of the 19th century, Russia was constantly expanding its borders and incorporating new territories and peoples in the steppes of Central Asia. In 1836 and 1837, a massive uprising against Russian rule broke out in the Kazakh steppe, disrupting trade between Central Asia and India. The Russians encouraged the new Persian Shah Mohammed to advance on the city of Herat in western Afghanistan. They hoped to open up a new, alternative trade route through the east. To achieve this goal, they provided military and logistical support to the Persian troops.

This did not go down well with the British, who were in a panic. They eyed Russia's intentions with suspicion and saw Russian expansion in Central Asia as a threat to the defense of British India. In London, a military confrontation with Russia was seriously considered.

Russia continued to court Persia and sought an alliance that could threaten the north-western access to India. The progress that Russia had made in Persia, Central Asia and the Far East put the British under pressure throughout Asia. It was during this period that the term "Russophobia" developed in Great Britain.

In his article of April 24, 2023, Stefan Korinth wrote the following about the origin of the term Russophobia:

"The English term 'Russophobia' was coined in the early 19th century in Great Britain, when politicians and leading media there — after the end of Napoleon — placed Russia in the public consciousness as a new, dangerous opponent of the Empire. The phenomenon was not new even then, but a concise term was found for it. The term Russophobia placed fear at the center – fear of Russian expansion into the spheres of influence of the then British Empire, for example in Iran or India. The 'Russian scare' took on such proportions that even the remote island state of New Zealand built a series of coastal fortifications in the 1880s to ward off a supposed Russian attack."

This fear, this hatred, still seems to be in the bones of many Britons today. The unfounded Russophobia is the subject of the next thesis.

Let's continue with the history of relations between Russia and the UK. When China resisted the colonial powers in the late 19th century, the great powers joined together in the "Eight-Nation Alliance", which included the USA, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Japan and France, as well as Great Britain and Russia. The allies crushed the so-called (bloody) Boxer Rebellion and exerted even greater pressure on China than before.

During the First and Second World Wars, Great Britain and Russia also overcame their differences and fought against their common enemy, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy, in the First World War – and against Nazi Germany and its allies in the Second World War. Relations between Russia and Great Britain deteriorated increasingly shortly after the Second World War, leading to the era of the Cold War.

Today, the British are committed supporters of Ukraine and opponents of Russia. The British believe that this war can be won by Ukraine. As in Germany, everything is being done to increase support for Ukraine, especially with weapons deliveries. The fear of the "evil" Russians is also being stirred up among the British.

The head of the British army, General Sir Patrick Sanders, compared the situation in Ukraine with the crises of 1914 and 1937 and said that only "citizen armies" would be able to repel the coming attack on the "Western way of life".

What nonsense. Russia is not interested in the Western way of life. Russia does its own thing and is happy to be left alone.

Of course, if Ukraine wants to become a NATO ally and the Americans want to station their nuclear missiles there, then the Russian peace and quiet will be over. That's why this war – which could have been ended with good conditions for Ukraine by the end of March 2022, but was prevented by the USA and Great Britain. Russia was not yet weakened enough.

Sir Patrick Sanders said:

"This war is not just about the black earth in Donbas or the re-establishment of a Russian empire, but about the political, psychological and symbolic defeat of our system and our way of life. How we, as the pre-war generation, react to this will echo through history. Ukrainian bravery is buying us time, for now."

Always these die-hard warmongers! Will they never die out? This warmonger would like to see the number of British troops doubled, in particular by introducing conscription – like our German die-hards – which, thank God, the British government has rejected.

Conclusion: The bellicose activities of the British and French governments, which would also have liked to send ground troops to Ukraine, should be stopped. The politicians behind them and their parties should no longer be elected by the people, who should take to the streets and demonstrate peacefully but firmly against the apocalyptic course of the unteachable until none of these warmongers can be seen on the political scene.
Thesis 5: Reduction of the completely unfounded Russophobia controlled by political and media war-mongers

Russophobia is deeply rooted in the subconscious of people in the Western world. It is not in the "rest" of the world. Germans, English, French and especially Americans like to set the bar low in order to be sure of their "moral superiority". They create enemy images in the population in order to distract from their own, often dishonest machinations and to realize their geopolitical strategies, which are usually aimed at increasing power and wealth.

The ultimate stage in the creation of an enemy image is the dehumanization and demonization of unwelcome individuals – as practiced, for example, in the Western narrative with Vladimir Putin. As early as 2004, the Polish-American political scientist and political advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski described Vladimir Putin as "Moscow's Mussolini" and four years later as "Hitler". Of all people, Brzezinski, who in his 1997 book "The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives" called for the USA, as "the only global superpower", to secure its dominance on the "big chessboard" of Eurasia. (1)

Western politicians and journalists mainly — and some exclusively — express negative views about Russia. What a poor show of political, journalistic and human behavior! They insult the Russian president, accuse soldiers of atrocities, accuse the Russian media of propaganda, which is certainly true to a large extent — as is the case with their own media —, and so on.

The aim is to influence public opinion in favor of devaluing Russia, with all its institutions, its inhabitants and its culture. Russia has a very high-standing culture that is in no way inferior to ours.

Propaganda is based on half-truths and lies, not on facts that can be verified. All these pathetic and "small" politicians and hacks have apparently never been to Russia. In the dozen or so times I have been to Russia, I have never had a negative experience with Russians or their system.

Everything that comes from Russia is attacked by the propaganda organs that are primed for war – whether it be the Russian state and its servants, Russian entrepreneurs or ordinary citizens.

What hubris, what a joke these people who think they are morally superior! You elevate yourselves above others so that you no longer have to feel your own worthlessness so much!

From my experience with Russia, I can only tell you: you have no idea and are at a very low level of personal development!

Why is nobody criticizing the Western propagandists who are spreading such hate against a nation that is peaceful compared to the USA? The Western anti-Russian propaganda organs are allowed to bluster, polemicize, label, defame and discredit without anyone getting angry with them.

Over time, the brains of the Western population have been washed by manipulation techniques such as fear-mongering, repetition, knock-down arguments, fragmentation and falsification of information, and by deliberately relying on herd behavior (solidarity). Instead of gray, self-thinking cells, many people have only retained unmovable thought patterns and negative images of Russia. These "backward thinkers", who have forgotten how to question, are the target group of the propagandists. There are still too many of them.

Conclusion: Just as the vaccinated should try to break down the poison of the mRNA injection in their bodies, the brainwashed should eliminate the virus of Russophobia that has taken root in their minds through propaganda. This irrational, unfounded, prejudiced, distrustful, hostile and hostile mindset – this hatred of Russia – is leading the world into chaos, and in the worst case scenario into a nuclear world war. Stand up and show the hateful and inhuman warmongers the red card. Or do you want a world war? If so, then you're already lost! Then stay on your couch as long as you still have it!
Thesis 6: To the dustbin of history with the warmongers

Politicians with a primarily transatlantic orientation and a bellicose attitude, such as Roderich Kiesewetter (CDU), Annalena Baerbock (The Greens), Friedrich Merz (CDU), Anton Hofreiter (The Greens), Marie-Agnes Strack Zimmermann (FDP), Boris Pistorius (SPD), Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) — and many more — should no longer have a chance in Germany for their warmongering activities and be punished in the upcoming elections. Voters in other countries should follow suit, so that global "peace thinking" can return and the "war thinking" of the backward can be counteracted.

On the dung heap of history with those who "carry the war to Russia", with German cruise missiles bombing the Crimean bridge in Russia, making Germany "war-ready" and sending ground troops to Ukraine, who have allowed the delivery of tanks and the use of German weapons on Russian territory, as well as the use of uranium-enriched ammunition and cluster munitions.

It is not the pacifist Sahra Wagenknecht who has lost her marbles, but those who say that about her. Even the Pope is put in the corner to "shame" by these simple-minded, personally underdeveloped warmongers.

The manipulated people remain silent about these events – at least for the time being. The mad lead the blind, as Shakespeare once said.

Conclusion: to the dustbin of history with the warmongers!
7. Drastic reduction of the influence of the elites on politics and the media

All the statements and necessities set out in the various theses are in vain if the mentally ill and insatiable elites who are waging a war against the people are not put in their place. The elites are the root of evil and the main culprits for the chaos in the world. They orchestrate crises such as alleged pandemics, "man-made" environmental disasters and wars, they divide the populations of all countries according to the principle of "divide and rule", because: they are in possession of the most effective instrument of manipulation – the mainstream media – with the help of which they succeed in directing the global herd in the direction they want. If the sheep recognized the deception being perpetrated on them today, the elites would stop ruling tomorrow and turn the world into chaos.

In his book Hybris und Nemesis, which I consider to be a brilliant work, Professor Rainer Mausfeld describes this phenomenon as follows:

"Silencing people's natural moral sense requires a significant attack on human consciousness. However, anyone with the necessary media resources can do this relatively easily, at least for a limited period of time and especially in situations that are critical for the stability of the prevailing power structures. Based on a distortion of the entire framework of thought and evaluation, black can be made white and white can be made black at will. Once the entire system of interpretation has been distorted, it is easy to make an act or a set of circumstances appear morally 'good' or 'evil'. In this way, people can be made to accept that there are two categories of state crimes: those that are not crimes at all, but morally justified acts, and those that are to be condemned in the strongest terms. They can be made to believe that morally reprehensible acts, such as torture, drone strikes, the bombing of civilian infrastructure or the use of outlawed cluster bombs and uranium munitions, can be morally justified as long as they are committed by the 'right people'." (2)

Conclusion: The mainstream media and most elite-instructed politicians have learned nothing from their total failure in the Corona era – and are making the same mistake again in the Ukraine conflict due to their subservience to the USA. Who should still trust them? Most Western politicians and mass media are elite-instructed and bellicose. If they do not change course in a pacifist direction, they will be complicit in the deaths of many people in the future.

The manipulative distortions of our natural, innate ability to judge by elites, politics and the media are leading society into the abyss if a large part of the population does not recognize its external control and we do not stop these dark forces.
Thesis 8 and overall conclusion: negotiated solution

Anyone who believes that the war could be ended and Russia driven out of eastern Ukraine and Crimea by supplying more weapons is either on drugs or has a complete mental breakdown. Anyone who believes that more weapons will bring Russia, the world's largest nuclear power, to the negotiating table faster has no idea of history or people.

Those who continue to support the geopolitical, war-oriented goals of the USA are complicit in the deaths of thousands more, which could have been avoided by the West just five weeks after the war began.

Anyone who believes that the undemocratic state of Ukraine is defending Western democracy should take a closer look at the concept of democracy and compare the situation in Ukraine with this concept. Anyone who is seeking a further military solution is a bloodthirsty person. There is only one way to avoid further bloodshed: a negotiated solution! Unfortunately, this alternative is not in the interests of the USA – and therefore not in the interests of NATO and therefore not in the interests of its military colonies, also known as "allies". Russia is willing to negotiate – the West is not.

Dear readers, I appeal to you to do everything in your power to prevent the existing catastrophe in Ukraine and the impending catastrophe of a third world war. Show the political and media warmongers the red card wherever you can. Do not vote for any party that does not support a quick negotiated solution, but instead advocates further arms deliveries. Take to the streets and demonstrate peacefully against the madness of the warmongers. Punish the warmongers in the upcoming global elections!

I am extending my hand to Russia. I am extending my hand to Putin. I am extending my hand to anyone who is in favor of peace. I cannot extend my hand to a clenched fist.

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Sources and notes:

(1) Zbigniew Brzezinski: The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (1999). Frankfurt am Main, S. Fischer Verlag (English-language edition 1997
(2) Rainer Mausfeld (2023): Hybris und Nemesis, p.28, Frankfurt am Main: Westend Verlag


Uwe Froschauer studied business administration at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, where he specialized in business psychology. He has worked as a management consultant, teaches seminars at vocational training institutions, is the author of several books and runs the blog wassersaege.com. His passion for traveling the world has made him sensitive to the cultures and problems of other peoples. He is close to nature and loves animals and plants.

Critics of the system often reduce football to being merely "bread and circuses" for the masses. The community-building and health-promoting aspects of the world's favorite sport are overlooked.
19.06.2024 by Uwe Froschauer


A continuing police scandal

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Trapped in a time warp
Mankind seems to have a certain resistance to learning from its historical mistakes.

The major media and many politicians have been talking about the supposed resurgence of right-wing and extreme right-wing movements for some time now. It should be noted, however, that the classification of political "right" and "left" has a slightly different meaning today than it did fifty or a hundred years ago. Is history repeating itself because we are caught in a time warp, or are people simply incapable of learning from history, which is why many behavioral patterns are so strikingly similar? Are people today essentially the same as their ancestors a thousand or more years ago, or have we been transformed by technological and cultural changes?
by Reimar Kanis
[This article posted on 6/21/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/gefangen-in-der-zeitschleife.]

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (George Santayana, in "The Life of Reason", 1905).
"It's always been that way!" versus "It didn't used to be like that!"

On the one hand, some people have the romantic notion that things were better in the past, because today's problems did not exist back then, and on the other hand, some people claim, without much evidence, that humanity has been struggling with the same problems since the dawn of civilization. Of course, neither statement can be scientifically verified, because we don't have a time machine at our disposal to travel back in time and conduct field research to verify the truth of either statement.

And even if someone had a time machine, this investigation would raise further new questions, such as: How could we ensure that the selection of respondents today is just as representative as that of respondents in the past?

The evidence from the past, such as written documents, works of art or recorded historical events, shows that as long as two thousand years ago, scholars were already asking philosophical questions that are still relevant today. However, little is known about how society at that time evaluated or answered these questions.

If we assume that the uneducated people of that time were not interested in these questions, and that the same applies today, then the statement seems to be true: it has always been that way. On the other hand, most people act as if these philosophical questions had been resolved, because they behave in the way that the prevailing conventions or agreements dictate. It is one of the rules of culture that violations are sanctioned and conformity is rewarded. This is another point that suggests that the behavioral pattern of adaptation has proven itself time and again, and that is why people today are hardly any different from their ancestors. Customs and traditions may have changed, but the need to adapt to them has remained.
Who actually defines the customs and traditions today?

We assume, because we live in a so-called "liberal democracy", that today's lifestyles correspond to the ideal of an "open society", or at least that we are on the way to becoming one.

"The term 'open society' was already used in the book 'Les Deux Sources de la morale et de la religion' (1932) by the French philosopher Henri Bergson. It became better known in the German-speaking world through the work 'The Open Society and Its Enemies' (1945) by Karl Popper. (…)

In contrast to ideologically defined, closed societies that pursue a plan of salvation that is binding on everyone, open societies allow an intellectual exchange of opinions that also enables cultural change. Therefore, freedom of opinion, association and assembly, as well as strict religious neutrality, are of fundamental importance for "open societies".

And here the critical reader immediately realizes that we are still a long way from an "open society", because the new faith in science or scientism, as it is sometimes called, partly excludes freedom of opinion, as we have seen during the pandemic. Although it later became clear from the publication of the Corona Protocols that the classification of the danger posed by Corona was not scientifically but politically motivated. There is also officially only one "correct opinion" on the allegedly man-made climate change.

We are increasingly seeing certain ideological views being propagated in the media and in discourse, which are then intended to become generally binding. These include, for example, specific ideas of anti-fascism, "against the right!", Russophobia, woke ideas of gender and identity, but also the demarcation from a supposed anti-Semitism. For the offenses of those who think differently, there is the culture of scolding, the virtual pillory and legal repercussions.

Are we living in a time loop, like in the movie Groundhog Day, and always on the same day, with roughly the same events taking place? But, the main character in the movie undergoes a change and is a different person at the end – a reformed person – which ultimately breaks the time loop.

The conclusion is that history does not repeat itself exactly, but changes with each repetition. 120 years ago, people were perhaps more obedient to authority than they are today, which is why they were more uncritical of the war propaganda that led to the First World War. The diversity of media did not exist back then either.

But it could also be that the majority today only imagines itself to be more critical, while in reality it is just as conformist as the people of that time. Both could be true, namely that some people today are just as uncritical as people in earlier times, while another part of the people is hardly willing to feel connected to other people and a common attitude.

According to Alexander Geljewitsch Dugin, the final stage of modern liberalism is that each individual defines his or her own gender and, if applicable, non-human entity. This means that the main difference from people in earlier times is the greater lack of uniformity within the group as a whole. This will probably influence the further course of history, because without common ground, such as a shared nationality and language, a culture that creates identity or a social order, there can hardly be any organized coexistence.

Every era probably has its own quality of time. Although people today have access to many documents from the past thanks to technological advances such as the internet, few are prepared to seriously engage with them. Some people seriously doubt or even deny the usefulness of historical sources today.

Perhaps people today suffer from a kind of chronophobia. The fear of the passage of time, perhaps also the fear of change in general. On the one hand, they want to interpret and transform the past as well as the present according to the currently prevailing ideological ideas – in short, they want to preserve a time that never existed. On the other hand, they want to conjure up and bring about a "turning point" that is to be universally valid. But at the same time, they reject any notion of a collective, because all people are individually different, and the ideal of an "open society" does not tolerate an ideologically fixed plan.

If this paradoxical dilemma is a mental illness, do we go to a doctor, a psychotherapist or a spiritual healer?

Reimar Kanis is a graduate communication designer and artist. For further information, please visit aya-watch.com.


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Divided reality
The so-called corona pandemic has created two very different realities that are threatening to drift further and further apart.

The Sunday speeches about a divided society are accurate in their results, but they completely miss the core of the problem. The division, which was mainly driven by the corona staging, has pushed people into very different realities, which lose their points of contact with each new crisis. People have perceived time in completely different ways and, on this basis, have developed different realities that make understanding almost impossible. This divided reality also prevents a genuine process of coming to terms with the past, which would be necessary for the two realities to converge.
by Felix Feistel
[This article posted on 6/21/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/gespaltene-realitat.]

"Society is deeply divided." This is what we hear time and again in politicians' Sunday speeches or read in the emphatically concerned articles in the major newspapers. The division, so the tenor, is a misfortune, a development that no one can really explain. Sometimes the blame for the division is also attributed entirely to those who have been unreasonably critical of the state and the media, who did not want to be "vaccinated" or who have questioned the corona measures. They have radicalized themselves, turned away from the state and its deeply humanistic and loving motives, and in this way have distanced themselves from the reasonable middle.

The fact that this process actually took place in reverse, that it was the supposedly so reasonable center that harassed its fellow human beings by means of defamation, discrimination and persecution, thus distancing itself from any kind of reason, that it was the state with all its institutions and followers that actively drove the division forward, is not mentioned at all.

Even if the cause of the division is attributed to a reversal of blame on the part of the victims of the Corona regime, the result is still correct: society is divided. And yet the many analyses miss the core of the actual division. This is because the word division conjures up images of two parties sitting in opposing trenches, shouting at each other or – in extreme cases – shooting and fighting each other. However, this image does not do justice to the depth of the division. Because the idea of opposing trenches also implies an important aspect: the reference to a shared reality. People may have different, even contrary opinions about this reality, but at least they still share a common understanding of reality.
Loss of reality

The situation is quite different, however, with the division created by the corona policy. Here, a common reality is no longer given. This is because the two camps – to put it in very simplified terms and to ignore the nuances and shades of gray – have had very different experiences since the beginning of 2020.

For some, a deadly pandemic was raging, making drastic measures necessary and forcing people to stick together to fight this pandemic, protect the elderly and prevent deaths. In this perception, it is incomprehensible that some people did not want to bow to this necessity. They are irresponsible endangers, and the danger they pose had to be stopped with all power, if necessary with state violence. Because the state has the duty to protect its people.

The other, much smaller group, on the other hand, understood that a pandemic did not exist. For them, it was the overbearing state that enforced measures by force and fought every resistance with all kinds of dirty tricks in order to enforce completely different, underlying interests. They experienced state measures, but also the lack of understanding and often the anger of their obedient fellow human beings as terror being exerted on them, as the rise of a fascist police state that has abolished almost all democratic rights and freedoms. They became victims of discrimination, exclusion, oppression and persecution.

But when they tried to explain this to the first, the obedient group, they met with complete incomprehension. This group, which actively participated in the discrimination and exclusion, approved of it and even supported it, cannot understand the problem with all this. For them, it was a special situation that made all these measures necessary.

The compliant ones were usually completely unaware of the fact that opponents were being persecuted by the police and visited at home, that critical media were attacked and blocked, and that discrimination was taking place.

None of this was mentioned in their media, the news, the Today program, the daily newspapers or the radio channels on YouTube financed by public broadcasting. They themselves were not victims of discrimination either. On the contrary, by willingly complying with measures and the unconditional willingness to take the gene injection, which was sold to them as a vaccination, this part of society was able to resume their lives as usual after a period of deprivation. The only reminder of the so-called pandemic was the control of vaccination certificates and the ever-present mask.

There was no discrimination or exclusion for this group, since everyone would have had the opportunity to get the gene shot at any time in order to gain access to shops, restaurants, cinemas or cafés. For them, it was much more a decision that the opposition made independently and voluntarily – which is why they then had to live with the consequences. At the same time, the critics of the measures and those who had not been vaccinated were sold to this group of the obedient as the ultimate evil: Nazis, neo-Nazis, Reich citizens and alternative practitioners would march through Berlin and other cities under the banner of the Reich war flag and endanger the great democracy that only wanted to protect everyone from the virus. If these people who were rampaging and raging there – so the completely distorted portrayal – were not allowed into shops because they refused to submit to the consensus of reason, then it was their own fault. They had a choice.

That this choice was actually nonexistent because there was no need for the "vaccination", which was also associated with enormous health risks, and that the state had first robbed people of their freedom in order to then grant it back to them on its terms, piece by piece, yes, "generously", as privileges, did not occur to them in this idea. The state was only doing what was necessary to fight the pandemic – a pandemic that the obedient were convinced posed a deadly threat. They had no concerns about the injection; instead, they believed that it was everyone's duty to have it. Compliance with measures and "vaccination" became the first civic duty, a virtually religious task for every good and decent citizen. Conversely, however, this meant that those who refused to fulfill this duty were not good citizens, but contemptible people whose humanity was also called into question: cue Ms. Bosetti and her appendix comparison.

Even if such statements come directly from the vocabulary of National Socialism, the real Nazis were to be found on the other side, the side of the critics and vaccination opponents, because the news presented them in exactly the same way. And, as we all know, anything goes against Nazis, because they represent a danger to our beautiful democracy.
Crisis spiral

In this way, we are dealing with two fundamentally different realities: On the one hand, the reality of a deadly pandemic, which required drastic measures to combat and which has created a real fear of infection; on the other hand, the reality of an overbearing, totalitarian state that has used an alleged pandemic as a pretext to force its citizens to comply with undemocratic measures and has taken violent action against anyone who does not comply. These two realities are now drifting further apart with each new crisis. Because once you have questioned the public narrative, you will do so with all subsequent issues. And so those who had already opposed the corona regime also find themselves on the side of the opposition in the Ukraine war or climate crisis, whereas those who have spoken out in favor of vaccination and corona measures also largely support arms deliveries to Ukraine and measures against climate change.

In this way, the last points of contact between the two realities are gradually disappearing. Like an island torn apart by the rift between two continental plates as they drift apart, the once shared reality has split into two completely different realities. While some are constantly fighting against evil in the form of climate or corona deniers or "the Russians", others find themselves in a reality that is at least more continuous, in which an oligarchic caste seizes power in conjunction with states and intergovernmental organizations, using all the narratives and enemy images to destroy the prevailing world order and recreate it in their own image.

But if you tell the latter to the group of the obedient, you will get nothing but disbelief and the risk of being committed to a psychiatric ward. For the obedient, such connections are nothing more than crazy conspiracy theories that mentally ill people have come up with to channel their insecurity in an increasingly complex world and regain security. Whereas the group of the obedient are hopelessly authority-worshipping followers in a new fascism from the point of view of the opposition, and do not recognize at all that they themselves are acting in a completely fascist manner and allowing themselves to be used. For the opposition, the obedient have completely lost their minds.

This division of reality makes it very difficult to overcome the division in any way. Because it is no longer possible to refer to the same reality in a relationship.

This leads to one side not understanding what the other is saying, and vice versa. It also leads to a situation – and many people experience this in their family environment – where, at best, if you are not hopelessly at odds with each other, you simply have nothing more to say to each other. After all, what is there to talk about with someone who believes every story dictated from above without question, who goes along with every absurd logical twist and is able to justify it to themselves? And vice versa, what is there to talk about with someone who has completely fallen for the delusion of conspiracy theories, who has lost touch with reality?

And at least this last aspect is completely correct: the opposition has completely lost touch with the reality of the compliant. But the opposite is also true. Thus, contact is gradually breaking down, and the two worlds, the two groups, are drifting further apart. A genuine reappraisal could reverse this trend, but it is hardly possible on this basis. Because the reference to different realities almost excludes meaningful communication. And even if the data and facts from RKI files, Cochrane studies, panic papers and many other documents confirm that the reality of the opposition is closer to reality, the compliant will not let this fact in for various reasons.

They have long since labeled the opposition as lunatic crackpots and thus dismissed any information coming from this group as implausible. How can you believe the sources of crazy conspiracy theorists? In addition, they have long since incorporated obedience into their identity as "good citizens"; questioning the basis and consequences of this obedience would therefore be tantamount to an attack on their identity itself. In addition, a reappraisal would have to ask the question of what wrongs one has committed against other people and what damage one has inflicted on oneself through the mask and gene injections. One would have to confront one's own perpetration towards others and oneself, and that is not a pleasant process. Last but not least, one would have to admit that one was wrong and had acted wrongly. This step is also not easy for anyone.

For these reasons, any process of coming to terms with the past will be very slow to get off the ground, if it gets off the ground at all – as was the case after the Second World War, where such a process was also left to the following generations, especially from the 1980s onwards. We are in a similar phase of collective silence and repression to that experienced by people after the war, in order to avoid having to deal with their own part in the catastrophe. Let us hope that this time the phase will pass more quickly and that a reappraisal can take place sooner. Only in this way can the division of society be overcome.

Felix Feistel, born in 1992, studied law, specializing in international and European law. He worked as a journalist during his studies and has been working full-time as a freelance journalist and author since his state examination. He writes for manova.news, apolut.net, multipolar-magazin.de and on his own Telegram channel. His training as a trauma therapist in accordance with the Identity-Oriented Psychotrauma Theory and Therapy (IoPT), which he also works in, has broadened his understanding of the background to events in the world.

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