PATRICE GREANVILLE

Today's "war party", the revoltingly treacherous Democrats, have brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, but given the unalterability of US foreign policy, it's not likely that things will change much on the GOP's watch. A well-informed citizenry would never tolerate these lethal clowns. The Dems have been and remain at the head of the deep state's efforts to censor dissident thought.

The lights are going out again around the globe, and truth is getting harder and harder to find. Humanity is at war, call it a "civilisational war", and this is perhaps the most important conflict in the history of our species. In what the West's ruling class deviously calls "the West", that is the bloc of vassal nations controlled by the  US—the imperialist hegemon—including most of Europe today (itself amalgated under the EU and NATO non-sovereign supranational alliances), plus the Asian satellites (Japan, South Korea, etc.) truth is being systematically eliminated from all forms of mass communications. Only the highly adulterous narrative endorsed by the Hegemon is allowed to circulate. The bottom line is that "the West", where enormously dangerous policies for the future of the planet are constantly being concoted, is a land where shameful ignorance and massive brainwash reign supreme, with the captive populations going repeatedy through fake democratic exercises that can never solve anything because the public interest, as such, is not represented.

Truth is vital if liberation is to have a chance
In this situation, with capitalist minions and institutions long engaged in a systematic, engineered erasure of truth from all political ambits, the acquisition (and dissemination) of truth is an act of survival. If history is any guide, massive brainwash by the upper classes always stunts the political imagination of their subject populations, until circumstances get so bad that reality pushes the population toward a different political arrangement. When such a tipping point is reached, history accelerates and breakthroughs become possible. At that juncture, the masses need all the historical information they can muster, not to mention a dependable, ideally battle-hardened and fully qualified leadership. Above all, they need to identify and interpret political events with sufficient clarity to avoid costly or even fatal mistakes. In an atmosphere of deliberate mendacity and confusion, with a huge machinery of deception permeating every nook and cranny of Western society, this is far from easy. 

Politics is far more than most Americans think
Many people in the US, exposed from cradle to grave to the ridiculous farce of bourgeois politics, US style, have a completely misguided idea of what really constitutes politics. For them, politics is a superficial circus that comes noisily and rudely into their lives with every election cycle, and in which "democracy" is always defined by the fake contest of two parties essentially defending the same class interest, that of the extreme super-wealthy minority, the 0.002 that comprise the ruling oligarchy. (The latter part is naturally never recognized or even mentioned by the media, as their role is to be guardians of the official narrative). The "two" parties are of course supposed to be mutually opposed ideologically, one of the foundational frauds of US politics (or British politics, too, where we see more parties, but again, only the Tory-Labour duopoly really counts).  In a recent piece, Finian Cunningham, sums up with his customary brilliance what the US population is facing, and by extension, the captive populations in Europe and other imperial domains:

The political party labels are irrelevant. The ship of state is charted for a collision course with perceived global rivals. Those rivals are of course portrayed as “enemies” and “threats”. That narrative or propaganda is required to “justify” (legitimize) the policy of antagonism and militarism, which is essentially a criminal warmongering policy. This, in my view, explains why the United States aided and abetted by subordinate “allies” are drumming up war with China over Taiwan and with Russia over Ukraine. The collision course is set by the ruling class in accordance with their interests, not by the majority of American citizens. This speaks of the fundamentally undemocratic nature of the US and its allies. More accurately, the US and its Western vassal states are acting like fascist powers because the policies are fixed by corporate power and reinforced with immense militarism. There is no democratic accounting for the war fixation. Citizens are held hostage by the warmongering deep state. (Finian Cunningham, Finian Cunningham Interview: An Objective Look at U.S. Foreign Policy, TGP, Oct 29, 2022)

"Citizens are held hostage by the warmongering deep state." That's an awful fix to be in, especially when we talk of nuclear war.  Reality, however, is not to be so easily denied. Since politics is all about how humans organise and rule themselves, about how power is exerted in human groups, the field is immense, being most of the time almost perfectly juxtaposed with history itself. As such, political analysis can cover virtually anything imaginable, from the discovery and recording of human events to analyses of culture, plus the various branches of human activity like economics, the sciences, gender interactions, and of course the arts, all of which can offer various filters through which to interpret reality. That's where sites like ours can play a useful role, as ongoing repositories of historical information and truthful political analysis. Not to mention large "data warehouses" like bannedthought.net, a resource that was recently brought to my atention by my tireless colleague (and associate editor) Jeff J. Brown. I have been exploring bannedthought.net for the last few days, and I am amazed at the richness of the place. Granted, there are other radical archives on the Net that merit attention, but even then, this is certainly a must stop for anyone doing personal research.

One document alone is worth the price of admission
Speaking for myself, after many years of exploring various interpretation of  "Chile's Road to Socialism", a process that culminated with the death of President Salvador Allende and the installation of a brutal US-supported dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet on Sept 11, 1973, I found a superb document authored by a Chilean Maoist, Jorge Palacios, which certainly raises many valid questions about the choices made by Unidad Popular, the forces backing Dr Allende. Certainly the moment was extremely difficult. Like any revolutionary process that has not conquered the native army, usually under the control of the comprador bourgeoisie in cahoots with its imperialist allies, not to mention at least half of a reticent population, revolutionary Chile found itself on a highwire act surrounded by hostile nations and much too far from any possible help from socialist nations, including a Soviet Union still caught in Krushevite revisionism. In such circumstances, Pres. Allende's refusal to arm the people, supported by Chile's own Communist Party (Moscow line)—is not to be dismissed out of hand, as the class enemy, including the majority of the armed forces, was looking for a pretext to launch a coup. Palacios, as a Maoist, disagrees, of course, but this document is extremely useful in understanding his position, especially since his stance was shared by many who also distrusted the possibility of a genuine socialist construction via bourgeois parliamentary means. Read it, if the topic interests you, but above all explore this site and its formidable collection of materials. While doing so, for obvious easons, before the "book burners" get to it, download as many as you can. 

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