Our Warped Reality: Losing Friends to Disinformation
The West's decade-long disinformation and hate campaign against Russia has poisoned the minds of many. Here's my private correspondence with a supporter of NATO policy toward Russia.
Since the start of Covid in March 2020, thousands of researchers, journalists, scholars, scientists, nurses, doctors, and human rights activists who stood for integrity, facts and honest research have faced enormous censorship, persecution, vilification and ostracism. Intellectually speaking, the Western world is now in a digital Dark Ages.
Ironically, the Information Age is marked by widespread ignorance. This is because an avalanche of information has overwhelmed people, who find it easier to outsource their thoughts and opinions to major media companies, which unfortunately are characterized by a noxious cocktail of incompetence and dishonesty.
With near total control of major media companies, the ruling class can easily fabricate any narrative and then coerce society to embrace and perpetuate those lies with a veneer of legitimacy. (“But the New York Times says…”) Intellectual integrity is dead, and dissent is punished.
What’s most shocking and perplexing, however, are those colleagues who don’t merely remain silent, but rather, vigorously join in the persecution of dissenters. I suspect this is because we are reminders of their own cowardice and betrayal.
And so it transpired last week that an old journalist friend reached out to me. His goal was to shame me for being skeptical of Big Brother’s narrative on Russia. Even though I have a university degree in the study of Russia and Ukraine, as well as 30 years work experience with both countries, my research and opinions make him uneasy.
I thought long and hard about doing this, and then decided to do it. Below you’ll find our correspondence. I take privacy very seriously and always protect the identity of my sources and companions. So, to protect his privacy, let’s call him “S”.
He is a British journalist, but lives in Switzerland. He is educated and has visited Russia many times in the past 20 years and was always given a warm welcome. He is a militant liberal and I suspect that’s one main reason why he hates modern Russia, which increasingly promotes conservative and religious values.
Most disturbingly, his hatred is so strong that he wishes Russia would be destroyed, which would condemn millions of people to death and misery. Indeed, such hatred and violence is the true face and essence of modern western liberalism.
November 18
Dear John
Thanks for your reply on facebook. Glad things are good with you!
I'm still in Switzerland, looking after my son and writing a book on cricket, plus doing some writing/editing for [name deleted].
Putin's War has destroyed the Russian art market. My wife's mother lives in Russia, but there are no longer flights between Moscow and Geneva, getting visas is extremely difficult, and transferring money impossible. Do you still have contact with Russia? I've given up contacting people there. Everything's surveilled and everyone's scared to death of being caught speaking the truth. I hope it will all end with Putin's death and, hopefully, the disintegration of a perpetually self-aggrandizing country that is really only a souped-up Muscovy. I haven't been back since 2019 and no prospect/intention of doing so before regime change.
Please let me know if you ever come to Switzerland. You're always welcome to stay the night with us!
Cheers
November 18
Dear S…,
I had to double-check the date on your email -- you sound like a circa 1983 right-ring Reagan supporter. 🙂
Well, I hope these divergent views of the world won't interfere with our friendship. The 4 million year old human race might soon be nothing but a memory. Not much time is left, so, there's no point in feuding. I've always valued your friendship, appreciated your sharp wit, attention to detail and critical eye. I only ask that you apply that same level of criticism to what our government and media are force-feeding us today. Perhaps if enough of us take a stand, then just perhaps we can stop the march to perdition.
warm wishes
John
November 19
Dear John
Many thanks for the kind remarks and the Reagan comparison which, as a committed centrist (with anarchist leanings), rather amused me. At least Reagan had the gumption and moral compass to call out Russia’s evil empire and hasten its (temporary) demise.
Finding you an intelligent and decent-minded fellow, I’ve always been a little disconcerted by what I perceive as your indiscriminate advocacy on behalf of the Motherland. So I was being a bit provocative – to draw you out, as it were. Many thanks for your thought-provoking comments.
Unlike you, I was not brought up to hate Russia but to treat Russian culture with respect – as a teenager reading Tolstoy, Lermontov et al, listening to Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, studying Russian to a decent level at school. We had a wonderful Russian teacher – English but married to a Russian – who transmitted both a love of Russian culture and hatred of Soviet Russia, which few right- and certainly no centre-minded people would disagree with.
I started going to Russia in 2004 to report on art and returned over 30 times before my last trip in 2019. I was struck by the dichotomy between the open-minded, generous and erudite people I came across in far larger numbers than one would in the west, on the one hand, and the stifling lack of freedom on the other. The art world was a little freer than society at large, but it soon started getting cracked down on, initially through the agency of the Putin-grovellin’ Orthodox Church. There were two things I didn’t like about Russians: their rabid nationalism/chauvinism (very similar to Americans’), and an utter inability to accept criticism in any form, which I suspect derives from an inherent national inferiority complex. When I get criticized, I weigh up the criticism and decide whether (a) it is well-intended or malicious and (b) it contains anything I can usefully appropriate. Criticize a Russian (or Russia) and all you ever get back is the comment ‘What About You (or The West/Your Country)?’
The art market was dealt a first blow in 2008 when Putin invaded Georgia, a ‘test run’ for future aggression to see how far the West would react (mildly). There was no big change in mood in Russia that I could detect after 2008, but there certainly was after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. I was in Moscow shortly afterwards to be bombarded by gloating NASH KRIM posters on every street corner and to come across a newfangled ‘Eurasia’ concept that basically meant Putin/Russia turning their back on the West.
Russia has no more right to Crimea than the U.K. does to the Falkland Islands. Ukraine certainly does have a right to Crimea: Russia gave it to it in 1954, and signed a Treaty guaranteeing Ukraine’s borders in 1993. Having said that, if anyone has a ‘right’ to Crimea (a ‘country’ having a ‘right’ to an area of land is a ludicrous concept, but then so are countries) it is the Tartars. I’d like to see Crimea independent under Tartar rule.
Russia invaded Crimea in 1783, for no other reason than imperial greed and Potyomkin’s desire to flatter Catherine II. Just as Russia invaded (clockwise) Siberia, Central Asia, the Caucausus, Bessarabia, Poland (several times), the whole of eastern Europe, the Baltic States and Finland… and now Ukraine – an independent state with the sovereign right to apply to whatever international organization it pleases, whether or not this ‘offends’ a neighbouring state that already occupies one-sixth of the world’s land surface (with which it does fuck all to benefit its own citizens, oligarchs aside).
As for your criticism of ‘our guys’ – their hypocrisy, their approach to war as ‘a Racket’ – yeah, sure, no problems with that. But (a) the point is irrelevant as regards Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and (b) you’re sounding like a Russian: ‘don’t criticize me, look at yourself.’ I am no fan whatsoever of the U.S. (or the U.K.), but they’re sure as hell better than Putin’s Russia. I am a fan of the E.U., and I hope Ukraine will shortly be part of it. I am reasonably pro-NATO, though disgusted by its pussy-footing response to the invasion of Ukraine, and I hope Ukraine will very soon be part of it, too. I hope that, once Putin has gone the way of Hitler, Russia will also be part of NATO and the E.U. Come to think of it, if Russia were part of the E.U. you probably wouldn’t need NATO any more.
As a journalist, I naturally believe NOTHING that is put out by media or governments.
Cheers
November 19
Dear S…,
All good points and I was on board with what you wrote until the moment when the right-wing Ukrainian nationalists who seized power in Kiev began bombing the ethnic Russians of Donbass and the massacre in Odessa. That's when I said, "I'm out", and I began to part ways with many Ukrainian friends who turned out to be apologists for bloodthirsty thugs and murderers. Sorry, I just don't have an appetite for mass murder. I wonder why you see that as "indiscriminate advocacy for the Motherland". I think it's basic human decency.
As far as Crimea, well, that's Geopolitics 101, and I gather that you've never been to Crimea because your comparison with the Falklands is rather empty, if not lacking in intellectual integrity (because I know you know better). Every powerful empire has the right to, and will fight to secure key regions near its borders. Just like the US will never allow any other power to meddle in Mexico, so Russia shouldn't tolerate NATO meddling in Ukraine, which is the second largest and militarily powerful country in Europe.
Or, let me put it another way -- if you want to ignite World War 3, then Yes, NATO should meddle in Ukraine.
Please look closely at your family and then ask yourself this question -- Are Crimea and Donbass worth World War 3 and possibly a nuclear war?
We certainly live in fascinating times!
best wishes
John
November 21
John,
Russia is winning ? increasingly powerful ? having planned to overrun Kiev inside 72 hours ?
You really are a bonkers Putin apologist, John.
I had hoped that I was mistaken in thinking that, alas not.
cheers,
November 22
S… ,
I'm surprised that you treat these horrors so lightly. When did you make the shift to the far-right?
My advice -- keep your focus on cricket. Geopolitics is clearly not your forte.
best wishes
John
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ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS
“It’s Not About Trump”: American CJ Hopkins, Charged Again in Germany, Describes Global Censorship Effort
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Matt Taibbi RACKET NEWS
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"It's Not About Trump": American CJ Hopkins, Charged Again in Germany, Describes Global Censorship Effort
Acquitted on German hate speech charges in January, American playwright CJ Hopkins is being charged again for the same offense. He has a scary message for Americans
The German judiciary displays Kafkaesque cynicism.
The German people are famous for putting everything in print, even things they shouldn’t, and in this instance at least, American playwright and author CJ Hopkins is glad. “The irony,” he says, laughing. “The Germans, always documenting everything.”
In a letter from the Berlin Prosecutor’s file on Hopkins, the Bundeskriminalamt(BKA, analogous to our FBI) acknowledges receipt of a document from a government office describing an effort to have tweets deleted. “The Hessen Gegen Hetze reporting office,” the highlighted portion reads, “has already initiated measures to delete the relevant post on the social network”:
Hopkins reached out to me after listening in disgust to the Murthy v. Missouri Supreme Court hearing Monday. Standing was a big issue: our government said plaintiffs like Drs. Jay Bhattacharya and Aaron Kheriaty lacked definite proof that the government was responsible for suppressing their speech. No such issue exists in CJ’s case, as you can see.
Hopkins also wanted Americans who might be up in arms about the specter of legalized censorship in their own country to see that the phenomenon has also spread to virtually every Western democracy, often in more extreme forms than we’ve seen so far in the United States.
CJ’s unique insight involves his ludicrous German case, which as you’ll read in the Q&A below has taken bizarre turns since we last checked and will now go to trial yet again. As an expat following the American situation from afar, he’s seen how the authoritarian tide is rising in similar or worse ways all around the globe.
Hopkins is facing the business end of the German version, among the worst. As detailed last June, he was charged with “disseminating propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization.” The crime? Using a barely detectible Swastika in the cover image of his book, The Rise of the New Normal Reich. Far from “furthering the aims” of Nazism, he was criticizing them by comparing Nazi methods and laws to those of modern health authorities. The offending image:
The prosecution is going to absurd lengths.
Hopkins went to trial in January and delivered an impassioned plea to the court. “Every journalist that has covered my case, everyone in this courtroom, understands what this prosecution is actually about,” he said. “It has nothing to do with punishing people who actually disseminate pro-Nazi propaganda. It is about punishing dissent, and making an example of dissidents in order to intimidate others into silence.”
Though the judge was clearly not a fan of Hopkins — a courtroom account by Aya Velázquez, which I recommend reading, described how the judge said CJ’s statements were “ideological drivel,” just “not punishable by law” — he won on the law.
After acquittal, he was made aware that technically the case wasn’t over, because thanks to a quirk of German jurisprudence, the prosecutor had a week to file an appeal. Hopkins was unconcerned. “I doubt he will [re-file]. He made a total fool of himself in front of a large audience yesterday,” he wrote. “I can’t imagine that he will want to do that again.”
Bzzt! Wrong. The prosecutor re-filed charges. The prosecutorial theory in the Hopkins case was based on a bizarre interpretation of hate crime, essentially asserting that if you have to think about an image to realize it’s satire, it can’t be allowed. If that idea spreads, it would make comedy or even sharp commentary impossible. This is why his indictment, and the similar investigation of Roger Waters, are really serious moments. Not to be heavy-handed, but eliminating the loophole for satire or mockery is exactly what Waters meant by “Another Brick in the Wall.” Before you know it, it’ll be too high to see over:
MT: You got charged again?
CJ Hopkins: No… I got acquitted. I went to trial on the 23rd of January, and I wrote this up and I’ll send it to you so you can just look at the whole account. But at the trial I made a big aggressive statement that people republished all over the place. The judge acquitted me, and then called me all kinds of names and then put on her covid mask and stalked out of the courtroom. She called me a Schwurbler, which in German is kind of an idiot, I guess a babbler or someone.
Anyway, I read that statement, which pissed them all off, but she said, “Okay, you’re an idiot, but that’s not against the law, so you’re acquitted.” So I thought, “Great. This is over. I’m acquitted.” The prosecutor had no case whatsoever, and it was really embarrassing, and I figured it was all done, but my attorney reminded me: oh no, the prosecutor can appeal. Which he did. So now I’m facing another trial in appeals court. It’s not new charges, it’s the same charge, but the prosecutor’s appeal of my acquittal.
MT: The double jeopardy thing isn’t big in Germany, I take it?
CJ Hopkins: No.
MT: Are they going to make a different argument?
CJ Hopkins: I have no idea what they’re going to do. They have no argument… I mean, they put my tweets up on an overhead projector, like we were back in high school, and interrogated me about whether the Swastika was on top of the mask or behind the mask, that sort of thing. The prosecutor’s argument was basically, “We don’t believe that Mr. Hopkins is a Nazi, or pro-Nazi, we don’t believe he was trying to spread Nazi propaganda, but he nonetheless spread Nazi propaganda. because his tweet” – and this is a great part of their argument – “because if people saw his tweets, they would have to stop and think for a minute to figure out what they meant.”
MT: Essentially you can’t have satire, because that requires a person to have at least one thought.
CJ Hopkins: You can’t make people think. You’ve got to have beat-you-over-the-head messaging. I think the whole point of this… I’m sure it’s like the plea-bargain thing in the States. They figure if they hit you with a 3,600 Euro fine, you’re going to pay three times that much to fight it in court, so you’re just going to pay the fine and go away. I don’t think they ever expected to end up in court, and I have no idea what the prosecutor is doing with this appeal. The judge a few weeks later submitted a written verdict, which is strongly in my favor. She pretty much reiterated my attorney’s arguments and made it absolutely clear that what I did falls under the exceptions to the statute, and there’s nothing here to prosecute. Nonetheless, the prosecution’s going ahead.
MT: Did you have much Western news coverage?
CJ Hopkins: Right before the trial I had you, then Neue Zürcher Zeitung, which is the big paper of record in Switzerland, and James Kirchick at The Atlantic, who was a big help. I think it put a lot of pressure on the judge. My lawyer made her aware that Germany was being portrayed as a laughingstock in the international press. Aside from The Atlantic, it was all independent alternative media.
MT: In the Murthy Supreme Court case in the States Monday, there was an issue with what they call “traceability.” I see you don’t have a traceability issue, with this document from your case file?
CJ Hopkins: Exactly. That’s why I sent it to you. Unquestionably, this is a government office, directly involved with removing the tweets. The other thing that I was going to say, is that I’m looking at things like the Supreme Court case from a non-U.S. perspective. I’m outside of it. I’m watching the legislation that’s getting rolled out in Ireland and the UK and what’s happening to me here and what’s going on in the States, and it’s so obviously much broader than just a red-blue political story in the US. This is happening throughout the Western democratic countries.
I’m just desperate to get that across to people. I think it’s so easy for people to get locked into what’s going on in their own country and not see the bigger picture.
MT: What’s an example?
CJ Hopkins: There was just a piece in The Herald, in Scotland. The police were being trained there on how to crack down on abusive hate speech. According to this new legislation that’s rolling out and in the training manual, they were saying this could take place in comic performances or stage plays. People are being arrested in the UK for protest signs.
Papers like the New York Times have tried to pitch cases like Murthy v. Missouri and the backlash against censorship as a concoction of “Trump Allies,” but as @CJ Hopkins and others point out, the new domestic surveillance craze is a global phenomenon.
Matt TaibbiMar 20
Another example of broad new laws criminalizing speech:
If I can just put one little bug in your head, Matt, to whatever degree you can tweak people and let them know: “Hey, it’s not just Trump and the Democrats and the liberals and the woke people and all that.” This is happening all over the West, in all these different countries. I think that’s one thing that my case does, it provides folks with an opportunity to remind them that this is happening all over. The old rules don’t apply.
MT: Good luck with your case.
CJ Hopkins: Take care.
VITAL
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Neo-Nazi ideology has become one of the main protagonists of political and social life in Ukraine since the 2014 coup d'état. And that's a fact.
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.
Since the overpaid media shills will never risk their careers to report the truth, the world must rely on citizen journalists to provide the facts that explain reality.
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After briefly reviewing the theories of the relationship between religion and nationalism, I find the theories of Anthony Smith, George Mosse and Adrian Hutchinson the most compelling. They all agree that religion provides the propagandistic foundation for nationalism. But I also claim that it is a particular kind of religion, monotheism, that is directly connected to nationalism. Animistic tribal societies and Bronze Age agricultural states did not have the same religious paraphernalia as monotheism, and societies like ancient Egypt, Mesopotamian, China and India were never nationalistic.
The second part of my article focuses on how monotheistic beliefs and dramatization have the same parallels in nationalization processes. The categories include the destruction of intermediary institutions, the commitment to expansion and the importance of both origins and future destiny in history as opposed to mythology. In both nationalism and monotheism founders are mythologized. Both nationalism and monotheism use the arts (painting, music and literature) for altering states of consciousness.
Coming Attractions
In this article we will be discussing the social-psychological and psychological techniques by which both monotheism and nationalism promote loyalty. These include means of transmission (writing as opposed to oral), how social time (holidays) is marked throughout the year as well individual time (rites of passage). We find that marking geography (territory and cityscapes) is crucial to both monotheism and nationalism. Each demands self-sacrifice, either as religious martyrs or soldiers. Each requires a conversion process. Membership is usually lifetime. Each has processes of exclusion and its members are purified through wars. Membership is sustained over time through fear of being exiled.
Next, I show that both nationalism and monotheism support individualism (as opposed to collectivism) for different reasons. I provide six reasons why each supports individualism. Lastly, I provide two qualifications. First, I pose the question of why the monotheistic religion of Islam is not included. After all, Islam began as a world religion hundreds of years before the rise of nation-states. It would seem to have had plenty of time to connect to the emergence of nation-states around the world. Why didn’t it? Secondly, in the 21st century we have a nation-state that is very powerful (India) that is founded on Hinduism, a polytheistic rather than a monotheistic religion. How do I explain that?
Marking Time: Special Occasions
The ability to recognize patterns is one of the adaptive skills that allowed the human species to survive in competition with other species. We live most of our everyday lives as problem solvers. But at the same time we need to be socialized to rise, metaphorically, from the ground level and examine long-term patterns to assess where we have been and where we are going.
In pagan traditions, sacred patterns involve the changing of the seasons. In Catholicism they include Christmas day, Easter, Lent, feast days and saints’ days. At the same time, at the micro level, the rites of passage in the life of an individual are linked to spiritual traditions through the sacraments. In Catholicism, the sacraments include baptism at birth, confirmation during adolescence, marriage in adulthood, and the last rites just before death. Further, a Catholic is expected to attend mass at least once a week and to go to confession. Lastly, monotheists – whether Christian, Jew, or Muslim – make pilgrimages. What does this have to do with socialization into nationalism? Like monotheism, nationalism has its special days, including Independence Day, various presidents’ days, Thanksgiving and Memorial Day. There are pilgrimages to Washington, DC and trips to Mount Rushmore all of which support nationalism.
Socialization takes place in physical spaces. Pagan societies built mounds and temples to spirits or deities. In caste agricultural civilizations like Egypt and Mesopotamia, physical buildings of monumental proportions made of impenetrable materials had a psychologically intimidating impact that was not lost on those in power. Likewise, Christians, Jews and Muslim elites build churches, synagogues and mosques, not just to pay homage to their deities, but to propagandize the lower classes into following them since they are God’s representatives on earth. Sacred sites are not limited to places of worship. Streets and buildings are named after saints. In the case of nationalism, we have gargantuan state buildings in Washington, streets named after presidents, and monuments at Bunker Hill, the Statue of Liberty, Plymouth Rock, and Mount Rushmore.
For most “people of the book,” hearing stories from sacred texts like the Bible or the Koran begins at a very young age. This upbringing is strengthened by studying, as with learning the Catholic catechism in grammar school or preparing to read an excerpt from the Old Testament as part of a Jewish bar or bat mitzvah. The most logical parallel to nationalism would be reading or even memorizing the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. However, since this is rarely done, a very important source of nationalistic literature is novels about the American West.
Animistic hunting and gathering societies used cave paintings, amulets and totems) long before monotheists to socialize (Lewis-Williams, 2002) their members. In the case of Catholicism in the 17th century, baroque paintings were epically dramatized to overwhelm the population with monumental scale. Furthermore, music has perhaps been the most compelling of the arts in creating an immediate emotional reaction. Hymns such as “Amazing Grace”help the faithful sing their way into submission.
Nationalist socialization may come about when the population is being exposed to patriotic paintings such as Washington Crossing the Delaware. Music such as the “Star-Spangled Banner”, “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee”, and “God Bless America” are bound to rouse even the most reluctant patriot.
Social Action: Fulfilling Destiny Through Sacrifice
As we have seen, both monotheism and nationalism must use the past in order to justify the present. However, each must also organize in the present by referring to the future. This is done through the expectation of sacrifice of the participants to life itself.
Anthony Smith (2003) points out five instances in which fulfilling destiny through sacrifice is depicted in paintings. In Jean-Simon Berthélemy’s painting Manlius Torquatus Condemning His Son to Death, we see the conflicted determination of a Roman father’s loyalty to the state in executing his own child for disobeying his order to not engage the enemy in combat. Though torn by the clash of the demands of state and family, Torquatus overcomes his paternal feelings and refuses to listen to his son’s appeal, despite fervent pleas for mercy from friends and family. He maintains legal impartiality and values the state’s welfare over his personal interests. His right hand is publicly outstretched in the preservation of justice while his left hand clutches privately at a father’s agonizing heart.
According to Smith, the painting The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons, Jacques-Louis David chose the moment when an anguished Brutus, returning home after the execution of his own sons, hears the cries of his wife and the swooning of his eldest daughter as the bodies of his sons are brought to his house. Having driven out the Tarquin and helping to institute the Republic, Brutus was elected consul in 508 BCE only to discover a monarchial plot fostered by his wife’s family and supported by his two sons. He saw it as his duty to suppress all enemies of the republic, including his own sons.
In 1778 Johann Heinrich Füssli was commissioned by the Zurich council to paint Oath on the Rütli, the cornerstone of Swiss unity and independence. This painting depicts three towering figures who represent the three original forest cantons swearing “an oath of everlasting alliance in the Rütli meadow”. Smith argues that it expresses defiance, struggle, unification, and sacrifice for freedom. In its thrusting defiant male figures embody the ideal of willingness to die for the freedom of the nation.
About a century later, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’s painting Joan of Arc at the Coronation of Charles VIIalso conveys the ideal of self-sacrifice as struggle in the service of a higher cause. In 1770 Benjamin West painted The Death of General Wolfe, an epic depiction of the British general who was mortally wounded at the height of victory over the French in Quebec in 1759.
Lastly, Smith points out that during the French Revolution:
On the occasion of Marat’s murder in July 1793, art and ritual proceeded hand in hand. Marat’s friend David was immediately urged by the assembly to paint his portrait. Marat’s assassination shows with great veracity the ‘Friend of the People’ dying in his bathtub, with a Christ-like wound in his right lung…
David also had to supervise the lying in state and funeral of his friend. Marat’s corpse was exhibited on a high dais in the Cordeliers Church, above the bath and the packing case, with a smoking incense burner as the only light. The funeral…which lasted six hours took place to the accompaniment of muffled drum-beat and cannon… Girls in white with branches of cypress surrounded it, and they were followed by the entire Convention, the municipal authorities and the people of Paris. (Smith, 237)
These examples show how the political religion of nationalism draws upon Catholic traditions and uses them for national ends in order to evoke a sense of sacred communion with the glorious dead.
Sacrifice Choreographed in Festivals, Monuments and Song
The Napoleonic Wars were a catalyst for the process of cementing a sense of national identity not just among the French but for those societies under attack. French nationalism was answered by a growing German nationalism, which was at first cultural but soon became politicized with the Prussian defeat at the Battle of Jena in 1806. The War of Liberation of 1813 and the return of aristocratic regimes after Napoleon’s defeat stimulated collective expressions of national sentiment in the form of festivals and monuments.
Smith informs us that in 1832 the Germans held their first mass festival in the same alleged place where the ancient German tribes had held their meetings. There was a procession to the ruins of the castle ruins in which patriotic songs were sung and people wore ancient German dress. The later 19th century saw greater efforts to invite people into the sacred communion of the nation through mass celebrations. This began with the songs of the volunteers for the armies of the French Revolution.
Sustaining nationalist and religious loyalties is not just about getting lost in mystical symbols and myths or engaging in altruistic actions. Building political loyalty to a nation or a religion also involves acting collectively in a very structured way. In his very provocative book, Keeping Together in Time, William McNeill argues that building community involves “muscular bonding”: community dancing, communal work, singing, religious rituals and military drills. In community dancing, moving and singing together tends to dissolve group tensions, reminding community members that they have more in common than they have differences. In the area of work, singing and moving together makes otherwise boring work more creative. The great large-scale architectural projects of ancient civilizations could never have been built without workers singing and moving in sync. McNeill points out that the rise of religious dervish orders at the beginning of the 11th century was so powerful in altering states of consciousness that they came close to being declared heretical.
In addition, McNeill argues that militarymuscular bonding, specifically close-order drilling, creates altered states. In his book The Pursuit of Power, McNeill concluded that the victory of European armies over non-European armies was largely due to well-drilled troops who were more efficient in battle. Soldiers moved in unison while performing each of the actions needed to load, aim, and fire their guns. The volleys came faster and misfires were fewer when everyone acted in unison and kept time to shouted commands. The result was more ammunition projected at the enemy in less time.
However, it was not only the superiority of weapons or efficiency in using them that made Europeans victorious. Drilled troops created deep social-psychological altered states. McNeill suggests that many veterans report that group effort in battle was the high point of their lives. Just like the boundary loss of whirling dervishes, the individual merges with the platoon.
By inadvertently tapping the inherent human emotional response to keeping together in time, military drills helped create obedient, reliable, and effective soldiers with a spirit that not only superseded previous identities – ethnicity, region, religion – but also insulated them from outside attachments. Soldiers could be counted on to obey their officers predictably even when fighting hundreds or thousands of miles away from their home base.
McNeill describes witnessing soldiers marching in step as both awe inspiring and terrifying. No twitches, twists, mutterings nor distractions could be seen or heard in the ranks. On the one hand, soldiers were perfectly composed, calm and moving to music. But on the other hand, they were completely poised to destroy human life or be destroyed by it.
For most of human history, the ruling classes understandably had reservations with arming the lower classes for fear they might recognize their class interests. However, the group experience of altered states that resulted from prolonged drills made soldiers loyal and devoted far beyond any class loyalties. In the 17th century, for poverty-stricken peasant recruits and jobless urbanites recruited from the fringes of an increasingly atomized, commercialized society, the military created a new artificial primary community, providing camaraderie that prevailed in good times and bad, where old-fashioned principles of command and subordination gave meaning and direction to life. It became safe to arm even the poorest classes, pay them a regular wage and expect obedience. In a time of domestic conflict, European soldiers were even willing to fire upon their own social class.
Before the drill, in the standing army of kings, obedience was extracted through fear of punishment. But the coming of the drill created a lively spirit between soldiers that was less prevalent than before. Now, instead of standing armies of subjects to a king, the citizens’ army shared the collective emotional identity of the nation. For soldiers who received regular pay, there was a good reason to not break ranks.
It would be an overstatement to say that drilling caused nationalism. The military revolution occurred hundreds of years before the rise of nationalism, which I said came about at the end of the 18th century. But there is no question that military drills helped sustain nationalism once it appeared. Other military formations such as the cavalry couldn’t create such a solidarity among those fighting.
The last part of socialization to nationalism is the unusual time when a person either joins through conversion or departs in an imposed or self-imposed exile. Typical examples of conversion for monotheists are the moment when Moses was on Mount Sinai or when Saint Paul was on the road to Damascus. The Great Awakenings in the United States in 1725 and 1780, though starting out as Protestant religious revivals, had nationalist implications, according to Wilbur Zelinsky (1988). A nationalist counterpart of conversion is the indoctrination immigrants or refugees receive upon becoming U.S. citizens.
Neither monotheists nor nationalists tolerate rejection lightly. For both, membership is expected to be lifetime. For national states, registration at birth and death is compulsory. What becomes of people who decide to leave? In the case of Catholicism, there is excommunication. In all monotheistic religions, there are attacks for such deviations as apostasy, heresy, blasphemy, inquisitions and witch hunts. Nonbelievers are attacked in religious wars as godless atheists. So too, in nationalism, expatriates are feared, ostracized and shunned. They are considered unworthy, traitorous or treasonous. In the case of political opposition, such people become the targets of CIA spying and assassination attempts. As for countries that oppose the nationalist vision, they are subject to state terror, world wars and torture. Please see my summary table at the end of this article.
Monotheism, Nationalism and Individualism
Both monotheism and nationalism support individualism in the following ways:
Each focuses the attention of the individual on a singlesource of loyalty in the objective world: in the case of nationalism it is the nation, and in the case of monotheism it is a single deity.
Each marginalizes and undermines intermediate loyalties between the individual and the single, ultimate source. In the case of monotheism, it is earth spirits, ancestor spirits, totems or gods and goddesses. Similarly, nationalism demands that citizens subordinate regional, class, ethnic and even religious loyalties in favor of the state. The individual must have one and only one loyalty: the state. So with religion, the second commandment of the Bible reads, “I am the Lord Thy God, thou shalt not have strange gods before me”. This not only applies to religion, but also holds as an expectation that the state demands of its citizens. Both nationalism and monotheism are large-scale emulsifiers that hold together and paper over class or religious conflicts, which monotheists and nationalists tell us will grow and spread otherwise.
The relationship between the individual and the nation or the religion is presented as a freely chosen association or a covenant. In the case of monotheism, individuals are proclaimed to have free will, with the choice for whether to obey God. In the case of the nation, individuals are free to renounce their citizenship and go elsewhere.
Each binds strangers together as opposed to kin groups, clans or neighborhoods.
Both have extremely violent ideologies. Monotheism has been responsible for more deaths than any other group membership. After the military revolution in the 17th century, nationalistic wars at the end of the 19th century (and of course the 20th century) show that the state has been at least as violent.
I hope to have shown that it is a mistake to think of individualism as either anti-social or a withdrawal from social relations. Individualism does mean a weakening of particular kinds of loyalties: kin group, village, regional or estate. But it also means a connection with a de-sensualized community, made possible by the printing press and newspapers.
While the forces of modernization may have weakenedreligious beliefs, the doctrines, myths, rituals, and entire architecture of religion (specifically monotheism) were reorganized and used in the name of a secular political religion: nationalism. Beginning in the 19th century, individualists were expected to renounce loyalty to class, ethnicity, and region – not so they could be “free as a bird,” but also to become bound to a new secular community of strangers serving the state. Citizens may gain political rights, but that is far from the end of the story. The socialization into nationalism has been an enormously successful project of the 19th-century ruling classes. Individualists were mobilized to fight and die in wars to prove their patriotism. The reality is now that stateless individuals are not allowed to exist anywhere in the world.
Please see my table at the end of this article.
Qualifications: What About the Place of Islam in Nationalism?
It might have crossed your mind that I did not include Islam in my monotheistic roots of nationalism comparisons. Certainly, Islam is monotheistic. Furthermore, when we look at Islamic fundamentalism, it would seem that surely there is fanatical nationalism at work. But a closer look shows that Islam has a similar internationalism as the Catholics. Being fanatical about your religion so that you will kill and die for it is not necessarily nationalism. Why did Islam not develop a nationalism the way the Jews and the Christians did: There are at least the following reasons:
Western nationalism was inseparable from the development of industry.While Islam went through a “merchant capital” phase of capitalism, they never initiated an industrialization process that capitalism did in the West. Industrialization is very important in pulverizing intermediate loyalties which is crucial to the emergence of nationalism.
Nationalism in the West was not built by one country at a time. The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 created a system of states that became the foundation for nationalism at the end of the 18th century. There was no system of states that existed in West Asia at the time. Predominantly what existed were sprawling tribes, kingdoms or empires, not nation-states.
In the 19th and 20th century, Islam has become a religion of the oppressed. European nation-states were not fighting against imperialism when they arose in England, France, the United States and Holland. Their development was not shackled by fighting defensive wars. West Asian nationalism could not develop autonomously, but as a reaction to being colonized
Qualification: What About the Presence of a Polytheistic Nationalism in India?
It would seem that when we look at the nation-state of India today, it would constitute a clear exception to my argument that only monotheism develops nationalism. Here we have the polytheistic religion of Hinduism as the guiding religion of Modi’s India. How can this be?
The title of my article is the monotheistic roots of nationalism. As we know, the origin of anything (monotheism) does not guarantee destiny (what something becomes in the future). New processes can take place later in time which are independent of their origin. My two previous articles on nationalism only went as far as the beginning of World War I. The events in the 20th century that went beyond the monotheistic roots of nationalism were two World Wars, a depression, fascism and national liberation movements especially after World War II.
In Europe as far back as the Middle Ages there were other political formations long before there were nation-states. There were tribes, city-states, federations, principalities, provinces, kingdoms and empires. With the exception of some empires, all these formations were decentralized. These forms of political organizations continued to exist all over the world even after nation-states emerged. But the effect of political mobilization first in World War I and then World War II, pulverized these earlier formations. The Ottoman and Hapsburg empires did not survive World Wars. Tribes, federations and city-states were too weak to survive two world wars and became hammered into nation-states. It is no accident that at the end of World War I, the new global mediator was the League of Nations not the League of provinces, kingdom or empires. After World War II it was the United Nations that was promoted. After that it is very difficult to have any political standing in world politics without being organized into a nation-state.
In the case of India, revolutionaries had to build up and centralize their states if they were to fight the British. They succeeded. After World War II Indian religions continued to compete – Buddhism, Islam and Hinduism to name three. As India (as many nations in the 20th century) turned politically to the right over the last thirty years it needed a religious justification for its shift. Hinduism, as the oldest Indian religion was championed. So, in the case of India, Hinduism did not help to form nationalism as Western monotheism helped nationalism. It was a reaction after a political nationalism that had already formed.
Something similar happened in the African liberation movements after World War II. African centralizedstates had to form in order for those revolutionaries to overthrow the colonizers. This has not been easy for those states as tribal and ethic loyalties in parts of Africa were fierce. Islam proved to be a better unifying force as a world religion than various decentralized pagan magical traditions. In the case of Africa Islam, though itself not a religion that helped nation-states to form prior to the 20th century, became one. Again, we have the case of a religion not being the cause of nationalism but a secondary reaction.
Commonalities Between Monotheism and Nationalism in the Socialization Process From Birth to Death
Monotheism(Judeo-Christian)
Category of Comparison
Nationalism(United States)
Written Scriptures (Bible) interpreted by priests or rabbis
Means of Transmission
Written Constitutions interpreted by courts (judges)
Special occasions throughout the year:Christmas day, Easter, Lent, feast days, saints days
Marking Social time
Special occasions throughout the year:Independence Day, President’s Day, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day
Rites of passage:Baptism, confirmation, marriage, anointing of the sick and last rites
Marking Individual Time
Rites of passage:Cub scouts, boy scouts, girl scouts, draft registration
Sunday school, private religious schools
Educational Training
Public school civics classes on American government and history
Detached from territory: Cosmopolitan (early prophets)Attached to Territory: Promised land, Zionists-Palestine, Christians-Bethlehem
Marking Geography (territory)
Attached to territory: (Promised land)Swiss Alps, U.S. Western frontier
Churches, Synagogues, Mosques, Vatican, streets named after saints, religious statues
Marking geography (urban landmarks)
Federal and state buildings Streets named after presidents, Monuments: Bunker Hill, Statue of Liberty, Plymouth Rock. Mount Rushmore
Pilgrimages to Mecca, Jerusalem, Bethlehem
Marking Geography (movement)
Pilgrimages to Washington DC
Sacrifice self (religious martyrs)
Sacrifice
Sacrifice of self in patriotic wars (Tomb of Unknown Soldier)
Community dancing rituals
Collective Bodily Orchestration
Military drills
Moses on Mount Sinai,St. Paul on the road to Damascus
Conversion
Great Awakening in America (1725), Second Great Awakening (1780), Naturalization ceremony with immigrants and refugees receiving citizenship rights
To be free every individual must belong to a religion (no pagans or atheists)
Loyalty and Exclusivity
To be free, every individual must belong to a nation (no nationless individuals)
Religious wars
Attitude Towards Nonbelievers
State-to-state wars
Usually lifetime
Length of Membership
State membership usually lifelong (compulsory registration of birth, death)
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.
Since the overpaid media shills will never risk their careers to report the truth, the world must rely on citizen journalists to provide the facts that explain reality.
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ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS
Victoria Nuland
Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.
Gonzalo Lira
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PRECIS
"in 1991...upon the implosion of the Soviet Union...there was a huge power vacuum. The US figured that by encouraging oligarchs, by outsourcing tyranny to oligarchs, they could better control these regions...That's why corruption was institutionalised. Ukraine, in particular, soon became a cesspool of Western corruption. Ukraine never overcame it, but Russia, under Putin, gradually emerged from this nightmare to take her seat again as a great world power."
Streamed live on Mar 27, 2022KHARKIV
Lira holds forth on the origins of Ukraine's astonishing corruption, and the deep-seated emotional motivations for Nuland's hatred of Russia, which Lira traces back to injuries and persecution inflicted on her great-grandfather during Russian pogroms in Bessarabia almost 150 years ago, forcing his son's emigration to America. This emotional scar, shared by many Jews in the US establishment (Blinken, and the Kagans and the rest of the neoconservatives, for example) may explain, to some extent, their deeply-held Russophobia. Victoria Nuland, says Lira, is not a nice person. She's a suckup to those above her and a mean tyrant to those with less power. Meanwhile, as one of the key people in charge of "the Ukraine project", she oversees the colossal grift taking place in that country by all kinds of US and Western business and political figures, much of it huge money-laundering operations, theft and illegal use of state assets, etc. Hunter Biden was one of such individuals, his "line" was chiefly bribery through influence peddling (his father). All in all a provocative discussion by an outspoken man whose truths made him persona non gratissima with the US/Western establishment, a fact which explains why the US did not lift a finger to help him when he became a prisoner of the Ukrainian regime's goons.
Correction: Victoria Nuland does have two children, David and Elena Kagan. So I was wrong about that part, which I take back. But I will add, she must’ve been a nightmare mother. GL
Editor's Note: Gonzalo Lira's ConundrumA late-blooming anti-imperialist, to put it that way, since till the end Lira was hard to classify, this was a man who lived his entire life with a huge contradiction. The scion of an aristocratic Chilean family, perhaps by dint of socio-cultural upbringing Lira was a lifelong unrepentant supporter of dictator Augusto Pinochet. This posture, of course, does not add up when we examine his YouTube persona, which is that of a cogent and unrelenting critic of Kiev's criminal Neonazi regime and the US itself.
We'll never know if, as time went by, and he became older and wiser (he always demonstrated a thirst for knowledge and no fear toward new ideas), Lira might have shed his "momio" persona and finally embraced a genuine leftism. This would have forced him to discard a multitude of prejudices inherited from his class and ethnicity, allowing him to consider richer explanations of political reality, including, perish the thought, Marxism itself. —PG
dyed-in-the-wool reactionaries seen by the masses as rigidly and haughtily anachronistic. Its derogatory connotation is derived from the term "mummy". After the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, it fell into disuse, being replaced by the equivalent "facho”. (Short for “fascist”). (Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator)
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.
Since the overpaid media shills will never risk their careers to report the truth, the world must rely on citizen journalists to provide the facts that explain reality.
Unfortunately, most people take this site for granted. DONATIONS HAVE ALMOST DRIED UP… PLEASE send what you can today! JUST USE THE BUTTON BELOW
Streamed live on Feb 17, 2024#russia#putin#biden Western "Leftists" Eulogize and Praise Alexei Navalny, Misty Winston Joins Nick at Noon Live
Nick (deservedly) demolishes Cornel West's praise for Alexei Navalny, outing him for the phony leftist milquetoast establishment critic that he is. Who can trust a man who eulogises a transparent intel asset of Western imperialism?
Navalny was such a Nazi shit that even imperial “human rights” frauds @amnesty temporarily revoked their “prisoner of conscience” label of him. Cornel West is a fucking joke. https://t.co/isYKj7z0ST
Sanders' betrayal, of course, is no surprise. His role as a sheepdog for the imperial establishment, and especially the repugnantly corrupt Democrats, is by now widely recognised by those who pay due attention to deeds and not just words.
The Black Church Provides Cover for Genocide | Joe Biden Lies About Civil Rights Record AGAIN
ABOUT NICK CRUSE • CITIZEN JOURNALIST Back in March, 2022, The Identity Paradox, did an interview with the uber lucid Nick Cruse (see below), that also provided a good intro to what Nick has been doing with his comrades at RBN. Besides Nick, this indispensable network has formidable members like Sabby Sabs and Compton Jay, among others, and all programs are not only entertaining but a fount of rich radical insight into contemporary politics and society. For these and many other reasons, we recommend RBN to all those who are confused about today's insanely devious political topography, or, for that matter, anyone who needs to clean up the accumulated claptrap in the attic.
BONUS FEATURE
THE IDENTITY PARADOX INTRO (From The Need for Black Leftist Media podcast) Interested in an “unapologetic Black, leftist, working-class” perspective on current sociopolitical events? If so, join us as we speak with Nick Cruse, citizen journalist and co-founder of Revolutionary Blackout Network (RBN). We discuss a variety of topics, including the importance of independent Black, working-class commentary in an age of corporatized journalism, the leftist failures of electoral politics in the US, the absence of an established leftist perspective in mainstream media, the challenges of social media activism (particularly the “BreadTube” effect), as well as the potential to change the current status quo through ground-up, working class solidarity.
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.
Since the overpaid media shills will never risk their careers to report the truth, the world must rely on citizen journalists to provide the facts that explain reality.
Unfortunately, most people take this site for granted. DONATIONS HAVE ALMOST DRIED UP… PLEASE send what you can today! JUST USE THE BUTTON BELOW
John Varoli
