Bruce Lerro

Orientation

How dare you!

• How can you write an article against the Democratic Party less than six months before the election? You must be a Trump supporter!
• We must keep Trump out of office no matter what!
• Vote Blue no matter who! (Or now, Vote Biden no matter what!)
• Only a privileged person would consider voting for the Green Party!
• You must be a dupe of the Russians!
• If you don’t vote for the Democrats, you must be antisemitic!
• This election is the most important in history!

Anyone who is critical of the Democratic party from the left will be greeted by these slogans, warnings and accusations.

What is dogmatism?

A little over a year ago I wrote an article titled The Dogmatic Personality. In it I attempted to show fourteen characteristics of dogmatic thinking and contrasted it to open-minded thinking. Please see the table at the end of this article. As in my previous article, I will follow Judy J. Johnson’s book What’s So Wrong with Being Absolutely Right: The Dangerous Nature of Dogmatic Belief.

Which social class is dogmatic?

When we think of a dogmatic personality, we are likely to imagine a conservative “Archie Bunker” type, a lower middle-class or working-class man. The open-minded person seems likely to be a well-educated middle-class or upper middled-class liberal, and probably someone who votes for the Democratic Party. But times have changed. For the last 50 years, the Democratic Party has shifted from a center-left party to a right-wing Neoliberal party which has been increasingly embattled and compromised through its involvement in overseas wars, a deindustrialization process, financial debt accumulation and austerity programs for working class and poor people. I will describe in this article that in fact the Democratic Party has become a dogmatic, authoritarian party whose leaders and loyalist followers can easily be characterized as dogmatic in all fourteen characteristics.

What is the relationship between dogmatism and authoritarianism?

Now that you have reviewed the fourteen characteristics of dogmatic thinking in the  table, we need to clarify what its relationship is to authoritarianism. Johnson sees authoritarianism as a subcategoryof dogmatism. According to Bob Altemeyer in his book The Authoritarian Specter, authoritarianism means the principle of blind submission to authority, as opposed to individual autonomy in thinking and acting. He defines authoritarianism as the co-variation of three kinds of attitudes:

• Authoritarian submission to established authorities
• Authoritarian aggression against anyone the authorities target
• Conventionalism adhered to by society and established by the authorities

The first nine characteristics of dogmatism plus characteristic number 14 are all psychological or social psychological qualities. Authoritarianism is more sociological involving the relationship between groups (characteristics 10-13). In terms of personality, Judy Johnson says that 6 out of the 14 characteristics of dogmatism would qualify a personality as dogmatic. While it is hard to imagine an authoritarian personality with characteristics 10-13 would not have the other dogmatic qualities as well, it is not too far-fetched to imagine a dogmatic person minding their p’s and q’s when it comes to large groups.

My claim

My aim in this article is that the Democratic Party and its upper middle class loyalists have all of these dogmatic and authoritarian characteristics.

Five Cognitive Ingredients in Dogmatic Thought

The  Five Characteristics of Dogmatic Cognition are:

• Intolerance of ambiguity (either/or thinking) due to anxiety
• Defense cognitive closure
• Rigid certainty
• Compartmentation (sealing off contradictory beliefs)
• Lack of self-reflectiveness

Intolerance of ambiguity

The Neoliberal Democrats insist that there are only two choices: Democrats or Republicans. Any votes outside the Democratic Party are a vote for Trump. Under these conditions, the Democrats cannot imagine that people voting for a third party do so in the hopes of building a third party over time. For them a vote for a third party can only be a vote for a second party. But what about the people who don’t vote? In any given election, over the past fifty years between 40-50% of the population do not vote. For Neoliberal Democrats ⁽¹⁾ this is not a problem. Why? Because they treat people who don’t vote as if they are the ignorant, stupid or apathetic lower classes. What Neoliberal Democrats cannot comprehend is that the reason people do not vote is because there are no candidates that represent their interests. They think the uncommitted are weighing between them and a Green party, when what is really going on is the uncommitted weighing between voting Green and not voting at all.

Defensive cognitive closure

The Neoliberal Democratic candidates act like they are entitled to the vote of anyone on the socialist left. They don’t think they have work to get it, or that they might be expected to answer to potential voters for their past failures. They insist they are the only game in town for “reasonable” people. Only a privileged person can afford to vote for the Green Party. In other words, racial minorities are all voting Democrat and as a white person you would be voting against them. The problem with this argument is that Trump is gaining more and more support of African American and Latino voters. Just as large numbers of working-class people left the Democratic Party decades ago, so now their much-vaulted race base is starting to break ranks.

Rigid certainty (cannot state the conditions for admitting they are wrong)

As many of you know, the philosopher of science Karl Popper claimed that a good scientific theory must insist on stating the conditions under which they can be proven wrong. It is also a good rule in argumentation classes to state the conditions under which your claim could be wrong. Do the Democratic Party politicians or their loyalists do this when they solicit new voters? No, they don’t. To be fair, the entire politician system in Mordor is not set up for parties to actually account for the contradictions between their promises and what they deliver. But if you talk to an upper-middle class loyalist and ask them what are the conditions under which they would give up on their loyalty to the Democrats they look like deer caught in the headlights. Next to no one has traced the relationship between promises and deliverance. Though well-educated, they have not thought seriously about what their liberal beliefs really are and how well the party has been faithful to them. No matter what the Democrats have done or not done over the past four years, they expect you to wipe the slate clean and simply say we have to vote for them.

Cognitive compartmentalization – sealing off contradictory beliefs

My hunch is that a large number of people who consider themselves liberal today believe the following:

• The state should provide for pensions, and unemployment.
• There should be universal healthcare.
• The minimum wage should be raised to keep up with inflation.
• Women should make the same amount of wages or salary as men for the same kind of work.
• Everyone should be able to go to college without being tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
• Unions should be supported because they protect working-class people.
• Capitalist profits should be reinvested in society in the form of infrastructural building and repair and mass transportation.
• Internationally the United States should not be at war and meddling in the affairs of other countries. Investment in the military should only have a defensive role to play.

I could go on but you get the idea. The problem is that when the Democratic Party gained power over the last 50 years they have NOT done any of these things.  It takes a great deal of cognitive internal gyrations to know these things and still vote for Neoliberal Democrats.

Lack of self-reflectiveness – refusal to bend back and analyze themselves

Hillary Clinton, with all the Deep State wealth and the Neoliberal capitalists behind her, managed to lose to Donald Trump. In a political party that was sensitive and self-reflective, they would say “where did we go wrong? Why did so many people not vote? We used to depend on working class votes. How can it be that many working class people are Republicans? What is wrong with our candidates? What population demographics were weak?”. They did none of this. Instead, in true paranoic and utterly dishonest style they blamed the Russians. Since 2016, whenever the Democratic Party failed, it was the Russians. This is a powerful change in party affairs. For 15 years the Democratic Party mocked and dismissed the 9/11 Truth movement for its tinfoil, paranoid conspiracy theory. For the past eight years the Democratic Party has so little understanding of its right-wing 50-year drift that its answer to all its problems is now “the Russians”.

 The Four Emotional Disorders

Although Neoliberal Democrats, being upper middle class, have more control over their minds than working class dogmatists they can still reify their emotions, making them “rigid states” rather than processes that can be changed by cognitive changes in interpretations, explanations or assumptions. Neoliberal Democrats, like everyone else has a need for social connection, but as an upper-middle person they are surrounded by most people who are not like them. Yet they must find commonality with them became they want them to join the Democratic Party. Because they are more or less oblivious of the social class distinctions, they find ways to avoid talking about them. They are most emotionally sensitive to race relations, since most African-Americans and Latinos are not upper middle class.

The four kinds of emotional issues that arise, according to Judy Johnson are:

• Anxiety and fear
• Lack of a sense of humor
• Oversensitivity to unintended infringements which result in anger
• Excessive pessimism and despair

For Neoliberal Democrats the anxiety and fear they have centers around:

• What will happen if a Republican, specifically Trump, wins the election?
• What will the mass of Trump followers will do?

Anxiety and fear

Faithfully, like clockwork, the only claim to winning voters over is fear of what will happen if a right-winger like Trump gets in. Over the past 4 years with the Democratic Party in power, we have seen billions of dollars wasted in Ukraine followed by a massacre of Palestinians funded by the Democratic Party. How much worse can it be than this? The Neoliberal fears know no bounds. They never state the conditions under which they are willing to admit there really is not much difference between the two parties, let alone to say there is only one party, capitalism, with two wings.

Secondly, Neoliberal Democrats fear the great unleashing of the great unwashed Trump followers. These folks are imagined to be goosestepping Gestapos terrorizing these liberals when they decide to have an outdoor brunch. It will be too late for liberal Karens to call the police! In reality the laughable power of Trump’s followers came about over a temporary “take-over” of the U.S. Capitol building in 2021. Did his followers block the roads, seize the radio and tv stations and begin broadcasting like what would happen in a real coup? No, they simply wandered around, almost like tourists, (often being ushered into the "sacred precincts" by the guards themselves), perhaps breaking a few things before being taken over by the police. For Neoliberal Democrats, this is the end of civilization. As for these rebels' treacherous fascist leader, Trump, he was nowhere to be found.

Lack of a sense of humor

Having a sense of humor means you can step out of situations and see them in perspective. Humor allows for a break in being serious before returning to serious endeavors. Lack of humor (being humorless) means you are serious all the time. This comes out most clearly in the Neoliberal attempts to control people’s vocabulary so they are “politically correct”. Up to a point it is reasonable to expect people to upgrade their vocabulary to be more sensitive racial and sexist issues. But past a certain point, as communication grinds to a halt because every word is dissected, the situation becomes laughable. But for the Neoliberal Democrat, this is no laughing matter. The combination of self-righteousness mixed with completely unrealistic expectations makes it understandable why the right-wingers get fed up at best and full of hatred at worst.

Oversensitivity to unintended infringements which result in anger

At the same time, the Neoliberal Democrats are terrified of being called racist.

After all, they work so hard to “understand” the history of racism and the conditions of Blacks and Latinos today. They feel betrayed when they themselves are called out on some racism. This is where accusations of being a “snowflake” really come from. For example, liberals are only dimly aware of their racism when it comes to Black politicians. For them, any Black man or woman who is well-educated must be liberal. Low and behold, when presented with people like Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell or Barak Obama it comes as a great surprise they could be so right-wing. No, Obama was never FDR in waiting. He is a Harvard Lawyer, trained in the Chicago School market fundamentalism and his political actions were consistently right-wing, neoconservative, in fact. But to this day Neoliberals refer to him as a great liberal. Their racism comes in when they do not grant the full political spectrum to any minority politician.

Excessive pessimism and despair

As I’ve pointed out in other articles, the beginning of Neoliberalism came about through the Rockefeller orchestrated Club of Rome report followed by a book called the Limits to Growth. Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission was founded around the same time. This was a clarion call to let Americans know that the days of abundance, a high standard of living, more leisure time and a better life through science was ending. Instead, we were told that people needed to tighten up their belts and do with less (Jimmy Carter). Why? Because nature was limited. Secondly, there were too many people on the earth and the population problem would soon be out of control. Thirdly, there was global warming caused, according to them, by the industrial revolution. Lastly, thanks to all our high living we have polluted the earth. This systemic attack on the values of the Enlightenment by the Rockefellers, together with their control over Think Tanks and Universities and mass media has been the methodical message of Neoliberal Democrats for 50 years. Ironically, the countries of the multi-polar world like China, Russia and Iran are carrying on the Promethean tradition of the Enlightenment with their infrastructure projects, harnessing many forms of energy.

Five Behavioral Characteristics of Dogmatism

Dogmatism is not just what is going on cognitively and emotionally inside of people. Dogmatism is also about how people behave and act. The five behavioral characteristics of dogmatism are:

• dogmatic authoritarian aggression towards minorities.

An Arrogant, dismissive communication style

Because Neoliberals usually make their living from speaking and writing, like lawyers and academic professors, they are at home in stressing the importance of language. Compared to them, both Trump and his supporters are at a disadvantage. Neoliberals are at their worst when it comes to attempting to control language. Secure in their tenured college professions Neoliberal professors control their classroom by making them open forums for every possible identity politics group to have their say. At the same time they insist that other members of the class learn to use the right words while addressing an identity politics group from gender pronouns on down the line. In their drive to inclusivity, they imagine they are liberating humanity and winning new people for the Neoliberal Democrats. The problem is that the largest sector of the population is unaffected by these battles about identity politics on college campuses. Some of the most interesting hypocrisy within Neoliberal Democrats is that the arm-twisting that takes place on college campuses never reaches the upper echelons  of the party. Are Elizabeth Warren, Chuck Schumer or Joe Biden going to be corrected by Kamala Harris when they refer to a non-binary man as “he” when he prefers to be addressed as a “they”?

Preoccupation with power and status in form

Neoliberal Democrats are snobs. A very simple comparison which brings this out is the difference between how they react to Obama vs how they react to Trump. Obama above all has all the formal qualities they look for. First of all, he is Black, but not too black, not Marshawn Lynch black. He is tall, slender and graceful in mannerisms. He is articulate, seems easy-going and reasonable. He doesn’t seem to get angry and he plays basketball. He went to the right schools and did well for himself as a Harvard lawyer. As Neoliberal Democrats swoon over the lure of his appearance and his rhetorical skills the way he acted as a president – the wars started, his failure to stem the economic tide of 50 years of decline, his failure to help working class Blacks economically – go unnoticed.

SIDEBAR

On the other hand, Trump is viscerally hated. He is a loud blowhard who neither knows nor cares about political protocol or diplomacy. He is fat, with a ridiculous wig along with orange face makeup. He looks like the worst lower middle-class used car salesman you can imagine. He knows nothing of history and bullies his way through press conferences. He has a string of unsuccessful business disasters under his belt and his behavior towards women infuriates Neoliberal feminists. He prides himself in mocking the politically correct. He has the attention span of a gnat and has no coherent foreign policy. But if you ask Neoliberals about his political actions, whether domestic or international they usually don’t know. What matters is they find him disgusting on a personal and psychological basis and that is enough for them and unsuited to be the President of the United States. (Not a single leading liberal castigated Trump for assassinating Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, a Middle East hero to hundreds of millions of Muslims around the globe, along with a prominent Iraqi military leader, in Iraq, on January 3, 2020, gangster style. In fact some praised him, for "acting presidential".).

The same class contempt is visited upon his followers. For Neoliberals, Trump followers are “deplorables”. They are uneducated, don’t care about facts and do not know how to reason logically. They think dualistically and more are likely to be some kind of ignorant, fundamentalist Christian. They know nothing about history, or geography and could care less. They are fat, have teeth missing and don’t dress properly. They watch too much TV and are preoccupied with the worst types of entertainment from World Wrestling to Reality Shows. This class contempt blinds Neoliberal Democrats from being sympathetic to the fact that Trumpsters are overworked and underpaid, have insecure jobs and are living from paycheck to paycheck. Secure in their own professional jobs, Neoliberals are too proud to visit the Trumpeters where they live and come electoral campaigns, deal with their own discomfort. Trump did next to nothing for the working-class or lower middle-class in his four years, but he did visit them, unlike Queen Hillary or Bernie Sanders, who stayed close the college campuses.

Glorification of the in-group and vilification of the out-group

For this category let’s turn from domestic to international affairs. For Neoliberal Democrats Russia has been their enemy even after the break-up of the Soviet Union. When you hear the name Vladimir Putin the Pavlovian response is “evil dictator”. There is normal reasoning about his political leadership with its pros and cons. Neoliberal Democrats who get on their hobby horses of “Putin”, “Putin” usually have no understanding of what Putin has meant for the recovery of Russia after being left for dead by Obama's buddies, the Chicago boys in the 1990s. The same dualistic sloganeering treatment is meted out to Syria, Iran, Lebanon, North Korea and Venezuela.

In the case of the glorification of an in-group let us turn to Israel. “The only democracy in the Middle East” has just massacred over 40,000 Palestinians, probably 20,000 children—a historic crime even in the annals of modern war— and yet the Democratic president has supplied the Zionists with billions of dollars in weaponry and unfailing financial, diplomatic and media support.  “Israel has a right to defend itself”! What are you, antisemitic?” Then there is the war in Ukraine. The Ukrainian fascists—long cultivated by the CIA and other Western intel services—became “freedom fighters” for Neoliberals against the evil Putin. It never occurs to these Neoliberals that the money spent on arming Ukraine could have been spent on infrastructure repairs at home, building low-cost housing, supporting the growth of unions and upgrading the minimum wage. Since the working class is invisible to Neoliberal Democrats this alternative way of spending money never occurs to them.

Thanks to the work of Matt Ehret and Cynthia Chung, the British Empire has been exposed as at the root of imperialism in the Western world. The British Empire sided with the South in the American Civil War. All along the line, this Empire tried to prevent the United States from industrializing because it feared the competition. In the 20^th century the British Empire was supporting the growth of fascism in Europe long before Mussolini or Hitler. After the Soviet Union defeated the Nazis, The British Empire helped arrange to have Nazi scientists and political bigwigs safely transported to the Western world where they were never prosecuted. Yet England is naively seen by Neoliberal Democrats as some kind of benign “liberal democracy” worthy of a “special relationship”.  (The stunning perfidy of Albion, incarnated in Churchill, who exercised a malevolent influence over Harry Truman, can be gleaned from this indispensable article: From 1945-49 the US and UK planned to bomb Russia into the Stone Age ).

Dogmatic authoritarian submission to authorities

To understand this let us look at the manner in which the Democratic Party dictated that there will be no competing candidates in the 2024 primaries. This is an attempt at totalitarian control of the party. “No” you might say, “the other candidates agreed not to run a campaign”. Was that a real democratic process? During the Moscow Purges, members of the Communist Party willingly confessed their guilt before the Central Committee and were purged. “No” say the anti-communist Democrats. There must have been some ‘sinister psychological brainwashing’ on the part of the evil Stalin”. But when it comes to the dictates from on-high, Powers that Be within the Democratic Party saying that there will be no party competition, where is the outcry form the Neoliberal Democrats? Why aren’t we permitted to imagine there must have been some sinister psychological brainwashing on the part of the Democratic Party elite to keep other candidates from running. No Neoliberal Democrat would dare point the finger at AIPAC, the most power Israeli Lobby in the United States. That would be antisemitic!

There is also passivity of liberal Democrats to leaving their own party and building another one. Upper middle-class Neoliberals make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. There is no reason why they couldn’t pool their money and start a new party closer to an FDR model. Sure, it would take maybe 12 years to become a force to be reckoned with. However, upper-middle class people are trained to think long-term in their work. They are well-educated and can envision a long-term trajectory, not just within Mordor, but internationally. Since liberal Democrats support capitalism, surely they are smart enough to notice that finance capital and wars are not productive for capitalism in the long-run. Why is there no movement to leave the Democrats? To do so would be disobedient to the leaders of the Democratic Party and those capitalists’ national and international interests that stand behind them.

Dogmatic authoritarian aggression towards minorities

If the Neoliberal Democratic Party lived up to its name, it would welcome competition from a third party, especially from the left. They would say “let us compete! Your program will teach us some things and the competition will be good for our ‘democracy’”. Instead, faithfully every four years it spends a great deal of money on lawsuits attempting to keep the Green Party off the ballot. It riggs the debates so the Green Party candidate cannot compete with the Republican and Democratic candidates on the stage. The Democratic Party would scream “totalitarianism” if there were only one party to vote for. Somehow the addition of one more party makes the political system go from totalitarian to democratic. But if you add a third or fourth party wouldn’t that make it more democratic? Not for Neoliberal Democrats. A third or a fourth party would make things chaotic and confuse people. Besides, authoritarian Democrats know what’s best for the people even though two thirds of the Mordor population wants more than two parties.

Conclusion

When Judy Johnson wrote her book on dogmatism it appeared that the targeted population were the lower middle-class and the working-class people. Middle-class and upper middle-class people could breathe easy since dogmatism was not really much about them. In fact, liberals like these were probably the model for fourteen characteristics of open people. My argument has shown that Neoliberal Democrats could be just as dogmatic in these fourteen characteristics. The following is a summary of how the Neoliberal Democrats and how their loyalists stack up against fourteen characteristics of dogmatism.

Intolerance of ambiguity

You cannot vote for a left-wing party. There are only two parties you have to pick one.

Defensive cognitive closure

We are entitled to your vote regardless of past failures. Only privileged people vote for 3^rd parties.

Rigid certainty (cannot state the conditions under which they are willing to admit they are wrong)

Past failures are ignored. The Party’s 50 year slide to the right is ignored. No matter how bad they are, the Republican party (Trump) is worse)

Cognitive compartmentalization

Both the DNC and their loyal followers act like social-schizophrenics. They pretend to be following tried and true liberal principles while in fact they fund wars all over the world, blow up pipelines, support fascist Ukraine and support right wing Jewish fundamentalism against Palestine.

Lack of self-reflectiveness: refuse to bend-back and analyze themselves

The Democratic Party blames Russia for its losses, rather than examine its internal failures. They become paranoid and see the “evil” Putin everywhere.

Anxiety and fear

The Democratic Party and their loyalists know no limits to how the horrible  things can be if Trump or any Republican wins an election. Similar fear of what the Trumpster followers will do if Trump wins. Yet their ineptitude shows in the pathetic political theater of January 2021.

Lack of a sense of humor

They have a seriousness and moralistic policing of people’s vocabulary to the point of failing to recognize the humor in trying to change people’s vocabulary all at once.

Oversensitivity to unintended consequences which result in anger

They imagine that they could never behave in a racist way, not realizing that Black politicians can be extremely right wing: Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell and Barak Obama are examples. Their racism is not granting blacks the full political spectrum of commitment that they grant to whites.

Excessive pessimism and despair about the future

By buying hook, line and sinker the anti-Enlightenment Rockefeller program of austerity, global warming, overpopulation and pollution.

Arrogant, dismissive communication style to the lower classes

The war of college professors and their loyalists in the public and students who do not care about identity politics and gender pronouns. They silence students  in their communication unless it conforms to their standards. They have a double standard since the heads of the Democratic Party do not have to adhere to these standards.

Preoccupation with power and status of appearance and rhetoric

Their obsession with good form and rhetoric skills in politicians like Obama. Hatred of the bad form, appearance and personality weaknesses in both Trump and his followers. They downplay the political content in their political performance.

Glorification of the in-group and vilification of the out-group

In international affairs the out-group, the evil Russia (Putin), Iran, North Korea and Syria can never do anything good. Meanwhile in Mordor, their European vassals along with Israel carry on the great tradition of liberalism, democracy and human rights. For this in-group these Neoliberals always find extenuating circumstances for all coups, assassinations and imperialistic pillaging.

Dogmatic authoritarian submission to the authorities

This has to do with the Neoliberal Democratic, upper-middle class loyalists’ acceptance that there will be no competition in the Democratic primaries. This authoritarian move has been meekly accepted. Neither do serious New Deal liberals have the nerve to break with their own party and found a new party which is closer to an FDR model.

Dogmatic authoritarian aggression to minorities

This is found in the repression of the Green Party to block their access to getting on the ballot and for controlling the ground rules for the Green Party for getting into the debates.

 Dogmatic vs Openminded Thinking

⁽¹⁾ Although supposedly the "leftoid" wing of the UNIPARTY (duopoly), the Democrats also pack in their ranks a fair number of fierce imperialists and pro-Israeli Zionist Neocons, starting with Joe Biden and his entire cabinet, and the vast majority of the tightly integrated legacy media and Big Tech they control at home and abroad, an immense propaganda platform.

Lili News 029

• In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
• Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
• Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.

Things to keep in mind...

Neo-Nazi ideology has become one of the main protagonists of political and social life in Ukraine since the 2014 coup d'état. Meanwhile, fascist ideology and blatant lies also permeate the consciousness of most people in the West. Those in the comfortable top 10%, the "PMCs" (Professional Managerial Class), are especially vulnerable. They support and disseminate such ideas. They are the executors of the actual ruling class' orders, those in the 0.001%, who remain largely invisible. The PMCs are the political class, the media whores, the top military brass, some people in academia, and the "national security/foreign policy" industry honchos. Push back against these unethical, contaminated people with the truth while you can.

AND...where the US Government is at: LYING 24/7

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The Jimmy Dore Show

The Jimmy Dore Show
May 31, 2024 #TheJimmyDoreShow
JIMMY DORE and his guests expose the Democrat-endorsed "wokeness" movement as a corporate plot to keep Americans divided. "Wokeness" is the ruling class' trick to distract Americans from their serious economic and political troubles and the badly needed unity they need to advance their class struggle.

Lili News 029

• In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
• Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
• Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.

Things to keep in mind...

Neo-Nazi ideology has become one of the main protagonists of political and social life in Ukraine since the 2014 coup d'état. Meanwhile, fascist ideology and blatant lies also permeate the consciousness of most people in the West. Those in the comfortable top 10%, the "PMCs" (Professional Managerial Class), are especially vulnerable. They support and disseminate such ideas. They are the executors of the actual ruling class' orders, those in the 0.001%, who remain largely invisible. The PMCs are the political class, the media whores, the top military brass, some people in academia, and the "national security/foreign policy" industry honchos. Push back against these unethical, contaminated people with the truth while you can.

AND...where the US Government is at: LYING 24/7

URL has been copied successfully!

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Dr. T. P. Wilkinson

In his Moscow interview, Tucker Carlson also asked the president of the Russian Federation to release a young American citizen convicted of espionage in Russia from imprisonment. Vladimir Putin replied that the man was arrested, tried and convicted by a Russian court of a crime under Russian law, espionage, by secretly receiving classified documents from someone in Russia.

Carlson’s plea was based not on respect for Russian law- or understanding of the crime of espionage- but on a widely held prejudice in the West. Namely there is a presumption that Westerners, in particular Americans, if arrested in countries listed as enemies of the West or the US, are never incarcerated for their acts but taken as hostages. Thus Carlson’s appeal was phrased in terms of a plea for mercy to an outlaw. President Putin rejected that implication and explained both the specifics of the crime committed and the customary practice for reciprocal release of agents caught by opposing special (secret) services. While not ruling a release out, the Russian president made clear that this was not a case for executive clemency.

Why, one might ask, did Carlson not grasp that fact? The obvious and superficial reason is that the request was gratuitous and theatrical. The “hostage release” mission is a typical form of quasi-diplomatic grandstanding. However there is a deeper level at which this segment can and ought to be understood. There is an ancient tradition -prior to 7 October- of states at war taking leaders of the opposing side as hostages to induce and guarantee negotiations to end hostilities or to enforce the conditions to which belligerents subsequently agreed. Medieval warfare is full of such incidents. Also other cultures have availed themselves of these in personam guarantees for treaties between warring parties. These guarantees have continued in the rituals of prisoner exchanges during truces.

Carlson’s plea was based not on respect for Russian law- or understanding of the crime of espionage- but on a widely held prejudice in the West. Namely there is a presumption that Westerners, in particular Americans, if arrested in countries listed as enemies of the West or the US, are never incarcerated for their acts but taken as hostages.

The late 20th century was accompanied by proliferation in the West of a new kind of hostage taking. Whereas the ancient mode usually involved the capture or surrender of belligerents (soldiers and officers) or high officials and dignitaries, modern Western warfare focussed on holding civilians, especially non-combatants, as hostage. This became a central tactic of counter-insurgency warfare. This was condemned in the treaties after World War 2 as a form of collective punishment and prohibited under the Geneva Conventions (or protocols to the Hague Convention on the Laws of Land Warfare).

The practice of the French in Algeria was one of the most notorious post-war examples. Although almost universally condemned (at least beyond the West) it found its way into the annals of counter-insurgency doctrine through Roger Trinquier. His book Modern Warfare formed the core of CIA-US military strategy in Vietnam. The conduct of war Trinquier proposed based on his service in Indochina and Algeria was fundamentally opposed to the spirit of the Geneva Conventions. By arguing that there was no more distinction between combatants and civilians he provided the example and the theory upon which all modern wars are waged by the West. World War 2 was the first modern war in which non-combatant casualties and death exceeded those of the armed forces. That was the reason for the Geneva protocols. Triquier circumvented this essentially by claiming that the organized self-defense and armed struggle against colonial occupation was not protected by the laws of land warfare since they protected states and their regular armed forces, while colonies were not states and could therefore not field armies in terms of international law.

While it is true that Trinquier insisted that treatment of civilians should distinguish between criminals to be tried and sentenced by the regular courts and “terrorists”, this distinction was no more than academic in the CI context. The CIA’s Phoenix Program extended to forcing the RVN legislature to criminalize political opinions and activities so that they could be punished as “civilian” crimes. As then CIA station chief William Colby explained, the Phoenix directorate in Saigon also insisted that political crimes be handled by the special branch of the national police so as to keep the military “clean” for regular warfare. However in Algeria, as in Vietnam, there was almost no contact between the regular forces of the two sides until the CI was virtually at an end. Moreover the personnel overlap between military and police in the colonies made the distinction more a question of clothes than substance.

The use of hostages in counter-insurgency expanded throughout the era of wars against national independence movements regardless of the prohibitions under international law. There was also a major innovation in 1972.

The conventional story is that a group of activists desiring to call attention to the ongoing occupation of Palestine by European settler-colonialists plotted to take the Olympic competition squad sent by the State of Israel to Munich hostage. Presumably this surprising move would compel the international community (as the US calls itself) to listen to the pleas of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, pleas for just treatment to resolve the conflict in compliance with international law.

The immediate result was dramatic and has been repeatedly dramatized. A special paramilitary squad from the German national police, GSG 9, stormed the rooms where the hostages were held and killed everyone, hostages and alleged hostage-takers. After that international air travel to and from Palestine was subjected to security measures that would then be standardized for all air travel in 2001. The immediate result was not the opening of international venues to the Palestinian cause but the opposite. The PLO became a certified “terrorist organization” and its members were declared outlaws. One should recall here what the term “outlaw” actually means. The naive understanding is misleading. Since the days of the Medieval Inquisition there has been a clear legal distinction between criminal and outlaw. A criminal is someone accused and convicted of violating the law. Nonetheless he is also governed by the law and enjoys its protection. Only the authorities have the right to seize and punish a criminal. An outlaw however is deemed literally beyond the law, enjoying neither rights nor protection. Hence an act of violence, even killing, against an outlaw is no offense. Anyone is free to treat an outlaw as he likes. An outlaw has no claims whatsoever.

One of the principles by which counter-insurgency is waged is by creating outlaws and removing them from the sight or oversight of the regular government and social infrastructure. This has also been done through what is now called “disappearing”. However hostage taking by the counter-insurgency agencies and their operatives has the perfidious effect of creating outlaws in the public perception by staging hostage incidents that appear to be perpetrated by the so-called “terrorists”. Thus the mythic propaganda of the deed is turned against those engaged in struggle- whether or not armed- to elicit the revulsion among the target population commensurate with this violation of the Geneva protocols.

Leaving aside the plethora of staged hijackings in the 1970s, there are two high jacking-hostage incidents that bear consideration. Indeed they too relate to Palestine. The first is the Entebbe incident in which Israeli military force was applied to near universal acclaim to the recovery of a passenger liner taken there by “terrorists”.

In June 1976, an Air France flight to Tel Aviv carrying some 248 passengers was diverted to Uganda’s capital. (Ironically Uganda had been one of Britain’s proposed sites for a future Zionist state.) Israel special forces attacked the airport and liberated the aircraft, killing some Ugandan soldiers and apparently violating Ugandan sovereignty to perform the raid. The ruler of Uganda, Idi Amin, apparently supported seizure of the airliner. In the course of the action practically all non-Israelis were released. The Israeli forces shot their way in and recovered all those passengers except for some collateral damage. Amin had been receiving and continued to receive exceptionally bad press. The review of his years in Uganda is only relevant to show that whatever domestic political struggles were underway in Britain’s former colony, Amin was one of several African leaders punished for supporting the citizens of Palestine in their armed struggle.

The second incident involved a TWA flight from Athens to San Diego that was diverted to Beirut in June 1986. In the course of this action a US Navy diver was killed. While this death is treated as a civilian casualty, since it was not a military flight, the reported actions of a man trained in what is essentially a special forces MOS may have led to his death as combat-induced. Nonetheless the remarkable aspect of this hostage incident was not only the negotiated exchange of 19 hostages unharmed in return for fuel. Eventually all the hostages were released. In this case the Israeli government released prisoners it held while denying that the incident had forced them to do so.

One of the hostages released was a Texas original, a businessman from that archconservative oil and ranching state. He was actually interviewed on network television just after he reached the tarmac. (The man disappeared from public view shortly thereafter.) He told assembled reporters that he was not only treated well but that they had made a case for their political objectives that he found very reasonable. He practically asked the governments concerned to listen and take his captors seriously. That was the last time he spoke in public- at least where cameras could record it.

The case of TWA flight 847 ended with the released passengers being flown by USAF transporter to Frankfurt am Main, the center of US intelligence services in Germany, for “debriefing” before a quasi-heroic reception in the US. That Texas businessman who had spoken soberly to journalists asking why no one was listening to the people in Palestine, was declared to have incurred “Stockholm syndrome”.

Stockholm syndrome is a pseudo-medical term invented in the early 1970s as a faux psychiatric disorder whereby captives allegedly become bonded with their captors and sympathetic to them. It has become a term of trade for discrediting anyone who by virtue of a politically motivated hostage-taking exhibits a sympathetic response to the political issue at hand, no matter how rational that sympathy may be articulated. To confuse matters the “syndrome” is sometimes compared with the established “attractions” in abusive relationships, e.g. wife-beating, child-beating, rape, etc. While there are plausible explanations for the persistence of abusive relationships the elements of time and social/ familial status are very different from those of temporary hostage situations.

The purpose of Stockholm syndrome is to pathologize the responses of people caught in political conflict who begin to consider rationally or even humanely the terms of those conflicts in officially prohibited ways. The origin of the term “brainwashing” was similar. When US POWs were released after the Armistice in Korea, many were forced to retract statements made in captivity about war crimes they had been ordered to commit. To explain these retractions and conceal the threats made to extract them, the returning prisoners were alleged to have been victims of Korean brainwashing. This also served as convenient cover for what is now known as MKUltra, the CIA psychological warfare program which included the mass marketing of LSD.

Throughout the so-called Cold War the Soviet Union was accused of conducting all the psychological and pharmament operations against its dissidents that the CIA was performing in the US, Canada and other countries under its control. The battlefield “mind” predates the Internet- in fact it has been the main battlespace since 1913.

The history of modern hostage taking for political purposes could bear far more examination than this space permits. However to return to the Carlson-Putin interview and Carlson’s plea for a “hostage release” we should ask from what position Carlson’s request is actually addressed?

That is most simply revealed in his opening questions.

“On February 22, 2022, you addressed your country in your nationwide address when the conflict in Ukraine started and you said that you were acting because you had come to the conclusion that the United States through NATO might initiate a quote, “surprise attack on our country”. And to American ears that sounds paranoid. Tell us why you believe the United States might strike Russia out of the blue. How did you conclude that?”

Tucker Carlson, consciously or not, was speaking with the voice of the real “hostage-taker”. The US, in NATO extended, began to take the world hostage no later than August 1945. It held for a brief period the absolute atomic monopoly, until the Soviet Union followed by China acquired a deterrent. Then until 1990 the US claimed to be the hostage of a country half its population and subjected to more than twenty years of US-supported war mainly against its civilian population. In addition it held the world hostage while it carpet-bombed Korea and Vietnam (plus Laos and Cambodia), murdering over six million people from the air. At the same time it held as much of Africa, Latin America and the Pacific archipelagos hostage through military dictatorships, with or without civilian faces. Then through brain drain and strategic immigration policy it created an international hostage pool paying ransom in return for a chance to send money to impoverished families at home. Ultimately the psychological and economic warfare to which all inhabitants of the US are subjected is calculated to create a strong emotional bond with their captors, the real but unnamed hostage-takers who rule the Anglo-American Empire.

Vladimir Putin responded to Tucker Carlson’s plea in the manner appropriate to a traditional statesman, schooled in statecraft from an age before the US was even conceived as a place, let alone as a nation. Also that point eluded the American journalist. President Putin’s repeated injunction that Tucker Carlson should ask the actors themselves (in the US) why they act as they do? was also a polite indication that for all his curiosity, sincerity and goodwill, Carlson was himself a captive, a hostage. He remains a captive of a hostage nation.

Dr. T.P. Wilkinson writes, teaches History and English, directs theatre and coaches cricket between the cradles of Heine and Saramago. He is also the author of the book Church Clothes, Land, Mission and the End of Apartheid in South Africa. Most of his work since 2015 has been posted at Dissident Voice where he also have contributed a poem every Sunday since then. Prior to that pieces were posted at Global Research, Black Agenda Report and while Alexander Cockburn was still alive at Counterpunch. He lived in Berlin starting on the weekend when the GDR border was opened and hence spent eleven years watching the West dismantle the East.

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They shone with hope and joy, each in their own way
Gaza’s children as they were in life: photographic tributes found on the web

This video shows, along with their name and age, some of the many children killed since Oct 7 in Gaza, drawing on pictorial tributes from their… pic.twitter.com/3vyBAYX6hF

— Iraq Body Count (@iraqbodycount) February 9, 2024

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