Showing posts with label imperialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label imperialism. Show all posts

Saturday, June 19, 2021

Why Democracy Died

To know why democracy died, it is necessary to understand why it came into existence.

Democracy is an improbable form of government. Throughout the thousands of years of human existence, before the emergence of cities, states and empires, humans lived in tribes of hunter gatherers, small groups of no fixed address, each tribe dominated by an alpha male or chief who impregnated most of the women and killed anyone who got in his way.

The agricultural revolution meant both an increase in population and the creation of settled communities with permanent housing, irrigation works, markets, temples, defensive walls and fortresses. With the rise of such communities, or city states, one man (or occasionally woman) rule remained the rule but with some elaboration. 

One man could not rule a city without a hierarchy of soldiers, administrators, and priests, the heads of each institutional group naturally acquired a degree of personal power independent of the Chief, or Prince, or King. But still the system remain firmly top-down, with trouble from uppity plebs subject to brutal suppression.

Rulers of large cities naturally sought to subordinate smaller cities, so that city states generally gave way to empires. But top-down government headed by a single person, the Prince, the King, the Emperor, remained the rule, though now with subordinate individuals, as for example, military commanders, tax collectors, architects, and priests wielding ever great powers.

But whatever the exact form of government of the newly risen city states and empires, no ruler had the insane idea of asking the people, the peasants, the surfs, the helots, the slave class, to take the reigns of power and dictate to the rulers what should be done.

Not, that is, until the emergence of the peculiar Greek city state of Athens during the late bronze age.

Why did this bizarre transformation in the government of Athens happen? Several unusual factors contributed.

Important was the geography of Greece which comprises many islands, and a mainland deeply indented by sea inlets and divided by mountain ranges, thus providing many small habitable areas of cultivable land sufficient to support a city state while providing natural defenses against attack by neighboring communities. As a result, the city states of ancient Greece survived long after Egypt, Persia, North Africa, Italy and China had been subordinated to imperial regimes.

Not that the inhospitable terrain discouraged imperialist ambitions among the leaders of the Greek city states who engaged repeatedly in mostly futile campaigns to subjugate one another.

A consequence of such wars was the acquisition of slaves, either soldiers taken captive in battle or the inhabitants of territory temporarily occupied during interstate conflicts. As a result, the landowning citizens of Athens were not obliged to till their own lands. Being free to pursue other interests, some naturally engaged in politics. And as the Athenian state was small, the most effective means to pursue a political career was by speaking in the town square.

This inevitably gave power to those who could rouse the mob. The game was formalized with those attending in the public forum registering their support for or against this or that proposal by marking a ballot in the form or a clay tile, or ostrakon, and dropping it into an urn to be counted. 

Athenian ballot form
Slaves and women were excluded from participation, but the male owners of slaves and women, referred to themselves as the people, or demos, hence democracy. Rule, that is, under the leadership of men of ambition and rapacity, who, intent only on elevating their own status, wealth and power even at the expense of the people, had the ability to sway the crowd. 

This crazy system, under which the greatest rabble-rousers drove Athens into endless wars against other Greek communities, might have continued to this day had not the Romans imposed imperial rule upon Greece from without. Thereafter, democracy became extinct throughout the world, until the modern era.

And it was modernity, and in particular industrialism and the consequent phenomenon of total war, that made the emergence of mass democracy inevitable.

Industrialization required the assembly and organization of large numbers of well disciplined workers in mines and factories, at docks and construction sites. Trouble was, the large assemblies of workers operating capital intensive systems of production and distribution were alarmingly prone to revolt against brutal conditions and long hours of work for miserable pay at a time when the newly enriched entrepreneurial class engaged in the most extravagant displays of wealth and privilege.

What to do?

Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, Commander in Chief of British armed forces, victor over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, and UK Prime Minister during the 1820's, urged the rapid development of railways to facilitate the movement of troops to deal with workers' rebellions. 

But instead of reliance on the systematic application of force, Britain's middle and upper class reformers reduced the risk of revolution by alleviating the horrible conditions of life for the mass of Britain's working people. This they did through successful campaigns to eliminate child labor, reduce working hours, improve work place safety, create a system of universal education, introduce old-age pensions (the necessary legislation set before Parliament by that prime target of today's British Woke university hatred, Winston Churchill), and  extend the franchise, universal suffrage for men being achieved in 1918.

That mass democracy arrived in Britain in the final year of Europe's great civil war was no coincidence. With millions of working men returning from a grotesque world of filth, lice, and mass slaughter in a struggle with German working men with whom they had more in common than with their own ruling class, some adjustment in the political system was essential to the maintenance of political stability.

That the war had already detonated Russia's Bolshevik Revolution to be followed by the deposition and murder of the of the Tsar, his wife and children, and that it threatened Germany with the same transformation, further concentrated the minds of the British elite on the need for greater deference to the interests of the lower classes. 

The refusal of Liverpool's dock workers to load armaments for shipment in aid of the anti-Bolshevik forces in Russia, provided further stimulus to ruling class deference to the opinions of the proletariat. 

Thus was democracy in modern form instituted in the nation that, more than any other, created the modern world. It was a response not to wokeness, but weakness. 

But the Western world is now post modern. 


Automation and AI have largely eliminated the need for either a working class of unskilled or semi-skilled workers, or a lower middle class of clerks and secretaries. 

Furthermore, modern weapons have entirely eliminated the value of mass armies. Future wars will be won, not by laying down the lives of millions of citizen soldiers whose loyalty the ruling class has earned, but with advanced technology weapons operated by a small cadre of military technologists.

How then, for the elite, which is to say the owners of modern technology, to dispense with the encumbrance of democracy.

Cancellation would be one solution. But it would be messy. It would provoke demonstrations, probably violent. With blood spilled, resentments would burn indefinitely.

But technology provides a superior alternative: mind control through media manipulation; indoctrination in the guise of education; garbage entertainment as distraction; plus fake news; fake elections; fake presidents; and a fake pandemic to force compliance with an increasingly authoritarian state.

Hence, endless bullshit TV news; the woke university; pornography as acceptable entertainment; President Biden; Meghan Remarkables; plus Covid19, facemasks, lockdowns and social distancing.

Image source
Democracy was interesting while it lasted. Now get used to the increasingly arrogant Gates-style techsploitation, to population reduction, and a pivot to a world order of which the main features were anticipated by Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) and George Orwell (1984).

Related:

Caitlin Johnstone:
The Fucking President Has Fucking Dementia: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Friday, August 17, 2018

Destruction of the West: A Guide For Immigrants

Man is a territorial animal. So just because you live in what President Trump might call a shit-house country it does not mean that people in more fortunate places want you to come and join them. On the contrary, they' know you're a high risk for  fleas, lice, drugs and crime, that you likely have a minimal education, a low IQ and if admitted to their midst will soon be a burden on the taxpayer as a recipient of welfare, healthcare, and free schooling for your kids.

How then to proceed? There are basically three ways to invade another country for the purpose of settlement:

First, is the imperial approach as employed by those with the means from the time of Babylon and Ur, to that of the British conquests of Mashonaland and Matabeleland, better known today as Zimbabwe. In concept, the approach is straight forward: just smash your way in with swords drawn or Maxim guns blazing and set up a government. As for the locals, they may be put to death in the Israelite manner:

Joshua Chapter 11:
10: And Joshua turned back at that time, and took Hazor, and smote its king with the sword; for Hazor formerly was the head of all those kingdoms.
11: And they put to the sword all who were in it, utterly destroying them; there was none left that breathed, and he burned Hazor with fire.
12: And all the cities of those kings, and all their kings, Joshua took, and smote them with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them, as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded.
13: But none of the cities that stood on mounds did Israel burn, except Hazor only; that Joshua burned.
14: And all the spoil of these cities and the cattle, the people of Israel took for their booty; but every man they smote with the edge of the sword, until they had destroyed them, and they did not leave any that breathed.

Or the natives of the occupied land may be be sold into slavery or otherwise reduced to servitude, as in England following the invasions of, first, the Romans, then the Anglo-Saxons, and last, until the post World War II era, the Normans under the rule of King William I.

Second, is to form an alliance with the Treason Party of the targeted nation: as did, for example, the Vikings who allied with English barons seeking to wrest power from Alfred the Great (868–899), who at one point was driven to take refuge in the swamps of Someset until able to organize a resistance that restored his authority. Alfred then created the English Navy the first task of which was to intercept Viking long ships before they made landfall.

Today the treason party is the globalist Money Power. The Money Power seeks the destruction of the democratic nation state, which is the chief obstacle to its goal of global governance. To this end, the Money Power works with the poor and down-trodden of the world in the name of socialism to smash down the borders of the Western states. Hence the cry of the fascistic Antifa crowd funded by the Jewish war-time Nazi collaborator, George Soros:

"No border, no wall, no USA at all!"

Neonettle.com: The Soros Funded left-wing anarchist group Antifa chanted 'death to America' during another violent protest in Washington, DC, on Sunday.

In shocking video captured by Breitbart journalist Ian Mason, Antifa members along with open borders activists can be seen marching down the streets demanding an end to the United States.

“No border, no wall, no USA at all!” Antifa and open borders activists chanted as they marched in Washington D.C.



Third: is to proceed the legal way, in accordance with the laws of the nation to which you wish to be joined. This, of course takes time, perhaps many years to go through the legal process, and the effort is by no means guaranteed of success. You may be found unsuitable for lack of in-demand professional or technical qualifications, linguistic skills, or perhaps racial requirements, for example, descent from an ex-patriot of the country to which you seek entry.

Should you succeed in achieving legal admission to the country of your choice, and should you then learn the language of the country and respect the customs of the people, you will in time be accepted as a fellow citizen and you, or at least your posterity, will become one with the nation.

But if your attempt at legal migration fails, you could always work to defeat the Treason Party of your own country. In so doing you may hope to make life better there not only for yourself, but for all those of your kith and kin.

Immigration by the third route is, obviously, the only way that sane people in any country will tolerate immigration, which on an large scale has the potential to destroy the welfare of the native group through mass competition for jobs and housing, and by the destruction of the indigenous gene pool and cultural traditions. Indeed, wherever such damage to native groups is evident, as it is currently throughout the Western world, one can be sure that the Treason Party is successfully at work.