Requiem for a Heel

I. Mourning and celebration

Who is celebrating the assassination of Qasem Soleimani? Who is commiserating?

In the first group - the celebrants - we find the opponents of Hezbollah and the aging Mullah regime in Tehran: Israel; the Syrians who are against Assad; the Lebanese protesting against the Lebanese government and Hezbollah in recent months; the Iraqis protesting against Iranian influence in Iraq in the past few weeks; Saudi Arabia and any other Arab nations in the Gulf who regard themselves as enemies of Iran. Outside the Middle East - and in the West - it is mostly the 'Ziocons' (Zionist conservatives) who number among those who are crowing and exulting. Many of the 'Ziocons' openly displaying their bloodlust are 'burgers' (that is, Americans, to use 4Chan parlance), although a few are British.

(Over the years, 'Ziocon burgers' have steadily infiltrated the dissident Right - which is surprising, given that the Far Right, especially in America, has been anti-Semitic for the past eighty or so years. Aficionados of Israel and admirers of the Jewish people have never been made welcome on the American Far Right, but they are now trying to turn the tables and make the anti-Semites unwelcome - see the comments thread at this article by Steve Sailer on the assassination. If I'm to make a prediction for the coming decade, it is that the Ziocons will increase their attempts to infiltrate the Far Right - and purge it of anti-Semites - as they make the Far Right their new home: they will abandon the Center-Right, which, as it becomes less and less credible, will continue to lose popularity).

But most on the dissident Right are mourning Soleimani's death or wondering anxiously what it portends for the future. The majority of the dissident Right is made up of what I call the 'anti-imperials'. This faction - by far the largest - sees the Mullahs and the rulers of all the other aging, kleptocratic and despotic regimes in the Third World as 'anti-imperialist' by dint of their anti-Americanism. The anti-imperials feel vaguely sympathetic to the Left, but they rarely characterise themselves as National Bolshevik ('Naz Bol'); rather, they prefer to call themselves 'populist' or 'anti-war'. On this side of the ledger stand mainstream political figures such as Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard, and also fringe libertarian individuals and groups - LewRockwell.Com, AntiWar.Com, Keith Preston's AttackTheSystem.Com - and a plethora of 'conservative' pundits: Stephen F. Cohen, Pat Buchanan, Saker in His Vineyard, Moon of Alabama, Philip Giraldi, Eric Margolis... On the fringes of the Right, a few prominent white nationalists have migrated over to anti-imperial country, among them Richard Spencer, Hunter Wallace, Mike Enoch, David Duke.

Many of the aforementioned pundits began with one ideology in their early years and subtly shifted away from it in their later. David Duke and Pat Buchanan moved away from racialism and immigration-restrictionism; the writers at AntiWar.Com and LewRockwell.Com, free-market liberalism. The newfound appreciation for Iran and Russia, 'anti-war' and 'anti-interventionist' American foreign policy, necessitates the throwing of one's original ideology overboard. One can then set sail to the land of Red and Brown, of 'Neither Left nor Right', of Naz Bollery. The Red Brown ideology does entail some radical contradictions, but these hardly seems to bother the anti-imperials. A conservative ought to oppose Muammar Gaddafi for his long-time bank-rolling of leftist terrorism; a socialist, Gaddafi's staggering wealth (Gaddafi was worth $USD200 billion at the time of his death). But the inconsistencies were shunted aside during Gaddafi's ouster, and Gaddafi ascended to the pantheon of anti-imperial demi-gods.

II. The last decade summed up

In retrospect, the two most important events for the Far Right in the last decade were the Arab Spring of 2010-11 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, both of which set the Far Right on a new path.

At the start of the decade, despots held sway in countries dominated by an ideology which was either left over from the Cold War (countries such as Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Iran, Syria, Zimbabwe) or which could be described as post-Marxist (Venezuela, Bolivia, Ukraine, Russia). The former group of despots never won an election which could be described as 'free and fair' in the best Jimmy Carter-approved manner; the latter group did win elections initially, but as time went on, they wanted to stay in power past their mandate, and so came increasingly to rely upon state repression.

Most of these despots used their position to enrich themselves, some of them becoming as rich as Croesus. Their rule produced - over the long term - economic, social, intellectual, and cultural stagnation, but it was widely assumed (by observers in the West) that these men would stay in power forever, as their subjects were passive, apathetic, and disorganised. The Arab Spring put paid to that notion. (But the Arab Spring should have been anticipated, as the Arabs, by nature, are a disputatious people given to great emotional excitement). A few years later came Maidan Square and the ouster of Yanukovych in Ukraine, as the Ukrainians sought, once again, to emancipate themselves from Russia.

Yanukovych and the Arab despots responded to the uprising with varying degrees of force, Gaddafi and Assad being the worst. At this point we saw the appearance of what I call the Gaddafi doctrine. At the beginning of the Libyan uprising, Gaddafi responded to his opponents with disproportionate violence: at one anti-Gaddafi protest outside an army barracks, Gaddafi's son ordered soldiers to fire on the crowd with anti-aircraft guns (!) (see Paul Kenyon's Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa (2019)).
Under the Gaddafi doctrine, any opponent of the anti-imperial despots becomes what Yockey calls an Inner Enemy. He is to be stripped of any rights as a consequence, and can be starved, kidnapped, tortured, raped, killed, his house and city leveled and turned into rubble, his family pauperised... 

In the past few months, we have seen a fresh round of protests by the Arab (and Persian) masses in Lebanon, Iraq, Iran; against both Assad's forces and the Kurds' in Deir Yezzor, Syria; against the Islamist HTS militia which holds sway in the rebel enclave of Idlib, Syria (which has been the recipient of a ferocious aerial bombardment and shelling by Putin and Assad, an attack which has killed hundreds and caused over 500,000 refugees to flee). Ideologically, these protests take neither ideological shape nor form - they cannot be classified as liberal or communist or Islamist - and it is not exactly clear what the protestors want; but the question is, do the protestors deserve to be punished, and punished as per the harsh strictures of the Gaddafi doctrine. 

The answer of the anti-imperials seems to be - yes, whereas mine is no.

By any stretch of the imagination, I cannot be considered a humanist or liberal or Arab-lover. I certainly do not want Syrian refugees in my country any more than the Turks or Saudis want them in theirs, and I do not want to take up a collection for the good people of Idlib. All the same, I wouldn't wish Assad on a dog.

This view of mine - a 'normie' view - sets me at odds with the vast majority of the dissident Right, as does my acceptance of information from 'normie' news sources - AFP, Reuters, BBC, Al Jazeera - on the Middle East. (I recommend this excellent summary of the Syrian War, from the Council on Foreign Relations, as the best guide to the war).

I look at Syria or Venezuela or Yemen as I would a horrific car accident. And what is the 'normie' response (I won't say the moral or Christian response, although I'm tempted to) when you pass by a car accident with wreckage and bodies strewn everywhere? It is this. You shake your head in sorrow, say a prayer for the injured or dead, stay out of the way of the emergency service workers, walk on, and go on about your business - thinking, 'There but for the Grace of God...' - and that's about it.

My attitude strikes me as being normal, and that of the anti-imperials, abnormal. During the 2010s, I stopped understanding them. Venezuela under Maduro has been plunged into misery - a misery which has inconvenienced Venezuela's neighbours, who have been forced into take in hundreds of thousands of refugees - and I agree with the 'normie' view (a truism, really) that Venezuela would be better off were Maduro to be removed. But we can't have that, according to the anti-imperials, as that would be 'regime change', a 'CIA Guaidó coup'. Fighting 'regime change', for the Carlsons and Gabbards, has become a principle which is sacred and one which has been elevated above all others.

The Tulsi Gabbard, 'anti-war', 'anti-regime' change doctrine is not built on solid foundations, and even a lackluster personality such as Shay Khatiri - an Iranian liberal activist who writes for neoconservative and anti-Trump publications - can tear it apart with ease. Perhaps it is the extreme incoherence, inconsistency, illogicality of the anti-imperials bothers me more than anything else.

Added to that is the enormous amount of time and energy expended on, for example, propping up the regime of Assad: how many videos and essays by dissident Rightists have been devoted to 'proving' that the April 2018 Douma gas attack was 'staged'? (According to the anti-imperials, the gas attack was either a) faked or b) actually carried out - more self-contradiction! - but by Syrian rebels who sought to frame Assad. The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, went as far as to say that British intelligence did the gassing. My assessment is that Lavrov is not telling the truth or is the victim of a delusion. But that opinion puts me in the minority: the amount of adulation of the Putin regime in the American dissident Right media - as opposed to lack of it in the mainstream Russian media itself - boggles the mind). 

The anti-imperials claim to be 'against war', but of course want the wars in Syria and Ukraine to continue - to a successful conclusion for Russia. Assad has become since 2015 a puppet of the Russians, and seeing as the Assads have been in power in Syria for fifty years (!) this year, the Russians are working towards another fifty. But why do the anti-imperials laud this goal? Why do they want the Assads, Putins and Maduros to stay in power in perpetuity? Why are they investing so much energy in this cause? Why are they neglecting the program of Yockey, as outlined in the last chapters of Imperium (1948) - Yockey, the original Naz Bol?













 

Why the Neocons should shut up about Munich

Many commentators in Bush 43 era objected to the neocons because of the role they played in fomenting the Iraq invasion and in propping up the Bush administration, ideologically, during the period of the 'War on Terror'. They took umbrage with Bush, the neocons and the 'War on Terror' on mainly humanitarian grounds: it was wrong, unethical, to kill and blow up so many Arabs and Muslims.

Moving forward to 2016, the neocons can't really be castigated for that reason: quite a few of these critics of the neocons now approve a 'War on Terror' - as it is waged by Assad; they approve the torture, kidnapping, bombing and murder of Arabs, so long as Assad, and the 'progressive', 'secularist' forces of Russia and Iran are doing it. The Syrian war is shaping up to be the most devastating conflict in the Arab world's recent history, and Assad will prove to be much worse than Bush 43. So, on this point, we should cut the neocons some slack.

I find the neocons - Krauthammer, Kristol, Podhoretz, Stephens, Kagan and the rest - fairly agreeable up to a point; they don't really differ all that much - especially since the election - from Steve Sailer, Hunter Wallace, VDare - in their criticisms of immigration, political correctness, the Democratic Party, Black Lives Matter... They are obsessed with Obama's Iran deal, but I could take or leave Iran.
As for their other obsessions - Israel, the Palestinians, the settlements in the West Bank - not being an Arab or Jew, I don't have a dog in the fight on that one either. I agree with the neocons when they make the charge that American foreign policy has been weak and unassertive, not to mention criminally irresponsible, since Obama - that's true enough. So I often experience, when picking up the National Review or Commentary or Weekly Standard, the strange sensation of reading through one of their articles and finding it not so objectionable after all - at least, not as much as I had anticipated. 'Maybe the neocons aren't as black as they're painted', I say to myself.

Then I come to the one stumbling block which prevents full agreement: Munich. Hitler. WWII. Analogies to Neville Chamberlain's deal with Germany at Munich in 1938, and to an alleged Chamberlain appeasement policy, have been made countless times in neocon propaganda; the neocons just can't keep away from the topic.

Let's take a look at the latest piece by the classicist Victor Davis Hanson, one of the few goyish neocons out there (and incidentally a big opponent of illegal immigration into California, his home state). It attacks the Obama administration for its many failings, including its lamentable foreign policy and its neglect of the fundamental truths of statecraft:

Throughout history, it has not gone well for powerful leaders when they have been perceived as being both loudly sanctimonious and weak (read Demosthenes on Athenian reactions to Philip II), as if the nation’s strength enervates the leader rather than empowers his diplomacy. Worse still is when a leader aims to loudly project strength through rhetoric while quietly fearing to do so through ships and soldiers.

So far, so good. I haven't read Demosthenes on Philip II, but when it comes to that subject, I'm willing to take Hanson's word for it. I'm no classicist.

But then, here it comes:

Think again of Neville Chamberlain at Munich, who gave Hitler everything — including lectures on proper international behavior. Anthony Eden remarked at the time that British statesmen thought Hitler and Mussolini were like typical British elites with whom they could do business; the British diplomats mistakenly believed they could appeal to the dictators’ reason and common interests, and thus they were bound to be sorely disappointed.

This is wrong in so many ways.

From 1938 to 1939, Czechoslovakia was breaking up, in the same way that Yugoslavia was to nearly six decades later. The 1938 partition deal, in which Germany, Poland and Hungary got pieces each of Czechoslovakia, wasn't enough to forestall the inevitable.

Here's what John Mosier - not a Hitler fan - has to say in his Cross of Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German War Machine, 1918-1945 (2006):

On November 22, the Czecho-Slovak Republic officially became a confederation of Czechs, Slovaks, and Ruthenians, each group to have considerable local autonomy in its local areas. But by then the Slovaks were beginning to panic. Negotiations with Hungary had broken down, and on November 2, representatives from Germany and Italy met in Vienna and readjusted the boundary between Czecho-Slovakia and Hungary; the latter thus got back the roughly 600,000 ethnic Hungarians who had been stuck inside the Czech Republic at Versailles. Teschen was restored to Poland, and Germany acquired a small piece as well. The Slovaks, who had been hapless bystanders with no say in the foreign policy of the republic, saw that at this rate, they would end up again under Hungarian domination. ('Bloodless victories, or nearly so: toward a Greater Germany, 1935-1939')

The Slovaks then upset the applecart by demanding independence - a demand which entailed the breakup of Czechoslovakia:

While some Slovaks sought real independence, as far as the Czechs could make out, the Slovak idea of autonomy was, for all practical purposes, de facto independence. Thus in February 1939, as the Spanish civil war slowly came to a bloody end, the Czechs drew up a plan to occupy Slovakia. The plan was so secret that neither the Czech prime minister nor his minister of defense knew about it; it nonetheless existed. On March 10, a version of the plan was put into effect, and Prague attempted to name a new Slovak government. On the thirteenth, the Slovak leaders went to Berlin, because Hitler had agreed the day before to guarantee the new state’s independence (as it were). Without Slovakia, there was obviously no more Czecho-Slovak Republic, so events happened quickly: by March 15, German armored cars were in the streets of Prague. On that same day, the Ruthenians declared their independence, only to see Hungarian troops invading the country, with the tacit approval of Warsaw. (Ibid)

Perhaps the US, and Britain, should have gone to war, like Lincoln in 1861, and Serbia in 1992, to keep the country together? In the view of the neocons, yes: this would have 'stopped' Hitler. But Mosier injects a note of realism:

Although it soon became established in the West that Hitler had orchestrated all these events, the motivating tensions predated Hitler’s rise to power by decades. Considered from the point of view of diplomatic history after 1918, Hitler’s decision was harmless. The Slovaks had always (post–1918) wanted their own country, they were as entitled to one as anyone else, and Germany had every right to guarantee its existence and to insist that Hungary and Slovakia settle their differences peacefully. Hitler would insist on the same thing with Hungary and Romania, embellishing his credentials as a man who had unified Germany peacefully and had reversed the injustices of the Versailles and Trianon treaties without a shot being fired. From the point of view of the Germans, the Poles, the Slovakians, most Hungarians—and some Ruthenians—this was a perfectly logical development, and one probably viewed favorably (in private at least) by a good many foreign ministries in the West as well. For the French and the British public at large, however, the dismemberment of the Czecho-Slovakian Republic was the last straw. Again the complexities of Central European ethnicity were, for most people, not merely abstractions; they were daunting abstractions of the sort that only the professional diplomats of the previous century understood. The disappearance of an entire country, though, was concrete enough. It was rendered all the more so by the defiant “come and get us” speeches that Hitler had been making through the fall of 1938. (Ibid)

Germany, then, prevented war by acting as it did -  a war which Roosevelt and Churchill so dearly wanted.

The neoconservatives will counter this by pointing out that the Czechs lost any independence and self-determination as a result of the Slovaks getting theirs - (what later became) the Czech Republic was annexed to Germany and became Bohemia and Moravia. I agree in principle that's a bad thing when a country loses its independence and ceases to exist. But then I remember another the fate of another country - Palestine - which disappeared in 1948: what happened to it?

We know the answer: in 1948, Jews took over most of Palestine and forced the original inhabitants - who had been there for far longer than these newly-arrived Jewish 'settlers' from Europe - to leave; at the same time, they attacked Palestine's neighbours with a numerically superior army. They won, and literally overnight, Palestine became Israel. All traces of the original Palestinian nation were wiped out; the nation was replaced with a new, synthetic, Hebrew-speaking one.

Now, in 2016, the neocons - and Israel - are outraged with Obama's abstention on the UN resolution on settlements: they find the notion that Israel should be censured for taking whatever scraps of land that the Palestinians have left deplorable. When it comes to the Palestinians - and the ethnic minorities who lived in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s and who were oppressed by the Czechs - all the neoconservative principles of liberalism, freedom, fairness, decency, 'moral clarity' and the rest go out the window.

It's here that the anti-Semites step in and accuse neoconservatism of being a Jewish thing; the only real principle the neoconservatives by is, 'Is it good for the Jews?'. The neocons oppose National Socialist Germany because of its anti-Semitism; likewise, they support the state of Israel, and the dismemberment of Palestine, because they believe in old Talmudic prophecies to the effect that the founding of the Jewish state shall lead to the return of the Moschiah (the messiah) and the dominion of the Jews over all life on Earth...

The destruction of Palestine in 1948, and the ethnic cleansing of the Germans by the Czechs from Sudetenland from 1945 to 1948, happened a long time ago. It's the 21st century, and I'm prepared to let them go. But the neocons - and Jewish intellectuals in general - keep on bringing the past up again and again; worse, their ethnic self-interest, which can be barely restrain itself for a moment, keeps on appearing again and again, and inserting itself into the discourse.

Some of my nationalist friends believe that we shouldn't talk about the war; nor should we talk about Jewishness. I see their point: we shouldn't live in the past, and we shouldn't be taking up the worldview of the obsessive anti-Semites David Duke and Kevin MacDonald either. But what happens when the neocons and the Israel lobby - two extremely politically powerful groups - won't shut up about the two topics of the Hitler era and the State of Israel? When they have bent the most powerful man in the world - Donald Trump - to their will?

It's almost as though we can't escape the Jewish question. Perhaps Hitler's doctrines represent inescapable truths - even in this day and age.

Castro dead, Trump now a Neocon? Reaganite?

Remember, during the election, how we heard - over and over - that Trump admired 'strongmen' and 'authoritarian regimes'? That side of Trump pleased many on the Left, who regard many of today's authoritarian and dictatorial regimes (such as in Russia and Syria) as 'progressive'; likewise, it pleased many on the Far Right (e.g., the Paleocons, the Libertarians, many of those on the Alt-Right), who regard many of those same regimes as fellow rebels against the globalist New World Order.

Now, after Castro's death, we find President-elect Trump sounding like a Reaganite - or a neocon. Here's Trump on front page of the BBC website:

And here's neoconservative Never Trumper John Podhoretz on the front page of the doyen of neoconservative and Jewish journals, Commentary:

Here is Trump's statement on Castro in full. He sounds like your average free-market conservative, a lot like Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio - or Ronald Reagan:

“Today, the world marks the passing of a brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for nearly six decades,” Trump said in a statement released on the news of Castro’s death Saturday.

“Fidel Castro’s legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights,” Trump said.

“While Cuba remains a totalitarian island, it is my hope that today marks a move away from the horrors endured for too long, and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve,” Trump said.

“Though the tragedies, deaths and pain caused by Fidel Castro cannot be erased, our administration will do all it can to ensure the Cuban people can finally begin their journey toward prosperity and liberty,” Trump said. “I join the many Cuban Americans who supported me so greatly in the presidential campaign, including the Brigade 2506 Veterans Association that endorsed me, with the hope of one day soon seeing a free Cuba.”

Just as significant is this article from the official Trumpist newspaper of record, Breitbart.Com:

Who are those four dictators? Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, Xi Jinping of China, and these two men:

Breitbart, the official organ of the Trump Republican Party, not being sufficiently reverential of Little Vladimir Putin and Ba'athist Bashar - this does not look good at all. Putinistas, Assadists and National-Trotskyites, read it and weep.