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The Generational Divide in Eastern Europe: The Soviet Boomers

In the West, we spend a lot of time endlessly debating the various generations and their voting patterns, values, and economic niche in our societies. While there are exceptions to any rule, certain generalizations have come into focus about the Silent Generation, the Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials and the Zoomers.

But what about in Eastern Europe? Do they have a similar generational divide?

Well, again, in the West, this generational divide was created mostly as a result of the cultural revolution of the 60s. Generations before then certainly differed in their views and their historical circumstances, but something changed from the 1960s onwards that divided the population into distinct cultural cohorts. The equivalent occurred in the East during the late 80s and the early 90s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the cultural revolution that occurred in its aftermath. Once again, everything in Slavland revolves around the USSR and people’s relationship to it, memory of it, and attitude towards what it represented.

The Soviet Generation is basically anyone who came of age in the Soviet Union and spent their formative years as a part of that system. These people generally have a nostalgia for the USSR that is tied both to their memories of their halcyon youth as well as a general support for the actual economic, social, and political system in which they lived. This is partially explained by the fact that the late Soviet Union was generally a stable, crime-free and an all-encompassing cradle-to-grave nanny-state. More than any other generation, the Soviet Generation is largely monolithic in its views and attitudes because their source of information was standardized and they did not have access to alternative media. This makes analyzing them quite easy, although it makes conversing with them rather tedious at times — you know what they’re going to say before they even formulate the thought in their heads.

It is worth mentioning that these people are often pejoratively referred to as the Sovok Generation, and when people in Eastern Europe refer to “sovoks” or the state of being “savok-like” they are referring to Soviet attitudes, values, and ways of doing things. It’s not a very nice word, but it’s also not quite at the level of being a curse or a slur. It is used in much the same way as the phrase “Ok, Boomer” is used by Millennials to deride their parents’ generation and their values.

A sovok, of course, is a broom in Russian and for some reason, it became popular to refer to Soviet nostalgists as sovoks, probably because of their tendency to deny that anything bad was happening during Soviet Union days. As an example, if someone were to bring up the existence of the archipelago of gulags in Siberia that the Soviet Union had created, the sovok would deny that such a thing existed and simultaneously insist that the people in them deserved to be incarcerated before just sweeping the discussion under the rug, as it were.

Anyway, because of their demographic weight, almost all culture in Eastern Europe revolves around them and their views on the world and their tastes. Because they remain committed and dedicated TV watchers, all official propaganda is broadcast with them in mind. As a result, you get non-stop state-funded dramas about World War II that play on repeat almost continually, with barely any commercial breaks. Spend some time living with these folks and you get used to the non-stop rat-at-tat of machine-gun fire wafting through the paper-thin commieblock walls and angry German barking noises coming from the TV. It is only interrupted occasionally by those god-awful “narodinye” music concerts that feature singers in their 60s singing love songs from better days and commercials advertising laxatives and the services of private health spas.

Hey, what can I say? The TV people clearly know their target demo.

Furthermore, there has yet to be an Obama-like politician (in Russia at least) who demonstrated the power of social media and internet outreach to younger folks to produce an electoral landslide in his favor, although Alexey Navalny came close. TV remains the powerhouse of political campaigning because it targets the largest, most consistant voting bloc in the country. As a result, all politicians promise to increase pensions, social benefits, and other socialist policies aimed at people in their 50s and above. Post-Soviet old-timers also have an economic interest in being pro-Communist/Socialist considering that they now collect checks from the government to fund their retirement — something that they were promised during the ancien régime and which they hold modern politicians accountable for delivering on.

In contrast, pro-Soviet sentiment is virtually non-existent in the post-Soviet generation that comprises the younger age demographic. They generally view the red flag with a sense of unease and associate it with stagnation, corruption and repression. The official state cult of World War II and the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany and her allies does not resonate with the youth, but, again, it resonates quite deeply with the Soviet Generation, who was raised on it. In the 70s and into the 80s, the Soviet government, which had been surprisingly quiet about World War II, started leaning into WWIIism once the Marxism and building a socialist utopia thing began to lose resonance with the public. As for why the Soviet state was loath to embrace WWIIism initially, it may have been because they had incorporated many of the countries that they had fought against into its empire. Unlike the Allies, the Soviets sometimes demonstrated a Realpolitik attitude towards reincorporating and reusing old cadres from the various vassal state that they had conquered which led to lower-level Nazi officials finding official employment in the newly-reformed Stasi, for example. It was all that or it was the embarrassment that the Soviet state felt at the scale of destruction that they had suffered. Or maybe the idea simply hadn’t crossed their minds yet or it was rejected by party elites for being too “militarist” or “imperialist” or “bourgeoise.”

Regardless, the two-headed Russian eagle has yet to move past World War II and her eye remains firmly fixed on the past, fighting the last century’s wars over and over again in her own mind. Russia cannot form a vision of the future because she has not yet reconciled with her past.

Since we’re on the topic of demographics and World War II, it’s worth pointing out that the war did indeed blow a giant hole in the Slav population. But, if reproductive rates had remained consistent in the years following the war, this wound could have healed over in short order and the body of the people could have recovered in a few generations time. Instead, because of the Soviet industrialization policy, the aquifer that produced fresh Slavic souls was deliberately destroyed with the destruction of Slavic villages where families traditionally had upwards of 8 children or more through collectivization policies implemented by the government. Peasants were herded into the cities to begin their new lives as proletarians and to repent of their wicked kulak ways. The housing crisis, plus the Soviet cultural reforms which encouraged feminism and women’s rights along with the suppression of religion all worked towards contributing to the demographic slump that occurred soon after. In this sense, the Soviet situation almost exactly mirrors what occurred in the West, and in the United States, in particular. A baby boom following the war, followed by a steep drop-off, which left a huge demographic cohort dwarfing the subsequent ones that followed. Just like in the US, the Soviet Boomers grew up in a time of relative peace and plenty. Jobs grew off of trees as the Soviet Union needed anyone that they could get their hands on to rapidly build new cities, new factories, new roads and new missiles. When this all came to an end following the collapse of the USSR, the Soviet generation was left shell-shocked and many lost all that they had worked for. Previous generations were largely self-reliant and relied on the social safety net provided by their large families and village communities. But the Soviet generation, whether they had a choice or not, actually believed the promise that the state made to take care of them. As a result, they were the first generation to abandon the concept of large, nuclear and extended families and embraced the nanny-state whole-heartedly. They have become a huge burden on the post-Soviet economy with their constant trips to state-subsidized clinics and demands for ever-increasing pensions paid for by a much smaller working-age demographic.

Most Soviet old-timers have also retained bits and pieces of old Soviet propaganda in their minds, although these have been warped by time and the revisionist efforts of Neo-Sovietist writers and propagandists. Nikolai Starikov stands out as a shining example of this new form of Soviet apologism and revisionism, although it has become a veritable cottage industry in the countries of the former Soviet Union.

As a result, Soviets have a rather eclectic list of likes and dislikes that don’t make any sense from a Western perspective. For example, they hate Solzhenitsyn, whom they view as a traitor and they love Stalin, whom  they view as the savior of Russia. Oh and they also hate Lord of the Rings for its anti-industial themes and because they believe that Sauron and Mordor represent the USSR — which they might, actually, come to think of it. But the controversy around the Lord of the Rings and its publication in the USSR is a story for another time. Soviet Boomers generally vote either for the Communists or for Putin, depending on whether they’re feeling particularly peeved at the government during that election cycle or not. As a rule, they are very concerned with economics first and foremost, and in particular, economic self-sufficiency. At heart they are autarkists, and nurse a burning hope for the Soviet promise of one day overtaking the West in the production and efficient distribution of widgets.

In short, their worldview and preferred political platform, in a nutshell, is economic nationalism (although they abhor the use of that particular N-word), cradle-to-grave big government socialism, and worshipping at the altar of the secular state religion of WWIIism.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t point out that the Soviet generation has a bizarre view of history and largely views the twentieth century through a conspiratorial lens. Please strap in for this next part and try to follow along as best you can. Most Soviet old-timers believe all of the following points simultaneously, even the ones that contradict one another. And so, without further ado:

  • Jews are not to be trusted. (Stalin condemned the Jews as being saboteurs of the Socialist project and the USSR subsequently supported the Arabs and their fight against Israel.)
  • Jews are very clever and have a lot to teach Eastern Europeans
  • Jews are responsible for the Russian Revolution and the carnage that followed.
  • Lenin had some good ideas.
  • Lenin was a secret Jew.
  • Hitler was a secret Jew funded by the United States and Great Britain.
  • Stalin was an enemy of the Jews and killed by the Jews.
  • Anti-Semitism is wrong and the Soviet Union was not anti-Semitic.
  • The Soviet Union saved the Jews from Hitler (and that’s a good thing).
  • The Jews destroyed the Soviet Union.
  • The Jews murdered the Tsar, but the Tsar was oppressing the people so he had to go.
  • The gulags are a myth.
  • The gulags were necessary to weed out traitors to the Soviet Union.
  • “Your great-grandfather was sent to the Gulags”.
  • Solzhenitsyn lied about the Gulags and was a traitor.
  • Stalin was a Russian patriot.
  • National-Socialism is abhorrent and evil.
  • Social-Nationalism is what made the USSR great.
  • The Soviet system was just and fair.
  • The Soviet Union stole wealth from Russians and redistributed it to the other socialist republics.
  • Ethnicity is not important, Socialism can establish world peace.
  • The Turks are a race of criminals and scoundrels.
  • Gorbachev was a traitor to the Soviet Union.
  • Comrade Andropov was a swell guy.
  • Krushchev was a drunk Ukrainian peasant.
  • Zhukov should have succeeded Stalin.
  • The KGB were just NKVD and Chekha thugs.
  • “I had many friends in the KGB.”

And on it goes.

Overall, they’re a mixed bag, to put it lightly. On the one hand, there is nothing wrong with economic nationalism and one could even make the argument for implementing some elements of socialism to raise living standards as part of a populist political platform. On the other hand, these ideas are simply not enough to form a romantic and uplifting message that captivates the hearts of the younger generations and chart a new civilizational course for Eastern Europe. What’s worse, these relatively sound and grounded ideas are tarnished by their constant and deliberate association with the Soviet Union.

In much the same way that myopic nationalists in the West deliberately associate their good ideas with the toxic brand of the Third Reich, so too do the old-timers in the East poison the well by associating the re-opening of Russian factories and social conservatism with gulags and secret police dragging people out of their apartments in the middle of the night.

Furthermore, they, like their Baby Boomer counterparts in the West, consider themselves the pinnacle of human evolution, and generally have an attitude of knowing better and being better than any generation that came afterwards. Their children and grandchildren (if they have any) will point out that everything built by their generation is ugly, which the eternal Sovok will, of course deny in much the same way that Western Baby Boomers demonstrate a peculiar appreciation for the sprawling strips malls and vacant parking lots that they built in the West.

More than anything, the Soviet Generation is terrified of being called the N-word and go to great lengths to extol the virtues of “the friendship of nations” that they supposedly successfully built in the USSR. They will frequently point out that there was no ethnic conflict in the Soviet Union, because Soviet values had defeated ethnic chauvinism by giving humanity a common goal and mission: efficient widget production and generous pensions, basically. If you point out that the Soviet Union achieved and maintained this uneasy peace through its military might, well… be prepared to have the N-bomb hurled at you.

And then, of course, one can’t help but notice the rather schizophrenic messaging around the war in Ukraine. See, you have young Russian nationalists with Slavic rune patches…

… or insignia derived from right-wing video games and fantasy novels ….

… shooting at Neo-Nazi mercenaries with SS Black Sun patches who are on the payroll of a Jewish oligarch.

And then you have Soviet pensioners coming out to welcome the militias of Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics by waving the red Soviet Flag. Lenin, of course, created the modern state of Ukraine to weaken Russia. Putin himself mentioned this fact in his speech declaring war on Kiev and called for the “de-communization” of Ukraine!

But they wave their red flag regardless. And then the mayor of Mariuple goes on to declare that a statue to the Soviet granny who came out of her home and waved a red flag at Ukrainian troops (viral video) will be built in the center of town!

This is Eastern European meta-political schizophrenia at its finest. I can only shrug and laugh at this point. Hopefully you find it as amusing as I do.

And of course, both sides also routinely accuse the other of being Nazis in their official propaganda. Sergei Lavrov just recently announced that, unbeknownst to everybody, Hitler was actually Jewish and that Jews are the real anti-Semites. He was then quickly condemned by Jews, who as a community, accuse Putin and his government of being Fascists and prefer to support the Jewish president of Ukraine. Lavrov’s statements are sure to raise eyebrows in the West, especially among members of the Dissident Right. But, if you had understood that Lavrov and most of the people in the Kremlin and the bureaucracy are Soviet Boomers, you could have basically set a timer and put your feet up while waiting for him to drop the obligatory “Hitler was a secret Jew anti-Semite” line. All I can say is that a lot of things become clearer about modern Russia when you understand the Sovok Mindset™.

Anyways I could write volumes upon volumes about the Sovoks and their Lies, but I feel that at this point I should tone down the criticism a bit and point out that compared to the generations that followed, these guys are the only ones holding the line against the onslaught of Western neoliberal values that the youth are so eager to gobble up and copy. Fundamentally, we have to conclude that they are simply a product of the informational environment that they grew up in. They cannot hate the Soviet Union because they grew up in it and to reject it is to reject decades of conditioning and hard work dedicated towards realizing the promised Socialist utopia. It’s easy to make fun of them and their beliefs, but they did not have the internet growing up, and they had to reconcile the whispered warnings of their far wiser parents’ generation and the realities of having to adjust and make a living in the Soviet system. They saw themselves as the Generation That Was Promised — as modernizers that would usher in an era of peace and plenty. When this vision crashed and burned, they reached out and clung to whatever they could to give them some sense of grounding and purpose. They did their best to rationalize irreconcilable realities and historical meta-narratives and as a result, their worldview is schizophrenic, to say the least.

What’s more, they seem incapable of realizing that their worldview is not universal and simply not shared by subsequent generations or those who lived outside the territories of the USSR. New ideas and geopolitical realities bounce off of them as their worldview has already firmly cemented and is continually reinforced by state propaganda geared at keeping them happy, leaving little room for doubt or deeper thinking to change their accepted vision of reality. Their vision of the future is myopic, as it is simply based on a nostalgia for the past.

In conclusion, in much the same way as the fate of the West is largely in the hands of the post-war generation, who still retains some semblance of wealth and electoral power, so too is the current political situation in Russia largely dominated by the needs, concerns and worldview of the Soviet Boomers. Funny enough, both of these demographic groups in the East and the West have more in common with one another then they care to admit.

God help us all.

Thoughts on Britain’s “Rwanda Plan”


 

“It seems fair to conclude that Jewish organizations have uniformly advocated high levels of immigration of all racial and ethnic groups into Western societies and have also advocated a multicultural model for these societies.”
Kevin MacDonald, The Culture of Critique

 On April 14, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson outlined a remarkable immigration agreement with the nation of Rwanda. Under the agreement, “everyone who enters the UK illegally will be considered for resettlement to Rwanda,” where their asylum cases, should they wish to make one, will be processed. Even if a migrant is granted asylum, he or she will be encouraged to remain in the east African nation for at least five years. If their application is refused, Rwanda will offer them permanent residence, prompting Johnson to speak of “tens of thousands” of migrants who will be permanently removed from Britain in the years ahead. In return for taking Britain’s unwanted migrants, the UK government has offered Rwanda an initial payment of £120 million in cash and investment. It’s the kind of policy that would have prompted Enoch Powell, who always championed a policy of incentivized repatriation, to nod in agreement.

Despite its surface level appeal, however, those furthest to the right have expressed suspicion of the measure as yet another conservative sop, intended to mask spiralling legal migration and the fact the UK’s new points-based immigration system seems designed to keep numbers high. I agree with this suspicion. I also believe, however, that the Rwanda scheme is important in terms of setting a precedent that can eventually be built upon. We should be absolutely clear here that, at the level of first principles, what is proposed by Johnson is a step forward in population removal and the rejection of the idea that non-White migrants have a fundamental right to live among Europeans. To employ the well-worn Lenin adage, our ideas must probe with bayonets: When they find mush, we should push. I believe it is worthwhile pushing the Rwanda scheme. Concurrently, when the bayonet meets with strong resistance, we should pause and examine the nature of the obstacle. 

Jewish Objections

One of the most outspoken opponents of the Rwanda plan in recent weeks is Larry Bottinick, an American Jew and the UN Refugee Agency’s current envoy to the UK. Bottinick’s lack of ties to the British people hasn’t prevented him from prolific and outspoken interference since the announcement of the plan. His main point of attack seems to be accusations that the plan will become “eye-wateringly expensive” and that it could “violate international law.” He told the Associated Press “There’s nothing in international law that says you have to ask [for asylum] in the first country you encounter. UNHCR understands the frustration of the U.K. government on that, and is not in favor of Channel crossing, of course. We think there’s more effective ways and more humane ways to address this.” By “effective and humane” he means doing nothing at a time when “more than 4,500 migrants have crossed the English Channel from France to Britain in small boats … four times more than the total this time last year.” Bottinick’s real fear seems to be that these migrants will never be allowed to settle in the UK, telling one skeptical interviewer that his understanding of the Rwanda plan is that “Once they’re in Rwanda they won’t be brought back to the UK. … You’re trying to deter them from coming.”

Bottinick has claimed that the Rwanda plan, the primary aim of which is to prevent migrant crossings of the English Channel in small boats organized by smugglers, won’t do anything to prevent people smuggling. I suppose it might be a coincidence or the simultaneous deployment of the Royal Navy to patrol the Channel for migrant boats, but in the nine-day period immediately after the plan became public knowledge, there were no migrant crossings in the English Channel. It’s clear that such attempts to enter Britain will seem radically less attractive to migrants if they result not in walking the streets of Notting Hill, but rather those of Kigali or Muhanga. This relates to the truth that the ultimate goal of the vast majority of even genuine asylum seekers to the West (to the extent that they do in fact originate in a country experiencing violent conflict or where they personally experience persecution) is not to find peace and security, but to take advantage of the chaos in their country in order to fulfil their pre-existent material ambition of living among Europeans and deriving any benefit that might entail. The basic principle of international refugee law contains, and approves, this ambition implicitly. It is the unspoken enshrinement of what we might call the international right to live among White people. This is why we see the widespread phenomenon of so-called asylum seekers passing through a dozen or more perfectly safe and welcoming countries in order to reach their chosen Northwest European destination, selected from the global map in the same way you’d pick your prize at a fairground. It’s also why we see the outlandish examples of Africans crossing an ocean, trekking across Latin America, and presenting themselves in the United States where they claim asylum.

Larry Bottinick

Rwanda has three times the intentional homicide rate of the UK, low by African standards, but not quite the asylum seeker’s desired prize. If the Rwanda plan was put into full effect, migrant crossings of the English Channel would become almost non-existent — a fact that seems to deeply alarm Mr. Bottinick. Bottinick’s ideas on the outcome of the Rwanda plan aren’t just wrong, of course, they’re also deeply hypocritical. In previous employment, according to one legal document, Bottinick worked as a “Senior Resettlement Officer,” in Tel Aviv, during which time he participated in a working group designed to “work to facilitate the departure to third countries to be determined of some 16,000 Eritreans and Sudanese under various programmes, including sponsorship, resettlement, family reunion and labour migration schemes.” Under Bottinick’s watch at least 4,500 Africans were removed from Israel to third-party nations, apparently without the process becoming “eye-wateringly expensive” or resulting in an increase of illegal immigration or asylum applications.

Another significant objection to the Rwanda plan has been raised by Enver Solomon, Chief Executive of the UK’s Refugee Council. Solomon’s name has the air of a Dickensian villain, which is about the only English connection he really has since he’s the son of a Jewish father and a Muslim mother. Shortly after the plan was announced Solomon wrote:

We are appalled by the Government’s cruel and nasty decision to send those seeking sanctuary in our country to Rwanda. … Sending people seeking asylum to be processed abroad will do absolutely nothing to address the reasons why people take perilous journeys to find safety in the UK. It will do little to deter them from coming to this country, but only lead to more human suffering and chaos – at a huge expense of an estimated £1.4 billion a year. Far from enabling people to rebuild their lives, we know from where this has been done by other countries, it only results in high levels of self-harm and mental health issues and can also lead to people ending up back in the hands of people smugglers. We urge this Government to immediately rethink its plans, which are in such stark contrast to what every Conservative Prime Minister since Churchill has sought to do by providing a fair hearing on British soil for those who claim asylum. Instead, the Government should focus on operating an orderly, humane and fair asylum system, and developing safe routes such as humanitarian visas, rather than harming lives and destroying our reputation as a country which values human rights.

Enver Solomon

I must applaud Mr. Solomon for his literary talent in crafting mendacious, manipulative propaganda. Every trick in the book is present here. Consider, for example, the emotive language “cruel and nasty.” Look also at the many diversions, like it “will do absolutely nothing to address the reasons why people take perilous journeys to find safety in the UK.” Is it the responsibility of the UK to address internal stability in every nation on earth? Isn’t the presumption that some people are incapable of governing themselves “imperialist thinking”? Apparently not when you can use to it pry open borders. He then proclaims that sending migrants to Rwanda will lead to “high levels of self-harm and mental health issues.” Why? The missed chance to see Buckingham Palace or the Beatles Museum? Aren’t these people fleeing war zones and death threats? The UK government has stressed that Rwanda is a “fundamentally safe and secure” location, perfectly suitable for the relocation of people in genuine distress. If you are thrown into distress because you missed out on Piccadilly Circus and instead find yourself in another situation in which you will be safe and cared for, then perhaps you weren’t in that much peril and need in the first place. Finally, and predictably, there is the coup de grâce — an appeal to abstract values so near and dear to the the British (and completely missing among Jews re Israel): “our reputation as a country which values human rights.” And yet Solomon himself has previously described Britain not as a country which values human rights but which is typified by “empty rhetoric” and “nationalist posturing.” Mr. Solomon is indulging in a cynical and petty moral blackmail.

Following in the footsteps of Enver Solomon’s screed, the Guardian published an open letter by a collective of “rabbis and members of the British Jewish community,” spanning Orthodox, Reform, Masorti, and Liberal sects of Judaism. The offended postmodern Israelites complained that

we are utterly appalled by the government’s inhumane plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda for offshore processing. Such a policy flies in the face of Jewish values, and would be a cruel, moral failure to those in urgent need of protections. It is particularly disturbing that such plans have been announced shortly before our community celebrates Passover, a festival where Jews recall our journey to safety from Egypt. As we prepare to read the story of Exodus, it is deeply unsettling that the government is seeking to deprive the opportunity of freedom to those fleeing modern-day tyrants. Such proposals also bring to mind unpleasant memories of the overseas internment of Jewish refugees in the second world war. This policy was a grave error: we urge the government to learn from this historic mistake, uphold international refugee law and ensure all those seeking safety in the UK are treated with dignity and respect. If the government is serious about preventing small boat crossings, it should act to introduce safe and accessible routes to sanctuary in the UK. Seeking to replicate Australia’s disastrous offshoring system in Rwanda, a country frequently condemned for its appalling human rights record, would be a terrible abdication of responsibility. We urge the government to instead stand up, fulfil its moral duty, and protect, not punish, those fleeing conflict and persecution.

Oy vey indeed. Our Hebrew friends are deeply distressed that the Rwanda plan reminds them of ancient stories that involve talking shrubs, sticks magically being transformed into snakes, and self-parting oceans. It’s almost criminal that Britain’s civil servants hadn’t considered this possibility when drafting the plan. In all seriousness, however, we see here precisely the same rhetorical tactics employed by Bottinick and Solomon. Again we see the emotive language, “cruel” and “inhumane.” It’s disparaged as a “moral failure,” and a “terrible abdication of responsibility” and “moral duty.” It’s an affront to “Jewish values” — values that are somehow missing in Israel which has deported thousands of African refugees to Canada against their will.

It’s cynical and petty moral blackmail another illustration of the power of moral imperatives in making Westerners act against their self interest. Cynical because, try as I might, I can’t find these same people issuing similar statements in the aftermath of Israel’s eviction of its Africans under Bottinick. You might argue that that’s because these are “English Jews” concerned with what’s happening in England, but that doesn’t add up either. The main author of the Guardian piece is Edie Friedman, who’s from Chicago, in yet another example of an American Jew bleating shamelessly about values she feels native Britons should adhere to.

In fact, much as with the American situation, almost everywhere one looks in the context of British refugee and migrant organizations, Jews are found in leading roles. The executive director of British Red Cross is Zoe Abrams, who has said she is “profoundly concerned” about the Rwanda plan and, echoing Bottinick, Solomon, and the Guardian complainers, added that “the financial and human cost will be considerable.” She wants the UK to accept “at least 10,000” migrants, and claims “We’re an island, but we can afford to be more generous, and as Global Britain — we should be.” Boris Johnson recently complained that refugee policy in the UK in recent years has been bogged down due to opposition from an “army of politically motivated lawyers,” but unmentioned is the fact that most British “refugee lawyers” filter through the University of London’s Refugee Law Initiative, founded and directed by the Jew David Cantor, and led academically by “Senior Lecturer in Refugee Law” Sarah Singer.

Christian Complicity

Aside from Jews, outspoken nonsense has also gushed forth from the Church of England, in the form of its abysmal Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. I’ve previously written of Welby:

At the heart of this disease is the Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the Church of England, Justin Welby, a man who looks like ten minutes of manual labor would actually kill him. He is the definition of all that is wrong in modern Man. Setting aside his uninspiring physical presence, Welby is a literal bastard, his mother Jane Portal having cuckolded her husband, the alcoholic Jew Gavin Welby (born Bernard Weiler) with her boss, Sir Anthony Montague Browne. The result of these chaotic origins is that Archbishop Welby/Weiler/Browne has fled entirely from any sense of meaningful identity, asserting in 2016: “I know that I find who I am in Jesus Christ, not in genetics, and my identity in him never changes.” If Welby limited himself to personal genetic oblivion there might not be a problem. A problem does, however, emerge, when Welby uses his position and influence to attack those who do pursue their interests. In 2016, when Nigel Farage told the press that sex attacks by migrants were “the nuclear bomb” of the EU referendum, Welby/Weiler/Browne told MPs in the home affairs select committee that he “utterly condemned” Farage for an “inexcusable pandering to people’s worries and prejudices, that is giving legitimization to racism.” If that wasn’t bad enough, Welby/Weiler/Browne, who has confessed to struggling with his mental health, appears to have an almost Freudian desire to replace the Jewish father he thought he had with the current Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis. Welby/Weiler/Browne has taken to accompanying Mirvis on numerous excursions, echoing the Rabbi’s sentiments on almost every subject.

For once, however, Welby seems to have taken the lead. While Mirvis has yet to say a word on the Rwanda plan, Welby has decided to speak for his deity, announcing that the plan is “the opposite of the nature of God.” I personally think Welby’s motivations for opposing the plan might be a little more earthly than heavenly. A recent London School of Economics study found that while native Britons are spending less and less time in Welby’s churches, “Migrants into the UK are more than three times more likely than natives to attend a religious service weekly, or to pray daily.” Welby probably thinks he’s boosting his pious flock, but it’s not quite so simple. It was reported by The Week last November that the Church of England was merely helping asylum seekers “game the system” by converting to Christianity. A Home Office source was quoted as describing the way in which asylum seekers would “show they are committed Christians” and can then “argue that their new faith would put them at risk in their home country.” The Telegraph reported that “thousands” of asylum seekers had been “welcomed into the Anglican faith in recent years, with clergy even given written guidance on how to navigate the Home Office system.”

Several newspapers pointed to a tribunal decision on an anonymous asylum case in 2017 that suggested an “improbably large” number of Iranians attending the Liverpool Anglican Cathedral cast doubt on whether they were all “genuine converts.” In other cases, asylum was granted after conversions were deemed authentic — normally after evidence of the very regular church attendance of the kind described above (three times more than native Brits). Modern British Christianity exists only as a left-wing immigration assistance body. It’s most notable conversion in recent years is that of Emad Al Swealmeen. He was denied asylum in 2014, then had a sudden road to Damascus moment which resulted in his baptism a year later. In 2017 he was “confirmed” to the applause of hundreds of idiots in Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral. Four years later this confirmed Christian prematurely detonated a bomb in the name of Allah, intended for a military remembrance event in the heart of Liverpool. I wonder if Archbishop Welby considers whether assisting such people, and making a mockery and a fraud of his religion, is “the opposite of the nature of God.”

Conclusion 

Surrounded by hostile forces, there is a temptation within our camp to adopt contrarian stances towards almost everything emanating from mainstream politics. There is a lot of context around the Rwanda plan which is far from ideal and is in fact contemptible. The Rwanda plan has been introduced by Home Secretary Priti Patel, who recently sought after the interests of her own ethnic group by signing the Migration and Mobility Partnership (MMP), a deal that has been instrumental in the dramatic rise of Indian immigration to Britain. The immigration profile of the UK since Brexit has been transformed, with a huge drop in east European migration, and a large increase in non-EU migration, especially from India and China. Much of this migration is in the form of student visas for Chinese and Indian students, which might lead commentators to assume that this is a “temporary” migration problem that doesn’t result in long-term settlement. A comprehensive study of the relevant figures in 2015, however, found that trends consistently show “a majority of students were not going home. For the past three years the estimated inflows of students has been significantly higher than the number of self-reported former students estimated to be leaving.”

Britain has a massive legal immigration problem, and the Conservative party seems to be cynically playing to its audience. The party is traditionally the choice of rural England, while Labour is the choice of the industrial heartlands and the major cities. By curbing east European migration through Brexit, the Conservatives removed visible migration from rural areas where these migrants were occupying jobs in agriculture and food production. Legal migration is less visible to rural England, since it tends to flow in large part to the universities and workplaces of the major cities, which are regarded as fully multicultural anyway. As such, simply through geography and demography, Boris Johnson and Priti Patel can increase migration while giving the opposite impression to their key voters. The Rwanda plan is in many respects another part of the ploy, since it gives off an air of being hardline and appeals to the instinct of Conservative voters to want to tackle illegal immigration.

Those of us looking on at this charade from a radical Right perspective have a difficult choice to make. Do we support such charades knowingly and opportunistically, in the hope that it is something that could be built upon culturally and politically? Or condemn it honestly as a legislative hoax, and make no inroads at all in terms of the political landscape? I suggest probing with bayonets, but without getting your hopes up.

The Northman

The Northman is a cinematic depiction of Viking society in the late ninth century. Co-written and directed by Robert Eggers (who previously directed two horror movies) and starring Alexander Skarsgård (who had long been interested in Viking history and mythology and was instrumental in getting Eggers involved), it is a refreshing attempt at historical realism in an age where having an all-White cast is seen as culturally subversive. Worse for our current cultural literati, it provides a positive portrayal of what would be seen as extreme “toxic” masculinity among White men at a time when emasculated White men are common throughout the media. Surprisingly perhaps, the film has gotten excellent mainstream reviews, with many commenting on its stunning visual qualities (it was filmed in Northern Ireland) and its gripping storyline. I completely agree. It kept me enthralled from beginning to end. If you want to see the movie, I suggest not reading this until after you’ve seen it. Lots of plot giveaways.

What interests me here is how accurately the film comports with Viking culture as presented as a prototypical Indo-European culture in Chapter 2 of my book, Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition.

Swearing an Oath

Fundamentally, The Northman is a tale of revenge—a common enough human emotion, but here with the added twist that Amleth (the main character, played by Skarsgård) has sworn an oath to avenge his father, King Aurvandill. Aurvandill had been killed by his brother, Amleth’s uncle Fjölnir who then seized the king’s wife and property.  Revenge is thus Amleth’s all-encompassing duty.

It is difficult for us to imagine the importance and seriousness of swearing a public oath in a religious ceremony in traditional Indo-European (I-E) culture. I-E culture was fundamentally individualist—one of the two powerful strands of Western European individualism, along with northern hunter-gatherers. And within I-E cultures, reputation, in this case as an 0ath-keeper) is far more important than kinship in determining one’s status. Thus avenging his father is an absolute, religiously tinged duty, far more important than, say, seeking a quiet family life. Duty above all else.  At the end of the movie, Amleth has succeeded in escaping his uncle’s farm where he and others had been held as slaves and after killing many of his uncle’s people, including his eldest son Thorir, his wife (Amleth’s mother, played by Nicole Kidman), and her young son by Fjölnir, Gunnar. But he hadn’t killed his uncle, so he goes back to his uncle’s farm for the final confrontation, despite earnest pleading from his pregnant (with twins) wife to accompany her to safety among anther branch of Amleth’s kin.

Oaths were a central component of the Männerbund (other terms: korios, comitatus), “the warrior brotherhood bound by oath to one another and to their ancestors during a ritually mandated raid.”[2] The formation of voluntary war-bands held together by oaths, camaraderie, and a common self-interest was a fundamental characteristic of these chiefdoms. This was a time when social status and rank were still openly determined by one’s heroic deeds and by the number of followers or clients one could attract and retain.[4]

In the absence of kinship ties, reputation becomes the standard for relationships. Andrew Fraser notes that oath-taking was and remains a peculiarly English pre-occupation, so much so that “the commonplace spectacle of Third World immigrants reciting oaths of allegiance at naturalization ceremonies is calculated to warm the hearts of WASPs committed heart and soul to the constitutionalist creed of civic nationalism.” Oath-taking is a public affirmation that is fundamentally about one’s reputation. It is, of course, a bit of WASP egoism to assume other peoples have a similar sense of public trustworthiness:

WASPs are trusting souls. For that very reason they can be exploited easily by those who promise one thing and do another. … Mass Third World immigration imposes enormous risks upon Anglo-Saxon societies grounded in unique patterns of trusting behavior that evolved over many centuries. If newcomers do not accept the burdens entailed by the civic culture of the host society—most notably the need to forswear one’s pre-existing racial, ethnic and religious allegiances—they are bound to reduce the benefits of good citizenship for the host Anglo-Saxon nation. (Andrew Fraser, The WASP Question (Arktos, 2011), 57, 64)

All evidence indicates that these groups will not forswear such allegiances, any more than Jews have forsworn their ethnic and religious allegiances despite centuries of living among Europeans.

Berserkers and Shape-Shifting

Two characteristics of I-E culture apparent in the film that always struck me are the berserkers and shape-shifting. Young boys “had to go out and become like a band of dogs or wolves—to raid their enemies.”[1] All young men went out on raids as part of their initiation into the group. Berserkers attacked their enemies in a trance-like frenzy that is apparent in several scenes. Emotional intensity at a fever pitch that was embedded in religion. Odin the god of the Männerbünde is also the “god of battle rage.”[5].

The concept is connected to a belief in shape-shifting wherein the soul is disengaged from the body and can roam as a wolf or a bear, at which time it can engage in superhuman heroic deeds. Snorri Sturluson, the medieval chronicler of the Norse sagas, writes: “Woden’s men went without hauberks [armor] and raged like dogs or wolves. They bit their shields and were strong like bears or bulls. They killed men but neither fire nor iron hurt them. This is called berserkgangr.”[6] Young men were initiated into the Männerbünde by mock hanging and were taught berserker techniques.[7]

Amleth as a Berserker

Amleth as a Shape-Shifting Berserker becomes a wolf.

Hypermasculinity of Norse Society

Indo-European culture was far from sexually egalitarian—what one might term “hyper-masculine.” Lotte Hedeager’s Iron Age Myth and Materiality: An Archaeology of Scandinavia, AD 400–1000 paints a picture of a completely militarized society in which male sexual penetration was a marker of power, while being penetrated was, for a male, the ultimate insult.[9] Accusing a man of having been sodomized was a grievous accusation, with the same penalty as for murder. Older males lacking the power or ability to penetrate took on the status of women and were even ridiculed by slaves. Women were seen as legitimate spoils of war and raiding, and such women were typically enslaved.

This is relevant to the plot of The Northman: Amleth’s mother, Queen Gudrún, was originally captured by Amleth’s father, Aurvandill, whom Gudrún describes as a rapist whom she passionately hated. When Aurvandill is killed by his brother Fjölnir, she becomes Fjölnir’s wife and bears him a son. She has much more positive feelings toward Fjölnir than for Aurvandill. Women as spoils of war.

The following passage from Hedeager gets at this hyper-masculine, completely militarized culture that appears to have been characteristic of I-E culture in northwestern Europe at least from 2500 bc until the Middle Ages:

In the extremely competitive and aggressive Scandinavian society in which blood feuds were taking place everywhere, often lasting for many years and several generations …, the concept of honour evolved around reputation, respect and prestige [i.e., not one’s place in a kinship group. as was typically the case in non-individualist cultures]. Social life and reputation were hierarchically organised and arranged according to dominance and submission, powerful and powerless. At the bottom of the social scale, female thralls [slaves] were routinely subjected to rape and traded as sexual subjects. In the account of a Viking market at Volga in 922, the Arab diplomat Ibn Fadlan describes how the Vikings (the Scandinavian Rus) regularly had sex with their slaves, often in public, and in groups of both sexes. This activity took place both in front of potential buyers and their own formal partners, whether wives or girlfriends, who seemed unaffected … . Rape of a free woman, however, was a serious matter … .

Within this social hierarchy, power was explicitly connected with metaphors for penetration—by the sword, penis, or tongue. Those who penetrated—with words, with weapons, or with the phallus—were the powerful (“males”); those who became penetrated were the powerless (“females”). In a social setting, sexuality provided a symbolic code for dominance and submission, throwing light on power and thus status differences … . The most severe accusations in the Old Norse society evolved around “effeminacy” and penetration, implying that sexuality and hostility were two sides of the same coin.[10]

I was surprised by the scene toward the end when Amleth reveals himself to Gudrún as her son. I expected Gudrún to be overjoyed at seeing her long-lost son, but instead she lashed out at him and admitted that she had asked Fjölnir to kill Aurvandill and Amleth, and that she prefers Fjölnir and their new son Gunnar. Amleth kills her after she attacks him, and he accidentally kills Gunnar. Assuming this could actually happen, it would indicate that despite the relatively low position of women, they could seek power by influencing men. The evolutionary psychology of her choice is a bit muddled; both Amleth and Gunnar are her sons and if anything, she should choose to favor the older (because he is already of reproductive age), but I suppose the hatred engendered by Aurvandill raping her overshadowed everything else—an example where a proximal mechanism (hatred of being raped, attraction to another’s relative kindness) trumps ultimate evolutionary logic. She was a prize in the fratricidal war between Fjölnir and Aurvandill, but apparently Fjölnir was relatively kind to her. Nevertheless, within the context of the story, the audience had been led to see Amleth’s quest as noble, to hope for his success, and to see Fjölnir as evil. The sudden reversal toward the end is jarring.

I-E Social Mobility

Another point of intersection with traditional I-E culture is that social mobility was possible. Men who had talent as warriors could move up in the culture—essentially it was a free market culture based on military talent, either organizational or fighting ability. Here Amleth is chosen as a slave by Fjölnir because of his physique and presumed fighting ability, and later, Amleth is on the side of Fjölnir and Thorir in an extremely violent game (Icelandic: knattleikr) where players club their opponents to gain an advantage, quite possibly with lethal consequences. Amleth excels at the game and comes to the rescue of the young Gunnar who is about to be murderously clubbed by an opponent. As a reward, Thorir lightens Amleth’s work load, and he allows him to supervise others and to be married to the beautiful Olga with whom he had already developed a bond. But he tells Amleth that he will always be a slave.

This reminds us that I-E culture had a strong role for reciprocity rather than total despotism. At the heart of I-E culture was the practice of gift-giving as a reward for military accomplishment. Successful leaders were expected to reward their followers handsomely.[11] Oath-bound contracts of reciprocal relationships were characteristic of I-Es and this practice continued with the various I-E groups that invaded Europe. These contracts formed the basis of patron-client relationships based on reputation—leaders could expect loyal service from their followers, and followers could expect equitable rewards for their service to the leader. This is critical because these relationships are based on talent and accomplishment, not ethnicity (i.e., rewarding people on the basis of kinship distance) or despotic subservience (where followers are essentially unfree). But progress from slave to completely free was slow, and, according to some scholars, could take several generations. Amleth will always be a slave in Fjölnir’s eyes.

Another thing that surprised and frankly horrified me was the aftermath of a successful raid on a Rus fortified village when many of the villagers were herded into a thatch-roofed building and then burned alive. The raiders made off with booty and some slaves (presumably the able-bodied men and desirable [fertile]  females) but seem to have murdered the rest—men, women, and children. Such behavior was not typical of many of the I-E groups that invaded Europe. Instead of simply raiding, conquering I-E groups typically developed settled among the people they conquered and developed relationships of domination and subordination between the new military elites and the conquered peoples, providing protection in return for service. This is a prescription for feudal-type societies dominated by military elites with mutual obligations to the people they dominate, but in which kinship ties between elites and the people they dominate are relatively unimportant and ultimately permeable. But the raid on the Rus village is not intended as a permanent settlement, with disastrous consequences for the villagers

*   *   *

The Northman depicts a society that is quite foreign to contemporary sensibilities. It’s unlikely many of us would want to live in it—unless one was able to be a male in a successful Männerbund. But, as it is said, uneasy lies the head that wears the crown—a lesson that could hardly have been lost on Fjölnir. In any case, there’s no denying that the society selected for strong men—something we definitely need now.

The deep question is how such a violent, hierarchical culture developed eventually into the highly egalitarian Scandinavian cultures we see today. My short answer is that the I-E’s dominated a far more egalitarian hunter-gatherer majority and that the latter eventually came to dominate the area—a theory spelled out in Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition. 


[1] Ibid., 239; emphasis in text.

[2] Ibid., 364.

[3] Duchesne, The Uniqueness of Western Civilization, 398.aa

[4] Ibid.

[5] Hans-Peter Hasenfratz, Barbarian Rites, trans. Michael Moynihan (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2011; original German edition, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany: Verlag Herder, 1992), 49.

[6] Michael Speidel, “‘Berserks’: A History of Indo-European ‘Mad Warriors,’” Journal of World History 13, no. 2 (1992): 253–90, 253–54.

[7] Hasenfratz, Barbarian Rites, 64–65.

[8] Anthony, The Horse, the Wheel, and Language.

[9] Lotte Hedeager, Iron Age Myth and Materiality: An Archaeology of Scandinavia, AD 400–1000 (London: Routledge, 2011).

[10] Ibid., 115–18.

[11] Anthony, The Horse, the Wheel, and Language, 238.

[12] Ibid., 303

[13] Ibid., 343.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Duchesne, The Uniqueness of Western Civilization, 438.

[16] Ibid., 379.

[17] Interestingly, Duchesne describes Stalin as a classic despot. Stalin, from Georgia, is said to have had a despotic Oriental personality, surrounding himself with “slavish characters” and continuing to need “choruses of public approval to reinforce his ego.” Duchesne, The Uniqueness of Western Civilization, 424.

[18] Herodotus, Histories 7, 136.

http://www.bostonleadershipbuilders.com/herodotus/book07.htm

[19] Haak, et al., “Massive Migration from the Steppe Was a Source for Indo-European Languages in Europe.”

[20] Kristian Kristiansen, et al. (“Re-Theorising Mobility and the Formation of Culture and Language among the Corded Ware Culture in Europe, Antiquity 9, no. 356 (2017): 334–347.

[21] Haak et al., “Ancient DNA, Strontium isotopes, and osteological analyses shed light on social and kinship organization of the Later Stone Age, Proceedings of the national Academy of Science 105, no. 47 (November 25, 2008): 18226–18231

[22] Ibid., 343.

[23] Anthony, The Horse, the Wheel, and Language, 343.

 

Recent Research on Race Realism

Race and Evolution: The Causes and Consequences of Race Differences
Stephen K. Sanderson
Self-published, 2022

Stephen Sanderson is the author, coauthor, or editor of sixteen books in twenty-two editions and some seventy-five articles in journals, edited collections, and handbooks. He is a retired professor of sociology and is quite unusual within his discipline for applying evolutionary principles to the study of society. His latest offering, dedicated to J. Phillippe Rushton, Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen, combines a useful summary of the best in recent research and theory regarding human racial differences (seven chapters) with applications to such topics as the history of slavery, liberal stereotype theory, social stratification by color, the history of human accomplishment, the rise of Northeast Asia, and the decline of Africa (six chapters); a final chapter discusses policy options. Being an American, the author devotes special attention to Whites and Blacks, but includes information on other races wherever helpful.

Sanderson begins his book with several epigraphs that indicate his awareness that he is stepping into a very politically incorrect minefield. These two are well worth pondering in the present context where woke ideology—an ideology based on moral judgments and equitable outcomes rather than science and facts—reigns supreme in universities, the media, and corporate culture:

A good society is one that permits a maximum amount of objective pursuit of truth and beauty, and this pursuit should be undertaken “irrespective of the consequences.” Such inquiry may lead to the discovery of “inconvenient facts,” but it must be undertaken nonetheless. We cannot know in advance whether the knowledge we create or discover will support or contradict certain moral positions already held. And “philosophies incongruent with the pursuit of a reduction in misery should be permitted since the basis of rationality is strengthened through argument,” and “all opinions, however obnoxious or however passionately held, [should] be heard and subjected to the test of rational criticism.” Barrington Moore, Jr.

Political thinking, especially on the left, is a sort of masturbation fantasy in which the world of fact hardly matters. George Orwell

The first section of the book, entitled “Foundations of Race Realism,” will be well-trodden ground for regular readers of The Occidental Observer, so I shall be brief. The first chapter defends the biological reality of races by providing a point-by-point refutation of two high-profile formal statements of social constructivism, one issued by the American Anthropological Association (AAA) in 1998 and the other by the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA) in 1999. The author explains what is wrong with “Lewontin’s fallacy,” i.e., the inference of the unreality of race from the fact of greater genetic variation within than between racial groups. He quotes some older texts to show that the concept of race was not invented by eighteenth century European colonialists, as the AAA and many antiracists maintain. A good example of the lengths to which some people will go to deny reality is the AAPA’s declaration that “human traits known to be biologically adaptive do not occur with greater frequency in one population than in others.” Sanderson marvels that this is “obviously false and a rather astonishing statement for a biological anthropologist to make,” giving a few simple examples. The chapter closes with an account of how cluster analysis of population genetic data can reliably identify “four to six major racial groups.”

Chapter Two explains the inadequacy of non-biological explanations for differences in racial outcomes, including discrimination, the lingering effects of slavery, and systemic racism. The best of these theories focuses on the higher rates of fatherless households among Blacks than Whites, but the explanation for this difference lies ultimately in racial biology after all.

Chapter Three summarizes evidence for genetically based racial differences in average intelligences. American psychometric data showing an average White IQ of about 100 and an average Black IQ of 85 has now accumulated for over a hundred years. In the course of childhood, the degree to which environment can explain such differences steadily declines, disappearing entirely by around age fourteen. Most damning for the social constructivist position, however, is that Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) now make it possible to identify specific genes that contribute to intelligence, meaning that intelligence can be reliably (albeit not perfectly) predicted from biological data alone. One particularly telling statistic Sanderson cites is the correlation between the average IQ of the nations of the world and the percentage of their population that is Black: .808.

Many Black-White socioeconomic gaps disappear once IQ is controlled for, but one difference that does not is out-of-wedlock births. In his fourth chapter, Sanderson explains race differences in sex, reproduction and family patterns, summarizing Rushton’s evidence for high mating effort/low nurturance among Blacks and low mating effort/high nurturance among Northeast Asians, with Whites intermediate. He demonstrates that fatherless homes are common in Africa and among Blacks worldwide, not something unique to post-World War II America.

Chapter Five discusses race differences in personality and temperament. In the American context, the most important are that Blacks have significantly higher levels of antisocial personality as well as higher time preference than Whites (i.e., Blacks are more likely to place less value on returns receivable or costs payable in the future and hence more likely to accept immediate rewards rather than wait for larger returns at a later date and more likely to take out disadvantageous long-term loans with immediate up-front payouts). Confusingly, the author systematically switches the terms “high” and “low” time preference; one hopes this mistake can soon be corrected through the print-on-demand system.

Chapter Six explains racial differences in law-abidingness, including violent crime, civil disorder (mob violence), and political corruption. Such differences are in large part a consequence of differences in intelligence and time-preference.

Chapter Seven outlines the historical development of racial differences following the migration of early humans out of Africa and into colder climates where getting through the winter required planning ahead. There is also a discussion of Life History Theory and the r-K continuum (basically the continuum from high mating effort/low nurturance to low mating effort/high nurturance).

The six chapters which make up Part 2 of Race and Evolution apply the race realist perspective to particular issues. Chapter Eight provides a brief history of New World slavery, including regional comparisons, arguing it was fundamentally an economic rather than a racial institution: “Europeans did not choose Africans as slaves because they considered them biologically inferior, but because Africa provided a huge supply of labor that could be transported to the New World more cheaply than slaves drawn from, say, India or China.”

Chapter Nine discusses racial stratification around the world, showing that Blacks have the lowest average socio-economic status in multiracial societies everywhere. The author explains that the phenomenon of “pigmentocracy”—where increasingly light skin is found the higher one goes up the socio-economic scale—results from a hierarchy of ability: “Lighter skinned people are regarded more highly because they are more talented.”

Ever since psychologist Gordon Alport published The Nature of Prejudice in 1954, “stereotypes” have been a staple of social constructivist discourse, the assumption being that they are unreliable. But this has never been demonstrated. In Chapter Ten, Sanderson summarizes the findings of a series of studies published since 2012 by social psychologist Lee Jussim and colleagues. They found a high positive correlation between racial, ethnic, and gender stereotypes and empirical reality. For instance, in one study comparing stereotypes with US Census data, correlations ranged from .27 (already moderately significant) to .96, with a mean as high as .83. Jussim et al. write that “stereotype accuracy correlations are among the largest and most replicable effects in all of social psychology.” This is no doubt because, over human evolutionary history, accurate knowledge of behavior patterns of social groups within one’s environment must have had considerable survival value, and thus been favored by natural selection.

Chapter Eleven demonstrates that the bulk of scientific discovery and other advances in human knowledge have been the work of European and European-descended men. Northeast Asians may have somewhat higher average intelligence, but they tend to produce highly conformist cultures where copying from accepted “masters” is inculcated and originality is frowned upon. Africa, of course, has produced nothing notable in scientific discovery.

Chapter Twelve discusses the recent rapid economic development of Northeast Asia and the dominance of Southeast Asian economies by the overseas Chinese.

Chapter thirteen contrasts this with the catastrophic fate of sub-Saharan Africa since decolonization and demonstrates the inadequacy of anti-colonial theories to explain it. The late Ghanaian economist George B. N. Ayittey has described the typical African post-colonial regime as a “vampire state.” Sanderson summarizes:

A vampire state is one run by crooks and gangsters who come to power either through rigged elections or coups d’état. Their leaders are functional illiterates who debauch all major government institutions: civil service, military, judiciary and banking system. They transform their countries into personal fiefdoms for the benefit of themselves, their cronies and tribesmen.

The author offers a brief tour of the continent filled with collapsing public services, universal corruption and bribery, civil wars, cannibalism, torture, a five hextillion percent rate of inflation (in Zimbabwe a few years ago) and outright genocide (in Rwanda). As he explains:

Before colonialism Africans had indigenous political institutions that were much simpler and more easily used to maintain order than those established by the colonists. The new colonial institutions were not natural to Africans and proved beyond their ability to manage effectively. Indeed, it took Europeans thousands of years to develop such institutions, . . . so it is no wonder that Africans did not understand them.

To this must be added that many who succeed in the ruthless world of African power politics have extremely antisocial personalities and are not really interested in economic development or the general welfare. They concentrate their efforts on enriching themselves at the expense of the countries they govern, displaying “a massive failure to adhere to social norms, no regard for truth, a lack of remorse or feelings of guilt, extreme aggressiveness, impulsiveness and recklessness, and an unusually weak moral sense.”

The final chapter of Race and Evolution is devoted to policy, explaining the failure of racial preferences, the lack of any evidence for the alleged benefits of “diversity,” and the many powerful objections to slavery reparations. Sanderson agrees with law professor Amy Wax’s position that “outsiders’ power to change existing [dysfunctional Black family] patterns is severely limited; the future of Black America is now in its own hands.” Yet he notes that the choices Blacks have to make are constrained by their own biological nature. Some Blacks do make good choices and prosper as a result, but these are generally those with above-average intelligence and an absence of antisocial character traits. Many others are unlikely ever to make better choices than they are making now.

Sanderson agrees that America needs a “national conversation on race,” as advocated, e.g., by Bill Clinton and Howard Schultz (the CEO of Starbucks), but unlike them he understands that it will do no good as long as knowledgeable race realists are banned from participation. As Arthur Jensen and J. Phillippe Rushton have written:

There is a need to educate the public about the true nature of individual and group differences, genetics, and evolutionary biology. Ultimately, the public must accept the pragmatic reality that some groups will be overrepresented and others groups underrepresented in various socially valued outcomes. The view that one segment of the population is largely to blame for the problems of another segment can be harmful to racial harmony. Equating group disparities in success with racism on the part of the more successful group guarantees mutual resentment.

Racial equality of outcome is not achievable, but race relations could be greatly improved if the biological reality of racial differences were understood by more people.

There is not a lot of original material in Sanderson’s Race and Evolution, but I am not aware of any other single volume which summarizes so much useful information about race between two covers. It could do a great deal of good if made widely available. Is there any chance it will be? The author is currently trying to get an e-book version published on Amazon. For the time being, you can order the book directly from him for $12 US plus $4 US shipping (domestic) or 10 EUR plus 7 EUR shipping (outside the United States). Write to:

Stephen Sanderson
460 Washington Road, Apt. G-3
Pittsburgh, PA 15228

E-mail: sksander999@gmail.com

The author also maintains a website at www.stephenksanderson.com.

Denying Holocaust Denial

On April 8, it was announced that Canada would soon be joining an illustrious club: the enlightened nations of the world that have elected to ban so-called Holocaust denial.  Depending on how one interprets the law, there are currently 18 nations that either explicitly ban “Holocaust denial” (including Germany, Austria, France, Israel, Italy, Poland, Hungary, and Russia) or generically ban “denial of genocide” (Switzerland and Lichtenstein).  Canada would then be the nineteenth nation in this honor roll of obsequiousness.

Canada’s action comes not long after the UN General Assembly approved a related resolution, A/76/L.30, on 22 January 2022, “condemning” such denial.  (The resolution was passed “by consensus,” meaning that no actual affirmative votes were cast.  Evidently no country had the courage to demand a rollcall vote.)

The text of Canada’s bill is apparently unavailable—it seems that it will be buried in a larger spending bill—but the UN resolution has some interesting remarks.  It first defines the Holocaust as an event “which resulted in the murder of nearly 6 million Jews, 1.5 million of whom were children.”  This is notable because it codifies in international law the infamous ‘6 million’ figure—a number which is doomed to eventual collapse, given the dearth of evidence.  Also, I know of no source for the “1.5 million children,” but a lack of substantiation has never stopped our intrepid authorities in the past, and it surely won’t here.

The resolution goes on to describe what it means by Holocaust denial:

Holocaust denial refers to discourse and propaganda that deny the historical reality and the extent of the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis and their accomplices during the Second World War. …  Holocaust denial refers specifically to any attempt to claim that the Holocaust did not take place, and may include publicly denying or calling into doubt the use of principal mechanisms of destruction (such as gas chambers, mass shooting, starvation, and torture) or the intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people.

As usual, such wording is a combination of ambiguity and meaninglessness.  First, no revisionist claims that the Holocaust “did not take place”—if by this we are to understand that no one, no Jews, actually died.  No revisionist calls into doubt that mass shootings of Jews occurred, nor that many Jews suffered from starvation and “torture.”  They do, however, specifically challenge the idea that homicidal gas chambers were used to murder masses of people, and they do question the actual intentionality of Hitler and other leading National Socialists to literally kill the Jews.

This requires a bit of elaboration.  On the first point, Zyklon-B (cyanide) chambers as instruments of mass murder face a large number of major technical problems, including (a) infeasibility of rapid, mass gassing; (b) personal danger to the alleged gassers; (c) inability to remove gas and Zyklon pellets after gassing; (d) inability to remove gas-soaked corpses; and (e) inability to dispose of masses of corpses in any reasonable time.  Worse still are the so-called “diesel exhaust” gas chambers, which are alleged to have killed some 2 million Jews—twice the number of the infamous Zyklon chambers.  (If this is news to you, you need to do some research.)  These chambers allegedly relied on captured Russian diesel engines to produce fatal carbon monoxide gas.  However, (a) diesels actually produce very little CO, far too little to kill masses of people in any reasonable time; (b) diesel engines cannot pump exhaust gas into sealed, “air-tight” rooms; and (c) the corpses at those alleged camps showed no sign of CO poisoning—namely, a pink or bright-red coloration of the skin.  If the traditional advocates of the Holocaust were serious about defending their view, they would start by addressing these obvious questions.  Instead, they ignore them, and retreat to legal remedies.

On the question of intentionality, the actual words of Hitler, Goebbels, and others matter.  They often spoke of the Vernichtung (‘destruction’) or Ausrottung (‘rooting-out’) of Jews, but these terms do not require the mass-killing of the people in question.  We know this because, first, the Germans used these very terms for years, decades, in public, long before anyone claims that a “Holocaust” had begun; clearly, they meant little more than ending Jewish dominance in society and driving most Jews out of the nation.  Secondly, the Germans consistently used other language that explicitly called for deportation, evacuation, and mass removal of Jews—ethnic cleansing perhaps, but not mass murder.  Thirdly, we have innumerable examples of other Western leaders, from Bush to Obama to Trump, who have similarly spoken publicly of “destroying” or “annihilating” their enemies (usually Arabs or Muslims) without implying mass murder.  Tough talk has always played well for politicians, and the Germans were no different.

The UN resolution continues with some specifics on the definition of denial:

[D]istortion and/or denial of the Holocaust refers, inter alia, to:

(a) Intentional efforts to excuse or minimize the impact of the Holocaust or its principal elements, including collaborators and allies of Nazi Germany,

(b) Gross minimization of the number of the victims of the Holocaust in contradiction to reliable sources,

(c) Attempts to blame the Jews for causing their own genocide,

(d) Statements that cast the Holocaust as a positive historical event,

(e) Attempts to blur the responsibility for the establishment of concentration and death camps devised and operated by Nazi Germany by putting blame on other nations or ethnic groups.

Four of these points—“excuse or minimize impact,” “blame the Jews,” “cast the Holocaust in positive light,” and “attempts to blur responsibility”—are all but irrelevant to serious revisionism.  Serious revisionists, including Germar Rudolf, Carlo Mattogno, and Jurgen Graf, among others, virtually never discuss such things.  They focus on far more pragmatic matters: the infeasibility of the mass gassing schemes, the lack of corpses or other physical evidence, the absence of photographic or documentary evidence showing mass murder, and the many logical inconsistencies of witnesses and survivors.  But our fine Holocaust traditionalists never raise these troublesome issues, because they know that they have no reply.

Of the five points, only (b), “gross minimization of the number of victims,” is relevant—in other words, the questioning of the “6 million.”  But what counts as “gross minimization”?  Does ‘5 million’ count?  If so, noted (and deceased) orthodox researcher Raul Hilberg would be quickly tarred with the “anti-Semite” label; the fact that he hasn’t suggests otherwise.  What about ‘4 million’?  If so, then early researcher Gerald Reitlinger is in for trouble; he long advocated around 4.2 million Jewish deaths.  Does ‘3 million’ count?  Or ‘2 million’?  Or will we “know it when we see it”?  For the record, serious revisionists today estimate that around 500,000 Jews died in total at the hands of the Nazis—most of these due to typhus contracted in the various camps, many in assorted shootings at the Eastern front, and virtually none in “homicidal gas chambers.”

So what, exactly, does the UN want from the world?  As we read in the text, the UN

  1. Rejects and condemns without any reservation any denial of the Holocaust as a historical event, either in full or in part;

  2. Urges all Member States to reject without any reservation any denial or distortion of the Holocaust as a historical event, either in full or in part, or any activities to this end;

  3. Commends those Member States which have actively engaged in preserving those sites that served as Nazi death camps, concentration camps, forced labour camps, killing sites and prisons during the Holocaust…

  4. Urges Member States to develop educational programmes that will inculcate future generations with the lessons of the Holocaust in order to help to prevent future acts of genocide…

  5. Urges Member States and social media companies [!] to take active measures to combat antisemitism and Holocaust denial or distortion by means of information and communications technologies, and to facilitate reporting of such content;

  6. Requests the United Nations outreach programme on the Holocaust as well as all relevant United Nations specialized agencies to continue to develop and implement programmes aimed at countering Holocaust denial and distortion…

Of course, if we wish to designate the loss of some 500,000 Jews as a “holocaust,” then we are welcome to do so.  But we had best get our facts and arguments straight.  To resort to legal prohibitions is tantamount to admitting defeat.

None of these points were lost on a Jewish Boston Globe columnist, Jeff Jacoby.  He was motivated to write a short op-ed entitled “It’s a mistake to ban Holocaust denial” (24 April).  He quotes Canada’s public safety minister, Marco Mendicino: “There is no place for antisemitism and Holocaust denial in Canada.”  Despite agreeing with this view, and despite “despising” Holocaust deniers, Jacoby opposes the pending law.  And he explains why—though not before displaying an embarrassing ignorance and an appalling shallowness.

He first informs us that Holocaust “deniers” (never defined) are “contemptible antisemites and brazen liars,” overflowing with “Jew-hatred” and seeking to “rehabilitate the reputation of Hitler.”  They attempt to refute “the most comprehensively documented crime in history” by insisting that it “never occurred.”  Such people deserve “all the obloquy and contempt” that one can muster, he says.  To call such claims unjustified and unwarranted is an understatement of the first order; the reliance here on ad hominem attacks is a sure sign of an impending vapidity of argumentation.

Still, Jacoby opposes anti-denial laws on two grounds.  First, such laws run afoul of the spirit of the First Amendment (free speech and press).  More broadly, he rightly notes that “it’s dangerous to empower the state to punish ideas.”  Indeed, “any government that can criminalize Holocaust denial this week can criminalize other opinions next week.”  Left unspoken, though, is a key point:  How is it that in Canada, a 1% minority of Canadian Jews are able to push through a law that specifically benefits them?  One would think that, in Canada, a 1% Jewish minority would have, say, half the clout of the 2% minority of American Jews.  But clearly not.  Canadian Jews are about to prevail yet again.

Jacoby’s second reason for opposing such laws is that, as I noted above, they amount to “intellectual surrender.”  He quotes Holocaust scion Deborah Lipstadt to the effect that such laws imply that one is unable to construct a rational argument in defense of the traditional view.  And this, in fact, is true.  Just look at any traditionalist account of the Holocaust, even by the most learned academician.  Look at any commentary on Holocaust denial.  None will address the basic issues that I cited above.  None will mention a single recent revisionist book, or a single active researcher, such as Rudolf, Mattogno, or Graf.  None will examine or refute a single relevant revisionist argument.  None will provide a breakdown, by cause, of the infamous “6 million” deaths.  These are telling facts.

For his part, Jacoby obviously has no answer.  All he can do is make flat and baseless assertions: “never was a genocide more meticulously recorded by its perpetrators … or more comprehensively described by scholars and survivors”; “an immense ocean of evidence attests to the horror of the Holocaust.”  Unwisely, he attempts to use General Eisenhower’s “visual evidence … of starvation, cruelty, and bestiality” to defend his point.  But this fails; as he likely is unaware, Eisenhower’s 550-page postwar memoir, Crusade in Europe (1948), has not a single reference to any Holocaust, gas chambers, or Auschwitz.  A single paragraph in the book (p. 439) states only that the Jews “had been beaten, starved, and tortured.”  One finds absolutely no mention of mass murder, extermination, gassing, crematoria, or the like.  Eisenhower is hardly a good witness for the defense.  (For what it’s worth, neither Churchill’s nor De Gaulle’s postwar memoirs had any mention of Auschwitz, gas chambers, or extermination either.  Ike was no anomaly.)

But does all this really matter?  What’s the big deal about the Holocaust? some may say.  In fact, it is hugely important.  The Holocaust is the lynchpin of Jewish power.  It is the raison d’etre of the state of Israel.  It is the number one guilt-tool used against Whites everywhere.  And it is the embodiment of Jewish narcissism.  When that story crumbles, the whole Judeocratic edifice may well fall, too.  We should never underestimate the power of Holocaust revisionism; the Jews certainly don’t.

A final thought: I’m happy to hear that Jeff Jacoby believes in free speech.  It’s too bad that he doesn’t have equally strong feelings about openness and honesty, about the many problems with the Holocaust story, and about a global Jewish Lobby that is able to pass laws, ban books, and impose a cancel culture on anyone that it doesn’t like.  Now, that would be an op-ed worth reading.

Thomas Dalton, PhD, has authored or edited several books and articles on politics, history, and religion, with a special focus on National Socialism in Germany.  His works include a new translation series of Mein Kampf, and the books Eternal Strangers (2020), The Jewish Hand in the World Wars (2019), and Debating the Holocaust (4th ed, 2020).  Most recently he has edited a new edition of Rosenberg’s classic work Myth of the 20th Century and a new book of political cartoons, Pan-Judah!.  All these are available at www.clemensandblair.com.  See also his personal website www.thomasdaltonphd.com.

Unpronounceable Name, Incomprehensible Policies: Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Afghanistan Myth, And What it Means for Ukraine Ukraine Part I  

It is now taken as Gospel that the relatively small war in Afghanistan “brought down” the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, an empire of Socialist Soviets extending — when one counts its tributary states — from the Bering Straits to Berlin.  Not much evidence has been presented to back this claim.  But a lot of feel-good talk by Western commentators, most of whom could not identify the location of Napoleon’s attack routes or the Pripet Marshes, has repeated this claim as fact.

This seems surprising.  At first view, it seems hardly credible that a nation, which barely 40 years previous had endured and prospered after a war that killed more than 20 million of its citizens and raged across virtually all of its European homeland could be destroyed by a tiny border war in which fewer than 60,000 ground troops were lost.

But a man named Zbigniew Brzezinski claimed it did, and so it must be.

And that is the problem today.  The self-written history by an historic self-promoter, with limited or no historical backing, now appears to be the strategic justification for war in the Ukraine, cited by the odious class of Neocons now running our foreign policy establishment.  Their goal — unbelievable — seems now clearly to be “regime change” in Russia.  Their machina satanica — a cruel, needless war of Christian against Christian in Ukraine.

The incredibly dangerous goal of pursuing “regime change” — by any means — in respect of what is perhaps the world’s foremost nuclear power would consign its promoters to mental hospitals in any sane jurisdiction.

But we are not governed by sane men, nor is our homeland any longer a sane jurisdiction. We are governed by an ethnic class that bears ancient enmity towards all Russian goyim, and the Russian Tsar that is so deep it is almost beyond human understanding.  They even hate Hungarian Christians, notwithstanding the Orban government’s close ties to Israel.  And, tragically, their stupidity matches their bile.

The fact that Russia is now headed by a self-proclaimed baptized Christian who is promoting the strong revival of the hated Russian Orthodox Church has ignited their fury.  The fact that he has outlawed many of their culture-war hobby-horses — gay marriage, gay and transsexual solicitation, and indoctrination of children — fuels their ire further.

Adding salt to the wound is that the same man grabbed Russia in 2000 out of the mouths of Jewish oligarchs who — along with Boris Yeltsin’s chauffeur — were actually running the country, starving its people, and looting its assets.

Thus, this ethnic class, who, 25 years ago, dreamed of re-taking Russia under the guise this time of predatory capitalism (as opposed to Judeo-Bolshevism), finds itself substantially cut off from any real control of internal Russia.  This state of affairs — to a decent person, commendable, to an historian, inevitable, to the Neocons, unacceptable — is what is viewed by the Neocons in Foggy Bottom with rage.

And then came Ukraine.  A Neocon-created, purposeful disaster, now coming to a head.  After years of provocation, threats of NATO entry since 2008, a western-backed coup in 2014, sanctions under Obama/Biden, armaments shipments under Trump, continual provocations of Russia in an area crucial to the Russian heartland, smack in the center of the prime southern route by which every western power has waged war against Russia, against all warnings by many of America’s older (even in some cases Jewish) leadership class — Henry Kissinger, George Kennan (whose pre-2003 warnings about NATO expansion were ignored), Jack Matlock (Ambassador to Russia under Reagan), John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, Stephen Cohen of Princeton and NYU, Michael Mandelbaum of Johns Hopkins (see “Anatomy of a Blunder” (americanpurpose.com), Richard Pipes, the Jewish historian at Harvard who clearly bore no love for historic Russia, but whose scholarship to the day of his death was generally careful and restrained. Finally, Russia strikes.  And for the Neocon class, this the perfect opportunity.  Regime change — not for the Ukraine, but for Russia!  Through a long, grinding war just like Afghanistan.

And there’s the rub.  “Afghanistan” is faked history.  And the failure of our leadership class to realize that is a symptom of our dilemma.

In effect, as we discovered in the “Jewish wars” of 2003–21 against Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan that we let the smart Jews go to Mossad.  We kept the dumb ones. Or, perhaps, we are simply not listening to the smart ones.

A little history is in order.

First, the fake history.

According to Brzezinski, the brilliant and ambitious National Security Advisor to President Carter, he and Carter (Carter as lead pony, ZB as ringmaster) “drew” the Soviet Union into Afghanistan by secretly authorizing a transfer of $500 million in weapons funding to a group of (as always) dissident, derelict Muslims, this time called the “Mujahideen,” who were organizing in southern Afghanistan as, in effect, a representation of the Pashtun nation which extends across parts of Northern Pakistan and southern Afghanistan.  It was this budget outlay, according to Professor Brzezinski, that — when detected, presumably by the ever-watchful Soviet KGB — freaked the Soviet leadership into introducing ground troops into Afghanistan 6 months later — in October of 1979.  This “masterstroke” embroiled the Soviets in their “Vietnam,” leading inevitably, as US funding for the Mujahideen increased, to the ultimate dissolution of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev on that fateful December night in 1991.

As far as can be discerned from the archival records, the story appears to be quite different.  The minutes of the relevant 1979 Politburo meetings at the Wilson Center Digital Archive at Princeton University (declassified in the Perestroika period of 1992) are fascinating for a number of things.  They contain clear evidence of the animal aggressiveness of Yuri Andropov, then head of the KGB and the total dominance he had even then over the Politburo.  They reveal — by his absence in many cases — the declining influence of the physically failing Brezhnev.  One report from a preexisting Soviet military advisory group to the Politburo indicates an awareness of “American aid,” but contra to ZB’s assumptions, expresses caution about putting in Soviet troops for fear of triggering an aid increase.  (See generally the Wilson Archives, Wilson Center Digital Archive.)  In later documents much more central to the decision to enter, especially a personal memorandum by Andropov to Brezhnev, also from the Wilson Center Digital Archive, only the risk of the new, corrupt, oppressive, personally motivated leader is made, and the need to assist in his capture and overthrow.

Later, post troop entry, memoranda discuss at greater length the Muslim rebellion, but focus solely on aid from Pakistan, the Saudis, and China.  Nowhere is the fine hand of the U.S. mentioned except for a U.S. consul in Turkey apparently making noises about establishing a “new Ottoman Caliphate,” whatever that was about.

Instead, the archive indicates Andropov strongly urged the entry of ground troops due to two factors (I) the erratic actions of the — ironically — pro Soviet leader who had just deposed — for personal reasons — the previous very pro-Soviet leader of what in each case was a highly socialist government; and (II) apparent contacts KGB agents believed that the new President was having with American interested parties, but no mention of U.S. aid to rebels in the southeast..

This summary is consistent with a history channel summary prepared by Suzanne McGee, “Why the Soviet Union Invaded Afghanistan,” which fails to note any concern about perceived US military aid to the mujahideen in making the decision to send troops to Afghanistan.   See also Artur Kalandarov, The Soviet and American Wars in Afghanistan: Applying Clausewitzian Concepts to Modern Military FailureIt is also consistent with the authoritative account by Diego Cordovez and Selig S. Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal (Oxford University Press, 1995).[1]

In what appears to have been a classic case of destroying the good to achieve the perfect, or, perhaps, to be fair, feeling the Soviets to be between a Scylla and Charybdis, Andropov argued for the entry of ground troops to depose the new Afghan President in conjunction with the Afghanistan military which, since the 1950’s, had historically been trained by the Russian military and had pro-Soviet inclinations.  (This in contrast to Afghanistan’s civilian leadership class, which had been trained primarily in the United States.)  In this respect, Andropov’s actions could be analogized to those of the Kennedy Administration in believing they had to dispose of fellow-capitalist Diem to save the anti-communist effort.

The absent but not completely somnolent Brezhnev later complained that he was told the entry would last only six months.  Whether this was the actual view of Andropov or a sales pitch is not known.  However, Andropov’s 1982 efforts to negotiate an extraction of all Soviet troops indicates that the incursion was viewed as short term and quickly was perceived as a mistake.

Presumably lacking the background that would have been provided by timely perusal of live Politburo minutes, however, this move must have terrified some members of the U. S. foreign policy establishment, despite the open and long information trail of the entry, made clear to the President by the CIA.  See Douglas MacEachin (CIA Deputy Director of Intelligence, 1993–95), “Predicting the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan: The Intelligence Community’s Record” (Federation of American Scientists.org) .  Among the terrified group was, predictably, Brzezinski, as well as a goodly number of the famous or infamous “team B” members then advising the CIA, most of whom were the same group of Neocons who have caused so much trouble over the succeeding 40 years.

Afghanistan’s western border smacks up all along a good part of Iran — both its northern and its massive southern oil fields.  A quick look at the map, undoubtedly pulled out in haste that morning by National Security Council, State Department, and Langley mandarins (let’s not presume too much preexisting “area knowledge” here, folks), indicate that if the Soviets took all of — or only the western fringe of — Afghanistan, a huge shift in the balance of power would have occurred in the  Middle East.  The Soviet war machine would be in much closer striking range of the oil necessary to run the NATO and Japanese military operations.  With a direct interior line of supply back to the USSR — no need here for a jerry-built African sub-base in Kenya to support further massive jerry-built air and sea lifts to the Persian Gulf — the Soviets would be poised like a Cobra for a master-strike at the major Western oil fields.  See, e.g., James D. J. Brown, Oil Fueled:  The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan (April 9, 2013).

Memories of the Soviet taking of the Carpathians in 1939, the only non-Russian European source of oil — the Polesti Fields in Romania, necessary for German Panzers,) and the Mannerheim line in the Winter War of 1940 (think Swedish chromium, necessary for German steel), preparatory to Stalin’s planned attack on Western Europe (known to U.S. elites but covered up for PR reasons) must have arisen.  If not in American minds, such thinking would occur to those of weathered Wehrmacht Eastern Front veterans then running West German foreign policy, not the least of whom was former Wehrmacht Lt. Helmut Schmidt’s (Eastern Front 1941) veteran of direct front-line combat through the siege of Leningrad), then the Chancellor of West Germany (1974–1982).

Was this to be the southern prong, of which the northern would be a land invasion of Europe?  In essence a large-scale replica of Stalin’s possible plan of 1940 (pre-empted by Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa)?

But, for now, the Americans were in luck.  Instead of proceeding in a high concentration down the western border of Afghanistan, and attempting to cut deals with the local tribes — especially the unlikely ally of the Balochistanis, strategically located in the southwest corner of Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan (closest to the Persian Gulf and its nearby oil fields). Controlling those areas would permit them to operate in large numbers with significant offensive bases aimed on a vector pointing at the Persian Gulf oil pocket (ominously, the predominant ethnic group in western Afghanistan were the Tajiks, counted as perhaps more supportive of the socialist government than the Pashtun, although the Mujahideen consisted also to some extent of Tajiks). However, instead of going for the oil fields, the Soviets directed their troops in a fly-net, air-dropping them in all major Afghan cities, in insufficient numbers to do more than hunker down against rebel attack, especially in the useless Eastern portion — the location of Kabul, the nation’s capital.

Of course, with the benefit of hindsight guided by the Politburo minutes, we can see why.  The operation probably was about limited regime change to a new leader, possibly nothing more, plus some military assistance in putting down the Muslim uprising, which increasingly took precedence in Soviet politburo memoranda after the Christmas Eve invasion and quick overthrow of the disliked Amin and his replacement by a “gentler, kinder” authoritarian leader.

Moreover, wiser “old hands” might have — and probably did at the time — also point out   ferocious geographic and topographical issues in controlling any part of Afghan terrain, especially without cooperation of the local population, made more difficult of course by the ideological battle being waged against the old social network (including its religious practices) in the rural areas.  Would Andropov — clearly motivated by Socialist ideology in his actions, as were the Kennedy and Johnson administrations vis-à-vis Vietnam — have been able constitutionally to cut the necessary deal with conservative Balochi and/or Tajik tribesmen who controlled the Iranian border areas to permit a permanent USSR base there without the interference that ultimately brought the Soviets down?  But that is another story.

But the Americans did not know that (nor frankly can we know that today — Andropov may have had much more in mind than he let on to his beloved Comrades.  See Imtiaz H. Bokhari (member of the faculty of the Staff College, Quetta Pakistan), Soviet Threat to the Gulf (Military Review, the Professional Journal of the U.S. Army, August, 1985, p. 51) (c. 1985).

Bokhari states that, “answers to the question of [whether] the Soviet march into Afghanistan is part of an overall grand strategy for reaching the gulf or whether the move essentially resulted from defensive or offensive motivation or both would greatly help in evaluating the possible consequences. While academia can afford to differ in their analyses, the success of Western policy will increasingly depend upon the ability of Western statesmen to correctly assess the root.” (Military Review, the Professional Journal of the U.S. Army, August, 1985, p. 51).  He continues “the Soviet move into Afghanistan was initially interpreted by many analysts as part of a grand design aimed at world domination. [Although] over the years, the number of analysts who continue to believe this way has [by 1985] declined (Ibid., 55)…., [a] pacified Afghanistan will provide the Soviets an excellent base for operations in Pakistan. The existing communication infrastructure is adequate to support large sized operations. … Air bases in southern Afghanistan are well-sited to provide tactical air cover to ground operations right up to the Indian Ocean in the south and to the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. The terrain in Baluchistan is well-suited for large-sized mechanized operations … and [p]erhaps the Soviets will conclude that it was less dangerous — and in some ways more promising — to move south by way of Baluchistan. … With this indirect approach, Iran and the Persian Gulf would be completely outflanked. Because of their presence in Afghanistan, the Soviets have already bypassed the mountain barriers of Iran” (Ibid., p. 58.   See also William E. Griffith, “The Implications of Afghanistan,” Survival (July–August 1980) and Shazia Pirzada (Research Officer at the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad), “The Soviet Union and the Gulf, Capabilities and Intentions,” Strategic Studies (Autumn 1986), p. 24).

So, the US properly prepared for the worst, funding the Mujahideen as, apparently, the best force to use against the invading Russians.  In that, we cannot fault Brzezinski or the Carter Administration.  Some may have thought it was cleverly enmeshing the Soviets, but I imagine wiser heads viewed it as staving off a small though non negligible chance of disaster.[2]

However, two things do appear clear:

First, unless there is classified Soviet information not yet released, it does not appear that the $500 million appropriation drew the Soviets in.

Second, if it in fact had so done, and had we not been colossally lucky that the Russian incursion appeared to be limited in scope, going to the eastern side instead of the western side, drawing the Soviets in could have been a colossal self-induced disaster for the U.S and might well have lost us the Cold War.  Merely a quick perusal of Pakistan Command and Staff College faculty member Imtiaz H. Bakhari’s ominous and contemporaneous article in Military Review, cited above, is enough to see the potential dangers from the move, if successfully done, to US, European, and Japanese oil security.  So, in the end, it may be good for ZB’s reputation that at some point his little fable about the $500 million will be found out.  If so, his reputation may not be permanently tainted by the thought that he advised Carter to make what might have been the most disastrous decision of any American President since Roosevelt decided to have fun with a two-front war.

Crucially, most serious analysts do not believe that Afghanistan was a material contributor to the ultimate amelioration or dissolution of the USSR.  The former was caused by actions taken across the Potomac, namely the negotiation by Secretary of Defense Harold Brown with Germany and France for the introduction of Pershing launchers and Tomahawk cruise nuclear missiles into German bases — thus de-facto making Germany, at least in-extremis — a nuclear power.  This had a dramatic impact on Gorbachev and Scheverdnadze, leading them to become much more accommodating in their nuclear arms negotiations, which quickly resulted in the removal of not only the Tomahawk/Pershings but also the Soviet IRBMs that had prompted the introduction of the Tomahawk/Pershings in the first place.  The ultimate dissolution of the USSR, as chronicled by Jack Matlock (Ambassador to Russia at the time) and most other serious commentators, involved a confluence of domestic events — not a much-delayed reaction to the loss of a minor border war. (See Matlock, Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador’s Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Random House, 1995).

Ukraine as the New Afghanistan

And now back to the Ukraine.  The Neocons see the Ukraine as today’s Afghanistan, a war that will dissolve Russia much as Afghanistan dissolved the USSR.  Since the analogy — like many such sloppily used in formulating bad foreign policy — is without foundation, it means that not only are our foreign policy elites dangerous risk-takers but also that they are egregiously ill-informed.  Ukraine may have many effects, but those are unpredictable, and many of them fearsome to those interested in maintaining a peaceful world.

In effect, the Ukraine war is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.  And those the words of Talleyrand, who knew something about mistakes and crimes.

The Neocons running our foreign policy have finally succeeded where Brzezinski failed — by their actions they actually have drawn the greatest nuclear power in the world into a crucial strategic area — Ukraine.  ZB should be tipping his hat to them from his grave.  Except, since he perhaps knew the real story and knew he was simply blowing smoke with his “dissolution” narrative, his eyes might instead be widening in terror; sort of like Churchill after the Chamberlain Polish guarantee.  “Hey gentlemen, I didn’t really mean that!”

And now what.

Nothing good.

Until this war broke out, Russia maintained, albeit with larger reserves, a miniature military compared with its former self.  Its entire Army numbered about 400,000 troops.  (Hitler’s at the commencement of Operation Barbarossa numbered 6 million; Stalin’s, 12–20 million.)  Nothing close to what is typically viewed as necessary to launch an offensive attack on Western Europe; and, even given the pathetically reduced size (65,000) of the German Wehrmacht — now tastefully re-designated the “Bundeswehr” — it made for an unlikely base from which to launch an invasion across a continental Europe.

Moreover, Russia’s current borders basically represent a Western victory for which Hitler could only have dreamed. The current borders of Russia approximate the winter front line of 1941 and 1943 — east of the Dneipier, not quite at the Volga or the Don.  This represents a huge loss by Russia of territory and hinterland for maneuver compared to its pre-1992 borders.  Had Hitler (who likely knew far more, even in advance, of the difficulties of Barbarossa than he let on) been able to cut a deal with that as the new Soviet border as of December 1943, he would have accepted it instantly and would have danced Austrian waltzes all the way from the Reichschancery to Obersalzburg.  It would have represented the greatest feat of arms in European history.

So this was the state of play in January, 2022.   We had it all.   But we wanted more.

From Russia’s point of view, the loss of the Ukraine and Belorussia, already disconcerting, would turn into a strategic catastrophe if either or both became aligned with a hostile block.

Specifically, the continent of Asia narrows dramatically as it extends westward into Europe.

A defense of Russia at the line of its current border thus is almost impossible.  The defensive front, a broad plain stretching from Leningrad in the North to the Black Sea in the South, is, from a geographic point of view, a vast prairie, plain or tundra, amenable to Blitzkrieg attack from almost any direction at will.  The loss of Belarus would mean the loss of the defensive part-perimeter of the Pripet Marshes.  The retreat of the border from Western Ukraine to east of the Donbass meant the loss of the partial southern perimeter of the Carpathian mountain chain.

Moving the Russian border back up to the western border of Belarus and Ukraine would therefore narrow the defensive front from 1,000 miles from Rostov on Don to St. Petersburg to a mere 500 miles from the hard-to-pass northern Carpathians to Kaliningrad on the Baltic. And part of that 500 miles would be blocked by the Pripet marshes in southern Belarus and the Pinsk marshes in northern Ukraine.  This has historically forced attackers into two relatively narrow lines of attack.  One through the very northernmost part of Russia, on a vector direct to St. Petersburg, usually coupled with a divergent vector after the Pripets have been surpassed, down to Moscow; and the second through the narrow gap between the Carpathians and the Pripets — essentially the gap represented by the Western border of Ukraine.

These potential lines of attack represented the historic defensive lines of the Russian and Soviet empires.

The events of 1991 blew those lines apart.  Unless both Bularus and Ukraine remained neutral, or pro-Russian, therefore, Russia stood mortally at risk of attack at any time from almost any vector.

But now, Putin’s modest demands for Ukrainian neutrality have been rejected by the neocon foreign policy elite.  And now, fatefully, the Russian armed forces have entered this area — Ukraine — from which they stand so much to gain if they can push to the Western border, closing Western attack lines to a miniscule remnant of what they have been since 1991.

Just as in Afghanistan, we don’t know what will be the final intention.  The stated intention is modest — at most a partition of the Ukraine on the Dnieper and probably less, just the Donbass.  But, if Russian victories accumulate, if Russia calls up its reserves and creates a 2-million man army as the war progresses, if Putin loses patience, or gets the taste of blood in his mouth, what will they do?  God knows.  So the Neocons have started a war that could reclaim the pre-1991 borders of the Soviet Union.  Or worse.  So they better damn well win this war.  But they have no capacity or understanding of how to do it.  Or even why.  They seem to think if they continue to promote gay rights and throw Europe into medieval night by cutting it off from half its current energy supplies (Russian gas), the West will win.

The longer this war grinds on, the more likely the Russians will massively and suddenly up the ante and go for more.

All of Ukraine?

Or — unthinkable — Poland and a defenseless Germany? As noted above, German ground forces number 65,000 — barely larger than the New York City police department.  Compare this with when Germany surrendered in May, 1945 — 1.5 million men under arms.  In fact, no sizable European army exists that would be close to matching the Russian army.   A blitzkrieg attack to the borders of France may sound unlikely, but stranger things have happened when aggressive military leaders have seen a chance for victory.  Read Caesar’s Gallic Wars.  Read his Civil War.  Remember Operation Barbarossa. Think of Napoleon at Tilsit.  And a few years later.  And remember Pearl Harbor.

So much for NATO.  70 years of Western perseverance, guided in the main by competent, if imperfect, elites, in shambles.

Back to a far worse situation than August 1939, when at least to face the Soviets we had Germany (and vice versa) and to face Japan we had China (and vice versa).  We have methodically laid waste to any allied power that might have realistically defended either of our “Eastern fronts”; we have been unsatisfied with overwhelming victory; we have made enemies of the two most powerful nations on earth, other than us; we have pushed one step too far.

And we will now discover the underlying fraud of NATO and the alliance with Japan, which, on the one hand, could never, ever, conventionally defend Europe against Soviet aggression and thus relied on the threat of strategic nuclear weapons launched at the Soviets by the U.S., which threat became simply not credible once the Soviets/Russians reached nuclear parity by 1970.  It will also expose the underlying fraud of our defense treaties with Japan and other Pacific rim nations, since China also has nuclear strike capability.

Now, we will face an enraged and contemptuous Russian behemoth on one side and a contemptuous and massive China on the other.  Having neutered Germany and Japan, we could not contain our arrogance.  This last neocon gasp may well leave us a failing Third-World Latin American-type country, slowly sinking into oblivion — no dollar as reserve currency, no empire, no manufacturing, no people capable of replicating what we had, massive numbers pouring over our borders, increased sales volumes for the rich, anarcho-tyranny for the many.

Elizabeth I of England is reported by some to have said “I do not like wars.  They have uncertain outcomes.” If not, she should have.

Bearing that in mind, may this be the war that kills America, not Russia?

End this war.

[Part II will delve into Soviet and Russian military doctrine and the implications for the nuclearization of war in Europe].


[1]Sadly for Brzezinski, the account in this book indicates that ZB’s analysis of the reasons for entry of the Soviets was completely off base, as, in the end, were much of his policies in response.  Insultingly, the book received a stellar review from none other than President James Earl Carter, as well as by Cyrus Vance, Secretary of State at the time, and Lawrence Eagleburger, U.S. Secretary of State under George Bush I, and Charles William Maynes, the editor of Foreign Policy.

[2]  In Out of Afghanistan (op. cit.), Selig Harrison tells us that as soon as 1982, Andropov was seeking ways to negotiate his way out of Afghanistan.  However, the ZB successors in Team B — the Neocons in the Reagan administration — wanted to “bleed” the, so they actually resisted UN and other multilateral or bilateral attempts to negotiate a cessation of hostilities sufficient to let the Soviets withdraw without humiliation.  It must be wondered at that they were willing to take the risk that Andropov might up the ante and capture the southwestern section of Afghanistan by bribery or force in order to establish bases with a clear shot at the Persian Gulf.  What were they thinking?

The Great Russian Restoration: The Ukraine Debacle

It is the opinion of most patriotic voices in Russian alt-media (remember, hardcore Russian patriots are still not allowed on mainstream media in Russia) that while the special operation in Ukraine is all well and good, there is no good explanation for why Ukraine was lost in the first place. How could the Kremlin let a country split evenly between a pro-Russia and pro-West vote for multiple election cycles suddenly, almost overnight, be turned into a hostile, armed to the teeth Israel on the border of the greater Slavic world?

It may be hard to believe, but Russian used to be the unopposed majority language in Ukraine. Not only did most people speak Russian, but most city people didn’t know Ukrainian or thought it was simply a quaint provincial dialect of country bumpkins. The number of Ukrainian speakers declines even more when you factor in that many so-called Ukrainian-speakers were actually “surzhik” speakers — which is a Russian/Ukrainian mixed vernacular. Me, a Russian-speaker, I can easily understand surzhik without skipping a beat. But propa’ Western Ukrainian, well, I have to really concentrate and hold my breath while I listen to make any sense of it.

Multiple polls in Ukraine showed a majority favorable opinion of Russians and a shared sentiment of belonging to one civilization. Even now, the numbers aren’t bad, but we will have to see how many Ukrainians harden or drift towards more anti-Russian positions as a result of a protracted conflict on their territory.

So where are we now? Well, tens of thousands of Ukrainians, who by all rights ought to be pointing their rifles at NATO, are now hunkered down in Donbass instead, and about to be shelled repeatedly into surrender or oblivion by the Russian forces.

Even before the first shot was fired, the situation that had developed in Ukraine following the coup d’etat of 2014 can only be characterized as a complete, abject and miserable failure of Russian foreign policy. And it only got worse year after year following the seizure of power and the beginning of the anti-terrorist operation in the Donbass. Here, the failure is inexcusable, but easily explainable. The Kremlin, in its hard-boiled cynicism, thought that they could just bribe politicians and oligarchs in Ukraine to keep the situation from getting too out of control. They never switched strategies and they never really did anything to neutralize the West’s far more effective color revolution + mass propaganda strategy. Incompetent corrupt fools like Victor Medvechuk were tasked with keeping a Russian toehold in Ukraine.

You must have heard about Medvechuk, yes? He was paraded around in chains recently by the Ukrainian secret police and plastered all over social media:

He was no doubt captured days after the beginning of the operation and only recently brought out by the SBU as a propaganda piece and a bargaining chip in prisoner negotiations.

Now, Victor’s been around for awhile, serving under Leonid Kuchma, who everyone knows was an ardent supporter of Russia and then Victor Yanukovich, another ardent Russian nationalist and die-hard patriot. SARCASM ALERT — SARCASM DETECTED.

I should warn you, I can’t help but slather the sarcasm onto my commentary when it comes to the “pro-Russia” faction in Ukraine, so keep an eye out for it as we move along. But sarcasm aside for now, let me state things plainly: this guy was your typical sleazy Eastern European political apparatchik and a deal-fixer who may or may not have been close to Putin (his daughter was baptized by Putin, making her his goddaughter, but so what). Most importantly, he was paid millions to be of use to Russia in Ukraine. He used to be a part of Yanukovich’s operation and he eventually bankrolled and ran the post-Yanukovich “Opposition Party — For Life” bloc, which eventually put up Yuriy Boyko as their “pro-Russia” candidate in the latest elections that Zelensky handily won.

Now, this was well and truly a big-brain move. Medvechuk and friends chose a man who had been around the cesspit that was Ukrainian politics for almost two decades — a man with several corruption and embezzlement scandals under his belt from his time managing the quasi-state oil company Naftogaz and the Fuel and Energy Ministry of Ukraine and a physiognomy that just screams SLEAZY in all-caps to represent them and the pro-Russia position in Ukraine.

10/10 optics, what else can I say?

Back in the day, when tensions with Russia were not as high, I remember what a big scandal it was when then President Yanukovich stepped in and quashed the anti-corruption investigation of his minister and close ally Boyko. Most Ukrainians were somewhat united in their exasperation at the never-ending corruption surrounding literally all of the post-Soviet Ukrainian administrations and the nonstop looting that was going on at the time. The constant corruption was one of the driving forces of the Orange Revolution and the ascent of Viktor Yushenko and his pro-NATO, anti-Russia government and then again with Euromaidan and the calls for Yanukovich to step down. At the time, the main narrative that fueled these color revolutions was the anti-corruption platform. This was popular at the time. The pro-Western faction managed to conflate being “pro-Russia” (or at least not being explicitly anti-Russian) with being corrupt. Being pro-West and Liberal came to mean standing for a corruption-less Ukraine free of the control of Russian oligarchs and the communist-era leftover nomenklatura.

So, to reiterate and make my point clear: the “pro-Russian” politicians were not really pro-Russian, but were, at a minimum, willing to not rock the boat with Russia. The pro-Westerners successfully created the association of “pro-Russia = pro-corruption” and used this propaganda to rally Ukrainians at the polls and on the level of street politics. The “pro-Russians” were indeed corrupt. But we all know that the West is not any less corrupt and that the people in the pro-West camp looted the country as thoroughly if not more than the “pro-Russian” people.

By the way, to my eternal shame, in my youthful NPC naiveté, I even wore one of those orange hats that they handed out at the maidan to show my support for the good Victor against the bad one. Orange man good, I suppose.

But patriotic circles in Russia are not exactly heart-broken by the news that Medvechuk was taken captive by Zelensky. The general sentiment appears to be that Zelensky has done Russia a favor by getting rid of an incompetent oligarch that lost millions of Russian rubles and an entire country through his counter-productive efforts. But, the nonchalance of the Russian public notwithstanding, his arrest is sort of, kind of a big deal. After all, Medvechuk is a billionaire that ran several TV stations that criticized the Kiev government up until Zelensky banned them following his patron and master Igor Kholomoisky’s direct orders that he do so, effectively granting Kholomoisky a monopoly over all media in Ukraine. It is worth pointing out that despite this party supposedly being “pro-Russian” they condemned the Russian special operation in Ukraine in early March. Some pundits have argued that this was simply to outmaneuver the Kiev government and another example of the much-vaunted hyper-dimensional 5D chess that we’ve heard so much about in recent years on display yet again. But either way, it did literally nothing but score another propaganda blow against Russia before Zelensky’s regime dissolved and disbanded the party in the Rada anyway. One could argue that there was nothing that they could do. I would agree that doing literally nothing at all would have done more to help and promote Russia and Russians’ interest in Ukraine.

As an aside, the “pro-Russia” faction in Ukraine did in fact have many shady dealings with the West. The only difference was that they seemed to prefer making deals and rubbing shoulders with Republicans, not Democrats. At this point, everyone knows that prominent Democrat politicians have been looting the Ukraine with the help of their pro-West allies in the government. It is funny to think that the roles used to be reversed once upon a time.

Russia’s own, personal efforts in Ukraine, however, were just as poor, if not worse than the non-existent efforts of the so-called “pro-Russia” parties in Ukraine. This is quite clear when we look at, say, the virtually non-existent propaganda effort used to deal with the ever-deepening crisis that resulted from Euromaidan.

Question: what was the Russian message to the Ukrainian people over these difficult years? Does anyone know?

I suppose the most logical and easiest message to send would be “we’re one people of one blood and our future belongs together, one way or another.” But, apart from Putin’s occasional video-message appeals which state just that, this hasn’t been the position of the Russian government and her official spokespeople. They’ve instead insisted on constantly referring to Ukraine as a “buffer state” and opining about the sanctity of arbitrarily drawn squiggly lines on the map.

Heart-warming stuff.

Even I, an ardent pro-Russia shill, just assumed that Russia had abandoned and written off Ukraine because of the messaging coming out from within the Presidential Administration. The intervention took me completely by surprise — and not just me. Dmitri Peskov, the official Kremlin spokesperson, was totally blindsided by the announcement. Literally two hours before the announcement by Putin, he was still talking about Minsk II i.e., saying the Kremlin would simply engage in more negotiations. Even the FSB chief was taken by surprise and had to be dressed down personally by Putin on stage and asked point blank if he supported the operation or not.

In between the stuttering and frantic gulping he manages to say that he more or less supports the recognition of the LNR and DNR. With administrators like these, Russia doesn’t even need enemies.

It’s worth pointing out that nobody in the patriot camp in Russia likes Peskov or understands why he still has his job — not even, apparently, Putin himself. In an interview with Megyn Kelly, Putin told said that he himself doesn’t understand why Peskov says some of the crap that he does.

But back to Ukraine.

Hell, I personally knew a few pro-Russia journalists in Kiev. I asked them if they had any help or support or even had any contact with anyone in the Russian government. Protection, money, support, a Christmas card? The answer was always a resounding, “sadly, no.” This was a conversation among friends, not an official interview, mind you. No 5D black ops chess here — they were no doubt telling the sad truth. Pro-Russian Ukrainians had very good reason to feel completely and totally abandoned by Russia for many years.

And even now, the Kremlin and its loathsome PR spokespeople claim that they are only in Ukraine temporarily, to conduct a de-nazification campaign. Not only is this claim bizarre, but what’s worse, people think they might actually mean it. So, after smashing the Ukrainian army and the volunteer battalions, they intend to do what — pull out?

Why then should anyone in Ukraine support the Russian army? So that they can receive a bullet to the head for being collaborators once they’re gone? No wonder Ukrainians are hunkering down and keeping quiet. Why support a military that won’t be there to protect you once they’ve won? After all, genius strategic feint or not, Kiev and the environs around it were abandoned. What will happen to the people there who came out waving Russian flags? A war is a great time for neighbors who envied (and stole) the roses from your garden to accuse you of being a collaborator. Don’t think that people aren’t reporting on each other right now — that’s what neighbors are best at the world over. Look at your own neighbors — can you honestly say that you can trust the Joneses to not rat you out if the secret police come knocking at some point in the near future? Were you paying attention during COVID and the hunt for the Trump Insurrectionists?

And on the Russian home-front?

Well, the patriotic block is sweating bullets that the Kremlin might actually go ahead and negotiate with Zelensky. They needn’t worry so much — Zelensky’s handlers want war down to the last Slav, so there’s no real prospects for a meaningful ceasefire. But still — it is hard to mobilize a society with such mixed messages coming from near the top. And a general mobilization might not only be desirable, but necessary in the coming months.

The point I’m driving at here is rather simple: Russia needs a new strategy and new people handling her interests in Ukraine and the near abroad. No more lazy half-measures, but smart, comprehensive propaganda and political efforts. Funding and support and protection for actual, genuine pro-Russians — it’s not hard to figure out. Most importantly, there needs to be a consistent and simple message presented to the Ukrainians. Putin himself said it well on several occasions: “we are brotherly peoples with a shared past and future.” I would add, “We will not abandon you,” for good measure.

Why Putin’s own government struggles to follow his lead is, frankly, infuriating to say the least.