Remember the Red October?
Had the Soviet Union not collapsed, today would have been a festive day in Moscow. The 90th anniversary of the October Revolution (“October” since in 1917 Russia was still using the Julian calendar) would be marked by a big military parade, with Western correspondents and military attaches on the lookout for new types of ICBMs and MBTs. There would be a speech by the Secretary General from atop Lenin’s tomb, with the rest of the gray-coated gerontocracy nodding in approval. But to anyone under the age of 30 such scenes are as distant as those from Nuremberg in 1936, and the date itself as irrelevant as that of the Armistice next Sunday.
In Russia itself, 13 years ago November 7 became the clumsily named Day of Reconciliation and Accord under Yeltsin; it was moved to November 4 an renamed “People’s Unity Day” under Putin. The holiday became linked with the date of the final expulsion of the Polish garrison from Moscow at the end of the “Times of Trouble” in 1612, and with the Day of the Icon of the Mother of God of Kazan, one of the greatest sacred symbols of Russian Orthodoxy, which the Vatican recently handed over to Russia.
A recent survey by the Public Opinion Fund has established that most Russians rightly perceive the “Revolution” as a political coup and conspiratorial takeover of power by the Bolseviks. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) is the sole political force that staunchly keeps its loyalty to the ideals of the Red October, but the communists no longer matter.
In a symbolic gesture, Moscow officially marked the 70th anniversary of the beginning of Stalin-era Great Terror last week. President Vladimir Putin visited the Butovo Range of NKVD secret police, where people were shot and dumped in their thousands in 1937 at the peak of terror. He laid flowers at a cross erected in memory of political repressions. “The year 1937 was prepared by the previous years of cruelty,” he said. “Such tragedies recurred in the history of mankind . . . always happened when ideals that were seemingly attractive” were held above the values of the human life, rights and liberties.”
There are a few capital cities around the world that are still marking the occasion in the spirit, and with the vocabulary, of Moscow cca. 1947. One of them is Hanoi, where the ruling Communist Party official daily Nhan Dan celebrated the "Spirit of October." Judging by the paper’s account of the past nine decades, communism is still alive and well:
The October Revolution entered the history of humanity as the greatest event in the 20th century and ushered in a new era, the epoch of transition to socialism on the global scale . . . The victory of the October Revolution affirmed the thorough scientific and revolutionary nature of Marxism-Leninism, providing invaluable historical lessons to the revolutions for national independence and socialism . . . The Soviet Union’s socialism was a strong support and a vanguard force in pushing forward the struggle for peace, co-operation and development, helping nations prevent international reactionary forces from launching wars of aggression and creating the premise for nations to set up relations on the basis of equality, co-operation and development . . . Socialism, on the basis of successes and failures together with the aspirations and consciousness of nations, will surely record new developments. According to the objective rule of history, humanity will certainly advance to socialism.
Similar editorials were published, officially-sponsored commemorative gatherings held, and exhibitions staged, in Minsk, Peking, and Pyongyang. Their common theme is that the “ideals of October” are alive and well, a few current hiccups notwithstanding. In Cuba, for instance, the High-level Party School of Nico Lopez in Havana held a “scientific workshop” earlier this week entitled “Restoration of Socialist Ideologies.” Addressing the workshop, Raul Valdes Vivo, head of the School and a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, reaffirmed the significance of the October Revolution to Cuba’s victories over its foreign enemies and social progress in central America.
Up to a quarter of the world’s six-and-a-half billion people live under regimes that claim to be inspired by what happened in St. Petersburg on this day nine decades ago, but there is no true zeal in their rulers’ rhetoric and no fire in their hearts. China is a “revisionist” power par excellence, as confirmed at the Communist Party Congress last week. That has enabled her to make a successful transformation from a poor agricultural economy into a global manufacturing base. The Communist Party has the monopoly of political power, but its rule fits in with the country’s authoritarian tradition from the First Emperor to Chiang Kai-Shek. The result is a reddish variety of authoritarian capitalism successfully tested decades ago in Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore.
Vietnam would like to emulate China’s example, albeit with tighter Party controls on ownership and money flows—which cannot be done. North Korea is a bizarre, starving, paranoid hell on Earth, ruled by a malevolent eccentric. If Lenin were to find himself in Pyongyang today, he’d ask for a sealed train—not to foment another revolution, but just to get out. Cuba is an irrelevant basket case.
In the Western world Bolshevik variety of communism is dead and gone, but a new enemy without AND within is Islam, justifying Hilaire Belloc’s prescient question, in The Great Heresies (1938), “Will not perhaps the temporal power of Islam return and with it the menace of an armed Muhammadan world which will shake the dominion of Europeans—still nominally Christian—and reappear again as the prime enemy of our civilization?”
Seven decade after Belloc it is not Lenin’s, but Muhammad’s beliefs, ideas and intentions that pose the greatest threat to our civilization. The elite class rejects this diagnosis, of course, just as its intellectual fathers had rejected the truth about the Russian Revolution when it claimed 2-3 million lives (1917-1922), or about the famine caused by Stalin’s collectivization (5-7 million), or about the Great Purge and the Gulag (at lest ten million). Back then we had a legion of Moscow’s apologists, character witnesses, moles and fellow-travelers, assuring us that the Comrades want nothing but social justice at home and peaceful coexistence abroad.
The ideological focus of their heirs has shifted in form, but not in substance. They are cultural Marxists rather than Bolsheviks, Gramscians and not Leninists. Instead of inventing excuses for the Soviet butchers of 1917, they are battling “Islamophobia” and conjuring a mythical dichotomy between “Islam” and “Islamism.” This time, however, the outcome of the coming struggle is in grave doubt. The West is spiritually and morally weak; Europe is, demographically, on her last legs.
The 1917 Revolution was an immediate bitter fruit of the Great War that went on for another deadly year. Today’s decrepitude of the West, manifest in its apparent inability to defend itself against the new-old jihadist threat, is the long-term consequence of that war. We are living with the consequences of what had ended on another distant November morning at Compiegne.
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Thanks to Dr. Trifkovic for reminding us, once again, of the calamitous impact of the Great War. European civilization before 1914 was vigorous and confident. Since then, the heirs of that civilization (including we Americans) have increasingly had difficulty summoning the courage even to defend what is ours.
I always wonder at people who accept (the promoters are pure degenerates) the claims for "social justice", which always seems to trump justice.
It seems that modern politics generates among the great unwashed either murderous outbursts such as we see in certain of our schools, and now even in Finland, or near total apathy. The few who want to vigorously defend this country end up in the clutches of our pharisaical elite or the ruthless neocons. The rest are going to basically lgoing to et it fail and look to what comes next -- which will be slavery on a large scale. (Slavery and polygamy are only forbidden in Christianity!)
When "Sarejevo" became a word that everyone seemed to know given the morass of evil that plagued the Balkans in the 1990's, I remember quipping that if I were to write a book about the West in general and Europe in particular, I would entitle it "From Sarejevo to Sarejevo: 1914-199?" Well, if I were quipping today, which I am not, I would entitle the book which I will not write, "From Sarejevo to Sarejevo: Merely the Horrible Beginning of Tragic Events as Yet to Occur."
Mister Peters,
The book "From Sarajevo to Sarajevo" exists already. it was written by Erik Kühnelt-Leddihn.
Von Sarajevo nach Sarajevo, Karolinger Verlag Wien !
Hey Trifkovic-If Moslems are so bad why is it that in spite of your constant hate spewing diatribes against them, none of them have ever come around to give you a smack upside your head? I'm a working class proletariat, and as such, frequent 7-11 stores, where alot of them people are behind the counter working crazy hours. I don't know from any of that pie in the sky egghead foreigner crap you're talking about-how bad them people are -I never had a problem. I found them to be extaordinarily polite and well mannered.
Mister Rogeni,
Thanks for the information. I'll order it online if it's available. I spent several years in Vienna as a student in the 1960's.
Dr. Trifkovic,
I heartily agree with most of your article, however I'm rather confused about your approach to Islam. Why is distinguishing between 'Islam' and 'Islamism' a 'mythical dichotomy? Is Morocco Islamist? Turkey? Syria? Jordan? Lebanon? Are all the people in these countries Islamist? Al-Qaeda, of course, will seek to destroy us no matter what. Yet why are they being lumped together with the rest of the Islamic world under the term "Islamism"? Doesn't this just give Al-Qaeda more credibility? How is your approach different from that of a hard-core neoconservative? Hope to hear your response.
Best
Good on Russian Revolution. I add that If Wilson had not intervened, the Central Powers would have won, would not have helped Lenin, and there would have been no Russian Revolution on Stalin. American Wilsonism is to blame.
Yet the analogy with Islam is lame and borders on insulting to the victims of Communism. The only point of comparison is American Wilsonism. Islam is over here because we're over there. Get the USA out of their world, and they will get out of the USA. Likewise, all Europeans need to do is stop the immigration and have some kids.
Irene, No. 9:
"Good on Russian Revolution. I add that If Wilson had not intervened, the Central Powers would have won, would not have helped Lenin, and there would have been no Russian Revolution on Stalin. American Wilsonism is to blame."
Absolutely right. And with no Russian Revolution, no Mao, either. And with a victorious Imperial Germany, no Hitler, either.
The First World War was the greatest catastrophe to befall the entire human race.
ECHS1967 & Irene, No. 9:
Yes, and the hubris and arrogance of Wilson made that war an ideological war - making the world safe for democracy. It will be and has already been that mantra put once again in play which awakens forces such as Islam.
I realize that these forces are much closer to the Slavic world, particularly Russia and Serbia, and that there the problem is more acute; but for us and the Europeans in general, it is our own interventionism and immigration policies which invite the danger to and into our own door.
"I’m a working class proletariat, and as such, frequent 7-11 stores, where alot of them people are behind the counter working crazy hours. I don’t know from any of that pie in the sky egghead foreigner crap you’re talking about-how bad them people are"
Is this some kind of wind-up? What you write here could have been written for Jethro Bodeen. That is if they had done an episode where the Clampett clan goes Red. See ya around the cee-ment pond....
Back to reality, great column Dr. Trikovic.
For those that feel you are just hearing the repetition of "Islam delenda est" I disagree. There is no doubt that the European left is using immigration from the third world as a hammer to smash the last vestiges of the old order. That many of these immigrants are Muslim is not subject to factual dispute.
Do a little research of your own and see the fantastic intellectual contortions regarding Muslim immigrant's criminal activities in Scandinavia or the British Isles. These are not marginal opinions either but those that are current in fashionable, mainstream circles. But more damning than what the cultural Marxists say is what they don't say. The lefts stunning lack of mention when crimes that were once uncommon become the order of the day for their new found darlings beggars decency and casts a very poor light on them.
Re # 9
"... Islam is over here because we’re over there. ..."
Says it all.
As for _why_ "we" are over there...
(On behalf of the genocidal "state" of "Israel"? ... On behalf of U.S. arms manufacturers? ... On behalf of big oil? ... ... Likely all of the above, in that order me thinks...)
If Dr. Trifkovic wrote an article about apples, he would explain that Islamofascists were secretly conspring to corner the market and use the shortage of apples to blackmail Europe into submitting to a new caliphate! The ringleaders of this dastardly plot would, of course, be Kosovo Albanians!
Dr. Trifkovic,
Unless I'm greatly mistaken, I think the 'Michael Kenny' who posted Number 14 is an Irish national employed at the European Court of Justice.
It's not over with yet. The West has faced great odds and come out on top time and time again. This is just our latest - and biggest - trial. The powers that be are at the high water mark politically, socially, culturally. Their collapse will come soon enough just as the collapse of other forms of liberalism did. Future Westerners will be fighters, and the coming trials will cleanse us of the poison in our civilisation. The West will recover and will prevail. The recovery is just now starting in Russia.
There will be a natural reactionary social revolution, as soon as conditions are right.
Islam may indeed become a threat inside the U.S. if we do not alter our immigration policy, but inside both the U.S. and europe, marxism is alive and well, a peculiar variety,a product of the Frankfurt School known as "Cultural Marxism". This mutant of marxism sought to reconcile marxist doctrine with the fact that the proletariat of europe flocked to their respective national banners before and after WW1 when Marx predicted they would turn against their masters. The founders of the Frankfurt School concluded that the dialectic had not allowed for feelings of nationalism spawned by an attatchment to culture. The remedy as they saw it was to sever the links between the individual and his culture which is why we are today ruled by a poisonous doctrine known as multi-culturalism. It is this which makes us incapable of resistance to Islam or any other self-assured invader who might present himself as a threat and until this is addressed the west shall be incapable of resistance.
Further Reading; http://www.academia.org/lectures/lind1.html
NB: POSTS irrelevant to the article and its broader themes, especially when acrimoniously intoned, will be removed.
*Thanks for the information. I’ll order it online if it’s available. I spent several years in Vienna as a student in the 1960’s.
Mister Peters,
The Book by Erik Kühnelt-Leddihn ist available. It could be purchased at
http://www.eurobuch.com/
Mr. Rogemi,
Thank you. There I shall avail myself of it.
In the mid to late fifties, elementary schools in the deep south had a spring holliday called "May Day"..........Our educaters would encourage us to dress up like 1776 collonialist and dance around the "May Pole"........It was a cute little spring celebration that gave us 6-11 year olds a spring project, and in our immature little minds we were celebrating the last throes of winter and glad to be outside in the warmth..............Fast forward 40-60 years and I see the labor movement of collective bargaining has disapeared from manufacturing(as has manufacturing itself)and the largest doner to the Democratic party has become the "American Federation Of State, County, and Municipal Employees"; with the "National Education Association" being the 4th largest(Yet part of the 1st largest). When Government is made up of "Union Employees" and the private sector is not, there has to be some kind of significance as history tends to repeat itself?.....................In past conversations with educaters, nowhere have I met so many imbittered, dogmatic, extreme socialists, with an absolute contempt for free market ideas and self-governence!............The educater mind-set of "We know better what's best for your child" is also at a revolutionary and tyranical stage!.............It makes me wonder?
re #16: You would have thought that when Marx's prediction turned out to be so completely wrong, his followers would have recognised him for the fool he was and abandoned the cause to find something else more real to believe in. You would have thought they might have enough sense to examine their own beliefs to see how wrong they might be, but no, instead they examined society to see what they could do to impose their revolution by other means, thus they began to wage war against everything that makes people who and what they are, against civilisation itself. They went from being delusionally evil to being diabolically evil. Smart people would do not do this, because smart people can see when they themselves are wrong and need to change.
Cultural Marxists are fools, and since the end result of cultural Marxism is nihilism, which is certainly nothing worth dying for, they are also cowards who would submit to any conqueror meekly. With the submission would come the beginning of the end of cultural Marxism and nihilism. That's why we will win in the end. Suddenly I sound like a follower of the scumbag Mohammed, but the Marxists will, in the end, submit either to us or them. Either way, their ideology is doomed.
Dr Trifkovic, I dont believe that the demographic decline can go on forever. It must level off sooner or later. There must also be a moral recovery sooner or later. Considering this, if the alien immigration could be stopped and reversed, what would be the chances for a recovery of the West, and what would it take to bring it about?
Mr.Wilson,
Unfortuantely ideology breeds fanatics.and fanatics often will hazard all for their ideology. Yes, that sort of thing is incomprehensible to such sensible fellows as ourselves, but history tells us that, contrary to all expectations, this does happen. Nice juxtaposition, delusional versus diabolical, it's set me to thinking about neoconservatism, but I wouldn't want to wander too far off the reserve.
'remember the red october?'
well, no ... i was still too little then ...
"Today’s decrepitude" is of course largely the result of the "long march on the institutions," which in retrospect may count as a more significant marxist victory than the various governments now paying lip service to red while going for the green. Obversely, the deafening silence of the left re Islam, especially from feminist, gay and free speech advocates, looms as one of the great failures of the socialist movement in western society.
I was wondering if the earlier article that Srdja wrote on Armistice Day is still available, i cant find it on the web...the last paragraph of this new one was similar, the same i think...it was 2003 or 2001 i believe...can you tell me how to find it? It was really good, I left that link on my webpage for years. I also got a fundraising letter from Rockford Institute and would gladly contribute if i could, i have been a subscriber since around 1990. I have told many people about the magazine, and have discussed some articles with them online, but have noticed that they only read the site, not the magazine. Most that read it were very impressed and surprised to know such ideas are being stated, even some of them that are fairly well-read. If you mentioned on your site something about contributions with a brief explanation why, a lot more might contribute. Several people I talk to in chatrooms find the site invaluable and some would most likely contribute. I do admire how few ads you have in your magazine, its by far my favorite still of the ones i get, The American Conservative is the only one that comes close, and i like the London Spectator too. I shall continue to debate and spread the word in the political chatrooms about Chronicles. Do keep up the good work please, your magazine is still the best by far. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you and your families.
Mr. Trifkovic,
I recently read the book "Wall Street & The Bolshevic Revolution"
by Anthony Sutton.
My question is how truthful this document is.
Thank you.
p.s.
Veliki sam ljubitelj vasih clanaka, kako iz "Slobode" tako i iz ovog casopisa.