Multicultural vs. Stereotypical
Srdja Trifkovic's paper on Russia and the European Media, delivered at the conference "Russia and Europe: Issues of Contemporary Journalism," Paris, November 24, 2011
Most West European media professionals tend to subscribe, consciously or not, to a neoliberal world outlook in general and to the tenets of multiculturalism in particular. In other words, they tend to accept the principle that recognition and positive accommodation of demands and special political and moral claims of various ethno-racial, religious, or sexual minorities are obligatory through “group-differentiated rights.”
The result is an obsessive favoritism of allegedly disadvantaged groups, such as Third World societies in general, Third World immigrants in particular, and most notably Muslims in Western Europe. The BBC and other media outlets thus routinely described the rioters in French banlieus six years ago—who were overwhelmingly of Arab-Muslim origin—as “angry French youths.” The term was technically correct, of course, assuming that most of them were indeed French citizens, but it was journalistically misleading to the point of dishonesty.
These assumptions have become culturally, psychologically and institutionally internalized in the West European mainstream media. Behind the veneer of all-embracing diversity, however, we find a carefully calibrated scale of acceptance or rejection of “the Other” depending on the cultural and political preferences of the media professionals themselves. Their insistence that there are many self-validating, closed systems of perception, feeling, thought, and evaluation—each associated with a racially, ethnically, religiously or sexually defined group—effectively rejects the legacy of the Western civilization, and specifically its insistence on the standards of reason, evidence, and objectivity, and principles of justice and freedom that apply to human beings as such. The result is a moral and intellectual relativism, which enables the media elite to pick and choose which group or nation will be approved for the status of sanctified victimhood, and which will be denied the benefit of the doubt, let alone sympathy, in the reporting and analysis of its foreign and domestic policies or its cultural and social developments.
Any serious discussion of the image of Russia in the Western media in general, and in those of Western Europe in particular, has to start with the recognition that Russia has been firmly and decisively relegated to the latter category by the Western elite class in general and the European media elite in particular. “It sounds paradoxical,” said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, referring to the Western attitude toward Russia, “but there was more mutual trust and respect during the Cold War.” His correct hint is that the regimes in Brussels and Washington detest a post-Soviet Russia—the state that no longer is subservient, as it had been in the 1990s, but reviving its patriotic and Christian roots—more than the Cod War leaders of the West hated the USSR.
Let me focus on a specific, well documented example which is seven years old. It is hardly possible to envisage an orgy of terrorist savagery more deprived than that staged by Chechen jihadists and their foreign cohorts in Beslan in September 2004—at the end of a week in which two Russian passenger planes were blown up in mid-air and a lethal bomb exploded outside a Moscow metro station. All these attacks were terrorist in character and, in the case of Beslan, Islamic in the method of execution; yet the reaction of the European media was characterized by (1) blaming the victim, (2) ridiculing Russia’s claim to be battling terrorism, and (3) advising “dialogue” with the Chechen terrorists and effective Russian capitulation to their demands.
The problem of such visceral bias, stereotypical quasi-reporting and quasi-analysis is by no means new. The collapse of Russia’s institutions and social infrastructure under Yeltsin was accompanied by hyperinflation that wiped out savings and reduced the middle class and pensioners to penury. Its leading lights—Anatoly Chubais, Yegor Gaidar, Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Ryzhkov—were nevertheless hailed in the European media as “pro-Western reformers” sans peur et sans reproche. Their political factions, lionized by the Western media, were duly supported by the quasi-NGO network funded in part by the Western taxpayers.
The parallel wholesale robbery of Russian resources by the oligarchs and fire-sale of drilling concessions to their Western cohorts such as the BP, became a contentious issue in Russia’s relations with the West only a decade later, with the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Media allegations of “Putin’s revenge” against the Yukos boss may have been worthy of serious investigation (which was lacking) but they disregarded the fact that—quite apart from his political ambitions—Khodorkovsky was guilty of fraud and tax evasion on a massive scale.
The West European media commentary brought to mind the manner in which Brezhnev’s propaganda had built Rudi Dutschke and Angela Davis into political martyrs. And while last month’s court proceedings in Kiev against Yulia Tymoshenko may have left a lot to be desired, the Western media disregard for her proven record of corruption and venality was equally predictable. Her transgressions are irrelevant in the context of the ideological usefulness of her constructed victimhood with clear anti-Russian implications and connotations.
There is absolutely no evidence, by contrast, that Anna Politkovskaya was killed on Putin’s orders, as claimed or suggested in dozens of West European mainstream media outlets With no evidence whatsoever, that assumption was immediately made when she was shot in November 2006, and gravely presented as near-certainty by the usual “experts.” But when a leading opposition politician was shot in May 2007 in Georgia, the event was barely mentioned in Europe: just try a Google search for “Guram Sharadze.”
Talking of Georgia, the anti-Russian stereotypes most notably prevailed over common sense and journalistic integrity at the time of Saakashvili’s attack on South Ossetia in August 2008, with the British media leading the pack in their attacks on Russia’s “aggression” and Western “passivity.” I am not going to bore you any longer with detailed quotes, we all remember it well.
While never missing an opportunity to hector Russia on democracy and criticize her human rights record, the West European media have been notably silent on the discriminatory treatment of large Russian minorities in the former Soviet republics. In Latvia and Estonia the Russians are subjected to arguably the worst treatment of any minority group by any member of the European Union, or (with the exception of Turkey) of NATO. Latvia and Estonia have been allowed by the West flagrantly to break promises made before independence.
All along, the mainstream media verdict on both sides of the Atlantic depends on an actors’ status on the ideological pecking order of the media elite itself, not on his words and actions as such—in line with the Leninist dictum that the moral value of any act by anyone is determined by that act’s contribution to the march of history. Putin’s current approval rating of 60 percent is thus cited as further evidence of his manipulative populist demagoguery and yet another “proof” that democracy remains underdeveloped in Russia.
Parallel with the denial of legitimate Russian interests in the “near abroad,” the Western media elite views Russia as a state with limited sovereignty even within her post-Soviet borders. No aspect of its domestic policies, from education (“ethnocentric”), immigration (“restrictive”), or religion (“discriminatory to the non-Orthodox”) to corruption (“rampant”), homosexual rights (“appalling”) and the legal system (“inefficient and corrupt”) has escaped scathing media criticism. That a “truly democratic” Russia can be only the one that is subservient both domestically and externally to the demands and ideas of the Western media elite is accepted on both sides of the European political spectrum as an axiomatic fact.
The notion of Russia’s fundamental illegitimacy and limited sovereignty was explicit in April 2007, when Moscow rejected Great Britain’s demand for the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi, suspected by British officials of murdering his fellow ex-KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko. “Time for a row with Russia,” pontificated The Guardian: “Russia has to learn that it cannot act with impunity. We need to make our condemnation of Russia’s appalling human rights record clear… We need to complain vigorously about… the mayor of Moscow’s banning of this weekend’s gay pride march… [W]e should not be afraid of ruffling Putin’s feathers.” A similar article was published in most major dailies all over Europe. Hardly any had mentioned that the issue of extradition between Britain and Russia was in some way linked to London’s point-blank refusal to extradite to Russia Boris Berezovsky, a corrupt arch-oligarch, or Akhmed Zakayev, accused of a host of horrendous terrorist crimes in Russia. That a British court blithely accepted Zakayev’s claim that he would not get a fair trial, and could even face torture in Russia, went unreported. If Russia, on the other hand, dares reject a Western extradition order for a Russian citizen, then it’s time for another paroxysm of rage that transcends the political divide.
In recent weeks, and particularly following the September 23 announcement that V.V. Putin would again run for presidency next March, we have witnessed yet another campaign of facile media stereotyping. The tone was set as early as September 25 by The Daily Telegraph, which expressed “fears that Vladimir Putin was railroading Russia into an outright dictatorship … as he set course to be the country’s longest-serving leader since Josef Stalin.” Boris Nemtsov’s absurd claim that “Putin will provoke a mutiny among the Russian people” was widely circulated as a serious prediction, reflecting a hint of wishful thinking.
The similarity of reactions to Russia on the right and left ends of Europe’s media spectrum reflects the perception that Russia belongs to a tradition that is both alien and unworthy of multiculturalist tolerance. This is an unreasoning phobia that goes beyond mere rhetoric. Its cause is not in a misunderstanding of the Russian mindset and tradition but, quite the contrary, it is due to the accurate assessment by the media class that Russia as such is an obstacle to the realization of their political, economic, and ideological preferences in the modern world.
The assorted editorialists and talking heads are following in the footsteps over 800 years old, of the sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The Franks did not understand, or care, that the New Rome on the Bosphorus was the guardian and protector of the West against the same enemy we all face today. Their insistence on Byzantium’s submission to the Western political and cultural model opened the way for the Jihadist onslaught against Europe that did not stop until it reached Vienna in 1683. Replicating the same Western folly with Russia today brings to mind Talleyrand’s comment on Napoleon’s execution of the Duc d’Enghien: “It is worse than a crime; it is a mistake.”
The mistake will be very hard to rectify. The unforgivable sin of the Russians, in the eyes of the Western media elite, is that they are still defined by their ethnic, cultural and religious identity. In spite of almost a century of horrendous ordeals and tribulations, Russia is still a recognizable nation, rooted in the continuity of its culture, faith, and collective memories—perhaps the last major European nation which is still recognizably itself.
By contrast the Western postmodern multiculturalism has numerous secondary manifestations (one-worldism, inclusivism, antidiscriminationism) that demand engagement abroad and wide-open immigration doors at home. In either case the impulse is neurotic and its justification is gnostic. It reflects the collective loss of nerve, faith, and identity. It produces cultural and demographic consequences unprecedented in history. It is built on the arrogant conviction that neoliberal ideology contains the blueprint for the solution to the dilemmas and challenges of human existence, that certain enlightened abstractions—democracy, human rights, secular humanism etc.—can and should be spread across the world, and are capable of transforming it.
Both these forms of insanity have a “left,” variant (one-world, post-national, compassionate, multilateralist, Gramscian, therapeutic, Euro-integralist) and a “right,” neoconservative one (democracy-exporting, interventionist, self-aggrandizing). While often differing in their practical manifestations, both paradigms are utopian. Their roots are in the legacy of the Enlightenment. Both maintain that Man is inherently virtuous and capable of betterment. These are two sects of the same Western heresy. Its fruits are in the Christophobic “liberal democracy” of our own time.
The cultural roots of the Western media elite are no longer discernible in what they cherish but in what they reject: they hate European societies founded on national and cultural commonalities, with stable elites and constitutions and independent economies. They regard all permanent values and institutions with open animosity, which is why they support the amorphous fluidity of the European Union. They oppose democracy in post-communist Eastern Europe because it may produce governments that will base the recovery of those ravaged societies on the revival of the family, sovereign nationhood, and the Christian faith. They therefore support political parties and NGOs all over Eastern Europe that promote the entire spectrum of postmodern isms that have atomized the West for the past four decades: the embrace of deviancy, perversion, and morbidity as the litmus test of “Western” credentials. At the same time, “democracy” in America and Western Europe alike is a corrupt process run by an elite class that conspires to make secondary issues important and to treat important issues as either irrelevant or a priori illegitimate.
It is futile to expect the Western media elite to stop treating Russia as “the Other,” and to stop wishing for its disintegration, all by itself. As Russia’s ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin has wondered, “The NATO gamekeepers invite the Russian bear to go hunting rabbits together. The bear doesn’t understand: why do they have bear-hunting rifles?” Well, because they’d like to kill the bear and carve him up, or else make him pliant and obedient to their whims, a tame dancer in the global circus.
There are some who might dismiss my concerns, saying “ah, but Russia is a powerful country, the dogs bark but the caravan moves on.” This is extremely short-sighted. The overall tenor of Western media reporting on Russia helps lock policy into concrete undesirable forms, notably on the issue of visas (in the case of Europe) and WTO (in the case of the U.S.). This is a phenomenon Russia ignores at its peril. The fact that both the European Union and the U.S. are bankrupt and their global power is objectively declining, is not cause for immediate comfort. The circumstances, where the authors of policy maintain ambitions far beyond the resources objectively available to them are those that can give rise to miscalculation, with disastrous results. It is all the more reason that Russia cannot afford to be complacent about policy formation in either Brussels or Washington and why, for its own self-interest, Moscow should actively seek to affect it with lobbying and soft influence.
TO CONCLUDE: For the past two decades Russia has been trying to rearticulate her goals and define her policies in terms of traditional national interests. The old Soviet dual-track policy of having “normal” relations with the West, on the one hand, while seeking to subvert it, on the other, gave way to naïve attempts in the 1990’s to forge a “partnership.” By contrast, the early 1990’s witnessed the blossoming of America’s attempt to assert her global hegemony. This ambition created an ironic role-reversal; it precluded any suggestion that Russia has legitimate interests, externally or internally. The justification for the project was as ideological, and the implications as revolutionary, as anything concocted by Zinoviev or Trotsky in their heyday.
That a “truly democratic” Russia must be subservient to the propositional matrix is still axiomatic on both sides of the Atlantic. “Democracy” is thus defined in the spirit of Lenin: it depends on one’s status in the ideological pecking order and on one’s contribution to the march of history. In this progression the reshaping of Russia’s soul is the final stop. In that respect any gap between the Sorosite “Left” and neo-Cold-War “Right” is a matter of degree rather than kind. In this context, Russia’s ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, stated something remarkable three years ago, in an interview with Russia Today (November 18, 2008): “There is a new civilization emerging in the Third World that thinks that the white, northern hemisphere has always oppressed it and must therefore fall at its feet now… If the northern civilization wants to protect itself, it must be united: America, the European Union, and Russia. If they are not together, they will be defeated one by one.” Rogozin’s statement reflects an understanding of the commonalities shared by Europeans and their overseas descendants—an understanding as accurate as it is odious to the Western elite class. It indicates that, in some important ways, Russia is freer than the West: No American or EU diplomat of his rank would dare make such a statement (even if he shared the sentiment), or hope to remain in his post after making it.
Western multiculturalists in the media and academia oppose any notion of “our” physical or cultural space that does not belong to everyone. They deny that we should have a special affinity for any particular country, nation, or culture, but demand the imposition of their preferences upon the whole world. They celebrate any random mélange of mutually disconnected multitudes as somehow uniquely “diverse” and therefore virtuous.
Ideologues will deny it, but in the decades to come Europe, Russia, and America will be in similar mortal peril. In the end there will be no grand synthesis, no cross-fertilization, and certainly no peaceful coexistence, between the North and the Third World. There will be kto kogo. The short-term prospects for fostering a sense of unity among Europeans—Eastern, Western, and American—are dim and will remain so for as long as the regimes of all the major states of the West are controlled by an elite class hostile to its own roots and cultural fruits.
We need a paradigm shift in the West that would pave the way for a genuine Northern Alliance of Russia, Western Europe and North America, as all three face similar existential geopolitical and demographic threats in the decades ahead. I don’t know if this alliance will materialize. I do know that, if it doesn’t, our civilization will be in peril. To prevent that outcome, it is essential to (re)affirm the principle of “preserve and augment,” to be inspired by the constant creative renewal of society without stagnation or revolution, and to rely on the commonalities of the spiritual traditions, history and culture of the extended European family, from Anchorage via Berlin to Vladivostok.
Entries(RSS)
Marine Le Pen is an example of a serious Western politician calling for rapprochement with Russia. Accordinly, and also because her visions of what a coherent society ought to look like more nearly (not perfectly) align with the Russians', than do those of any major contender in France, the UK or the US, she and her followers are vilified by the press in the most hateful manner imaginable.
By the way, hearing French or American governmental officials denounce "corruption" and "inefficiency" in other governments is enough to make me wish I were bulimic.
Dr. Trifkovic,
I have always come away from your articles with new facts, with sense of the prescient and with the words to articulate positions which I hold on informed intuition.
My task in these far climes is to find and engage those with an inclination to hear what I have learned here. Pray that those opportunities present themselves and that I am adequate to the duty when it arises.
Recognizable nation? Russia? Its history of ethnic insurgency in recent times seems to contradict the idea.
There is a large part of Russia which does not believe itself to be Russian. Unlike the large part of France which does not see itself as French or a large part of America that does not see itself as American, these people are armed and dangerous. Dagestanis and other Turkic groups have been enablers of the Chechen movement.
There are 2 million Turkic Russian Muslims in Moscow. Given the Black Widows who bombed Russian subways recently, one imagines they had at least **some** assistance from within the city itself, even if most of those Russian Muslims are patriotic Russians.
Mr. Moses, aren't French and American officials in justified in pointing out cases such as the arbitrary detainment, torture, and death of Sergei Magnitsky, because he uncovered Artem Kusnetsov's plundering $230 million from the treasury? Or the arrests of wealthy executives to ransom them for their hefty cash?
No hypocrisy there, because French and American officials never ruin lives deliberately to the same degree out of pure greed.
No, the U.S. did not invade Iraq and destroy hundreds of thousands of lives and one of the oldest Christian communities in the world out of sheer avarice. The U.S. does not encourage a culture of legal greed and avarice whereupon dubious charges are pressed so long as they serve to put the prosecutor in the limelight, wrongful convictions doled out if they suit the sociopolitical agenda of the judges and rigged juries and exorbitant settlements extorted from innocent parties on the most tenuous pretexts.
As for France, no, the French military didn't go in and try to police and dictate a bloody affair in North Africa. The French government didn't shirk it's responsibility as protector of Middle Eastern Christians and let the Cistercians get murdered.
Yes, in most cases French actions are less direct, but overall the French and U.S. governments willfully aid and abet more than their share of evil. For some reason, not actually having their fingers on the trigger (sometimes, anyway) makes them morally superior.
Well, Mr. Sanjay, my first thought while reading Dr. Trifkovic's post is that Russians (as well as Western Europeans and North Americans) better start making more of themselves.
Recognizable nation, indeed. The fact that some three million Afrikaners are by now a beleaguered minority in their own heartland (Orange Free State, Northern Cape & Transvaal) does not mean they have ceased to be a nation par excellence. On the other hand, the fact that Sweden has probably no more than 1% of parts which are not "Swedish" (such as Malmo) does NOT mean that the Swedes are still a recognizble nation.
During my late studies (UK), I was surprised to see so many "commonwealth members" practicaly invade London and the suburbs. Within two years I couldn't recognize much of Chelsea where I lived - which used to be a well to do SW section of London, let alone the outskirts.
I am not sure who invented "Multicultural" - but that practice should be abolished faster than the slavery - since in most cases serves on indebtured labor basis. Yesterday I flew in from Zurich, and the airport maintenance staff was largely Bosnian Serbs, along with a small presence of Asians. I was in Zurich many times before and next time I get there I may have to wear a turban - considering the speed of change. These are NOT the best of times.
Dr. Fleming would know better than I, but I think the inventors of "multicultural" were Montagne, Montesquieu and Voltaire. And yes, they really have GOT to go.
Dr Trifkovic,
in view of western style democracy in action, I am sure you are duly watching the course of the Egyptian elections today. After coming across fractured opinion amongst Muslim Brotherhood members, in light of the recent violent protests against the country's military rulers, I came to the conclusion that your past assessment of the entrenched power of the military elite there was more accurate than Egypt becoming a fully fledged islamic state within 5 years. I think it is correct to say that the core of the MB is not wahhabist/salafist by nature or by ambition, and this is probably its key problem. What I mean is that if it is going to take time for kemalist elements of the Egyptian military elite to totally disappear (and this is going to be near impossible, as far as the Turkish scenario is concerned), then it is probably very likely that, given the year's violent upheavels in the country and the continuous prevalence of rage amongst the populace, from economic woes to political corruption, the hardline, islamist element will be very hard to deal with. I have no doubt the MB leaders are already anticipating this, which is why they must be feeling anxious about the time in which they have to fully take over the military. They mustn't appear to be "sell outs" to the Muslim cause, and the only thing that appears to be endangering this is the apparent omnipresence of the powerful military kemalists.
As the Western media elite drone on endlessly about the joys and benefits of multiculturalism and the incessant negative press about Putin, less and less will the masses believe it. Like the people in the former Iron Curtain countries, the propaganda that emanates from the talking heads goes in one ear and out the other. At most, the people are paying lip service to it as they see their once clean and orderly lands sink down the drain of third world immigration. Twenty or thirty years ago, before the damage was as obvious, multiculturalism was a relatively easy sell. All the media elites had to do was to package it up as something exciting and trendy and the young especially, lapped it up. Most of us in the west have now seen the ugliness of multiculturalism first hand in the rise of fundamentalist Islam, hordes of rioting dark violent people, inhabiting our cities and suburbs, draconian hate laws, blatantly unfair hiring practices while at the same time our media keep on telling us how good it is. On the other hand, the media try their hardest to show Russia as the enemy with it's attractive female Tennis players and it's masculine white leaders with 60 percent plus public support. How much longer are even the talking heads going to believe their own propaganda!
Thanks for the update Mr. Moses. I think I would agree with you in the original thought of multiculturalism, but this event today is only masquerading as "multicultural/global village" and similar euphemisms, while in truth it has only an economic - pure profit background. I have friends who live in Germany and their daughter just graduated college with decent grades but getting work as an architect in Germany today is not as easy as they planned - however Lufthansa (formerly known as Luftwaffe) was hiring straight out of college campus (of course with a 20% pay-cut compared to seasoned workers). When I use the term "multicultural" I use it as a sad parody, skewed thinking, backward social move, new form of slavery, anything but "multicultural". Even the dreaded communism had a few good points in Das Kapital, but not in real life. I don't oppose being liberal (as in broad-minded) but in today's life of the United States being "liberal" is pretty close to being brain dead or brain-washed. Words have a life of their own, and over time they tend to expand, conttract, chenge and alter, even oppose their own self.
In either case thank you for your remark.
Well, of course you're right about the finance interest.
The thing is that the euro is tinkered to serve German interests and this is part of the justification for Germany's keeping less robust economies within its monetary sphere. If the euro were a purely German currency it would probably trade with the dollar at a value of 1 to 2, and would probably buy a bit more than the 6.59 French francs one would have traded for one euro back in 2002. Of course, that would mean fewer Volkswagens, BMWs and Mercedes exports, but that is exactly why Germany is pulling the reins as tight as she can.
Meanwhile, here in France the cost of living continues to rise and starting salaries continue to fall. But the exchange rate is awesome! The euro has accordingly privileged international travel at the expense of domestic mundane living. The hippie globetrotter lifestyle is more viable for most people my age than is marrying and starting a family. And we wonder why youth are increasingly banal and fertility rates are so low...
More examples: the costs of food, clothing, entertainment and long-distance communication and travel have plummeted over the past 50 years. The costs of lodging and mundane quotidien transport, on the other hand, have skyrocketed. Again, we see a pricing scheme that privileges wasteful consumption over meaningful investments.
As we both seem to be temporary expats and on a good note the price of espresso coffee at the Odeon in Zurich has gone down to $8.00 from the two years ago when it was $12.00. Happy, happy, joy, joy.
I agree iliija. The financial or profit motive involved under the current financial system is the main driver regarding multiculturalism. It's the same system and thus reason for multiculturalism in other western nations, but the following is case specific to the U.S.
The U.S. financial system currently is the mother context, in relation to the other contexts domestically involving this issue of multiculturalism, because it is in the mother context's financial interest, to exacerbate the problems in the other contexts under the guise or humanitarian cover story of 'solving' said problems.
Why? Because the current financial context or system has to create and justify government debt, loans guaranteed by the citizens of the nation and paid directly back to private parties (for printing money) and that's only 'legal' to privately print public currency in the U.S. system via loans.
So the more victim-Roles and strife multiculturalism via the wholly owned, monolithic media creates for the government to throw money at, they don't have, (and so private parties loan to the government) the richer those private lenders get for printing the government or nation's own money and loaning it back to them.
If the government (as Ron Paul points out) like it's supposed to be, is responsible for printing its own money, there is no debt.
If the current law changed, subsequently there then is no private profit motive, for the existence of a wholly owned or top down monolithic media either--(in a free society)--in order to uniformly aggravate the chips on people's shoulders (and to also permit unlimited import of all different kinds of people they know won't get along with one another). While deluding and spoiling and destroying the various classes and encouraging them against one another as well.
All inherent (normal) contextual problems, context by context to some degree remain, but they're not constantly, unendingly exacerbated and stoked, if without the profit motive for doing so the current financial system provides. But, because it does enrich private money printers, they threw open the immigration doors, the floodgates and erased the borders in the U.S.
Sure if the government itself--(instead of the private printers)--then prints too much money it doesn't have, that's inflationary. But the private interests do precisely that anyway, inflate (i.e. inflation) because the system allows them to, and it's then all owed back to them, instead of back to the people who make their currency possible in the first place, to the nation. ...
Former U.S. President Andrew Jackson was opposed to a central government bank because then he knew it would become a central-[private] government bank, i.e. publically financed but privately owned, exactly the insane financial system we have hiding in plain sight today. I say 'hidden' because they don't teach it in school, or explain it in their monolithic media. Imagine being allowed to print a nation's currency, loan it out, and it's all owed back to you for printing it.
Only the Left (which yet wants to cling to the notion that socialism works...that's another context), sees this clearly, and is why they've launched their small rebellion, the wholly owned monolithic media mostly ignores, called 'Occupy Wall Street'.
So Jackson was right in the regard that once you have one central bank it's the easiest thing for corrupt politicians to sell for a big price and *allow to be privatized i.e. publically financed but privately owned, because you just need to do it once, i.e. make it 'legal' only once. ... But therein lies the end of any Republic (i.e. bringing in a slave system rather than a free system). As well as ushering in the profitable *exacerbation of all kinds of problems domestically, since profitable to the private printers both monetarily and in terms of keeping a nation domestically distracted and fighting with one another all the time requiring all kinds of government intervention, and since the government can't print its own money they must borrow it from the private printers.
We haven't been a free Republic now by any stretch of the imagination for almost 100 years. If we had one eye open about the "Federal" Reserve Act in 1913 perhaps the 'Occupy Wall Street' rebellion would have started then, even though they're left (or whatever they are), and others may be right. Regardless I agree in this case, follow the money = multiculturali$m.
An obviously Anglo-Saxon kid graduating from high school finally gets up the nerve to ask his two obviously Chinese parents if he was adopted. 'No, you no adopted,' his parents both reply. ... Does a fish know it lives in water? ... If you're never taught and it's kept from you, does a nation know what its financial system is? If it's a Republic we're supposed to, if we're not a Republic I suppose we can all go back to sleep.
I can't say if the current system is best? But that's the system, and they're aiming to collapse us further here and in Europe so that we'll accept instead some sort of global system out of desperation...Well, doesn't it seem like that's the direction?
I've often thought it is a shame that the post-1989 opening could not have been better handled. I remember at the time thinking, "where is the spirit of the Elbe?"
In April, 1945, units of the U.S. and Red armies met peacefully, and joyfully, on the banks of the Elbe river, a historic meeting that marked the closing of the trap on the Wermacht and the virtual end of the war. What is touching and significant about this meeting is that it was managed by low-level troops, the Ivans and Joes who had actually fought the war, without interference from higher officials. In fact, the officer in charge of the American patrol, a young lieutenant from Texas, explicitly disregarded orders from above which set out the official procedure for the expected link-up. Instead of launching a green flare, which was supposed to be answered by a red flare from the Soviet side, the American simply commandeered a sailboat tethered to the bank, blew off its chains with a grenade, and sailed across to greet the Russians in person.
The struggle for me has always been to reconcile this image, this potential for populist rapprochement, with my personal history as a veteran of a war fought at least in part against Communism, and with the anger that naturally arises in light of the postwar Soviet brutality toward the Eastern Europeans, which included (though apparently not in the worst form) members of my family. But Dr. Trifkovic's argument, that Russia may be seen as the equivalent of Byzantium, and that we in the West may be repeating the error of the Franks of 1204 in not recognizing them as being, in the grand scheme of things, on our side, is making headway against my prejudice and grudge. Especially telling to me is the fact that our vile media and government elites are the people most critical of Russia; when the "enemy of my enemy" is doing as much or more harm to me and what I hold dear as to the enemy, it's time to reevaluate. It certainly does look more and more like, rather than the danger of a return to Soviet era repression and expansionism, "The unforgivable sin of the Russians", as Dr. T. puts it, "in the eyes of the Western media elite, is that they are still defined by their ethnic, cultural and religious identity."
If this is the case, and if "Russia is still a recognizable nation, rooted in the continuity of its culture, faith, and collective memories—perhaps the last major European nation which is still recognizably itself", - precisely what I dearly wish for my own country - then I may have to learn to let bygones be bygones and give Russian/American relations a chance to recapture the spirit of the Elbe.
Remember that United Russia, for all its problems, is the right-wing opposition to the Communists, and that the Russian people never voted for Communism. Indeed, the bulk of them always harbored a deep-seated hatred for the regime. Stalin managed to rally the Russian people to fight for the Red Army only by painting it as a matter of defense of fatherland.
For a Rumanian mirror of that terrible epoque and the beautiful communal village and national spirit that Communism bruised but did not destroy, I strongly recommend watching the movie, The Silent Wedding.
A useful reminder, Mr. Moses. I don't, however, usually think of ordinary Russians as having supported the Party, not in the sense that we think of support in the West, anyway, but rather as having been morally compromised and psychologically perverted by their acquiescence, which they had to give in order to survive.
My people were German Hungarian, not Rumanian, though their villages are all now in that country. If I can find it, I will watch the movie, village life being an interest of mine.
I just have to warn you: the film is quite depressing if you take it only on the narrative level. However, on the aesthetic and thematic levels, it is a most excellent film about enjoying life... while you still can.