Memes and meanings
On the path to globo-totalitarianism
I almost fell of my chair laughing when I came across this meme yesterday. It is funny, but still, by itself it wouldn’t deserve a post. What made it interesting is the reactions to it when I shared it on Facebook.
Here is one, loosely translated:
“Whoever drew this knows nothing about the factors that shaped the story of Europe.
Look at your younger son or your grandchildren and think again about where this kind of conclusion might lead.”
Obviously, the commenter knows me. My younger son is quarter Japanese; the two sons of my older one are half Mexicans. The hint is that without the wonderful promise of the globalizing Kumbaya, this would not have been possible. That my opposition to the EU is, in a way, a negation of what my personal life represents.
I don’t know how she got that conclusion from the picture, for me it was yet another confirmation that the emotional stances of the political left preclude rational thinking.
The word ‘factors’ in the comment is just some pontificating bullshit to make it sound more important and the word ‘story’ instead of ‘history’ is straight out of Yuval Noah Harari’s postmodernist vocabulary (There are no facts, only narratives). The essence of the comment is just an emotional burp: “I like the EU, and I don’t like YOU not liking it. It’s not funny!”
But the meme is excellent and to the point.
The EU is, indeed, a marriage of the Comintern and globalized totalitarianism. It is not a marriage of convenience; it is a match made in haven. Well, we could also say that it is ideological incest.
That conclusion also reminded me that most people do not understand how and why it is so. Most people do not have a proper understanding of either political movement. Saying that they are closely related is an understatement, but don’t tell this to the AI LLMs as they will protest vehemently. They will tell you that they are mortal enemies from the moment of their birth. (AI will always give you the consensus narrative)
In reality, these movements had two major splits. First between the socialists and the communists (thanks to Marx); the second between those two and the fascists (thanks to Mussolini).
The first one was over strategy: violent or peaceful achievement of the goal; the second had two aspects: nationalism vs. internationalism and control vs ownership of ‘the means of production’.
When Jonah Goldberg published Liberal Fascism in 2008, he included in it, as an appendix, the platform of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party written by Anton Drexler and Adolf Hitler. Apart from its virulent antisemitism and radical nationalism, it could be the platform of a typical socialist party.
The left, including Lenin, considered Mussolini an important ally, expressing his disappointment over his break with the Socialist movement.
The fights between the communists and the fascists in the Weimar republic were seen as a civil war within the socialist left, between nationalist and internationalist authoritarianism.
Then came the war, then the cold war, then the fall of the wall and “The end of history”; and finally, in 1993, the European Union.
The EU didn’t come from, or into a vacuum. Soviet communism may have died, but the rot it represented has already infected liberal democracies. The EU was (and is) a grandiose project of centralized decision making and totalitarian control.
The customs union, free travel and a common currency all sound wonderful until you realize that customs unions do not mean free trade but harmonized regulations, free travel means no control over your own borders and a common currency means no control over your monetary policy. To some, this may not matter, to some it means a lot. The Greeks learned it the hard way in the course of their financial crisis of 2009.
In 2010, I was sitting on a plane next to a Greek man on a business trip. When I asked him about it, he said: “we had ten good years.”
For ten years, they were enjoying the benefits, and they are paying the price ever since. They were hit by the first wave of the migrants; they were not able to compete with the Germans and their significantly higher productivity, and they had no control over their monetary policy to compensate for their economic shortcomings. Here is a light-hearted take on the costs. You can find more comprehensive (and serious) lists if you care to look for them.
Looking at those lists will help you to understand the essence of predatory globo-corruption. Maybe we can start with the ideals and the realities of these systems.
Communism
In theory, communism is the ultimate expression of Rousseau’s ‘general will’ in which everybody will agree with everybody else on everything; where everybody owns and shares everything in an infinitely altruistic harmony.
“From each according to his ability. To each according to their need” (Marx)
In practice, everything is owned by the state, and all productive activities and decisions are strictly controlled by a central authority.
Without the signals of a real market, the decision makers are blindfolded in an information vacuum. Its ideological rigidity always results in economic failures and ecological disasters.
Socialism
In theory, socialism is a stage on the road to communism, where everybody contributes to the common good to the best of their abilities, while their wise leaders, the vanguard elite, decide how to best distribute the collective resources for the benefit of the whole.
In practice, socialism is robbing Peter to pay Paul, or to be more precise, robbing them both and trying to convince them that they will be both better off with the result.
‘Democratic socialism’ allows the existence of a free market, but with its parasitic political class it sucks the life-blood out of it with excessive control and regulation. Socialism is always on a path to slow decay under the centralized control under of a managerial technocracy.
Fascism
In theory, fascism is the ultimate expression of ethnic nation state. combination of national identity and socialism. A variation on socialism, subjugating the market forces to the ideology of the political leadership. Fascism is socialism with a nominally free market economy.
In practice fascism is an ideology driven totalitarian command economy in total control of both the people and the economy. It is unsustainable. It cannot exist without the charismatic but narcissist blowhards like Mussolini and Hitler. It never works for a long time, due to its insular nationalism, bellicose nature and unstable leadership.
In the narratives, ‘fascism’ is just an insult, not a description of an economic or political system. The left turned the word into a slur to level against any conservative, nationalist, free market idea and movement. The most notable examples are Franco’s Spain and Pinochet’s Chile. Both were conservative, authoritarian dictatorships, but not fascism as such.
Liberal representative democracies
In theory, It is the best compromise we can have. In the words of Winston Churchill:
“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”
But he also said that:
“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
Hinting at its most basic problem: corruptibility.
In practice, the best definition of democracy is still Benjamin Franklin’s:
“Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.”
Liberal democracies are bound to be captured by special interests in an ugly web of systemic corruption. Not even illiberal democracies can be completely free from its inherent weaknesses. The problems of liberal democracies are far too many to list here, but I wrote several posts in this blog about them. Check out the links at the end of this post to get to them. For now, we can focus on just the politicians:
The primary concern of politicians is their reelection.
Their time horizon is the next election.
Their loyalty is to the people who finance their reelection.
All politicians are corruptible. The honest ones will never get into office, and if by accident they do, they will either get corrupted, or never get reelected.
Politicians will promise anything for which the bill will only come due beyond that time horizon.
They will borrow any amount of money on your, and your descendants’ behalf.
If by any chance, the consequences of their bad decision become difficult to deny, they will just double down to kick the can of reckoning down the road.
They will always tell you what you want to hear.
Exposing these failures is the subject of Hans Herman Hoppe’s book: Democracy – The God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy and Natural Order (Perspectives on Democratic Practice)
But, in the words of Margaret Tatcher:
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money,”
The United Nations and the Western lead World Order
The Western Liberal World Order emerged from the ruins of the colonial empires.
In theory, it was/is the promise of harmonious global coexistence with mechanisms for conflict resolution built into them.
In practice, The United Nations is a pathetic circus with either impotent or corrupt but always captured agencies. The real power is in the hands of these captured institution.
The agencies of the UN represent a continuation of the condescending, patronizing exploitative attitudes of the colonial powers. In some twisted ways, they are also and still subjected to continued exploitation. They are the dumping ground of subsidized Western food overproduction; a testing ground of new pharmaceuticals and so on.
The UN agencies represent a Western world view and Western interests. It could be (and is) argued that they do more harm than good. What they do not have is much power.
The European Union
The EU is quite different. It has power, but it never seems to have enough.
In theory, it is a customs union for its members, with extra goodies such as free travel and movement of labour.
In practice, the EU is just a stepping stone towards global governance. Its structure is most reminiscent of that of the Soviet union. The European Council is the Politbureau to the European parliament’s supreme Soviet. An insular ideological elite presiding over a toothless, rubber-stamping parliament.
Being a customs union means harmonized regulations and trade. The reason Yanukovich said no to the offer to join the EU in 2013 was the price: it would have forced them to trade with Russia on the EU’s terms. This rejection led to the coup that ousted him a few months later.
Membership in the EU has some benefits, but it can have steep costs as well, like the loss of sovereignty.
The EU has turned into an overregulated and sclerotic, bureaucratic organization. It either has to grow, or grab more power. Just two days ago the commission decided to make the freezing of the Russian assets permanent, overriding the veto of Hungary.
That is a power-grab and an act of war.
The EU fined X/twitter to 120 million Euros under their Digital Services Act for refusing to give full access to ALL accounts (meaning world-wide) to the EU censors.
This is well into totalitarian territory. The EU claims jurisdiction over the worldwide membership of X/twitter.
The aim of the EU is to turn the Union into a US like federalized state. Its leadership in the Commission are dedicated globalists. They yearn for a global government and they are closely allied with the World Economic Forum, the champion of global governance.
The European economies are failing and falling behind. The EU cannot save them. Globalization will not save them. Immigration will not save them.
The only thing that might is saying no to the EU. Public opinion in most EU countries are turning right. The EU is ready to start World War III to save itself from a resurgent nationalism.
The emerging alternative
The rest of the world is awakening and began to reassert itself. It is the Ukrainian war that opened their eyes.
It is the Ukrainian war that started them thinking about viable alternatives.
It is too early to tell whether they will succeed, but I am looking forward to seeing it.
My Facebook post got another comment suggesting that I am driving against the crowd that knows better.
It will be interesting to see which direction will collide with the big beautiful wall of reality. As always, I will welcome your comments.
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Zork, everyone following your blog would enjoy and benefit from, reading 'Let the People Govern' by Kendall and Louw, if they have not already read it.
You bring up Chruchill's quote: “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” It sounds like you recognize the fact that George Carlin also expressed (“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”).
Yet you never seem to fully entertain the idea that the people that end up in power in a popularity and influence based democracy, might just be from the exact same herd. Just plain, short sighted, uninformed, idealistic, well intentioned (based on their ideas, within the confines of their own world view) people, empowered by other plain, short shigted, uninformed, idealistic, well intentioned (based on their ideas, within the confines of their own world view) people.
Assuming malice will only reduce the possibility of inspiring education and acceptance of your ideas, or even researching the validity of their own.