We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, January 18, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend today: Monday, January 18, 2021

This article is entirely accurate, but it will be a surprise, and likely not to be believed by ordinary Americans and others. This history contradicts the "history" that most children have been exposed to in their educational experience in the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire that is now the dominant force in the world. As capitalism evolved into its natural end-state of fascism among many of the leading capitalist powers in the 1920s and '30s, it was natural that leading political figures of all the capitalist states were drawn to the fascist leaders of that period. But this didn't last, because the leading capitalist power of that time was the British Empire, and it was threatened by the rise and power of fascist Germany and their allies.
“Signor Mussolini” would only become a problem for Churchill and colleagues in the latter stages of his fascist rule, when British interests were threatened by the despot’s colonial ambitions.
It is unfortunate that Quinn did not develop the many implications of this historical development and the rewriting of history that was subsequently done by most historians, and especially those upper-middle-class propagandists and careerists employed by the ruling classes of the USA and throughout the British Empire. It demonstrates the power of ruling classes that is often missed by ordinary people. The latter are reared to be compulsively obedient to authorities who are employees of the capitalist ruling ruling classes. Notice I didn't mention actual members of the ruling class because they mostly stayed invisible by controlling the authorities with job and career opportunities. Often employees were thoroughly indoctrinated and co-opted by the ruling class to engage in sociopathic activities that would please their bosses.

This tale is so pregnant with many insights about humans, but I will explore only one of them. It is obvious that propaganda played an enormous role in changing the views of ordinary people who mostly had to struggle to maintain themselves and their families. This lack of time and the effects of indoctrination provided by their masters to respect and obey their authorities encouraged ordinary people to believe what they were told by mostly upper-middle-class authorities. The latter's well-paid careers were controlled by the mostly invisible capitalist ruling classes.
This actual history of the author explains why the British Empire and allies suddenly found themselves disenamored with, and severely threatened by, their fellow capitalists in the Axis nations to the extent that they joined their arch-enemy, the Soviets, to defeat the competing capitalist empire represented by the Axis powers. (This was especially evident in the behavior of Prime Minister Winston Churchill who had a visceral hatred of the Soviets. FDR often played a conciliatory role when he and Churchill met with Stalin.) If Germany had not launched their major air attacks on British cities after more the eight months since they declared war on Germany (the "phony war") and instead had headed east through Czechoslovakia to invade the Soviet Union, actual history might be telling us a very different story. (See my history of the war.) However, Germany had always competed with Britain to be the dominant force in the world, and their defeat in WWI left a residue of revengeful taste in their collective mouths.

Thus, the Allied capitalist ruling classes of WWII suddenly found themselves in a very different situation. The British ruling class was severely threatened by the growing fascist countries and gathered their Empire forces, warmed up their relations with the USA (which saw threats to their interests from a rising fascist Japan), and even established relations with their arch-nemesis the Soviet Union in order to defeat the threat of the German, Italian, Japanese threat to their British Empire.

However, they had to deal with their previous history of approval of fascist powers in order to prepare their ordinary citizens to fight this threat to the British Empire. The history of this propaganda project was successful beyond their wildest dreams. As a result, they had to banish Allied history from any hints of previous support for fascism. They didn't overlook its successful accomplishment and its lessons for further control of the minds of ordinary people via advanced propaganda technology. We are now seeing in America the fruits of this development in blatant examples of censorship, heavily biased anti-Trump propaganda, and psychological operations such as 9/11 and the exaggerated corona pandemic.
  • Who Is Bill Gates? A series of four by James Corbett from his weblog The Corbett Report. (Note: This excellent series was posted in May 2020, but he is playing such a major role in today's pandemic that I am posting this now.)
Perhaps this is a world of moral, not mental, illness. A sickness of the soul. And it is easy to sell one’s soul to the Devil if one has no moral sense, if it is a shrivelled appendage like a spiritual appendix. No longer needed, surplus to requirements, a useless eater of our body energy. Better to cut it out in one clean, surgical strike. 
Can a whole culture fall prey to a collective soul-sickness, poisoned with the Kool-Aid of a warrior death cult? Can “this is war!” lose its power to thrill in the boardrooms, sports stadia, and fields of battle? Can Veblen’s “predatory culture” evolve past the need for “full spectrum dominance?”
  • Psychological Attack on the UK by Dr Bruce Scott from UK Column (Britain). My reaction: This sounds so familiar. The pressures to conform have personally affected me. I might have to move.
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