The German Interior Ministry continues to defend its controversial and widely criticised plans to restrict the speech, travel and economic activity of political dissidents. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), our domestic intelligence service and political police, have sacrificed substantial popular regard in the face of this campaign. According to a poll published last month,
I think the era of the "non-crime hate incident" is looming. Since Haldenwang and his minister get to define what constitutes being an "enemy of the state" and "enmity to the constitution", it's all about intimidation. People who think this is an excellent idea "to protect Our Democracy" should consider how they would feel if an AfD-led government first got to define what constitutes "enmity to the constitution" and "enmity to the state" and then got to police people for it.
One of my favorite TakiMag journos (now sadly deceased) made me laugh some years back in a piece she wrote about enviro warriors. She said (jokingly) "I hate the environment!" I wonder if she would have been prosecuted had she lived..... and relocated to Scotland.
I'm not going to deny climate change per se; the Earth's climate always changes.
What I'm going to deny is the existence of a "climate crisis," along with the stupid notion that there's anything Homo sapiens can do to affect the weather.
Whatever one's stance on climate change - I believe we can all agree that it's reprehensible to try to banish an idea by making it illegal to talk about it.
Possibly have a look at <geoengineeringwatch.org> and watch their documentary "The Dimming."
There have certainly been attempts at weather modification for decades and the CBC just announced today that we will create rain on the prairies to avoid another "Dustbowl" or something. When it gets to the CBC you know that somebody is trying to normalise some programme.
As long as the journalist does nothing more than agree with what ever comes out of the made-up policy of the moment, she would be fine. The moment there is a hint of disagreement, the State moves in. Yes, the journalist would be prosecuted, the platform access removed, and the organisation pushed into liquidation.
We have a UK regulator called Ofcom. It looks after all media, and broadcasting. Because it has been given additional powers, our official outlets from print to on line in all ways is heavily regulated, and Ofcom openly attacks anyone thought to be against the State.
These appeals to “how would you feel if WE did it to YOU??” never, ever work because they know (correctly) that they control the bureaucracy and will continue to control it under nearly any conceivable scenario within the present system.
That asymmetry across the West, between rightist parties that generally want less state control and leftist parties that want more of it, explains nearly all the persistent institutional leftward march for the past 50 years.
Until right parties are willing to tear up legal norms in fighting the bureaucracy or indeed turning the state’s power against their own political enemies, that dynamic will continue.
There's that dirty little word that the bureaucratic establishment fears, and it rhymes with evolution. The French have had 5 governments since 1792, each brought about by a revolution or counter-revolution. Other nations go through coups and revolutions on a regular basis. It seems to be their go-to for constitutional change. In the anglicized world, there is a deep-seated fear of this happening, partly because they have been bloody in the past, and partly because we are taught that all revolutions are evil (except for the first one in 1776) by the people in power. This is another reason to delegitimize the Founding Fathers, and portray the revolution as founded upon the propagation of slavery. If you read their justifications for rebellion, we are WAY past that point with our current government.
I agree. It is a platform of total destruction of the bureaucracy. Stated bluntly and plainly. Instead there is talk of reform, which misunderstands the nature of the beast.
Precisely. Inspired Orwell to no small degree too.
The old capitalist v communist paradigm is certainly no longer valid, if it ever was. You need to keep an eye out these days, even (especially) for those close to you politically. The right wing parties of the West are not our friends, they are simply collaborators with the UniParty, with few exceptions.
It is fascinating watching the dialectic turn. I wouldn't be the first person to notice that while Marxism and liberalism imagine themselves enemies, they really have much in common: they are both totalizing, proselytzing, determined to conquer every inch of the globe, and represent a top-down reign of managers and professors who get to sculpt all human clay into whatever shapes the system and its owners may need in the moment (up to and including liquidation).
Once the Left jettisoned the smelly working class and their benighted loyalty to things like family, God and country and became an upscale bauble for the disaffected daughters of our secular elite class, it was only a matter of time that the inevitable marriage took place, and the Left made its peace with capitalism by being offered cash awards, sinecures and (most appealingly) perches to proclaim how much more moral and "compassionate" they are than the rest of us.
Mammon is the last god standing in the West, which is why everyone wants to sit at his right hand.
What is liberalism? I certainly don't think those who call themselves liberals today actually are. Liberalism wasn't a free for all. It prescribed limits on state power, a republican form of government, and geographically decentralized political power.
None of these characteristics are present in today's "liberalism": the limits on state power evaporated in the 1930s, the republican form of government went by the wayside around the 1910s with Wilson's bureaucratic reforms, and all "liberal" regimes are effectively unitary states at this point.
Personally I think we should claim the idea, but I recognize that these labels can only get you so far, and really fundamental values are all that matter. An informed, capable and moral citizenry that's jealous of its natural rights is the only viable defense of a free state.
"Inside the liberal system of ideas, we have so far found, human nature is changing and plastic, with an indefinitely large potential for progressive development. Through reason, freed from superstition, authority, custom and tradition, human beings can discover the truth and the road toward the betterment of society. There is nothing inherent in human nature that prevents the attainment of peace, freedom, justice and well-being—of, that is, the good society. The obstacles are ignorance and faulty social institutions. Because both these obstacles are extrinsic and remediable, historical optimism is justified. Social problems can be solved; the good society can be achieved, or at any rate approximated.
The child, for liberalism, approaches the altar of education—for the school is, in truth, liberalism's church—in all his spiritual nakedness as a purely rational, or embryonically rational, being, shorn of color, creed, race, family and nationality: the Universal Student before the universal teacher, Reason.
The doctrine that begins by proclaiming its emancipation from all prejudice, superstition and dogma, from all beliefs sanctioned by time, habit and tradition, that opens up every question to free inquiry by every questing mind, that declares its total readiness to follow reason, science and truth wherever they may beckon: it is THIS doctrine that, we discover at last, is so fixed an absolute that no possible happening now or in any conceivable future could trouble its eternal certainty by so much as a surface tremor!"
My thinking is that the Liberalism you describe—"prescribed limits on state power, a republican form of government, and geographically decentralized political power" with "an informed, capable and moral citizenry that's jealous of its natural rights"—tracks almost perfectly with Protestantism, but doesn't quite work without Protestant roots (and maybe also not outside of small, mostly homogenous societies).
But in a way the Reformation and Enlightenment succeeded too well—now all our priests demand that everyone on the globe hears the good news while various sodalities compete to see who can be given the portfolio for global morality.
Or more simply: the Old World was rooted in Christianity, the New World is rooted in humanitiarianism, which provides an a la carte belief system at best and often boils down to "nothing is true and all is permitted".
w.mj said: "These appeals to “how would you feel if WE did it to YOU??” never, ever work because they know (correctly) that they control the bureaucracy and will continue to control it under nearly any conceivable scenario within the present system. [etc.]"
Excellent, w.mj. This understanding of modern state bureaucracies underpins much of Eugyppius's writing here, and yet (going by the comments) only a small minority of his readers share his perspective. Clearly, you have a very good grasp of these ideas.
As you say, the lack of symmetry means that it is beside the point to ask "How would you feel if we did it to you?" There's one exception I can think of, though, which is Orbán. He had the experience of heading the Hungarian government quite early in the post-Communist period, and then returning after several years of the Socialist Part, which was the main successor party to the Communists, but in policy, they were entirely pro-Brussels and globalist. What he found, on his return, was that the Socialists had control of the entire state bureaucracy, and being considerably more intelligent than Trump, he largely managed to clear out the leading personnel and replace them with people he could rely on to put Hungary's interests before any damaging orders from Brussels. At the same time, he introduced stringent austerity measures that were highly unpleasant for the populace, but which paid off all the debt to the IMF; once this was done, he told the IMF to vacate its Hungarian office. This, I think, is why he is so hated in Brussels and the various globalist bodies, which have been squealing ever since about his "authoritarianism" and the danger he poses to what they archly call "democracy".
He is far from perfect, of course. He imposed one of Europe's worst lockdown regimes on Hungary. He is much more open to Russia and China than other EU states, which could pull him into their orbit, although his recent veto of an EU anti-Israel measure (he was alone) shows that he still retains his independence.
It’s already started in Scotland 🏴 under Hamzhead Youseless - I see a mass migration south but not too far south since there are battalions of opposition in strange clothes - you know those multiracial communities we’ve been embracing for so long that are running vaste swathes of our little island - what chance Marxist Europe?
I was actually thinking about this this morning, as The White House was "love-bombing" (like the Moonies, or Jim Jones' People's Temple or Scientologists) the mentally ill (boundariless, developmentally stunted, absent interiority, attention-crazed) on Transgender Day of Visibility ("visibility' being the clue to the mental illness of borderline personality), while ignoring Easter. Pride is for the cult members, and humiliation is for the rest of us. This is part of that Oxford WEF shrink's Emotional Amoral Egoism theory. Here in the States, the migrants get money and housing while inflation rips into people's lives, not to mention the pandemic deaths and losses and small business closures (3 million), which signals symbolically that we can just freaking pay taxes and get nothing, be humiliated and abandoned, while the mentally ill parade about when not clinging to the Harlow wire monkey mother of the state. Under Clinton and Nafta 40,000 factories closed, so workers' self-respect, especially men's, collapsed, and darling pharma pumped opiates into the most devastated places, in a prelude to the vaccines. They want us to feel abandoned, humiliated, worthless or to take up the rainbow cult pronouns and non-reproductive sexualities, and they want to indoctrinate kids with this, who are so much more vulnerable. Counter-pride is not exactly the cure. More like holding fast to your deontological rules and knowledge or your faith, and knowing that you are a unique, incredible manifestation of the brilliance of the cosmos, and just f*ck them.
Good summary, Cynthia. But their plan has a flaw. It doesn't work on everyone. Not everyone ends up as a fentanyl statistic.
And the hardcases who can survive all that will not be pushovers. That's what every despotic regime eventually learns. Unless they actually eradicate us all, they are just training some of us to be tougher.
but that's just the thing about tribalism and about people jacked up on full-spectrum propaganda centered around "the Nazis are coming!!"—there is no thought for the future or any possible consequences, the tribe demands that their enemies be killed or banished, and nothing else matters.
The "protect Our Democracy" people won't be swayed by the "what if AfD" scenario, because that would require a system-wide application of principle, and they don't want to change the system. Just those parts that would allow disfavored political ideas to get a public hearing.
To them, there's no contradiction. It's bad when bad people are in power, and it's good when we and the good people are in power. If the AfD defines "enmity to the state," well, then they would be evil and wrong. If their side defines it, that's as it should be. There's no overriding principle to appeal to.
It's like it's here in the U.S., when the media and politicians pejoratively call the Supreme Court "conservative" when it rules against their interests. You'll never hear any MSM referring to the "liberal court" in this way. Because that's as it should be. That's normative.
That query doesn't work *even when someone they hate is already in office* as I have cause to know from the First Trump Years, and expect will be backed up in the Second Trump Years.
"The creepy, dissolute and rodent-looking BfV chief, Thomas Haldenwang..."
Physiognomy is underrated.
"Even within the limits of criminal law, however, expressions of opinion, despite their legality, can become relevant for constitutional protection."
This attitude is straight out of Popper and the 'paradox of tolerance.' Essentially Popper argued that illiberal or antidemocratic suppression of anti-liberal speech should be within the power of the state, because people might choose violence over reason. Put thusly, without Popper's circuitous and obfuscatory prose, the problem is obvious. Either you believe in the capacity of human beings, given truth and freedom, to hew to the better angels of our nature, in which case the paradox is irrelevant, or you don't, in which case liberalism fails anyhow.
What history has shown is that without freedom of thought and expression, your society stagnates and eventually dies...Germany is making a lot of progress toward that end....
I believe that all Western states are embarked upon the same dangerous course to control the cognitive infrastructure of their populations. The utility of the German case is that the perpetrators are being so open about it.
All Left philosophies needs to control minds because their plans don't work. They are utopian dreams unconnected to reality. Men aren't women, you can't change the weather by raising taxes, and the ice poles aren't melting. Because we can all see this we have to be taught to unsee it. The six-foot masculine beast in a dress is a fucking woman, got it bigot?
That’s the truth; it’s frankly terrifying: more interesting if you analyse the ethnicity of the majority of these unelected acronyms, perverted ‘philanthropists’ and totalitarian Marxists isn’t it?
It is odd though. All the west seems to be throwing itself on a similar sword at the same time.
Also odd that the leaders pursue these policies, seemingly to their own political detriment. The Liberal party in Canada seems hell bent on destroying itself in perpetuity. Although the individuals themselves never seem too affected and pop up their heads when you would have thought them long gone from politics (Brian Mulroney as an example)
Half of our members of parliament are graduates of the WEF Global Young Leaders program including our Illustrious prime minister and his right hand minister Freeland who actually sits on the WEF BOARD as a member! Our government and parliament is completely compromised, I think Pierre and Singh are all on the same team.
Agreed, the polices pushed do have a pretty direct alignment with what is discussed and proposed at these supranational love ins.
I’m of the mind that the “right” is just as controlled as the “left.” Which seems to drive most of the divisive and radical talking points being pushed by our MSM.
That’s the most terrifying aspect of it. Is the entire DDR made up of alphabets? Do they not believe in their holocaust? Remember the one where our fathers grandfathers uncles cousins sisters mothers gave their todays for our tomorrows?
Yes, when younger I used to be thankful that I was not in a trench like my grandfather and not coming ashore at Normandy like my dad. Now I know that the sacrifice of so many millions was for nothing. The Nazis just moved into power in the US, Canada and in the EU.
Community matters I have realized. I too am not super young, although not old. I believe to survive we need to improve our social connections in the real world, although online can help too.
I think too many overlook this. During lockdowns it was all that kept me sane, illegally meeting others, lol. Totally crazy.
Enjoy each day. That is all I can advise. Whatever is coming for us is coming and we cannot do anything to stop other than waking everyone up. Alas, most are still utterly brainwashed.
This Tucker Carlson interview from yesterday explains how the covid and the jab are designed to make us depressed, erase memories and make our minds more controllable.
so true. I think the older millennials are seeing it. changing of history, removing statues, renaming schools, public schools and teaching, it is everywhere. I have older millennial daughters and sons in law. only 4 years apart and my older son in law is very aware and savvy. My younger son in law is an arrogant asshole.
The key part there is “national”. The goal is to destroy national identity and national priorities and subsume them to the global military capital empire. Nations resist subjugation and exploitation; this national identity and cohesion must be dismantled and destroyed, even made illegal. Because the Nation is an idea, they need to destroy the idea of nation itself, hence thought crimes and communication of those thoughts being criminalized.
Interesting if true! Germany, having shut off their main source of affordable energy, is heading straight for the 18th century...Do people really want that?
Well, the ruling coalition tends to have low rates of approval in the surveys.
Currently they are hovering around 35%, so well below 50% of the electorate. They have not had a majority in the surveys for months, so about 60-65% of the population don't want this (a small percentage of those think the ruling coalition is not radical enough, though. Utter lunatics. They decry the "harsh" stance of the ruling coalition on migration, for instance, lol). The ruling coalition know this, of course, and are trying to "fix" their influence well beyond the next elections. For instance, they've just made legislation that allows them to allocate funding to "democracy protective" NGOs for eight years, an immensely long time.
That sounds like the Blairite tactic of ensuring there is a permanent, well funded cadre of True Believers left behind, to multiply to the point where elections become more or less irrelevant; just the white noise, distracting but disarmed from making any effective change. It has worked in Britain to a terrifying extent.
I wasn't aware that was a Blairite tactic, but it makes a lot of sense. Put your people in key positions, make sure they are financed, and you can wield influence and power even if your coalition has been voted out. There is an infamous tweet by someone in the Green Party, Berlin chapter who writes they put "good people" in positions in the judiciary and the police. That's the long game they play, I think.
It is Fabian socialism, a generations long view. Your only hope is an illiberal government who would literally exile them from the country.
All the European nations are being destroyed by fewer than ten percent of the population, perhaps only a few percent. All are in key positions and all believe the West must be destroyed. This is what the masses misunderstand, none of this is incompetence, the mass immigration, destroying energy, trans madness. It is because Western nations must be destroyed.
This is the endgame of these people and it is a war in my view. They need to be outed and exiled.
It's mind-boggling that they think their leftist agenda will be appreciated by the muslim immigrants they're ferrying into Europe with such enthusiasm.
“Pre-illegal” sounds a lot like the military dentist who insisted on drilling out perfectly good teeth because they were “future cavities”, and like the perfectly healthy people who have now been re-classified as “asymptomatic”. What happened to our language, and our world?????
It would seem BfV chief, Thomas Haldenwang is a very, very weak man who's only defence is to bully.
Thanks to the brilliant work of the Good Professor and the wonderful comments, I find what goes on in our small divided country (UK) mirrors almost exactly the same themes as other parts of the West.
For example, Scotland First Minister Humza 'The Useless' Yousaf has overseen into law, effective 1st April 2024, a device which can ban anything at any time, including 'thought'.
JK Rowling decided on the first day to invite the usual idiots to arrest her - for stating a man is a man and a woman is not the same, but a woman.
The Police in Scotland got the predictable screaming complaints, and then decided to do nothing. For now. Tick, tick, tick......
Indeed she did. JK Rowling has had years of opposition by Trans Activists (ie, political activists) with the result the film studio, much of the film cast and more have turned their back on her. However, JK Rowling is strong, and knows she is right - she fights for women to be recognised as women. She does not recognise Trans as female.
In debate we can agree or disagree, but many who are wealthy because of her works did much more than disagree - they sought to destroy her. Such is the 'modern' age of revisionist activism.
That's easy bc it is just thought and speech that is easily acceptable to all humans shared together in communistic harmony.... stay inside your 15 minute city unless you have permission to go elsewhere, that is not difficult to argue with - save the planet /s
I've probably said this in comments here before, but in the face of comments like the ones quoted in this post, I've always fantasized about asking a politician this and forcing them, somehow, to answer honestly:
"What is the appropriate and acceptable way to dissent to your rule?"
I suspect that, if cornered, German politicians would say "voting" and, by implication, rule out everything else. I just want to hear them say it out loud
The first is: the right to vote is so sacrosanct in the US, that we even extend it to dead people! As long as they vote correctly, of course.
The second is: historically, the right to vote in America was not considered as important as other rights. Among other things, free speech is the 1st amendment and women voting is 19th amendment. Crudely, and at risk of oversimplification: the legal system of the United States clearly demonstrates that, at least historically, your right to free speech is _more important_ than your right to vote, since, y'know, women had a right to free speech since 1791, but only had a right to vote as of 1920.
Whether or not this is the morally correct situation is a separate conversation but purely from a US civics perspective, this makes it clear that free speech is more important than voting.
And, tbh, I think that this is _obviously_ true. Voting is pretty much meaningless; even if you assume that US elections are real, you're one vote out of 300 million; your vote is watered down to the point of uselessness. On the other hand, if you have good ideas, and you spread them, you can influence _millions_ of people.
To put it bluntly: Your right to vote gives you control over one vote. Your right to free speech, theoretically, gives you control over _every_ vote (if your ideas are compelling enough). Since both are equivalent but one is larger than the other, it is clearly obvious that your right to influence millions of votes should be 'more important' than your right to influence exactly one (your own)
One has to ask whether this current regime, either the least popular or second least popular since 1949, really is so deluded that it believes it can chutzpah its way to totalitarianism two thirds of the way through a dismal first (and likely last) term, or if they are merely deluded. I am reminded of an overheard conversation in a bar once, that worked better in German than English: "Do you have to be a complete economic idiot to work for our company?" "No, you only have to be a complete idiot".
How ignorant, or self-confident, do you have to be to not realise just how DDR "restricting the speech, travel and economic activity of political dissidents" sounds, and is? Or is it a sound you want? That FAZ wants to amplify this sound illustrates how far the march through the institutions has gone.
Unfortunately the restriction of speech is a fait accompli, and in many other countries one has to accept that unless you are now actively heard saying the right things (and not just not saying the wrong things), your economic activity may also be curtailed. But arere we facing a future where we will be unable, as citizens of a very democratic republic, to travel to "the west" unless we are either sufficiently politically trustworthy or well-connected to be "permitted" to do so? What country might that remind us of?
And yet again, the BRD proves it is not the DDR by cracking down on anyone insinuating it might be heading in that direction.
FAZ publishing this tripe, and Haldenwang being CDU, I think really illustrates how this game is played. The leftist parties demonstrate ostentatiously against ‘the right’ but the centre-right establishment which is being outflanked by AfD has to do the bulk of the openly antidemocratic dirty work.
Neo-Bolshevism coming big time. These sick remote controlled criminals will kill millions and millions if the people can not stop them.
I've known for a long time that anything can be expected from these sick criminals. But the will to such a level of unconditional criminal energy is frightening and shows who is pulling the strings in the background.
I think the era of the "non-crime hate incident" is looming. Since Haldenwang and his minister get to define what constitutes being an "enemy of the state" and "enmity to the constitution", it's all about intimidation. People who think this is an excellent idea "to protect Our Democracy" should consider how they would feel if an AfD-led government first got to define what constitutes "enmity to the constitution" and "enmity to the state" and then got to police people for it.
It is already in place as of 1st April 2024 in Scotland, and I think will be in place across the UK as well as Eire before the end of 2024.
One of my favorite TakiMag journos (now sadly deceased) made me laugh some years back in a piece she wrote about enviro warriors. She said (jokingly) "I hate the environment!" I wonder if she would have been prosecuted had she lived..... and relocated to Scotland.
In 2023, a German MP (Christian Democrats) actually wanted "denial of climate change" to be made into a criminal offence. You can't make it up.
NotSee's are going to NotSee. For as long as the people do not see. NotSee's do all they can to make sure the people do not see.
"[D]enial of climate change."
I'm not going to deny climate change per se; the Earth's climate always changes.
What I'm going to deny is the existence of a "climate crisis," along with the stupid notion that there's anything Homo sapiens can do to affect the weather.
Whatever one's stance on climate change - I believe we can all agree that it's reprehensible to try to banish an idea by making it illegal to talk about it.
Possibly have a look at <geoengineeringwatch.org> and watch their documentary "The Dimming."
There have certainly been attempts at weather modification for decades and the CBC just announced today that we will create rain on the prairies to avoid another "Dustbowl" or something. When it gets to the CBC you know that somebody is trying to normalise some programme.
"When it gets to the CBC you know that somebody is trying to normalise some programme."
Oh, great point.
Here in the USA one can also track the projects and plans of the "elites" in similar manner.
As long as the journalist does nothing more than agree with what ever comes out of the made-up policy of the moment, she would be fine. The moment there is a hint of disagreement, the State moves in. Yes, the journalist would be prosecuted, the platform access removed, and the organisation pushed into liquidation.
We have a UK regulator called Ofcom. It looks after all media, and broadcasting. Because it has been given additional powers, our official outlets from print to on line in all ways is heavily regulated, and Ofcom openly attacks anyone thought to be against the State.
These appeals to “how would you feel if WE did it to YOU??” never, ever work because they know (correctly) that they control the bureaucracy and will continue to control it under nearly any conceivable scenario within the present system.
That asymmetry across the West, between rightist parties that generally want less state control and leftist parties that want more of it, explains nearly all the persistent institutional leftward march for the past 50 years.
Until right parties are willing to tear up legal norms in fighting the bureaucracy or indeed turning the state’s power against their own political enemies, that dynamic will continue.
There's that dirty little word that the bureaucratic establishment fears, and it rhymes with evolution. The French have had 5 governments since 1792, each brought about by a revolution or counter-revolution. Other nations go through coups and revolutions on a regular basis. It seems to be their go-to for constitutional change. In the anglicized world, there is a deep-seated fear of this happening, partly because they have been bloody in the past, and partly because we are taught that all revolutions are evil (except for the first one in 1776) by the people in power. This is another reason to delegitimize the Founding Fathers, and portray the revolution as founded upon the propagation of slavery. If you read their justifications for rebellion, we are WAY past that point with our current government.
This is why the try to instigate new wars - with the enemy within (the evil right), or the enemy without (the evil Putin).
"Wars happen when the government tells you who the enemy is; revolutions happen when you figure it out for yourselves."
A few founding fathers knew that revolution would be necessary if the government became tyrannical
I agree. It is a platform of total destruction of the bureaucracy. Stated bluntly and plainly. Instead there is talk of reform, which misunderstands the nature of the beast.
Burnham's Managerial Revolution! the man was a prophet
Precisely. Inspired Orwell to no small degree too.
The old capitalist v communist paradigm is certainly no longer valid, if it ever was. You need to keep an eye out these days, even (especially) for those close to you politically. The right wing parties of the West are not our friends, they are simply collaborators with the UniParty, with few exceptions.
It is fascinating watching the dialectic turn. I wouldn't be the first person to notice that while Marxism and liberalism imagine themselves enemies, they really have much in common: they are both totalizing, proselytzing, determined to conquer every inch of the globe, and represent a top-down reign of managers and professors who get to sculpt all human clay into whatever shapes the system and its owners may need in the moment (up to and including liquidation).
Once the Left jettisoned the smelly working class and their benighted loyalty to things like family, God and country and became an upscale bauble for the disaffected daughters of our secular elite class, it was only a matter of time that the inevitable marriage took place, and the Left made its peace with capitalism by being offered cash awards, sinecures and (most appealingly) perches to proclaim how much more moral and "compassionate" they are than the rest of us.
Mammon is the last god standing in the West, which is why everyone wants to sit at his right hand.
What is liberalism? I certainly don't think those who call themselves liberals today actually are. Liberalism wasn't a free for all. It prescribed limits on state power, a republican form of government, and geographically decentralized political power.
None of these characteristics are present in today's "liberalism": the limits on state power evaporated in the 1930s, the republican form of government went by the wayside around the 1910s with Wilson's bureaucratic reforms, and all "liberal" regimes are effectively unitary states at this point.
Personally I think we should claim the idea, but I recognize that these labels can only get you so far, and really fundamental values are all that matter. An informed, capable and moral citizenry that's jealous of its natural rights is the only viable defense of a free state.
Back to Burnham:
"Inside the liberal system of ideas, we have so far found, human nature is changing and plastic, with an indefinitely large potential for progressive development. Through reason, freed from superstition, authority, custom and tradition, human beings can discover the truth and the road toward the betterment of society. There is nothing inherent in human nature that prevents the attainment of peace, freedom, justice and well-being—of, that is, the good society. The obstacles are ignorance and faulty social institutions. Because both these obstacles are extrinsic and remediable, historical optimism is justified. Social problems can be solved; the good society can be achieved, or at any rate approximated.
The child, for liberalism, approaches the altar of education—for the school is, in truth, liberalism's church—in all his spiritual nakedness as a purely rational, or embryonically rational, being, shorn of color, creed, race, family and nationality: the Universal Student before the universal teacher, Reason.
The doctrine that begins by proclaiming its emancipation from all prejudice, superstition and dogma, from all beliefs sanctioned by time, habit and tradition, that opens up every question to free inquiry by every questing mind, that declares its total readiness to follow reason, science and truth wherever they may beckon: it is THIS doctrine that, we discover at last, is so fixed an absolute that no possible happening now or in any conceivable future could trouble its eternal certainty by so much as a surface tremor!"
My thinking is that the Liberalism you describe—"prescribed limits on state power, a republican form of government, and geographically decentralized political power" with "an informed, capable and moral citizenry that's jealous of its natural rights"—tracks almost perfectly with Protestantism, but doesn't quite work without Protestant roots (and maybe also not outside of small, mostly homogenous societies).
But in a way the Reformation and Enlightenment succeeded too well—now all our priests demand that everyone on the globe hears the good news while various sodalities compete to see who can be given the portfolio for global morality.
Or more simply: the Old World was rooted in Christianity, the New World is rooted in humanitiarianism, which provides an a la carte belief system at best and often boils down to "nothing is true and all is permitted".
Great point.
w.mj said: "These appeals to “how would you feel if WE did it to YOU??” never, ever work because they know (correctly) that they control the bureaucracy and will continue to control it under nearly any conceivable scenario within the present system. [etc.]"
Excellent, w.mj. This understanding of modern state bureaucracies underpins much of Eugyppius's writing here, and yet (going by the comments) only a small minority of his readers share his perspective. Clearly, you have a very good grasp of these ideas.
As you say, the lack of symmetry means that it is beside the point to ask "How would you feel if we did it to you?" There's one exception I can think of, though, which is Orbán. He had the experience of heading the Hungarian government quite early in the post-Communist period, and then returning after several years of the Socialist Part, which was the main successor party to the Communists, but in policy, they were entirely pro-Brussels and globalist. What he found, on his return, was that the Socialists had control of the entire state bureaucracy, and being considerably more intelligent than Trump, he largely managed to clear out the leading personnel and replace them with people he could rely on to put Hungary's interests before any damaging orders from Brussels. At the same time, he introduced stringent austerity measures that were highly unpleasant for the populace, but which paid off all the debt to the IMF; once this was done, he told the IMF to vacate its Hungarian office. This, I think, is why he is so hated in Brussels and the various globalist bodies, which have been squealing ever since about his "authoritarianism" and the danger he poses to what they archly call "democracy".
He is far from perfect, of course. He imposed one of Europe's worst lockdown regimes on Hungary. He is much more open to Russia and China than other EU states, which could pull him into their orbit, although his recent veto of an EU anti-Israel measure (he was alone) shows that he still retains his independence.
It’s already started in Scotland 🏴 under Hamzhead Youseless - I see a mass migration south but not too far south since there are battalions of opposition in strange clothes - you know those multiracial communities we’ve been embracing for so long that are running vaste swathes of our little island - what chance Marxist Europe?
Glad someone else has noticed, Wendy. 🙂
You know I wish (sometimes) I could morph into 🐵🙈 🐵 and sleep walk through this despotic insanity of evil … so so tired 😪
It is exhausting, but that is why they do it. To demoralize you. Stiff upper lip, Wendy 😛
I was actually thinking about this this morning, as The White House was "love-bombing" (like the Moonies, or Jim Jones' People's Temple or Scientologists) the mentally ill (boundariless, developmentally stunted, absent interiority, attention-crazed) on Transgender Day of Visibility ("visibility' being the clue to the mental illness of borderline personality), while ignoring Easter. Pride is for the cult members, and humiliation is for the rest of us. This is part of that Oxford WEF shrink's Emotional Amoral Egoism theory. Here in the States, the migrants get money and housing while inflation rips into people's lives, not to mention the pandemic deaths and losses and small business closures (3 million), which signals symbolically that we can just freaking pay taxes and get nothing, be humiliated and abandoned, while the mentally ill parade about when not clinging to the Harlow wire monkey mother of the state. Under Clinton and Nafta 40,000 factories closed, so workers' self-respect, especially men's, collapsed, and darling pharma pumped opiates into the most devastated places, in a prelude to the vaccines. They want us to feel abandoned, humiliated, worthless or to take up the rainbow cult pronouns and non-reproductive sexualities, and they want to indoctrinate kids with this, who are so much more vulnerable. Counter-pride is not exactly the cure. More like holding fast to your deontological rules and knowledge or your faith, and knowing that you are a unique, incredible manifestation of the brilliance of the cosmos, and just f*ck them.
Good summary, Cynthia. But their plan has a flaw. It doesn't work on everyone. Not everyone ends up as a fentanyl statistic.
And the hardcases who can survive all that will not be pushovers. That's what every despotic regime eventually learns. Unless they actually eradicate us all, they are just training some of us to be tougher.
but that's just the thing about tribalism and about people jacked up on full-spectrum propaganda centered around "the Nazis are coming!!"—there is no thought for the future or any possible consequences, the tribe demands that their enemies be killed or banished, and nothing else matters.
The "protect Our Democracy" people won't be swayed by the "what if AfD" scenario, because that would require a system-wide application of principle, and they don't want to change the system. Just those parts that would allow disfavored political ideas to get a public hearing.
To them, there's no contradiction. It's bad when bad people are in power, and it's good when we and the good people are in power. If the AfD defines "enmity to the state," well, then they would be evil and wrong. If their side defines it, that's as it should be. There's no overriding principle to appeal to.
It's like it's here in the U.S., when the media and politicians pejoratively call the Supreme Court "conservative" when it rules against their interests. You'll never hear any MSM referring to the "liberal court" in this way. Because that's as it should be. That's normative.
They aren't concerned about tiresome thoughts like shoes on other feet or different heads in baskets. It is their intention that AfD shall never win.
Of course we can be sure that Robespierre had similar feelings.
That query doesn't work *even when someone they hate is already in office* as I have cause to know from the First Trump Years, and expect will be backed up in the Second Trump Years.
"The creepy, dissolute and rodent-looking BfV chief, Thomas Haldenwang..."
Physiognomy is underrated.
"Even within the limits of criminal law, however, expressions of opinion, despite their legality, can become relevant for constitutional protection."
This attitude is straight out of Popper and the 'paradox of tolerance.' Essentially Popper argued that illiberal or antidemocratic suppression of anti-liberal speech should be within the power of the state, because people might choose violence over reason. Put thusly, without Popper's circuitous and obfuscatory prose, the problem is obvious. Either you believe in the capacity of human beings, given truth and freedom, to hew to the better angels of our nature, in which case the paradox is irrelevant, or you don't, in which case liberalism fails anyhow.
What history has shown is that without freedom of thought and expression, your society stagnates and eventually dies...Germany is making a lot of progress toward that end....
We all are.. all our western countries are going down the same dangerous path not just Germany.
I believe that all Western states are embarked upon the same dangerous course to control the cognitive infrastructure of their populations. The utility of the German case is that the perpetrators are being so open about it.
All Left philosophies needs to control minds because their plans don't work. They are utopian dreams unconnected to reality. Men aren't women, you can't change the weather by raising taxes, and the ice poles aren't melting. Because we can all see this we have to be taught to unsee it. The six-foot masculine beast in a dress is a fucking woman, got it bigot?
Not all heroes wear capes 😜
That’s the truth; it’s frankly terrifying: more interesting if you analyse the ethnicity of the majority of these unelected acronyms, perverted ‘philanthropists’ and totalitarian Marxists isn’t it?
It is odd though. All the west seems to be throwing itself on a similar sword at the same time.
Also odd that the leaders pursue these policies, seemingly to their own political detriment. The Liberal party in Canada seems hell bent on destroying itself in perpetuity. Although the individuals themselves never seem too affected and pop up their heads when you would have thought them long gone from politics (Brian Mulroney as an example)
Strange times, doesn’t seem organic to me.
Agreed. Blackrock? Beezlebub? Wtf?
So many bad guys… and they all seem to have a curated flavour… WEF is too on the nose… Babylon?
Meh, probably doesn’t really matter; personally I’m focusing on my own back yard. Powers and principalities and all that.
Half of our members of parliament are graduates of the WEF Global Young Leaders program including our Illustrious prime minister and his right hand minister Freeland who actually sits on the WEF BOARD as a member! Our government and parliament is completely compromised, I think Pierre and Singh are all on the same team.
Agreed, the polices pushed do have a pretty direct alignment with what is discussed and proposed at these supranational love ins.
I’m of the mind that the “right” is just as controlled as the “left.” Which seems to drive most of the divisive and radical talking points being pushed by our MSM.
This!
All this "hate" crime nonsense is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn't there, and finding it.
Anyone saying they are "defending democracy" is guaranteed to be destroying 'democracy'.
Yes, this phrase is right up there with "but the children..."
Turns out that wall never came down. It just magically expanded to encircle the whole country.
Fascism in charge of Germany once again and the German people seem happy with it.
That’s the most terrifying aspect of it. Is the entire DDR made up of alphabets? Do they not believe in their holocaust? Remember the one where our fathers grandfathers uncles cousins sisters mothers gave their todays for our tomorrows?
Yes, when younger I used to be thankful that I was not in a trench like my grandfather and not coming ashore at Normandy like my dad. Now I know that the sacrifice of so many millions was for nothing. The Nazis just moved into power in the US, Canada and in the EU.
I’m terrified … there’s nowhere to run at my age
Community matters I have realized. I too am not super young, although not old. I believe to survive we need to improve our social connections in the real world, although online can help too.
I think too many overlook this. During lockdowns it was all that kept me sane, illegally meeting others, lol. Totally crazy.
Enjoy each day. That is all I can advise. Whatever is coming for us is coming and we cannot do anything to stop other than waking everyone up. Alas, most are still utterly brainwashed.
This Tucker Carlson interview from yesterday explains how the covid and the jab are designed to make us depressed, erase memories and make our minds more controllable.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UPQDFdYOeS8&feature=youtu.be
so true. I think the older millennials are seeing it. changing of history, removing statues, renaming schools, public schools and teaching, it is everywhere. I have older millennial daughters and sons in law. only 4 years apart and my older son in law is very aware and savvy. My younger son in law is an arrogant asshole.
we need to keep doing treadmill each day to keep up our skills
You never know.
Is it though? Or is it the CCP, in Canada we have outright political election interference by the CCP now finally being investigated…
No, many truly believe that these measures are necessary to fight the return of facism/national socialism.
The key part there is “national”. The goal is to destroy national identity and national priorities and subsume them to the global military capital empire. Nations resist subjugation and exploitation; this national identity and cohesion must be dismantled and destroyed, even made illegal. Because the Nation is an idea, they need to destroy the idea of nation itself, hence thought crimes and communication of those thoughts being criminalized.
Interesting if true! Germany, having shut off their main source of affordable energy, is heading straight for the 18th century...Do people really want that?
Well, the ruling coalition tends to have low rates of approval in the surveys.
Currently they are hovering around 35%, so well below 50% of the electorate. They have not had a majority in the surveys for months, so about 60-65% of the population don't want this (a small percentage of those think the ruling coalition is not radical enough, though. Utter lunatics. They decry the "harsh" stance of the ruling coalition on migration, for instance, lol). The ruling coalition know this, of course, and are trying to "fix" their influence well beyond the next elections. For instance, they've just made legislation that allows them to allocate funding to "democracy protective" NGOs for eight years, an immensely long time.
That sounds like the Blairite tactic of ensuring there is a permanent, well funded cadre of True Believers left behind, to multiply to the point where elections become more or less irrelevant; just the white noise, distracting but disarmed from making any effective change. It has worked in Britain to a terrifying extent.
I wasn't aware that was a Blairite tactic, but it makes a lot of sense. Put your people in key positions, make sure they are financed, and you can wield influence and power even if your coalition has been voted out. There is an infamous tweet by someone in the Green Party, Berlin chapter who writes they put "good people" in positions in the judiciary and the police. That's the long game they play, I think.
It is Fabian socialism, a generations long view. Your only hope is an illiberal government who would literally exile them from the country.
All the European nations are being destroyed by fewer than ten percent of the population, perhaps only a few percent. All are in key positions and all believe the West must be destroyed. This is what the masses misunderstand, none of this is incompetence, the mass immigration, destroying energy, trans madness. It is because Western nations must be destroyed.
This is the endgame of these people and it is a war in my view. They need to be outed and exiled.
It's mind-boggling that they think their leftist agenda will be appreciated by the muslim immigrants they're ferrying into Europe with such enthusiasm.
Yes, it's the long march through the institutions, but wearing a silk tie instead of a Mao jacket.
“Pre-illegal” sounds a lot like the military dentist who insisted on drilling out perfectly good teeth because they were “future cavities”, and like the perfectly healthy people who have now been re-classified as “asymptomatic”. What happened to our language, and our world?????
> What happened to our language, and our world?????
Leftists.
Humanists. We make our own truth now.
Thank you enlightened rationalism…
It would seem BfV chief, Thomas Haldenwang is a very, very weak man who's only defence is to bully.
Thanks to the brilliant work of the Good Professor and the wonderful comments, I find what goes on in our small divided country (UK) mirrors almost exactly the same themes as other parts of the West.
For example, Scotland First Minister Humza 'The Useless' Yousaf has overseen into law, effective 1st April 2024, a device which can ban anything at any time, including 'thought'.
JK Rowling decided on the first day to invite the usual idiots to arrest her - for stating a man is a man and a woman is not the same, but a woman.
The Police in Scotland got the predictable screaming complaints, and then decided to do nothing. For now. Tick, tick, tick......
I don't know much about Rowling except those best-selling books she authored. She really did this?
Indeed she did. JK Rowling has had years of opposition by Trans Activists (ie, political activists) with the result the film studio, much of the film cast and more have turned their back on her. However, JK Rowling is strong, and knows she is right - she fights for women to be recognised as women. She does not recognise Trans as female.
In debate we can agree or disagree, but many who are wealthy because of her works did much more than disagree - they sought to destroy her. Such is the 'modern' age of revisionist activism.
If you haven't been paying attention to JK Rowling the last couple of years, you might start here…
'The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling'
https://www.thefp.com/p/the-witch-trials-of-jk-rowling
This is the quintessence of Fascism.
the antifascists love Fascism.
That's easy bc it is just thought and speech that is easily acceptable to all humans shared together in communistic harmony.... stay inside your 15 minute city unless you have permission to go elsewhere, that is not difficult to argue with - save the planet /s
It has morphed from rule by law, to rule via exception. All that is needed to ignore the law is a crisis; crisis has moved from acute to perpetual.
We being played and it appears those doing the playing are going all in.
Buckle up.
I've probably said this in comments here before, but in the face of comments like the ones quoted in this post, I've always fantasized about asking a politician this and forcing them, somehow, to answer honestly:
"What is the appropriate and acceptable way to dissent to your rule?"
I suspect that, if cornered, German politicians would say "voting" and, by implication, rule out everything else. I just want to hear them say it out loud
Hillary Clinton a decade or so ago with a straight face asserted that Americans' "most precious right" was the right to vote.
(I immediately thought of many, many more rights that are more valuable than that!)
Two thoughts occur.
The first is: the right to vote is so sacrosanct in the US, that we even extend it to dead people! As long as they vote correctly, of course.
The second is: historically, the right to vote in America was not considered as important as other rights. Among other things, free speech is the 1st amendment and women voting is 19th amendment. Crudely, and at risk of oversimplification: the legal system of the United States clearly demonstrates that, at least historically, your right to free speech is _more important_ than your right to vote, since, y'know, women had a right to free speech since 1791, but only had a right to vote as of 1920.
Whether or not this is the morally correct situation is a separate conversation but purely from a US civics perspective, this makes it clear that free speech is more important than voting.
And, tbh, I think that this is _obviously_ true. Voting is pretty much meaningless; even if you assume that US elections are real, you're one vote out of 300 million; your vote is watered down to the point of uselessness. On the other hand, if you have good ideas, and you spread them, you can influence _millions_ of people.
To put it bluntly: Your right to vote gives you control over one vote. Your right to free speech, theoretically, gives you control over _every_ vote (if your ideas are compelling enough). Since both are equivalent but one is larger than the other, it is clearly obvious that your right to influence millions of votes should be 'more important' than your right to influence exactly one (your own)
Exactly. Which is why the likes of Hillary Clinton would have us believe that voting is our "most precious right." It isn't.
One has to ask whether this current regime, either the least popular or second least popular since 1949, really is so deluded that it believes it can chutzpah its way to totalitarianism two thirds of the way through a dismal first (and likely last) term, or if they are merely deluded. I am reminded of an overheard conversation in a bar once, that worked better in German than English: "Do you have to be a complete economic idiot to work for our company?" "No, you only have to be a complete idiot".
How ignorant, or self-confident, do you have to be to not realise just how DDR "restricting the speech, travel and economic activity of political dissidents" sounds, and is? Or is it a sound you want? That FAZ wants to amplify this sound illustrates how far the march through the institutions has gone.
Unfortunately the restriction of speech is a fait accompli, and in many other countries one has to accept that unless you are now actively heard saying the right things (and not just not saying the wrong things), your economic activity may also be curtailed. But arere we facing a future where we will be unable, as citizens of a very democratic republic, to travel to "the west" unless we are either sufficiently politically trustworthy or well-connected to be "permitted" to do so? What country might that remind us of?
And yet again, the BRD proves it is not the DDR by cracking down on anyone insinuating it might be heading in that direction.
FAZ publishing this tripe, and Haldenwang being CDU, I think really illustrates how this game is played. The leftist parties demonstrate ostentatiously against ‘the right’ but the centre-right establishment which is being outflanked by AfD has to do the bulk of the openly antidemocratic dirty work.
Superb point.
NO MORE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS ALLOWED
.....because to even propose an amendment means you are very strongly against a certain part of the constitution in its current form.
We all know who routinely trades in disinformation ... and it's not private citizens with common sense.
And 100 percent of the colleges support all the disinformation. You know, that's where the world's "best and brightest" work and study. Sigh.
https://billricejr.substack.com/p/my-recurring-nightmare?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Rope! bring more rope!!!
Si vis pacem, para bellum
Neo-Bolshevism coming big time. These sick remote controlled criminals will kill millions and millions if the people can not stop them.
I've known for a long time that anything can be expected from these sick criminals. But the will to such a level of unconditional criminal energy is frightening and shows who is pulling the strings in the background.