Hegemony and the Modern Condition in the United States

Human subjects are dominated by their masters. While you’re used to thinking of master/slave in terms of chattel slavery, so you appreciate the subjugation of black slaves to their white plantation owners and can understand why those slaves rarely revolt and often didn’t even think consciously about revolting, you don’t consider modern rulers to have slaves, precisely because you’re enslaved by the modern hegemonic force. Every slave begins by believing he’s free – his freedom can only begin with the realization that he’s not.

Slaves consume the product of the masters, often willfully, just like chattel slaves ate the food “given” to them by their plantation owners. And more importantly, they DON’T consume the products that their masters don’t want them to consume, just like the vast majority of chattel slaves didn’t act outside the bounds of their slavery, bounds that they as intelligent human beings fully understood.

The stronger a hegemonic force is, the more “subversive” the product they can produce. For example, a strong plantation owner could show his slaves the movie Django Unchained, which is about a former slave’s rebellion, but the purpose would not be to encourage his slaves to rebel but rather to say to them that I am so strong that I can show you this movie and you STILL won’t rebel.

Hollywood revels in it’s own power, a fundamental trait of all dominators.

The ultimate movie as far as Hollywood is concerned shows an utterly realistic method of achieving human freedom which they encourage people to see by means of a massive PR campaign, just like every big budget movie currently gets regardless of it’s quality. And then people tell each other how noble Hollywood is by means of “helping them free themselves”, and then they go to the next Hollywood movie, and the next one after that, etc., in order to experience the “feeling” of supposed freedom without the pain, terror, insecurity, loneliness, and oppression of ACTUALLY freeing themselves. It’s no fun at all to be free when the people around you are slaves. It’s this shared sense of community, this need to be intimate with other humans, which causes slaves to remain slaves, since the only other substantial community is the masters, and every human with a decent soul prefers slavery over mastery. This is why the masters terribly fear “misfits”, “antisocials”, “psychotics”, etc., not because they are “looking out for the well being of people” as they say, but because these are people in the process of freeing themselves, slaves who are cast out of slave societies for not being happy slaves.

Yet another deceptive Hollywood movie is The Matrix, where a small group of freedom fighters successfully battles the forces of oppression. This cannot occur in reality, only a mass movement with millions of people can successfully create a revolution.

There’s a modern conceit which is potentially very damaging, the idea that any mass group of people is inherently revolutionary. So the Arab Spring is called “revolutionary”, despite the fact that very little of any real positive substance has occurred there. The unfortunate reality is that hegemony is so strong, that potential revolutionaries are so desperate for any good news, that they invent good news to console themselves. So the Arab Spring is “revolutionary” despite not doing much, the mass gathering in Wisconsin around Scott Walker’s machinations was “revolutionary” despite doing effectively nothing, the anti-NATO gathering in Chicago a couple years ago was useless as I can personally attest to.

As I wandered around the anti-NATO gathering wondering what I was doing there, I noticed that I seemed to be the poorest person there, and I’m far from the poorest person in America. The typical protestor was a well-meaning middle-class person fearing for his material well-being after having gazed into his dark future. There’s nothing wrong with such people protesting of course, but if that’s what things amount to there’s not going to be any success.

Right after we dutifully marched down the streets of the wealthy I walked South, and just a few blocks away I saw a lot of poor black people, none of whom cared about the rally. Then I want back to the other world, and saw the protestors happily returning to their cars and buses, having done their “fight for justice”.

THEY DIDN’T GO SOUTH, THEY WENT HOME. This might as well be the slogan for the current state of things in the United States. Everyone knows poor people, especially poor black people, are pathetic and useless, right? Why bother inviting them? Middle class white people are so FUCKING AWESOME that of course they can do super-awesome things all by themselves. Besides, if poor black people are included then they might want some of the spoils of the “revolution”, and we can’t have that.

There’s such a thing as premature celebration. Can the Arab Spring lead to something useful? Yes. Will it? That’s a situation that is ongoing, to determine whether it will. But calling it a “spring” is itself depressing, since it’s much like the Obama slogan of “hope and change” – it gets hopes up while the elite use that manufactured hope to make things even worse.

A slave watching Django Unchained and cheering is doing nothing other than living vicariously through another’s experience, which isn’t even a real experience. Hollywood smiles in response and greenlights Elysium.

On Nietzsche and slaves as revolutionaries

Slaves do not have a slave (craven) mentality – they have a revolutionary mentality.

If someone holds a gun to one’s head one acts as a slave toward that person, that’s a form of wisdom. Notice that the phrase “give me liberty or give me death” has the outcome of death whenever liberty is not achieved. Death is the *antithesis* of slave values, thus death is the greatest threat to make against a slave, which masters well understand. Corporeal bravery, a devaluation of death, is largely held by masters not as a mark of their superiority over slaves (as they and their lackeys have long pretended), but as one of inferiority.

Every revolution has three possible outcomes – death (for the revolter), freedom (for the revolter), or a return to slavery (for the revolter). I’ve never seen any reason to believe that slaves are against *wise* revolution – the disagreement among slaves is about *how* and *when* to revolt, not whether to revolt.

One of Nietzsche’s tragic outcomes is the false assertion that humanity is cowed slaves. It’s not surprising that the 20th century featured so much fascism – Nietzsche was not an antidote to fascism but a *cause* of it.

Nietzsche said that humanity needed saving and he would provide the philosophy of salvation. But if humanity in fact does NOT need saving then his assertion degrades humanity. Nietzsche made humanity *into* pathetic slaves rather than recognized it.

A slave by necessity is deceitful. Master is always watching so the slave can never give away his revolutionary movement and intent, or he will be punished, perhaps even killed, and there goes the revolution.

So Western slaves watch TV, while retaining an ascetic distance toward TV. These slaves play video games, while retaining an ascetic distance. These slaves never enjoy the world as crafted by master, not because they ARE slaves but because this lack of enjoyment maintains an emotional distance from the master’s tools, does not lure him into the master’s tools, and maintains his revolutionary processes.

The normal Western slave, according to modern slave morality, is to pretend to be a happy slave while acting toward revolution.

Masters can speak openly with each other, deceiving each other only with respect to competition for profit and control. For slaves deceit is far deeper and more meaningful – slaves must always keep their true power a secret, from master. Slaves have hidden secret languages among themselves – a slave’s glance is nothing like the look of a master. For a master, truth is what is spoken. For a slave, truth is always what is not spoken.

The role of Nietzsche is not to save slaves, but to seduce them. To mock their weakness, to cause them to lose their composure, to make them insecure, to cause them to rage out and lose the fight for their freedom.

Slaves do not form freedom organizations or freedom structures until they openly revolt. Slave culture is completely amorphous and mostly involves interactions between individuals – family and friends. It’s primary language is comprised of empathy and emotion.

One way to exterminate slave culture is to kill these interactions. The final extermination of slaves will be by science – for science (and thus the elite) to gain control of human reproduction and take that control away from slaves.

Nietzsche ignored the identity of slaves, slave culture (for which Christianity is largely a front), and slave desires, so he could degrade humanity and offer his “redemption” for it.

Nietzsche wanted slaves to *express* power, to threaten the elite, and then for the elite to predictably respond. Nietzsche is harmful at worst and a fool at best.

Love is the greatest slave interaction and forms the core of slave culture.

The religion of slaves is not Christianity – it’s fellowship, friendship, love, and life.

Stopping ruling class monstrosities

This is a response to a post on Dissident Voice, here.

It’s going to be stopped in the same way every other vast criminal system is stopped – by massive populist organizing. Either the American people are going to join political groups that cause systemic change in political institutions or they are going to live in a fascist state with increased global and domestic terror and poverty. The 3rd option is that America is destroyed through war (terrorist strikes are a form of war), the multinationals and attached ruling class relocate with most of their wealth intact, and they continue the imperialist project from a new geographic center. A greatly weakened America would then start a rebuilding process possibly in a democratic fashion, if for no other reason than that there are not vast taxpayer dollars for the ruling class to steal thus there’s much less resistance to democracy.

The problem, even in this “good case scenario”, is that the world is hardly more democratic than America. So if America becomes relatively democratic, similar to much of South America today, they become subject to imperialist control from sources of elite power in Europe or Asia. So the only real solution, the only lasting solution, the “final solution”, is for a global democratic movement, unifying local movements, that takes democratic control of ALL global political institutions, in particular institutions of wealthy countries. While such a movement has started, it needs to be much, much stronger to have any effect on global politics. If, say, even 10% of Americans joined such a movement, it would gain tremendous strength and momentum.

Part of the problem is that even progressive sites like this aren’t filled by people who want global democracy, which is global socialism. Most progressives in America want wealth redistribution only *within* America – to take the blood money obtained by the American ruling class from exploiting non-Americans and redistribute it to “poor” Americans, nevermind that “poor Americans” are wealthy compared to the average person in the world. That is to say, 95% or more of Americans who congratulate themselves on being “good people” are in fact simply trying to get the criminal’s money transferred to himself. Stealing second-hand.

The percentage of Americans who want global democracy is probably 2-3% tops. More would want it but are apolitical. Therefore America is politically useless on the global democratic scene, far weaker than many South American countries and probably weaker than 90% of all countries.

America’s role in the world from a progressive standpoint is to provide money and a whole lot of condescension and holier-than-thou while “helping” poor people. Meanwhile at home they “fight” the criminal class to get money transferred to themselves for “justice” and “equality” and so that apparently they can continue to “help” poor people who they have contempt for in the same way as does the criminal class itself.

The first solution is for progressive America to face the reality of what it is and to realize that nothing can be done in America until progressives reform their own morality. Sites like this prove that instead of that project progressives prefer to complain about how bad the actions of other people are.

Indymedia Presents Episode 300

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The Lords of Capital Decree Mass Death by Starvation

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Real Utopia-Left Forum ’08: Jessica Azulay 8/11

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Part 4 of The Global Movement for Justice and the end of Oppression

“I don’t think racism has its roots in biology per se. That there are distinctions between people, that these distinctions have regional origins doubtlessly is the case and these differences have been manipulated for racial/exploitation. These distinctions are not the essence of racism.”

I think you’re misreading me. They are based on cultural elements of family and society, not biology exactly. If one eliminates all of the propagandized, manipulated effects pertaining to racism 90% of the racism disappears. American soldiers don’t call Iraqis “hajjis” because of a lack of an extended family association – but this lack of an extended family association makes them more susceptible to using the term.

“Racism (ism) is a means to an end. So, how does a KKK get its marching orders? Is it hate created from displaced anxiety coupled with a mythological narrative? I think so. I think the KKK is the result of fear which is the basis of hate. It is the same rooted emotion that serves the elite when the drums of war need bodies to go off.”

Either you’re not reading me or you’re simply disagreeing. The KKK is not a hate group – it’s a theft and subjugation group. It’s a subset of the American internal colonial project. Here’s the process:

1st: Desire to steal and gain power over someone
2nd: Become willing  to implement that desire
3rd: Look around for someone to implement it on
4th: Take the first steps toward implementation (insults, discrimination, light oppression)
5th: Evaluate the effects of the implementation – did you face retribution? Were the costs low or high? If the costs were sufficiently low, move to:
6th: Upgrade the oppression – moving to overt theft, light terror, etc. Re-evaluate. Rinse and Repeat until the late stages:
7th: Enslavement, murder, rape, internal colonization, terror.

The final stage:

Implement propaganda so that the victim doesn’t know it’s the victim. Normalize the monstrosity. Create a new reality. Reap the benefits of the exploitation for the rest of human existence (or as long as one is able).

The KKK is not a hate group – it’s a theft, terror, and subjugation group. If there were no blacks in the world groups like the KKK would still exist – they would just target someone else.

Why do you think Iraqis are only hajjis when Americans are killing them? Why do you think blacks are only niggers when whites are committing genocide against them? Hatred has nothing to do with it – profit has everything to do with it.

Hatred comes into play in terms of the perpetrator’s reaction to his own will to subjugate. Once a perpetrator becomes committed to terrorizing someone he becomes committed to hating him, in order to make the subjugation all the easier and ease his own conscience. After all, if one is a mass murderer one wants to be an *effective* mass murderer. It just doesn’t do to love the people one is killing.

The KKK is not a group that hates and then kills – it’s a group that kills and then hates. Or rather, wills to kill, finds a victim, hates the victim, then kills, then develops institutionally toward “hating blacks”. But they aren’t psychopaths – the KKK kills in order to instill fear into blacks – making them more controllable by the interests the KKK serves – white elites within the United States (mainly).

Take a look at the history of the KKK – only after ex-African blacks became established as a weak group within the United States (but after they became potentially uncontrollable after chattel slavery) did the KKK emerge and “hate blacks”.

Or look at another example – Jews. Why have Jews been so often hated throughout European history? The answer is simple – they have been a socially weak group throughout much of recent history and hence have provided low costs, low retribution, toward any groups who sought to subjugate them. Hence Europeans have “hated Jews”. That is to say, they’ve willed to steal from and subjugate them, hated them, and then stole from and subjugated them.

“If I recall my history American Germans were regularly rounded up by vigilante groups and strung up and lynched/hung in the run up to WWI. That same mob mentality exists throughout history and has been at the root of our image of post-Civil War abolition. It’s fanciful to imagine that had Lincoln lived to oversee the reconstruction, things might have been very different – he’d shown himself to be masterful at exerting tremendous will and determination. But who knows…”

Japanese Americans were terrorized during World War II. Any group that through some event loses social power becomes vulnerable to oppression. Why do you think dissidents in America are oppressed? Is it some inherent hatred of them? Or is it rather that whenever the social group in power is threatened by dissidents they oppress those dissidents?

You might think – how can a group both be weak and yet threaten the group in power? Power is relative – as far as the group in power thinks, any loss of profitability is a threat. So for blacks to strike on the corporate plantation is a threat which the KKK served to eliminate.

Capitalism is about growth and opportunity. It’s especially important to terrorize Japanese Americans during WWII and German Americans during WWI because those are growth industries – when a group loses power there is a profit vacuum of exploitation which capitalism wants to and needs to fill. The same thing during the McCarthy era – the left lost power and then capitalism moved in to exploit them. Even the far left has no idea just how horrible capitalism really is, and the standard left has no fucking clue.

“No, racism is a ideology employed to dominate for economic purposes. The US invading Iraq has at its core racism. Slavery was and is naked racism. Beyond this the American people (all colors) subvert their empathy for their fellow human beings and ignore the horror that this empire reigns in places like Iraq.”

Racism has nothing to do with a lack of empathy and everything to do with greed, profit, and power. It’s not an ideology – it’s a tool. It’s easy to see this – Iraqis are hajjis while the American government is killing them and Iraqis once they aren’t. A worker is liked by his boss while he is working obediently for him and hated by his boss when he’s on strike. Do you honestly think the boss “has empathy” for the worker when he’s obedient and “loses empathy” for him when he’s not? Or rather – does the new social relationship created by the strike change the boss’s emotion toward the worker?

Emotions are *outcomes* of social relationships, not causes of them.

Part 3 of The Global Movement for Justice and the end of Oppression

“Brian Koontz
I sense we’ve started to talk a bit passed one another. When I say racism – a term which has been controversial in its definition – I think of oppression. Those who are singled out and oppressed to serve others are facing a form of “racism”. For instance, Israel has systematically oppressed and created conditions of control over the Palestinian people. I would term that racism. Perhaps you would not.”

I agree with your understanding of racism, but I’m saying that racism does not derive from hatred. The relationship between the American government (dominated by whites) and Iraq and it’s government (dominated by “browns”) is a perfect example.

In the 1980s Iraq served as a check on Iranian power. The American government’s policy was to encourage arms sales to Hussein. With Hussein’s ambitions fueled with enough weaponry, he went to war with Iran for nearly a decade.

With Iran and Iraq weakened and the American purpose fulfilled, the next step was engaged – severe economic sanctions on Iraq. This greatly weakened the population and the economy.

And then the next step was engaged, the current step, to militarily and governmentally dominate the country and open up it’s oil reserves to control by American multinational firms, as well as open up it’s critical geography to American military bases which can then strike at areas in the region (including Iran).

None of this has anything to do with racism, except that the American government fuels racism domestically in order (one reason) to create racism so as to move public opinion as well as make it easier to fill the ranks of American soldiers. In order to perpetuate war the American government through propaganda and social policy causes the American people to be racist. And then when war comes that same government invents slurs like “hajji” for American soldiers to use to make it easier for them to terrorize and kill the Iraqi population.

My point is that racism is a convenience, a *tool* of subjugation, and not the *cause* for subjugation. The cause is greed, desire for power, desire for wealth, and desire for domination. None of this would be any different if there was no racism in the world – all that a non-racist world would be (in the absence of other changes) would be one where greed, war, terrorism, power-plays, theft, and subjugation were not based on race. Calling that an “improvement” is at best cynical. The improvement will be to no longer *allow* greed, war, terrorism, power-plays, theft, and subjugation, whether such things are organized by race or not, in the same way as through the structure of domestic society we do not allow crimes through social control and legal enforcement. Crimes still occur, but they are effectively accounted for and minimized in their duration and frequency (at least that’s what a good society does, America is somewhat different).

An objection to this is Europe – where I’ve heard it said countless times that the United States and Europe are allies because Europe is also dominated by whites. That’s ridiculous – Japan is an ally of the US for the same reason (western) Europe is. The reason is simple – both Japan and Western Europe are powerful forces who are also more or less compliant to American wishes. It’s this combination of strength and acquiescence (shared interests) that makes them allies of the U.S., not their race. Israel is in the same category, but is given favorable military treatment to fuel their desire to fight the Arabs in the region. A country that is weak and acquiescent (like Colombia) is treated differently. A country that is weak and not acquiescent is targeted for destruction, and if they have significant resources they are doomed to a quick death, like Iraq. China is treated differently from Japan because it’s seen as a threat, as a country which has the power to potentially dominate American multinationals. So the idea is to use India as a check on Chinese power just like Iraq was used against Iran in the 1980s.

Or take a look at chattel slavery. People make a big deal out of Africans being black and American slavemasters being white, as if that was the cause of slavery. The cause, as you point out, was economic. That is to say, again, greed, subjugation, capitalism. Africans were weak (militarily) and abundant in resources. Perfect for capitalist exploitation. If they were white with the same degree of weakness and resources they would have also been exploited.

The precise nature of the exploitation is based partly on racism. There is still such a thing as racism even without elite creation of it. Racism at it’s core is an extension of the localized family/society model that is geographically and historically centered. So over time races develop that culturally and biologically are distinct. Even in the absence of elite creation, if a person sees two equally injured people lying on the road, he is more likely to help the person of his same race, because he sees that person as a closer extension of his family/society. Likewise, if you see your child and a stranger lying injured on the road, you’ll help your child first. Your child may live and the other may die as a result of your priorities.

So if whites inhabited Africa instead of blacks, would chattel slavery have occurred or some other form of exploitation? Probably another form that was less extreme, I suspect. The real underlying racism fueled the greed and desire to subjugate that was the primary motivation and made the result worse than it otherwise would have been.

But the 10 million whites who were killed by whites in World War I can make quite an effective objection that racism is hardly the “cause” of conflict, as well as any of other countless examples.

Far too many people believe racism is the cause of social problems. Ending racism may have a very minor positive effect on the total oppression in the world, but mostly what it would do is to distribute terror more evenly across races, which is a pathetic solution at best.

To end terror we need to attack, destroy, and control those who implement terror, theft, war, and subjugation. That’s the early solution. Putting George W. Bush and those like him in jail is a good first step toward a solution. A more stable solution is to create societies and institutions that ensure good practices and values.

Part 2 of The Global Movement for Justice and the end of Oppression

Here is the my followup reply to Max Shields from Dissident Voice, per here. Max Shields’s words are in italics:

“Here’s where I think you move the argument too far. Yes, there is a complicity across the board with exceptions (from people of all color), but it does us no good to simply say that the machine that imposes empire is rooted in the colonies of America. New Orleans is such a colony, one of many. I cannot in all good conscience say that New Orleaners are the recipients of empire, anymore than the 700 miliary based colonies throughout the world that receive US remittances are in fact part of the oppressive machine. There is an important difference”

If there were no serfs there would be no king. We live in a neofeudal age, the age of corporatism. If there is no slave there is no master, because the slave acts as enabler for the master. The internal colonies of America are given special treatment due to actual democratic advances within a nation-state system. But with the rise of a single superpower, that superpower determined that it no longer needed to act democratically in order to woo international opinion it’s way. So the weak democratic elements that led to favoring internal American colonies over external colonies began to erode.

It’s the serfs as well as the king who keep the system going. If the serfs decide that the king will no longer receive the serfs’ bounty, he won’t. Many serfs will die of course in the aftermath of such a choice, but the king will also die and sooner than all the serfs will, since the emergence of a new king with more moderate policies will then occur in order to spare the lives of the remaining serfs (in order for the land as a whole to have more power than if the killing of serfs continue).

It’s completely true that black slaves played a large role in building the United States of America. But hardly anyone acknowledges the actual implications of that – which is that black slaves played a large role in building an empire of tyranny, terror, and mass murder. And now they want to reap the gains of such a criminal construct, instead of meting out justice.

As serfs they certainly didn’t choose for their masters to be imperialists, but they sure did keep giving the imperialist master bounties, didn’t they? And their “leaders” kept up the mantra of integration, of the desire to work their way up the criminal ladder, of the desire for wealth and to stand side-by-side with the mass murdering king himself. That’s what “equality” means within the American monster. The equal right to extort, coerce, and dominate the rest of the world.

It takes a brave serf to defy a king, and the history of black slaves in America is not a history of bravery (by and large). If it was the world would be a very different place today. Blacks mourn the death of Martin Luther King not so much because of his great leadership but because of the utter dearth of black leadership today. The serfs have lost their spine.

Serfs define kings, and black slaves (through chattel, wage, and neofeudal) have shared in the defining of the American monster.

“I do not think that New Orleaners perpetuate empire. As an American colony they are kept in receipt of remittances that reach but a few and are siphoned off by corporate elites. It is simply not fair to call a colonists racist or part of the heart of empire. They are peripherial at best.”

That’s like saying workers are “peripheral at best” within capitalist systems. It’s nonsense. Serfs are the heart and soul of every kingdom, and American serfs are no different. Even for those black Americans who have problems gaining a place as a wage slave, they serve a crucial role insofar as they hold a lower rung on the social ladder, and show those on a higher rung the suffering that waits for them if they get out of line. American progressives think they are sophisticated when they talk about poverty, never knowing or caring that it’s the different shades of poverty, “minor” differences in the social structure, that make all the difference. “Divide and conquer” is, sadly, understood far better by the masters than by those who claim to be helping the serfs.

What do you think the “American Dream” is, this thing that so many serfs care about and who are lamenting the death of? It’s about the gaining of wealth, of milk and honey. America is the “Land of Opportunity” – that is to say the opportunity for wealth. So it’s not surprising that those at or near the bottom of the American ladder would put their energies into climbing up that ladder instead of dismantling the system itself. In order to climb up a ladder there not only needs to be a ladder (the “American Dream” of upward mobility) but there also needs to be someplace to climb to, so that after all that climbing the person isn’t stranded at the destination. That “someplace to climb to” is filled with blood money extracted from American colonies.

“My point is that racism is essential to imperial empirism and it is true whether that colony resides within our outside the major empire – USA.”

No, it’s not true. Do you think the serfs of Europe were a difference race from the king? Do you really think if there was only one race on the planet there would be no imperialism? Imperialism and empire is about greed, about desire for power, not about racism. Racism is just a convenience, an easy way for divide and conquer to be maintained. End racism and all that happens is that American blacks move up that ladder.

Emotions are outcomes of social relationships, not causes of them. That is to say, if one plans to steal from and subjugate a bunch of people, it’s convenient for those people to be able to be identified by race. It’s extremely convenient – it’s a kind of skin-based uniform, so that soldiers immediately know who to shoot, for example. So that people know who to hate just by looking at them.

“All that said, racism in terms of the sanctity of life and the quality of life is what is very worrisome. When Americans, regardless of color, cannot empathize with the pain of Iraqi families who are suffering do to empire we have to acknowledge the universiality of this wretched condition.”

If the Iraqis were white there would be no increase in compassion among American whites. When a school bully extorts money he only cares about race if race plays a larger role in the school society – he really just wants the money and he seeks to get it in the easiest and cheapest way possible.

It may sound trite to say that the global division of race is based on convenience, but it’s true. White imperialists aren’t the way they are because they hate non-whites, they hate non-whites because they want a perpetual stream of wealth from them, and if this convenience wasn’t available they would extort even more from members of their own race.

Look at this another way – do you really think a capitalist machine stops and starts based on the race of the victim that sits on the assembly line in front of it? The machine just wants victims, and convenient victims makes for more efficient extraction, that’s all.

“To your issue of where change comes from, Brian, local change is the only meaningful change. It roots the change on a human scale that absolutely cannot be achieved from the top down (globally or nationally). To see such change across the globe or even just within the US landscape is a major challenge, but I think that the notion that we can have some kind of national or global transformationis nearly outside the realm of the possible. I can imagine a cataclysmic situation where human species is subverted across the planet. Within that context all bets are off.”

I don’t think we disagree here. The global democratic movement will link together many local movements. It will have to link them together otherwise it will fail. In order for people to support each other across the globe they have to be in communication, regardless of whether that communication is mediated or otherwise controlled in a “top down” or “bottom up” fashion.

The Global Movement for Justice and the end of Oppression

This is a reply to Max Shields from Dissident Voice, as here. Max’s words are in italics.

“Brian Koontz, I had not read your post before writing mine. I think we’re saying much the same. I would differ somewhat on the extent to which most American blacks have gained from a largely white driven empire.”

I think it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 billion people in the world living (barely and often not for long) on $2 a day or less. Don’t kid yourself – American blacks have benefited tremendously from the American criminal machine. And they know it – which is why they ask the monster for reparations just for them (and maybe also for the 400,000 remaining indigenous Americans) instead of demanding that the monster give out true reparations to all it’s victims. American blacks don’t want justice – they want wealth. They want to move to a higher rung on the criminal ladder. Check out Michael Eric Dyson as he drools over the possibility of “one of his own”, Barack Obama, possibly gaining the high seat of the American throne.

“The voice for the voiceless?” It’s not American blacks who have no voice – it’s the blacks and the “blacks” of the third world who have no voice. American blacks don’t give a shit about them.

Martin Luther King made a critical error when his vision was one of integration. One cannot change the beast from within – it can only be killed from without. It’s the global population – a global democratic movement that will destroy all forms of oppression including the American empire. And you’d better believe that most American blacks will side with the empire instead of with the global democratic movement. The empire has the wealth that American blacks covet. They just want a piece of the pie that was made with blood, sweat, and so many tears.

“Still, on the whole there is great complicity regarding racism. Experiments by Milgram on authoritarianism in the 1960s showed just how universal some of our worst traits. It just takes the right conditions for us to be willing to hate and kill.”

Emotions are derived from social relationships (both real and pursued). That is to say, if you plan to steal and subjugate someone you hate him in order to make the theft, subjugation, and possible murder all the easier (both instrumentally easier and easier on your psyche). This truth is utterly universal.

“Colonialization, as you rightly note, is not something that happens exclusively to external lands, but also within the borders of nations, in this case the USA. There are issues with nation-states which we cannot readily dismiss. A nation the size with the population of the US is nearly impossible to construct without imposing the very same neo-liberal and imperial approaches to its cities and various poor rural areas as it does tries to do in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East (and to some degree in Southeast Asia).”

“This is very fundamental to the issue of racism in America, but there is no denying that the citizens of this nation are complicit, regardless of color, in the racist, imperialistic empire we perpetrate on many areas of the world where we have military outposts and settlements.”

Right – it’s about who gets the money – and American blacks are in a completely different position from third world blacks. While most of the wealth transfer goes from third world peoples to the American elite, American non-elite, white, black, and otherwise, share in the criminal gains.

“Poor Americans may have some benefits from that set up, but there is a major issue of proportionality.”

If one man steals $10 Million and another steals $1,000, both are criminals. For the latter to say “well, proportionally I’m not nearly as bad” is a weak argument. And, proportionally, black Americans have 10% of the wealth of white Americans (per capita). What percent of the wealth of white Americans do black third-worlders have? And more importantly, how many Americans care? And more importantly yet, how many Americans are willing to do something about it?

“Still, the deep seated willingness to look the other way on the part of most Americans – regardless of color – as we perpetrate racist hegemony cannot be denied, anymore than our at home statistics against minorities and poor.”

Yep – and it has nothing to do with racism – since black Americans hardly care more about black third-worlders than white Americans do. It has to do with “looking out for #1”, the capitalist ethos of utter greed. The most common excuse is “I’m taking care of my family”. A mafia boss uses the same argument.

“Nevertheless, I think we are all capable of changing our world, through local transformation. This can and should be done in solidarity with our diverse cultures, ethnicities and races. Or, we can just keep calling one another racists. Choice is ours.”

We’re not racists – racism is created and maintained solely by the elites who benefit from divisions within the exploited class (per divide and conquer). However, we need to wake the hell up to our own moral failings and recognize the power that we have to improve the world. The world can be changed – but only if we have real solutions and aren’t just lesser versions of the monsters we claim to despise.

Where Has the Rage Gone?

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FARC Women

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Nine Billion Little Feet on the Highway of the Damned

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Michael Albert on capitalism and public perception of change

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Creating sufficient boredom – the truth about decadence

A consideration of difficult times results in mental and emotional exhaustion. In Nietzsche’s times that was “death of God”, colonization, elitism, and others. Since then many other things have been added or adapted, including global empire, elite abuse of the world, and possible human annihilation or enslavement (through colonizing the material and mental states or through neglect such as ignoring global warming or use of highly destructive weapons).

Callous, selfish, or simple people can be ignorant of these issues. Everyone else deals with them to some degree. The only way to avoid exhaustion from exposure to thought concerning these things is to effectively work against them. Consider the dilemma – everyone knows they need to work against these things or become exhausted yet everyone knows what that implies – the elite have controlled the world for millennia and the only solution is to destroy the elite. People have varying reactions to this understanding including the one the elite want you to have, which is that they are highly capable and the world would “fall into anarchy” in their absence.

Everyone knows (on some level, not often the conscious) that this is a group, popular effort. Elite rule can end very soon after the people decide it will end.

Decadence is the condition where thought is given to exhausting topics prior to the event where the elite are destroyed and positive outcomes can occur from such thought. That is to say, decadents require high levels of boredom in order to refresh their minds so they can once again live under the conditions that produce such exhaustion.

This need for boredom then coincides with the destruction of the elite – that is to say a culture that is giving a lot of thought to such issues whose only solution can be that destruction will produce it, or destroy themselves.

The culture of boredom we live in can be described in any number of ways – computer games are primarily used as ways of achieving boredom. Watching television likewise.

The post-decadent period is marked by a rise of organizations that are aimed at destroying the elite and eliminating the culture of decadence itself. The United States might be entering into a post-decadent period at present, although it’s not progressing nearly as rapidly as many of us would like.

The Coup’s Dig It

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Wow – this might be The Coup’s best.

Interview with Delbert Africa

Part 1

Part 2

Nietzsche the Synthesizer

Don’t worry if you’re a rapist
Don’t worry if you’re a saint
Don’t worry if you’re an average joe
Nietzsche will bring you all together

Some wonder how Nietzsche can be both a Western apologist and a critic
He saw a shattered world with him the glue
Nothing was too terrible or tragic or banal to be a part
His vessel passed through all waters while claiming excellence

Nietzsche inspired fascism, the 20th century was all his
Though he has his defenders, of course he does
You can find anything in Nietzsche, anything you want

I was born tired of the 20th century, now I’m exhausted
The manipulation, the coercion, the fear, the war, the torture
It’s a part of society now, it’s invisible but the repercussions are all too real
Now it’s Orwell’s time, now it’s time for a decades-long struggle

On War and related topics

War is about two things: theft and subjugation (which themselves are closely related). In the Roman model which is no longer in use war was also about glory (the glory of conquest), however that was most likely the result of a successful propaganda campaign.

There is no such thing as real hate in the context of war (hate only occurs outside of war). Hate is never the reason for war. People only hate their enemies after they become enemies, never before. Hate is a useful emotional tool which allows for mass killing, and especially for effective killing as it turns humans into tools of death. Sufficient technology allows no more need for hate, when one can achieve mass killing by pushing a button, but subjugation will always involve intimacy with humans on some level so there will always be hate involved with war so long as there is war.

On something of a side note, what is called a “hate crime” in the United States is actually a war crime. Most wars do not involve large armies and are organized. Many wars are genocidal in nature and are carried out sporadically and in everyday life. The Ku Klux Klan is not a hate group but a militant group that periodically carries out acts of war.

The humans who perpetuate wars are those who gain the most from theft and subjugation and who pay the least in terms of the cost of war. In hierarchical power models such as have dominated the world for millennia it’s the humans on the top of the hierarchical structure who reap the largest benefits from theft and subjugation and pay the least cost in terms of having other humans die on their behalf. They invent fictions like honor, glory, and duty to allow others to be controlled by them as they go to their death in slavery to give the powerful more control and wealth.

The question “How do we end war?” is often asked but rarely answered. It’s not that difficult to stop or at least greatly curtail the amount and degree of wars in the world. The first thing to do is eliminate all hierarchical power structures, which put those on top both unaccountable to everyone else and most eager to commit to war. The second thing is to use military force only in defense and in circumstances that allow for no other course of effective action (such as stopping a genocide).

On a side note, no hierarchical structure is ever or can ever be democratic. No modern state is democratic, the United States perhaps the least of all. Hierarchy is the opposite of democracy. There are no such things as leaders or citizens in a hierarchical model. There are only rulers and subjects. Rulers treat subjects differently depending on their relation to the ruler, so for American rulers the American people are deemed “citizens” (those they keep a close eye on and give gifts to) and non-Americans are deemed “non-citizens” (those they don’t worry about except to exploit).

The “War on Terror” by necessity will be fought by American rulers primarily against the American people within the United States, since that is where the greatest threat to the American rulers exists (due to physical proximity, material relations (taxation) and elections). It will also provide a pretext for foreign wars, as we’ve already seen and will continue to see. While terror means one thing in a dictionary, it means something else to a ruler – it means anything that threatens his interests. Hence he uses terror to “stop terror” and he considers unruly American subjects to be “terrorists”, again receiving terror from him.

Modern elections have nothing to do with democracy. Elections are where subjects choose between Ruler A and Ruler B. The subjects themselves experience little difference between the rulers – only the elite culture treats the two rulers with much anticipation and differential.

The term “subject” is a fairly kind one by me. Subjects are always enslaved, as we witness whenever the police are called upon to stop whatever demonstration occurs if it “gets out of hand” (where it threatens the interests of the rulers).

In a “democracy” the police don’t use pure force because they want to maintain the fiction of being a democracy. The only difference between a “democracy” and a police state is that the police state no longer seeks to maintain the fiction of being a democracy.

Americans range between deluded and severely deluded on all political issues. They are ignorant about war, they are ignorant about the American political system, they are ignorant about their own role and degree of power within the system. Thus they are “shocked and outraged” about the Bush Administration, when all that administration is is a more transparent and less maintaining-of-fiction version of what has always come before, and what will always come again until the hiearchical model itself is destroyed.

Back to the original point of this writing: it’s extreme useful for a ruler to enslave someone. A ruler always wants control and slavery allows for total external control. A ruler wants nothing better than to enslave the world – that was the Roman vision that has so enthralled civilized Western society. Control means the ruler can do whatever he wants with that person – the ruler wants to avoid threats and he achieves that – he wants to reap material rewards and he achieves that.

The case of American rulers waging a war in Iraq is typical. Mass killing is undertaken in order to subjugate the populace. Torture is used to further the subjugation. Iraq has vast oil wealth which is now being transferred to American multinational corporations.

The only real solutions will occur following democratic revolution. There has to be no such thing as rulers and subjects in order to avoid the monstrosities of the past and today.

Zapatistas, Companeros

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The problem with the vaginas of American women

They are filled with American culture. Why don’t they ever have that kind of abortion?

Destroying the Elite Left

(To destroy is to transform)

You stand against rape but you don’t know what rape is
You stand against war but you don’t know what war is
You stand against exploitation in utter ignorance

To know is your first task, to understand your quest
But it’s so much easier to be righteously indignant
Denouncing is a pain pill, hating brings a smile
How terrible, how terrible, how terrible they are

Punching bag? Er, what what? Michael Richards? Who?
Nothing is solved because nothing is ever addressed
You can’t look at swastikas because they are much too painful
You can’t see wife beaters because they are much too unpleasant
Better to hate what is not them than to destroy what they are

There are two kinds of you. Some say ‘how depressing this all is’ and turn on the TV
Some are activists, or join organizations, the militant arm
But there is a third way, besides fighting and ignoring
It starts with knowing, and it ends with destroying

So stop burying Michael Richards under the rug
Stop putting your pain behind bars
Stop being threatened by ‘nappy headed hos’
Start down the moral path – study in depth your enemies
And then destroy them. Destroy all of them

On James Baldwin

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Forget America

“America the Beautiful” is a dead song
It was murdered for profit, thrown in a dumpster
Sing it through the tears, through bitter irony
We remember beauty, our children will not

It’s pleasurable to have hope
Cornel West masturbates but his eyes betray him
He reaches only a few, the monsters reach many
Hope doesn’t have a price so the market cannot buy it

We have only ourselves to blame
We had hundreds of years to make America a democracy
We had hundreds of years to realize a Republic is not a democracy
Even now the ignorance is spread by the “good” people

So now Rome burns, and fools discuss whether fiddling is being done
Few discuss the tragedy of being Rome
Noone discusses the lost war that transformed America into Rome
Noone mentions that the “greatest generation” led this transformation
Romes should always burn to the ground, and the ashes forgotten

Forget places, forget glory, remember only the faces of your neighbors
Join with the people of the world, make plans to build
Create, and love each other, and live together
Defend one another as they come for you
They for whom glory is everything and the people mean nothing

This is What Democracy Looks Like

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