Post by Wayne Hall on Feb 23, 2023 23:07:19 GMT -5
How many cheers for democracy?
W. Hall
The reason we are starting this new cycle of discussion is to try to present a good example of clear thought and action which can gradually expand. We are all active in political groups, but they are different groups and I personally am not interested in trying to form a single ideological group. What I would like is to continue on the path that Preda Mihailescu and I started on at Easter in 2021 and see if it is possible, as an alternative to supporting the disintegration of the European Union, to construct a new democratic pole for European politics, centred in Romania but embracing all the EU, an active citizens' assembly systematically liberated from the mass media and from every kind of communication through middlemen and competing for a mandate with the existing European Parliament. A second Europarliamentary chamber in Eastern Europe but for all Europeans. If this is too ambitious and proves to be not possible we can just stay with the different groups we work with at the moment and give up trying to start something new as well.
Since we are at the very beginning of this process we can start by saying what we don't like about other attempts that are being made to organize political action and how we want to do better. I propose to start the ball rolling myself by criticizing the British parliamentarian Andrew Bridgen. Quoting Wikipedia: "Bridgen sits in the House of Commons as an independent, having had the whip suspended by the Conservative Party in January 2023 after criticising the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines and comparing their implementation to the Holocaust."
In December 2022, the British Heart Foundation criticised Bridgen for propounding a conspiracy theory which claims the Foundation covered up evidence of mRNA vaccines increasing inflammation of heart arteries. Bridgen had called for a halt to COVID-19, claiming they damaged hearts. The charity "categorically" denied his allegations.
On 11 January 2023, Bridgen had the Conservative whip suspended after comparing the implementation of COVID-19 vaccines to the Holocaust. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called the comparison "utterly unacceptable". Bridgen issued a statement two days later saying his tweet was not anti-semitic and apologising to anyone genuinely offended. He was taking legal advice about action against those who labelled him anti-semitic. He contended that he had made reasonable questions about the side-effects of mRNA vaccines, and said he had "received huge support from ordinary people, medical workers [and] those who have experienced vaccine harms themselves".
My criticism of Andrew Bridgen's action is that he attempted to strengthen a controversial statement which violates powerful taboos by appealing to an idea, the Nazi persecution and murder of Jews which is called the Holocaust, as if the taboos surrounding discussion of this other subject can work in his favour rather than against him. The reaction to his statement at the official level showed that this calculation was wrong. In a sense it almost seems as if the Holocaust discussion is someone's private property.
Does this need to be pointed out, or is Andrew Bridgen simply to be praised for his courage in not being afraid to violate taboos?
His more recent statements on MrNA shots been have focused more on the efforts made to bribe him into keeping his mouth shut so perhaps he doesn't need to be told anything.
At the opposite pole to Andrew Bridgen is another right-wing input, that of the populist right, who have resurrected the McCarthyite language of the 1950s and refer to the Labor government of the Australian state of Victoria as Communists. Victoria is Communist Victoria. The Victorian premier Dan Andrews is Commie Dan. The American slang term Commie is preferred to its 1950s Australian equivalent Commo. The most clear-sighted comment that I have seen on this has come from a person whose political views would be called centre-right, namely the Greek freedom movement politician Phaedon Vovolis who has said: "As you know, whoever you are not afraid of you promote. Through your television stations, through your gallup polls. But those you are afraid of you exclude and you copy." You exclude, through censorship. And you copy. This is an unusual insight and one implication of it could be that people being called leftists now are copies of the real leftists of another era. That is an idea worth exploring. How true is it?
Another extreme example of right-wing populism is this pitiless demolition of "libtards", i.e. liberal retards, even though they are members of her immediate family, by the American Roseann Barr. The audience are laughing their heads off, as if this is a comedy show.
I gave the example of a British mainstream conservative, Andrew Bridgen, who became a pariah in his own milieu. I could give a corresponding socialist example. The Australian leftist Lorraine Pratley writes in an online magazine called "The Real Left" To quote from there: "Disaster capitalism’ has a way of taking people by surprise, and Covid-mania was the first to be rolled out on a truly global scale."...... The heroic age of the National Health Service's foundation sustains its reputation, especially on the Left, to this day. State-media exhortations to save the National Health Service fell into eager ears. The idea that the National Health Service played a malevolent role during the COVID period is antithetical to Left thinking. it needs to be acknowledged and understood that the form of modern health care was not won through explicit left demands at all, rather it was the defeat of natural medicine and the elevation of chemical medicine at the hands of the likes of early American industrialist J. D. Rockefeller that shaped modern medicine. Yet almost no-one knows this history and the public largely accepts chemical medicine and surgery as legitimate dominant forms of medical ‘care’.
Lorraine Pratley shoots down right and left alike: she says: "unless an issue can be turned into an ‘us versus the bosses’ argument it will not be considered worth discussing, let alone acted upon, by the Left." But she also writes: "The populist right, with their incessant infighting and small base, don't have the traditions of solidarity or basic unionist discipline required to mount an effective challenge to the status quo. (snip). In current times, the right that dominate the freedom movement just don't have what it takes to be effective. I'm convinced that the reality of this means a meaningful struggle must come from those with a left perspective. And only through this can we pull the apolitical and soft-right towards a better strategy."
Nowadays the idea that the terms right-wing and left-wing have become almost meaningless is taken for granted by many people. When the role of the corporate media comes up for discussion the key questions really are true versus false rather than right versus left. The proposal that we introduced at Easter in 2021 had to do with trying to control the media and the idea was to offer an alternative to the monopoly of mass politics and mass deceit. The idea we introduced involved an upgrading of the role of Romania within the European Union. A former Communist country Christian Orthodox by religion but speaking a Latinate language, Romanians have a tradition of independence from Moscow and since Romania's integration into the European Union also independence from Brussels. In 2022, later than our own particular singling out of Romania, a Romanian Cristian Terhes emerged as spokesperson and quasi leader of the small anti-lockdown, anti-censorship and anti-mandated vaccination opposition in the European Parliament. After the catastrophic earthquakes in Turkey and Syria in early 2023 another Romanian politician Diana Sosoaca came to international public attention with the video of a speech she delivered to the Romanian Senate. Were these signs that a powerful opposition movement in Romania is coming into existence?
I think it is worth watching the video. It is not very long and in any case the first four minutes of it are probably enough.
The idea of trying to save the European Union from itself has come to seem almost as ridiculous as the idea that there is anything worth preserving in the British Commonwealth, despite the fact that the disintegrating Soviet Union tried to rescue what it could of its original character by imitating the British Empire's transformation into the Commonwealth. The Soviet Empire similarly became the Commonwealth of Independent States. At the beginning of the twentieth century after the catastrophe of the First World War all of these notions of international organization to prevent war were taken very seriously. One of the key protagonists in the early days was the Greek-Austrian aristocrat Richard von Coudenhove- Kalergi. Coudenhove-Kalergi is recognized as the founder of the first popular movement for a united Europe. In 1922, he co-founded the Pan-European Union, together with Archduke Otto von Hapsburg as "the only way of guarding against an eventual world hegemony by Russia." His model for the Europe of the future was a kind of transformed Austro-Hungarian Empire but with English as its basic language. Although he wanted the English language to have this unifying function in the Pan-European Union, he did not want the United Kingdom to be a member. Greeks will see similarities here, I suppose, with attitude of "the West" to the Eastern Roman Empire, whose language was welcomed but its population distrusted.
Kalergi tried to secure the support of Mussolini for his Pan-European Union, but was not successful. He did not try with Hitler because Hitler very quickly became an outspoken opponent to him. According to Hitler the idea of "a pacifist-democratic Pan-European mishmash state" as proposed by "that commonplace bastard Coudenhove-Kalergi" would not be able to oppose the United States. Nazi criticism and propaganda against Coudenhove-Kalergi decades later formed the basis for what Wikipedia calls "the racist Kalergi plan conspiracy theory." White nationalists quote Coudenhove-Kalergi's writings out of context in order to argue that the European Union's immigration policies reflect a plot to destroy white people, to create a populace devoid of identity which would then be ruled by a Jewish elite.
In an article entitled "Kalergi, the most misunderstood man the argument is put forward that "when Kalergi was talking about the future race of Europe being mixed, this was not him prescribing that there should be fewer people of European descent in Europe. It was a prediction he made based on the trajectory he saw Europe taking if Europeans failed to unite." But it remains true that although Coudenhove-Kalergi is still feted as one of the founding fathers of the European Union, ordinary European citizens could be prosecuted for writing some of the formulations to be seen in his writings.
This might be an appropriate occasion to draw attention to this important online symposium programmed for 28th February 2023 at 6 p.m. Central European time, 7 p.m. Greek time.
In April 2021 the first biography of Coudenhove-Kalergi in English "Hitler's Cosmopolitan Bastard" was published by McGill-Queens University Press. Its author Martyn Bond, together with his collaborator Claudia Hamill, made a video which is no doubt the best introduction to this pioneer of European integration, freed from the assumptions, explicit or implicit, of the Nazi-originating "conspiracy theory" which has accompanied his name to this day.
It is said that the United States Constitution tried to strike a balance between the role of the one, of the few and of the many. "Hoi polloi" to use Erasmian pronunciation of ancient Greek.
In the present global situation the one and the few have been so corrupted that they no longer protect the many.
The island of Aegina in antiquity because of reaction to the imperialism of Athens did not side with the democracy, in the Peloponnesian War for example, but rather with the Spartans and with Persia. Is any useful political conclusion to be drawn from this, or is this just something to be forgotten?
W. Hall
The reason we are starting this new cycle of discussion is to try to present a good example of clear thought and action which can gradually expand. We are all active in political groups, but they are different groups and I personally am not interested in trying to form a single ideological group. What I would like is to continue on the path that Preda Mihailescu and I started on at Easter in 2021 and see if it is possible, as an alternative to supporting the disintegration of the European Union, to construct a new democratic pole for European politics, centred in Romania but embracing all the EU, an active citizens' assembly systematically liberated from the mass media and from every kind of communication through middlemen and competing for a mandate with the existing European Parliament. A second Europarliamentary chamber in Eastern Europe but for all Europeans. If this is too ambitious and proves to be not possible we can just stay with the different groups we work with at the moment and give up trying to start something new as well.
Since we are at the very beginning of this process we can start by saying what we don't like about other attempts that are being made to organize political action and how we want to do better. I propose to start the ball rolling myself by criticizing the British parliamentarian Andrew Bridgen. Quoting Wikipedia: "Bridgen sits in the House of Commons as an independent, having had the whip suspended by the Conservative Party in January 2023 after criticising the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines and comparing their implementation to the Holocaust."
In December 2022, the British Heart Foundation criticised Bridgen for propounding a conspiracy theory which claims the Foundation covered up evidence of mRNA vaccines increasing inflammation of heart arteries. Bridgen had called for a halt to COVID-19, claiming they damaged hearts. The charity "categorically" denied his allegations.
On 11 January 2023, Bridgen had the Conservative whip suspended after comparing the implementation of COVID-19 vaccines to the Holocaust. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called the comparison "utterly unacceptable". Bridgen issued a statement two days later saying his tweet was not anti-semitic and apologising to anyone genuinely offended. He was taking legal advice about action against those who labelled him anti-semitic. He contended that he had made reasonable questions about the side-effects of mRNA vaccines, and said he had "received huge support from ordinary people, medical workers [and] those who have experienced vaccine harms themselves".
My criticism of Andrew Bridgen's action is that he attempted to strengthen a controversial statement which violates powerful taboos by appealing to an idea, the Nazi persecution and murder of Jews which is called the Holocaust, as if the taboos surrounding discussion of this other subject can work in his favour rather than against him. The reaction to his statement at the official level showed that this calculation was wrong. In a sense it almost seems as if the Holocaust discussion is someone's private property.
Does this need to be pointed out, or is Andrew Bridgen simply to be praised for his courage in not being afraid to violate taboos?
His more recent statements on MrNA shots been have focused more on the efforts made to bribe him into keeping his mouth shut so perhaps he doesn't need to be told anything.
At the opposite pole to Andrew Bridgen is another right-wing input, that of the populist right, who have resurrected the McCarthyite language of the 1950s and refer to the Labor government of the Australian state of Victoria as Communists. Victoria is Communist Victoria. The Victorian premier Dan Andrews is Commie Dan. The American slang term Commie is preferred to its 1950s Australian equivalent Commo. The most clear-sighted comment that I have seen on this has come from a person whose political views would be called centre-right, namely the Greek freedom movement politician Phaedon Vovolis who has said: "As you know, whoever you are not afraid of you promote. Through your television stations, through your gallup polls. But those you are afraid of you exclude and you copy." You exclude, through censorship. And you copy. This is an unusual insight and one implication of it could be that people being called leftists now are copies of the real leftists of another era. That is an idea worth exploring. How true is it?
Another extreme example of right-wing populism is this pitiless demolition of "libtards", i.e. liberal retards, even though they are members of her immediate family, by the American Roseann Barr. The audience are laughing their heads off, as if this is a comedy show.
I gave the example of a British mainstream conservative, Andrew Bridgen, who became a pariah in his own milieu. I could give a corresponding socialist example. The Australian leftist Lorraine Pratley writes in an online magazine called "The Real Left" To quote from there: "Disaster capitalism’ has a way of taking people by surprise, and Covid-mania was the first to be rolled out on a truly global scale."...... The heroic age of the National Health Service's foundation sustains its reputation, especially on the Left, to this day. State-media exhortations to save the National Health Service fell into eager ears. The idea that the National Health Service played a malevolent role during the COVID period is antithetical to Left thinking. it needs to be acknowledged and understood that the form of modern health care was not won through explicit left demands at all, rather it was the defeat of natural medicine and the elevation of chemical medicine at the hands of the likes of early American industrialist J. D. Rockefeller that shaped modern medicine. Yet almost no-one knows this history and the public largely accepts chemical medicine and surgery as legitimate dominant forms of medical ‘care’.
Lorraine Pratley shoots down right and left alike: she says: "unless an issue can be turned into an ‘us versus the bosses’ argument it will not be considered worth discussing, let alone acted upon, by the Left." But she also writes: "The populist right, with their incessant infighting and small base, don't have the traditions of solidarity or basic unionist discipline required to mount an effective challenge to the status quo. (snip). In current times, the right that dominate the freedom movement just don't have what it takes to be effective. I'm convinced that the reality of this means a meaningful struggle must come from those with a left perspective. And only through this can we pull the apolitical and soft-right towards a better strategy."
Nowadays the idea that the terms right-wing and left-wing have become almost meaningless is taken for granted by many people. When the role of the corporate media comes up for discussion the key questions really are true versus false rather than right versus left. The proposal that we introduced at Easter in 2021 had to do with trying to control the media and the idea was to offer an alternative to the monopoly of mass politics and mass deceit. The idea we introduced involved an upgrading of the role of Romania within the European Union. A former Communist country Christian Orthodox by religion but speaking a Latinate language, Romanians have a tradition of independence from Moscow and since Romania's integration into the European Union also independence from Brussels. In 2022, later than our own particular singling out of Romania, a Romanian Cristian Terhes emerged as spokesperson and quasi leader of the small anti-lockdown, anti-censorship and anti-mandated vaccination opposition in the European Parliament. After the catastrophic earthquakes in Turkey and Syria in early 2023 another Romanian politician Diana Sosoaca came to international public attention with the video of a speech she delivered to the Romanian Senate. Were these signs that a powerful opposition movement in Romania is coming into existence?
I think it is worth watching the video. It is not very long and in any case the first four minutes of it are probably enough.
The idea of trying to save the European Union from itself has come to seem almost as ridiculous as the idea that there is anything worth preserving in the British Commonwealth, despite the fact that the disintegrating Soviet Union tried to rescue what it could of its original character by imitating the British Empire's transformation into the Commonwealth. The Soviet Empire similarly became the Commonwealth of Independent States. At the beginning of the twentieth century after the catastrophe of the First World War all of these notions of international organization to prevent war were taken very seriously. One of the key protagonists in the early days was the Greek-Austrian aristocrat Richard von Coudenhove- Kalergi. Coudenhove-Kalergi is recognized as the founder of the first popular movement for a united Europe. In 1922, he co-founded the Pan-European Union, together with Archduke Otto von Hapsburg as "the only way of guarding against an eventual world hegemony by Russia." His model for the Europe of the future was a kind of transformed Austro-Hungarian Empire but with English as its basic language. Although he wanted the English language to have this unifying function in the Pan-European Union, he did not want the United Kingdom to be a member. Greeks will see similarities here, I suppose, with attitude of "the West" to the Eastern Roman Empire, whose language was welcomed but its population distrusted.
Kalergi tried to secure the support of Mussolini for his Pan-European Union, but was not successful. He did not try with Hitler because Hitler very quickly became an outspoken opponent to him. According to Hitler the idea of "a pacifist-democratic Pan-European mishmash state" as proposed by "that commonplace bastard Coudenhove-Kalergi" would not be able to oppose the United States. Nazi criticism and propaganda against Coudenhove-Kalergi decades later formed the basis for what Wikipedia calls "the racist Kalergi plan conspiracy theory." White nationalists quote Coudenhove-Kalergi's writings out of context in order to argue that the European Union's immigration policies reflect a plot to destroy white people, to create a populace devoid of identity which would then be ruled by a Jewish elite.
In an article entitled "Kalergi, the most misunderstood man the argument is put forward that "when Kalergi was talking about the future race of Europe being mixed, this was not him prescribing that there should be fewer people of European descent in Europe. It was a prediction he made based on the trajectory he saw Europe taking if Europeans failed to unite." But it remains true that although Coudenhove-Kalergi is still feted as one of the founding fathers of the European Union, ordinary European citizens could be prosecuted for writing some of the formulations to be seen in his writings.
This might be an appropriate occasion to draw attention to this important online symposium programmed for 28th February 2023 at 6 p.m. Central European time, 7 p.m. Greek time.
In April 2021 the first biography of Coudenhove-Kalergi in English "Hitler's Cosmopolitan Bastard" was published by McGill-Queens University Press. Its author Martyn Bond, together with his collaborator Claudia Hamill, made a video which is no doubt the best introduction to this pioneer of European integration, freed from the assumptions, explicit or implicit, of the Nazi-originating "conspiracy theory" which has accompanied his name to this day.
It is said that the United States Constitution tried to strike a balance between the role of the one, of the few and of the many. "Hoi polloi" to use Erasmian pronunciation of ancient Greek.
In the present global situation the one and the few have been so corrupted that they no longer protect the many.
The island of Aegina in antiquity because of reaction to the imperialism of Athens did not side with the democracy, in the Peloponnesian War for example, but rather with the Spartans and with Persia. Is any useful political conclusion to be drawn from this, or is this just something to be forgotten?