How Socialism Destroyed Communism & May Well Destroy Capitalism.

A general assumption prevails that communism failed for its extremism, and that capitalism may fail for the same reason. There is no doubt some truth to this. Communism is an extreme form of socialism and suppressed and stifled freedom and initiative. And the kind of hyper-globalized–over-extended–capitalism where the finance industry has grown ever more powerful is also causing havoc all over the world.
Of course, communism is a god awful ideology, and here can be no good communism in the way that there can be good capitalism. For one thing, capitalism thrives within and provides us with freedom. Capitalism or the rise of the bourgeoisie loosened old ties wherein most people were peasants toiling for their lords. Though working conditions for most people during early capitalism were inhuman by today’s standards, there was a new unprecedented vertical and horizontal mobility of populations. People moved into cities or other towns, even other countries. Many were uprooted but they also found a new kind of freedom. The children of workers moved up to middle class status, and their children could move up higher–while others went into business themselves. Capitalism unleashed innovations and advancements in all fields like no other system before. There had been periods of great innovation long before the rise of capitalism, but they failed to generate the kind of profound and continuous changes that capitalism brought about because, in the pre-capitalist order, the system of trade in material goods and investment in future growth had been curtailed by old prejudices.

Though trading was oldest profession–older than prostitution, though smartasses will say, ‘what’s the difference?’–, traders traditionally weren’t allowed elite status. Elite status was reserved for the warrior caste(the nobility), priestly caste(the church), or god-like kings or demagogues and their henchmen(allied with the military and priestly castes). Traders, middlemen, or businessmen were seen as having no scruple or principle–as did the warrior caste–, without spirituality–as the priestly class–, and without wisdom or powerful vision(or medicine)–as the kings or great leaders who sometimes even posed as ‘philosopher kings’. This prejudice against tradesmen existed in all societies–and even does today. In India, the merchant class was well below in stature to the Brahmins and the warrior castes. In China, Confucian system regarded the merchants as leeches, the lowest of the lowest, but surprisingly enough, merchants rated higher than military men. Confucius despised merchants as a people who produced nothing while profiting from selling goods produced by others. He despised the military even more as people who resorted to violence to gain power and influence or settle disputes. His ideal was a society ruled by a persuasive wise king with well-educated advisers of cultivation and refinement. They would ideally rule by example as well as by teaching. It was a Chinese version of the ideal of philosopher kings.

Trade was very important in the Ancient Civilizations of the Near East, North Africa, and Southern Europe. Indeed, the richest and most powerful empires tended to be ones that traded most. Even so, traders got less respect than other groups, and for reasons that were obvious and applicable even today. There is something holy about the priestly class. There is something about higher truth with the intellectual or philosophical elites. There is something romantic about artists, and there is something heroic about military men. Traders, on the other hand, are in it for wealth, and that means they are more fluid and compromised than any other group. Businessmen generally settle economic disputes through haggling about prices, not by invoking God or gods or ‘heroically’ going to war. Also, those who seek profits don’t really care whom they buy from and sell to. Hollywood liberals distribute their movies to conservatives, and a pizza joint owned by a white conservative is not averse to making money from non-whites, liberals, and gays. One can laud this as the great thing about business–that it brings people together and makes them cooperate(in the name of self-interest) in ways other systems do not.
Indeed, it is the paradox of business/trading that it is obsessively about self-interest yet it brings together the greatest number of people under the same roof. Capitalism, more than communism or Christianity, has played a key role in bringing peoples together. Communist Russia and communist China became bitter enemies, but the increase in business between current Russia and China has led to friendlier relations. During the Cold War, both India and China were in the anti-imperialist camp yet were also arch-enemies. Since they have turned to capitalism, both nations have been more willing to cooperate and do business. This is the magic power of capitalism. It is a way of uniting different individuals and peoples through self-interest. One would think self-interest would keep people apart, and this may well be true in most cases. A person or nation may seek to shut out everyone or every other nation for his or its self-preservation–like Japan during the Tokugawa period or North Korea today. But capitalism is a system whereby you can buy to and/or sell from others for your own self-interest. It’s a system of give-and-take. You sell what others want from you AND you buy what you need from others. If your nation has lots of coal but no iron, you sell the coal to a nation without coal and buy iron from a nation with lots of it. If you’re doctor with medical knowledge, you sell your services to someone who needs medical attention. The doctor himself buys legal services from a lawyer, food from a grocer, and car from auto dealer.

Why was capitalism different from previous methods of trading? One was the change in the social outlook, and this change would catapult the West far beyond other nations–until others learned the art of capitalism too. Capitalism removed the negative connotations associated with trading and business. In pre- or non-capitalist social systems, some people grew rich through trading but felt shame about their profession or means of wealth/privilege. Thus, upon earning a certain amount of wealth, they didn’t invest in future growth but put on aristocratic airs, went into politics, built huge mansions, patronized the arts, donated to the church, and read some books(and pretended to be wise). Same pattern happened in China. Though businessmen had always been crucial to the economy of China, once they reached a certain level of wealth they bought land, collected taxes from the peasants, put on scholarly airs, and sought social respect; and they steered their children toward learning to take exams to be respected scholars or bureaucrats.
If Japan had a more developed merchant class and dynamic economy around the time the Western imperialists arrived, it was because Japan’s social ordering had been somewhat different than that of China or Korea. Though heavily influenced by Confucianism, the most prestigious caste in Japan were the samurai, the military, the group most despised by Confucius. The samurai nobility were landowners and looked upon peasants–over 90% of the population–with contempt. In China, the peasants, though mostly poor, were second only to the scholarly class in terms of social respect. Confucius regarded them as honest and productive salt of the earth–an idea echoed later by Thomas Jefferson in his paean to ‘yeoman farmers’. In Japan, since the samurai relied heavily on the merchant class to act as a conduit between themselves and the peasants, merchants came to enjoy a status much higher than in other Asian countries, and this may explain why, even prior to the Western influence on East Asia, Japan had a more advanced economy than China and Korea. Among all the Asian nations, Japan had moved furthest toward the proto-capitalist development, and some historians think this was one of the reasons why Japan had been more adept than other Asian nations in adopting Western economic ideas and means.

The rise of capitalism gradually removed the social stigma from the business class, and nowhere was this more truer than in Northern Europe. But there was another paradox that led to the flourishing of capitalism in this part of Europe. We generally associate capitalism with super luxury, ostentatiousness, excess, and crass narcissism, yet capitalism developed in the part of Europe that happened to be more restrained, steadfast, thrifty, spartan, and reserved than other parts of Europe. In Catholic parts of Europe, the rich really loved to show off their richness. The clothes they wore, the houses they built, the jewelry they adorned, and so on were very loud and colorful. Much the same was true of Catholic Poles and Orthodox Russians. Protestant-ized Northern Europe was different. After all, Martin Luther had rebelled against the corruption not only of the Catholic Church but of Catholic Society, where stairway to heaven was bought by people who wealth and jewelry. In the Catholic world, wealth got associated with piggery despite–or precisely because of–the great money donated to the Church by the rich. The Catholic church used the wealth to build bigger cathedrals, design more colorful garbs for its elite priestly class, and so on. Riches were very much on display in Catholicism, which made the Church all the more magnificent and ridiculous. Magnificent since the Church hired some of the best artists to build artistic treasures. Ridiculous since Christianity was about purity of spirit, not puerile obsession with what glitters in THIS world.

Protestantism, on the other hand, restored the spiritual aspect of Christianity and, as a result, shaped Northern Europe into a more sober and solemn place. Of course, the Protestant rich also had nice houses, fine clothes, expensive jewelry, and hired best artists they could find, but it would have been considered excessive, gauche, and even immoral(and sinful) if Protestants went to the excesses that the Catholic rich folks did inside and outside the Church. Since Protestant businessmen didn’t excessively spend their wealth to show off how rich, powerful, and glorious they were, they were more likely to invest in future growth and expansion, which made them even richer. But since they couldn’t use their greater riches to show off their wealth, they invested their greater profits into yet bigger ventures. Thus, capitalism grew in the North. (Same difference existed in the 19th century between Protestant rich in United States and Catholic Rich in Latin America. The Catholic Latin American Rich built the bigger houses, but the Protestant North American Rich built the bigger economy.
Furthermore, since Protestant Europeans were more sober and solemn about spiritual matters–preferring morals over rituals–, there was the idea of using wealth for social good, and thus, greater wealth got associated with greater good.
There was the idea of doing social good in the Catholic world too, but it largely amounted to giving charity to the poor. It was good work to be sure, but unlikely to do much for the economy since giving poor people fish isn’t as productive as teaching them how to fish. In Protestant Europe, on the other hand, the rich business class didn’t simply invest in business expansion but in projects for higher education, medical science and research, social reform, and etc. This tradition still operates today–again, mostly in the white protestant world. In America, the captains of industry such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller donated huge sums for the public good. Ford Foundation has served a similar mission. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates likewise believe in using their wealth for social good. Indeed, Buffett had led a rather modest lifestyle considering he’s been one of the richest man in the world. Of course, what passes for ‘social good’ today isn’t what such meant100 or even 50 yrs ago. The radical, venal, and hideous Left has completely taken control over capitalist-funded institutions and foundations, and it’s not much of a stretch to say today’s capitalists are donating to the death of the West. Even so, this desire to do ‘social good’ has its roots in Protestant capitalism. It was Protestant austerity which suppressed the desire of the rich to show off and blow off their wealth.
As a result, excess wealth was reinvested for innovation or expansion than buying fancy clothes, diamond studded jewelry, and huge mansions. Also, the moral component of Protestantism justified the accumulation of wealth since a good portion was used for constructive social reform of society. Even today, rich Germans live in modest houses, own and drive normal cars, pay their taxes, and don’t put on I’m-the-richest-mofo-in-the-world airs. Compare them to Silvio Berlusconi, the brash corrupt pig of Italy or with Russian tycoons who act like Tony Montanas(of the SCARFACE remake). And we all know Greeks and Italians don’t wanna pay their taxes though they demand everything from Big Government. If United States had been founded by the vain and narcissistic Catholic or Orthodox elites than by sober and serious Protestant elites, it would have been a very different nation. Indeed, a study of the Latin American Catholic elites tell us pretty much what we need to know. Argentina has been ruled mostly by Spanish and Italian peoples, and it’s a society where looks matter more than talent, where style counts more than substance.

The loss of Protestant sobriety and simplicity among the masses in America was in some ways regrettable, in other ways, beneficial. At any rate, it was predictable. As America grew richer and as new pleasures gushed forth for the consumerist masses, the ethic of sobriety became less fashionable. With the rise of the Negro and his funky ass music, whites too began to shake their booties in ape-like ways and began to gyrate to Jazz and blues. With Italian-American food and folklore, Americans were wooed by Old World Catholic flavors and tribalism over idealism. With the rise of youth culture, there arose the anti-ideal of the rebel without a cause. Previously, rebellion or resistance had been justified in America on MORAL grounds, such as rebellion against British tyranny or rebellion against the unjust system of slavery. But youth angst that rose in the 1950s was simply about vanity, narcissism, self-pity, and self-aggrandizement.

With the arrival and ascendancy of the radical, subversive, and/or zany Jews, Anglo-American culture and traditions seemed boring, bland, and conservative(in a potatohead-ish way) by contrast. Also, Jewish Hollywood seduced and tempted the entire nation with its glittering and glamorous stars.
To be sure, there was a morally sober element in Jewish leftism, especially in communism. However, in its radicalism and aggressiveness, it was markedly different from American Protestant sobriety. There was an element in Protestantism that was self-reflective and self-critical as well as critical of society itself. Thus, Protestant reformers didn’t see themselves as all-knowing agents of social change with all the answers. They were serious people who incrementally sought to reform society. Sometimes, their means were misguided to say the least–such as Prohibition–, but the fact is they were not radicals. Jewish radicals, on the other hand, were filled with aggressive energy and ruthless pride and confidence in their cause. They didn’t simply want to improve society by extending power to other peoples but by grabbing all the power for themselves in the name of THE PEOPLE and SOCIAL JUSTICE–whatever that meant.

Well, enough about capitalism and its origins. The point is, while all of us know of the excesses of capitalism and its problems, there is no denying the crucial role it played in the rise of the West and advancement of mankind. The Ancient Greeks had tons of great ideas as did the Romans, but they failed to realize their full potential because they didn’t have capitalism. They had advanced mathematics, philosophy, theories of democracy and republic, the will to build empires, and so on. But they didn’t have an economic system that relied mainly on free workers than on slaves or helots. They didn’t have a means whereby the business class would reinvest their wealth as capital into new projects and enterprises, thus allowing even greater innovation. Indeed, one can say the same thing of the Soviet Union. The USSR had its share of great scientists, mathematicians, and highly intelligent people–many of them Jewish. But there wasn’t much these individuals could do with their ideas in material terms. They could not go into business with their ideas like their counterparts could in Japan or the US. Communism faded in Russia in the early 90s, but Russia still lags behind in economic development because of its corruption, absence of rule of law, and its lack of work ethic and sobriety, which still exist among many Germans and WASP Americans. Russians work best at guzzling vodka, dancing on tables, and wrestling with bears. Putin puts on all those magnificent military parades but most times of the year, rich Russians only care about showing off their wealth–and don’t care how they earn it–and most non-rich Russians only care for vodka.

The real point of this piece is to examine how SOCIALISM came to endanger communism and then capitalism. Of course, we first need to define what we mean by ‘socialism’. For some socialism and communism mean the same thing. For some, socialism means social-democracy. Social-democracy can mean public ownership of natural resources and major industries–postwar Britain under Labor government–OR it can mean mostly privately owned companies taxed heavily by the state–Sweden. Socialism can also be defined as the initial stage from away from capitalism toward communism. There has been utopian socialism, ‘scientific’ socialism–aka Marxism–, anarcho-syndicalism–a form of de-centralized socialism–, national socialism, fascist socialism, and welfare socialism. Europeans consider America as too freewheeling cutthroat capitalist, but many Americans would complain America is too socialist–at least since the New Deal or Great Society. For hardline libertarians, even public education and libraries constitutes forms of socialism. With so many meanings for ‘socialism’, we easily misunderstand one another in discussions and debates.

So, let me define socialism in the easiest way possible FOR OUR PURPOSES. What I offer is not THE definition of ‘socialism’ but of how it is understood by most people. In today’s world, socialism essentially means expanded bureaucratic or institutional positions/powers for the educated elite class, and it means expanded ‘rights’ and ‘entitlements’ for the masses. The modern socialist ideal says society cannot be left exposed to the greed, avarice, stupidity, and prejudice of individuals; society must be controlled and guided by an enlightened, progressive, and politically correct elite and its army of indoctrinated social engineers, bureaucrats, and officials. We have the seen the rise of such all across EU, especially in UK, France, Germany, Greece, Spain, etc. There is no longer unfettered free speech since it may lead to ‘hate speech’ or ‘incorrect’ speech. Recently, Gordon Brown called an ordinary voter a ‘bigot’ since she wasn’t happy with UK’s immigration policies. (To be sure, the woman was careful to raise concerns only about Eastern European–white–immigrants since it would have been very politically incorrect to raise concerns about black or Muslim immigration. Even so, she got labeled a bigot by the elitist Brown, who obviously lives in luxury and doesn’t have to worry about crime and other social problems faced by ordinary Britons.)
There used to be forms of national or right-wing socialism–and such still exist on the fringes–, but 99% of what passes for socialism today(at least in the West) is leftist.
For most socialists, the idea of ‘national socialism’ or ‘national bolsheviks’ is a oxymoronic. Socialism goes beyond nations, race, blood and soil. It must be about all humanity, the equality of all peoples. Socialists believe it is wrong to say only THIS or OUR people have rights and entitlements while the rest of humanity doesn’t. Therefore, European socialists are for open borders since EU should welcome to ALL peoples without prejudice or ‘racism’. Some argue that socialism grew out of the Enlightenment and the cult of reason, and it just so happens that Reason and Universal Truth are not compatible with atavistic, irrational, and reactionary notions of nation, territorialism, blood and soil. And the elites and brainwashed masses are absolutely certain–or at least desperate to convince themselves–that RACE is a cultural myth and not a biological reality.
When the radical Right espoused the ridiculous notion of RACE being almost synonymous with SPECIES, the Left indeed had the scientific and rational advantage. In comparison to Nazi lunacies, even Franz Boas comes across as a rational person. But the Left soon went from arguing for fundamental similarities among races to denial of race altogether. In time, this became a cultural myth on the Left, and today it is the race realist or racist(meaning race + ist = a person who believes in races and racial differences)who stands on sounder scientific and rational ground.

Anyway, socialism among today’s Western elites simply means more elite control. Strangely enough, this has the blessing of many and perhaps the majority of top capitalists. There are many reason for this. Socialists need money to run their institutions and programs, and taxes and donations come mostly from the superrich. Also, many politically powerful and well-connected socialists came from rich families, attended top schools, and have mostly rich and powerful friends. These are not the freaking Khmer Rouge. Indeed, many rich and/or well-educated people turn to socialism because they want to do ‘clean’, ‘progressive’, and ‘noble’ work than ‘greedily’ wallow in the private sector. (Working for government also requires less intelligence and creativity than starting or running a business, and most children of the rich are not as smart or driven as their parents.) It’s more respectable to work in a nice clean office in the name of public good than run a chain of hotdog joints. Besides, working for government means you don’t have to worry about the budget. Government can always raise more taxes and if not that, borrow more or print more money. And the benefits are good too, and if you ever leave the private sector, your resume will get you picked up private firms. Just look at the kind of people who’ve gone back and forth between government, Ivy League institutions, law firms, financial firms, etc. Among the elites, socialism and capitalism come to the same thing: power and privilege. This is especially true among the Jews who represent both the top capitalists and socialists in America. Many Jews–New Democrats and Neocons–cross back and forth between both spheres.

Socialism also appeals to the rich and powerful because they hunger for respect and good reputation. Even in our heavily capitalistic world, there is still the notion–more so in the EU than in the US–that wealth equals greed, that big money is evil, that corporations are all crooked–notice that even corporate Hollywood makes anti-corporate movies–, that rich people are crass and spoiled, and etc. People wanna be rich, but riches alone don’t bring respect. If anything, it can make you the target of leftist activists. So, the superrich try to win love and favor by supporting modern socialism. Or they try to buy off the socialist opposition by donating huge sums to progressive causes. Remember when the liberals tried to skin Microsoft alive for its monopoly powers? Well, ever since Bill Gates remade himself as Mr. Do-goody, he’s been the darling of the Left and left alone. And notice Hollywood almost never gets audited for its ‘creative accounting’. And no one on the Left goes after Google–though it’s becoming even more monstrous than Microsoft–because it donates 99% of its money to the Left. So, there is the capitalist-socialist collusion.
Besides, rich people aren’t satisfied with money. They also crave power, and power means politics. To gain more political power, there needs TO BE more political power, which means there needs to be bigger government. Also, the global elites are well-aware of the fact that the NWO has led to economic disruptions in the First World, and as a result, many workers–especially the working and middle classes–have grown apprehensive and anxious. How to you pacify those people? Through bread-and-circuses offered by socialism. If people who’ve lost decent-wage jobs can be socialistically anesthetized into couchpotatoes addicted to TV shows and videogames–and free food and medicine–, maybe there won’t be any great social uprising against the NWO.

For the masses, modern socialism means more ‘rights’ and ‘entitlements’. This has an infantilizing effect on the masses since more people will think that goodies grow on trees and everyone should be ‘entitled’ to them.
If you want corn, you have to plant the seeds and harvest the corn. In other words, corn is the product of work. But, if corn becomes a ‘right’, it means you can sit on your ass and just demand corn because it is, well, a ‘right’. A right is something guaranteed to ALL regardless of what that person does. If you have a right to ‘money’, government must give you money even if you don’t work. You don’t have to work to earn money since it is a ‘right’. For examples, all citizens 18 and over have the right to vote. They don’t have to work to earn this right. It is a right whether one is rich or poor, employed or unemployed. When material goods are made into rights, society is telling people they are owed stuff because they are simply entitled to them. So, if housing, food, medicine, transportation, clothing, water, gas, electricity, and living expenses are rights, one need not work for them. One need merely be born and alive and demand his or her ‘rights’. One works to pay for one’s needs. One doesn’t work for ones’ rights. Rights are guaranteed by the state. If material needs are rights, it sends a message that the people should just sit on their asses and demand their rights.
(This is why the idea of healthcare as a right is DANGEROUS. It should be considered as a NEED that people should work and pay for–with minimal interference by the state. If some people cannot pay for healthcare, their BASIC needs can be met by the state if surpluses are available. Indeed, this is how we deal with food, housing, clothing, and etc. Those are even more crucial to life than medicine, but they are not handled as rights but as needs. As needs, people work and pay for them. In the process of working to produce and consume goods and services, wealth is created and even surplus wealth to take care of those who’ve fallen through the cracks. But, if needs are all said to be ‘rights’, one need not work for them but just demand them as ‘rights’ or ‘human rights’.
The first lesson learned by increasing numbers of immigrants–both legal and illegal–in the US and EU is ‘I have my rights. Gimme free housing, free clothing, free food, free medicine, free everything because the are my rights’. Of course, there are ever increasing numbers of native born leeches who feel the same way. This kind of idiot mentality is bound to hasten the erosion of work ethic, social discipline, and personal responsibility of a nation. It is also terribly demoralizing. If you work your butt off to pay your own way and pay taxes, how does it feel to look at growing number of bums who are leeching off society by invoking their ‘rights’? Socialism isn’t only destructive to the takers but to the workers and earners. Eventually, more and more workers/earners either drop out and demand their ‘rights’ OR they look for ways to avoid paying taxes. Why should they bust their butts to pay for the wages and benefits of fatassed government bureaucrats and the ‘rights’ of lazy leeches and bums?
The social climate grows even more poisonous and acrimonious when much of capitalism becomes demented and venal–like finance capitalism of Wall Street and globalist capitalism that seek to tear down all national and cultural borders at breakneck pace. (Radicalism, as opposed to gradualism, is always dangerous whether it is socialist or capitalist). When this happens, every side has its readymade excuse to defend its empire of self-interest. Capitalists will say they don’t wanna pay taxes to pay for corrupt big government and lazy welfare bums. Socialist elites and masses of bums will say they refuse to budge an inch since economic problems are the product of evil capitalist crooks. (Though most business people in America are good solid people, scumbags on Wall Street and other crony capitalists–like Enron among others–have given the Left ammo to trash all of capitalism.)

Anyway, how did socialism destroy communism? The favorite narrative among American conservatives is that Western capitalism defeated communism. There is some truth to this. Directly and indirectly, capitalism did indeed triumph over communism. It was obvious to everyone in the postwar era that Western Europe–capitalist or at least half-capitalist–outperformed the Eastern Bloc in economic wealth, social freedoms, and political liberties. Indeed, Western Europeans never had it so good as during the 1950s and 1960s. From the rubble of WWII, their economies expanded into the richest the world had ever known. The combined GDP of revived Western Europe was larger than that of the US.
The US and USSR comparison also made it clear which side was the winner. Many people in the USSR hoped to move to the West. Only a few morons in the US wanted to move to the USSR. US was far freer, richer, more innovative, bountiful, interesting, exciting, and etc than drab and grey USSR where ordinary people had to stand in line for hrs to buy bread and toilet tissue. Things were so shitty in the USSR that Russians were amazed by shops in Poland!! People fled from East Germany to West Germany, not the other way around. East Germany was supposedly the top ranked economy in the Eastern Bloc, but one had to wait several yrs to buy a car made mostly of plastic. My friend once showed me a photo by a East German camera, and it was the crappiest quality image I’d ever done seen. I once felt a commie Polish toilet tissue, and it felt like sandpaper. Another region where capitalism clearly beat communism was East Asia. Communism brought forth Mao’s madness, North Korean nightmare, Khmer Rouge psychosis, and Vietnamese Boat People, and the mass murders in Mongolia. For all the right-wing military rule and abuses in non-communist East Asia, the casualties came to tens of thousands than tens of millions. Japan did as spectacularly as Western Europe in the postwar era. South Korea developed an economy 40x larger than that of North Korea. Maoism brought nothing but famine and oppression to the Chinese, who only began make great progress through capitalism. In Latin America, the greatest success story was Chile soon after Augusto Pinochet toppled that scum Castro-ite Marxist Salvador Allende and instituted free market reforms. Even socialist policies that followed later under leftist governments in Chile could be paid for by the rising economy of Chile thanks to encouragement of free enterprise. So, communism lost its luster, and today, only intellectual midgets and morons still go by the label of ‘communist’. Today’s leftists prefer the title of ‘progressive’, ‘neo-Marxist’, ‘intellectual Marxist’, ‘multi-culturalist’, ‘anti-racist’, ‘feminist’, ‘gay rights activist’, or ‘environmentalist’. Having failed in their macro-venture to change and ‘save’ the world, leftists have now gone for micro-taking-over and mico-managing of every aspect of our lives. So, environmentalists would tell us what kind of toilet bowls we can use, what kinds of coffee we can drink, and how much water we should use when showering. And anti-racists would tell us what is and isn’t ‘thought crime’ and drag us to sensitivity training sessions to weed out the evil ‘racist’ within us. With the influence of Bill Ayers and Elena Kagan, public education is less about teaching basic skills and knowledge than indoctrinating students to worship a certain ideology or historical/political/cultural figure–such as MLK, Harvey Milk, Oprah, or Obama, Mmm Mmm Mmm.

Anyway, even though there is much truth to capitalism defeating communism, it isn’t enough to explain the TRUE WHY as to why communism fell as it did, at least in Eastern Europe. It could just as well be argued that SOCIALISM destroyed communism. By socialism, I don’t mean the kind Karl Marx meant–the transitory middle phase from capitalism to communism–but the kind of welfare socialism that developed in the West.
How did this kind of socialism come to infect the communist world, and why was communism unable to cope with it in the long run?

Before we answer that, we must first consider the history of communism in Eastern Europe, especially in the USSR. Soviet communism was essentially Stalinist, and there is no doubt that Stalin was the greatest of all communists. He may have been the most evil communist, but he was the greatest because he understood the ‘evil’ nature of communism. Had it not been for Stalin, Soviet communism probably wouldn’t have amounted to much. Though there were plenty of ruthless and murderous communists in the Soviet Union, only Stalin understood that communism was indeed a slave system and can only succeed as such. Does this mean Stalin was a pure cynic who only used communism for self-aggrandizement and national power? No, it’s very possible that Stalin sincerely believed in Marxism, but he well understood that masses of uneducated or undereducated Russians and others in the Soviet empire would never become good theoretical communists–people who were loyal to communism by ideals alone. Most of the early Soviet elites–especially the Jews–had spent their time among fellow intellectuals and understood people as social constructs and theoretical models. Stalin, having rubbed shoulders with the people of the Lower Depths–as did Hitler with real stinking humanity in the war trenches and men’s hostels–, believed that this rough, dumb, unruly mob had to be whipped like cattle. Only RUTHLESS FORCE and the CULT OF FEAR could make communism work.

On one level, communism had a simple mass appeal in its call for the overthrow of the Old Order. Even illiterate peasants understood the slogan ‘Land, Bread, Peace’, especially after yrs of war and famine. But most peasants understood the slogan in a ‘proto-capitalist’ way. They understood it to mean “I’m gonna have a piece of land to call MY OWN, I will grow wheat on MY land, and with the wheat I’ll bake bread and sell the surplus to make a profit in a land ruled by peace and law.” Russian masses flocked to the Bolsheviks out of self-interest. They thought they would left alone to own their own land, work it, and make a profit. But once communists took power, they sought to create a new kind of people who thought beyond private property and self-interest. The problem was all that Marxist stuff about NEW MAN working together in collectives and sharing and moving toward socialism and then communism(after which the state would dissolve and there would everlasting ‘social justice’)either went over the heads of the masses or sounded like the sort of sophisticated idiocy that only educated fools could believe. Sometimes, simple minds instinctively see through bullshit faster than educated minds. (The less educated in America are likely to be more candid and truthful about race and race relations than educated fools who spout the most convoluted nonsense.)

Stalin hated the peasants but understood them better. He understood they could only be forced into communism. Also, since there wasn’t much in the way of material incentives in communism, he knew the state would have to rule with the whip and instill bone-chilling fear in the masses. He also knew that this approach would yield results since over a 100 million people being forced to work is bound to produce something. And indeed huge industrial complexes and mega-cities were created. Though many peasants were torn from their roots and shipped off to work in cities under horrifying conditions, for many young people it was all very exciting and thrilling, especially since their young impressionable minds had been molded by nothing but communist propaganda and Stalin’s cult of personality. The brutal and ruthless use of force led to millions of deaths but also built great cities and giant industries, which filled the Soviet peoples with great pride and confidence. Within a single generation, Stalin had indeed transformed the entire country–even to the point where it could deflect and even defeat the mighty Nazi war machine.

Experts often say Soviet communism crumbled in the late 80s because economic crises, but this is only half the story. After all, the Soviet Union was in far worse economic straits in the 1930s when possibly 7 to 10 million starved to death across the USSR due to Stalin’s forced collectivization. Though the USSR won WWII, the much of the nation was a wasteland following the war. There’s no way anyone can say USSR was worse off in the 80s than it was in the 40s, 50s, or even the 60s–when things started to get better..
No, what really changed by the 1980s was the change of will(or loss of will) among the leadership and the rise of SOCIALIST expectations on the part of the masses. Think back to the days of Stalin. Though Soviet communism guaranteed food, housing, medicine, and etc for everyone, the fact is most people didn’t get diddly squat, especially if they were toiling in the gulag. And no one thought to complain and ask, “Can I have a little more?” since his ass would have been grass in no time. So, under fearsome communism, Soviet peoples were producing more than they were consuming. They were given the bare necessities for life and then driven to work, work, and work. They were human cattle. Many worked out of fear, many worked out of idealism, many worked out of combination of both. Apathetic cynicism had yet to infect the nation since communism was still young(and idealistic) and almost no outside influence entered the USSR. During the Stalinist-communist era, Soviet Union was an inhuman giant factory powered by human cattle under the whip of iron chains and wave of the red flag. Even if Soviet products were, by and large, shoddy or defective–or economically irrational–, USSR was indeed a nation of workers producing lots of stuff. Under communism, things such as housing, food, clothing, medicine, and other necessities were material rights BUT they existed ONLY FOR workers. Those weren’t human rights but workers’ rights.
In contrast, under modern socialism, you need only to be born and breathe to demand your rights. You don’t have to work. You can be a jiveass Negro shaking your ass all day and playing videogames all night, but you can demand your rights to free everything. Such kind of rights didn’t exist under Soviet communism. Rights were ONLY for workers, and the state made sure you were given some kind of work. If you didn’t work, there were no rights to be had. Since communist economy was run wastefully and ridiculously, unemployment wasn’t a problem. It generally took 20 Russians to finish a job that required 5 Germans or Americans. This wasn’t necessarily because Russians were lazy–they couldn’t afford to be under ruthless Stalinist communism–, but because centrally commanded economies tend to lack balance of supply-and-demand mechanisms.

Well, what happened to the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin? It went from Soviet communism to Soviet socialism, and that’s what eventually led to the fall of the Soviet Union. Initially, it didn’t appear that way, and many people welcomed the changes as positive and productive. They thought Soviet communism had matured and liberalized toward allowing greater freedoms and offering more consumer goods. Others thought Stalinism had been a cruel perversion of communism, and a humane and truer version of communism was taking its place. The anti-communist West looked upon the changes with hope and trepidation. With hope in the sense that a more liberal form of communism would be less aggressive. With trepidation in the sense that a reformed communism might be even more formidable–not only able to produce guns but also butter–and more appealing as a model to the Third World. And indeed for a time, especially in the 60s and 70s–with the flood of petro-dollars from the West–, it seemed as if the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc were on the economic upswing. And given that WWII had been far more devastating to most of Eastern Europe than to Western Europe in terms of lives lost and destroyed infrastructure, one could not neglect the fact that communism did accomplish the basic task of reconstruction and providing most people with their basic needs–plus something extra. The standards of living in the communist world was far below that of the West, but most people were decently off compared to Third World standards.

Also, a more humane form of communism and a more liberalized attitude served to depressurize certain social tensions. The privileged and loyal members of communist nations were allowed to travel to other countries. Young people were allowed greater access to Western films, music, and fashions. In some ways, a taste of freedom caused problems too, especially in the Eastern Bloc countries. The newly privilege elites of communist nations felt an acute inferiority complex vis-a-vis their Western peers and wanted to win the respect, but his required reforming or Westernizing their nations.. Just as John McCain the ‘reform conservative’ sought to win plaudits with the liberal power elite by ingratiating himself with the New York Times crowd(and just as Christopher Buckley voted for Obama to be invited to cocktail parties by the NPR crowd), new generations of communists who’d studied in or about the West wanted to be like the West and to be liked by the West. In this sense, Gorbachev was like John McCain of communism, which is why so many Russians came to despise him. When Gorbachev began to reform communism, he was the darling of the Western elites and media. He seemed to care less about the preserving the power and glory of the Soviet Union than about courting good press and approval from the rich Western elites.

East Germans wanted to be like West Germans than live under the iron heel of what was essentially Soviet occupation. Poles felt likewise, and besides, they’d always regarded themselves as closer to Western Europe than to Eastern Europe. Hungary rebelled in 1956 as a direct consequence of Nikita Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization policy, and easing of communist control led to Prague Spring in 1968, only to be crushed by Soviet tanks.
The Soviets wanted to have the cake and eat it too. They wanted a more humane and freer communism, but the problem was greater freedom and human rights always seem to lead to fatal weakening of the whole communist project. Prague Spring, after all, hadn’t started out as an anti-communist movement but as a reform communist movement. But once reforms allowed greater freedom, more and more people wanted to be rid of communist rule itself. Though Soviets crushed this movement, they too were infected with a similar spirit with Mikhail Gorbachev’s Glasnost. Again, it followed the same logic. Once freedom was allowed into the USSR, the whole communist apparatus began to weaken and crumble.

These events suggest that the main reason for the fall of communism was political or even cultural, but we need to consider another factor–the economic. (Of course, we must keep in mind that the political, economic, and cultural forces are interlinked.)
The fact is that by the 1980s, communist nations were in really bad economic shape. They were, for the most part, more liberalized and humane than they had been in the 1950s, but there was a feeling of apathy, cynicism, and disaffection unknown in previous generations. This was rather odd since previous generations underwent far worse problems and crises.

The difference was that by 1980s, the communist bloc had essentially become the socialist bloc. It was no longer the world of workers but world of shirkers. Under harsh and oppressive communism, people had been forced to work. Maybe they didn’t work as competently or efficiently as workers in the capitalist world, but they did work indeed. Certain goals–such as the Five Year Plans–had to be met, and besides, you could get severely punished by shirking one’s duty or by complaining too much. Anyone condemned of ‘sabotage’ under Stalinist communism would be in big trouble.
Especially following WWII, the need to work was obvious, if only to clear away the rubble and build new housing, schools, and factories because so much had been destroyed by the war. But once the basic rebuilding was accomplished, people came to breathe more easily. Also, the elites didn’t want to control the populace with the iron whip forever. The elites wanted to win the genuine heartfelt support of the people; they wanted to be humane communists. Though Soviet occupation continued in Eastern Bloc nations until the fall of the Soviet empire, Soviets wanted to rule with the carrot as with the stick. Soviets wanted to be respected and admired than merely feared. Even Stalin had been uneasy about being too hardline in the Eastern Bloc nations. If communists pushed too hard, there would be obedience but also simmering hatred and resentment. So, there was a general transition from communism to socialism as yrs passed.
If this ‘socialism’ had meant greater privatization and free market reforms, it would have been good, and there was some of that, especially in Hungary and Poland. (Romania and Yugoslavia were anomalies as communist nations seeking neutrality and playing both sides in the Cold War.) But in effect, transition form communism to socialism proved to be highly costly. For one thing, most Eastern Europeans didn’t have much in the way of work ethic. Not only did communism play an important role in snuffing initiative, risk-taking, and enterprise–even ordinarily hardworking Germans in East Germany were made relatively lazy, dependent, and dull in comparison to their Western brethren thanks to half a century of communism/socialism–, there had never been anything like a Northern European Protestant work ethic among the majority of Eastern Europeans. Even in the 18th and 19th century, Germans used ‘Polish’ as being synonymous with ‘lazy and inept’.

When communism turned toward socialism in the Eastern Bloc, it didn’t allow sufficient freedom for the enterprising members of society to economically remake and rebuild society, but it did allow just enough freedom for workers to become shirkers. Without the bullwhip of communism, one hour lunches soon became two hour or three hour lunches. With kinder and more humane supervision, workers produced even less than before, and most of them couldn’t be fired and replaced since nearly everyone was a lazy bum. And since there wasn’t much of a material incentive–as under capitalism–to work hard to get ahead of others, why bother to take risks or work harder than the next lazy shirker bum? So, once communism became more humane, it produced less and less. If people living under capitalism have a material incentives to work–to make more money and to pay for their needs and desires not provided by the state–, people living under communism could only be forced to work hard since there was little material incentive for working hard. Once the bullwhip was removed, there was no need to work hard at all. Besides, the basic needs were all provided by the state as ‘human rights’. All you needed to do was show up to work, putz around, drink vodka, dance, have 3 hr lunches, and look over one’s shoulder to see if the supervisor was coming, but then the supervisor was most likely snoozing off in his office.

So, what happened in the long run as communism turned into socialism? It meant workers doing less work but demanding more ‘necessities’ of life–as ‘rights’ of course. Especially since communist governments promised the people butter as well as guns in the 1960s–in order to prove that communism could be just as fun and plentiful as capitalism–, ‘necessities’ came to mean more than bread, roof over one’s head, and a pair of pants. People wanted to afford consumer goods as well–cameras, phonographs, records, TVs, fashionable clothing, etc. Though the average person living in a communist country got much less than the average person living in a capitalist country, he still got enough to lead a decent enough life. Problem was that since most workers became shirkers, communist nations weren’t producing enough to provide their people with the goodies in life. So, what did communist nations do in the 70s and 80s to pay for their socialism? They did what Greece did for a long time before it finally went bust. They borrowed from the West.
There is a misconception in the West that most people in communist nations rebelled and rose up to replace communism with capitalism. Not true. Though there were many pro-capitalist liberalizers in the communist world, MOST people rebelled because the communist regimes could no longer afford to provide people with socialist goodies. The Polish Solidarity movement was not pro-capitalist–though Lech Walesa later jumped on the free market reform bandwagon. Most Polish workers were demanding higher pay, more benefits, and more socialist goodies. Under Stalinist communism, such troublemakers would have been rounded up and shot or sent to gulag to work and produce things. Under the ‘humane’ socialized form of communism, workers weren’t forced to do much of anything that could be called real work. Painters could spend two weeks to paint a single room. A factory floor could spend an entire month making shoddy goods which had to be scrapped because they were useless. Workers at a publishing company could show up to work and spent most hours chit-chatting. And even conscientious supervisors couldn’t really fire anyone since the government had to offer jobs to everyone. Yet, all these people were making a ‘living wage’ and provided with ‘rights’ and entitlements. Now, how can any nation sustain ‘living wages’ where most people produced little or nothing? And besides, the shoddy goods that were produced could not be sold to the West from which the money was borrowed to sustain the communist/socialist enterprise? Eventually, Western nations stopped lending to Eastern Bloc countries, and the whole facade of humane communism–or socialism–began to crumble.

West Germany, Sweden, and France could afford their socialism because they had productive wealth-producing capitalist sectors. Those nations produced some of best quality goods in the world, and a good share of their earnings came from exports. What did the Eastern Bloc make that the West wanted? The Yugo? East German cars or cameras? The Polish toilet tissue? The only people who might be impressed by Eastern European technology were the ever cruder Russians. Since Russia had plenty of natural resources while Eastern Bloc nations were technologically more advanced–at least in the consumer products industry–, they mostly traded with one another. The Eastern Bloc got the lumber, iron, and oil while the Soviets got East German cameras, Hungarian cosmetics, and maybe even Polish toilet tissues. The problem was this wasn’t enough to sustain the ‘socialist good life’ that the government had promised their peoples in the Eastern Bloc, if only to pacify the people and half-convince themselves that life in the East was nearly on par with life in the West.
Soviets needed extra cash to maintain its empire and revolutionary reputation around the world–and dole out tons of aid to Third World countries–, and this could only be afforded by Soviets selling petroleum and other raw materials to capitalist countries. The going was good until the price of oil plummeted, and even to this day, Russia depends largely on its sale of its vast natural resources. Eastern Bloc produced just enough goods–industrial and consumer–to sell to the Soviet Union in order to pay for Soviet raw materials like iron and oil, but that was simply not enough for Eastern Bloc nations to pay for what their peoples demanded–and kept demanding more. And with the relatively humane form of communism–socialism–firmly entrenched in the Eastern Bloc, there was little chance of going back to hardline Stalinist communism. There was a crackdown in Poland in the 1980s, but brutal as it was, it was nothing like ruthless communist repression of the past. Soon, Solidarity regrouped and gained more ground, and the Polish government could only hope to compromise by offering higher pay and more benefits... except there was no way to afford them except by taking on even more debts via loans from the West, which was growing ever more reluctant to lend to nations that had no hope of repaying their debts.
Some cynical observers might argue that the capitalist West intentionally made sweet loans to the communist world to eventually bring down the system, but this most unlikely. In the liberal West, there was a sense–even a hope–that both oppressive communism and cutthroat capitalism would meet in the middle area of humane socialism. The communist world would grow more capitalist, and the capitalist world grow more communist, and the result would be socialism for both, whereupon the West and East would come to see one another eye to eye. This didn’t happen. When communism began to ease its control, most people didn’t become capitalists willing to take risks and run businesses. They simply wanted to work less and be provided with more ‘rights’ and ‘entitlements’. Especially in the Soviet Union, which had been communist for nearly 70 yrs, the mentality of dependency on the state for all basic needs and services had become endemic. If 40 yrs of communism could so profoundly alter East Germans–who had once been known for work ethic and pride–into nanny-state bums, just imagine what 70 yrs of communism did to Russians who never had a work ethic or culture of diligence to begin with? Russians only worked hard and produced thing under the bullwhip of Stalinist communism. The effective fear and awe of this kind of communism survived to the early 60s, but it began to fade once the humane form of communism–or socialism–took its place. Everyone from Leonid Brezhnev to the factory worker was just slumming through the 70s, with the economy largely dependent on petro-dollars. As with Cuba and Venezuela today, the Soviet economy could only function by selling to rich nations or attracting capital–or tourists–from rich nations(all of which happened to be capitalist).

Well, there was no way the capitalist West was going to keep lending to the Eastern Bloc. And the West pretty much abandoned the hope that the reformed communist bloc could produce goods or services worthy of purchase in the West. The Eastern Bloc could never earn enough through exports or develop a self-sufficient economy to do real business with the West. With each passing year, the communist/socialist nations could only sustain their myth of the SHIRKER’S PARADISE by borrowing more and more from nations like Germany, UK, and France. So, one could argue that socialism, more than capitalism, destroyed communism. Notice that Chinese embarked on cutthroat capitalism, and it has saved Communist Party rule to this day. China may no longer be economically communist, but it is stilled controlled by the Leninist political apparatus that took power in 1949. Capitalism in China provided the people with incentives to produce, work, and trade, thus producing more than the people consumed. China earns than borrows its way to prosperity and power.

Of course, there are other reasons for the resilience of Asian communist rule. Asians care less about human rights. Oriental despotism will not stop at mowing down 1000s to maintain its iron grip. This is a problem not only of the Asian elites but of the Asian masses. The strongman is respected for his power. Even capitalist Chinese still revere Mao as a ‘great leader’. And if even European communist nations had long been influenced by Enlightenment principles of reason, freedom, liberty, and rights of man, such concepts appear foreign and suspicious to most mainland Chinese who never came under Western domination or influence–like the Japanese, Hong Kong folks, Taiwanese, and South Koreans. To be sure, communism was a Western invention with roots in the Enlightenment, but its inbuilt authoritarianism well serves authoritarians in power.

Now, let’s consider what is happening to the West thanks to the rise of socialism. The crisis-filled events in Greece–and potentially in Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland–suggest that Western Europe too may have overdrawn from the socialist account. A third of the Greeks workforce is in government. The state provides the people with what are considered ‘fundamental human rights’, which amount to lots of goodies and freebies. Since they are deemed to be ‘rights’, no one has to work to pay for them. He only needs to DEMAND them. Greece has a nice enough tourism industry, but that alone cannot pay for all the things that Greeks–in and out of government–demand.
So, just like Eastern Bloc nations, Greeks borrowed and borrowed. They also lied and cooked their books to borrow some more. It just so happens that the richest nation in Europe is Germany, a nation burdened with historical guilt, and thus Germans had been reluctant to say NO to other nations, especially if they’d been victimized by Germany during WWII. But things got so bad in Greece that the Germans were compelled to say NO...until a final bailout was worked out which is gonna cost the Germans dearly. But Greeks are fuming mad because, in order to renegotiate their debts and receive new loans, they must make sacrifices. And government workers must face cutback, work harder, and retire later. Oh, those poor poor Greeks, they are finally being made to do some real work!!! What cruelty!!
Until now, Greeks, as members of the EU, had expected rest of Europe to foot the bill for their good times. Greek students attend universities where they pay nothing, learn nothing(but to spout 19th century Marxist and anarchist slogans), and graduate to do nothing–unless they can land a sweet government job through nepotism, bribery, or connections. What a country, eh? Italy faces much the same problem because only the northern part has been hardworking and productive. Indeed, northern Italians are racially and even culturally close to Germanic types. But it just so happens that most of Italy comprises the lazier and messier middle and southern Italians whose favorite economic activity is crime and cheating. Given these circumstances, it’s no surprise that so many Italians and Greeks have become expert tax evaders. I mean who wants to work to pay taxes to support government leeches and welfare socialist leeches? Who wants to pay for college students who learn nothing of any value but Marxist slogans and the desire to work in the public sector, which in most cases amounts to hanging around government office, drinking tea, and chitchatting all day?

To the extent that there is still some degree of cultural solidarity and the shared work ethic among Germanic peoples–Germany, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, etc–, their public sector workers are more likely to be conscientious and efficient(sincerely working for the public good) and their people in the private sector are more likely to pay taxes for the common good. Of course, this is in relation to rest of Europe. Compared to the past, socialism has also spread the culture of laziness and dependency in Germanic nations–though it’s nothing like the reality in Southern Italy or among the black underclass in the US. But the rise of the EU and immigration are making even ‘enlightened’ Germanic peoples nervous. The rise of EU has meant tax payers in richer nations must provide for ALL Europeans, and many Germans feel their tax dollars are being wasted on the wrong people–Greeks, Southern Italians, Spanish, Portuguese, certain Eastern Europeans, etc. If this keeps up, Germans are not gonna be too happy about paying their taxes.
There is also the problem of immigration. Already, certain cities in Denmark, Holland, and Sweden have turned majority Muslim or African. These newcomers want freebies as ‘rights’. They even seek permanent refugee status as ‘human rights’. And self-righteous and morally narcissistic white elites promote and defend the ‘rights’ of immigrants, legal and illegal.
Though most Europeans are liberal–the great majority of them peed in their pants over the election of Obama–, they are beginning to wonder if their socialism is a good idea or viable in the long run. Socialism forces diminishing number of productive people to serve the growing number of bums. This resentment can even be white-on-white within the borders of a single country. Northern Italians are tired of paying for Southern Italians, and the Flemish Belgians dislike the Walloon Belgians–who tend to be more socialistic and suck on the wealth created mostly by the Flems.

Of course, limited and conditional national forms of socialism aren’t so bad and even can serve the common good. Though Adolf Hitler was a psychopath on race and a tyrant, there were some good ideas in National Socialism. As with communism, certain ‘rights’ were guaranteed to only those who worked and produced. If one didn’t have or want to work, he was forced to work–at least to the extent that he took from public trough. In other words, if you wanna take from the nation, you have to do your part for the nation. And the political and working conditions for most people under National Socialism were more humane than under Stalinist communism. For one thing, National Socialism believed in private property and the natural reality of classes, and therefore didn’t seek to exterminate enemy classes whereas Soviet communism wiped out the bourgeois, aristocracy, and ‘kulaks’.
Furthermore, one could argue Germany was already an industrialized nation by the time the National Socialists came to power, and therefore Hitler only needed to get the factories running again. In contrast, Stalin needed to industrialize much of Russia from scratch, a much more daunting task. Finally, Hitler could trust most Germans to work hard with due diligence since German national character was synonymous with discipline and thoroughness. In contrast, Stalin had a much rougher and lazier population to deal with, the kind of people whose consciousness was unfamiliar with the concept of working hard for the sake of individual pride and communal good. Also, as the USSR was more diverse and culturally disunited, Stalin felt it was important to use extreme force to pull and hold the nation together. (Of course, the brutality of Nazism was in full display once the war began and the Nazis began to use non-German laborers, who were treated as badly if not worse than Soviets treated their own people.)

If conditional or national socialism can work–most obviously in Singapore–, what prevails in the West is leftist or liberal universalist form of socialism. The ultimate logic of this kind of socialism looks beyond national borders and argues for something envisioned in John Lennon’s song “Imagine”. Even if most left socialists are not quite that utopian, their core ideology makes them allergic to any ideas pertaining to race, nation, culture, and interests of white people. Even if they are alarmed by the rise of non-white numbers, rise in black crime, and exploding deficits, they’ve been programmed to suppress those fears and doubts. They’d rather lose themselves in liberal myths heard on NPR or seek refuge in bohemian communities where mostly white liberals come together to flatter one another on how creative, wonderful, and progressive they are. And since a good many are affluent, they can afford to move away from danger zones and put on fancy liberal airs without facing the direct social consequences of liberal policies, which are more likely to fall on poor or working class whites who cannot afford to move out of black or non-white areas. And when affluent liberals hear about increasing violence and mayhem, they look for answers that are fashionably PC. So, they convince themselves that blacks are not dangerous because of their racial make up but because of poverty and lack of self-esteem caused by centuries of white imperialism. So, the problem of radical Islam is not really with Muslim culture but with white hostility against Muslims which forces some Muslims to seek extreme measures. White leftists argue that what we need is more love, more understanding, more compassion, more relief, more handouts, and more welfare for blacks and Muslims. If this leads to even higher black and Muslim numbers–via more immigration/migration or higher birthrates–and produces yet more problems, the white socialist left will say it’s because NOT ENOUGH has been done for the ‘underprivileged’, therefore EVEN MORE has to be done. This kind of left socialist argument doesn’t only apply to what’s happening in Europe but all over the world. The West has pumped over a trillion dollars in Africa, yet Africa is still a pisspot. So, what is the answer of the Western Left? Oh, NOT ENOUGH was given to Africans, and we must give trillions more.

The concept of national socialism died with WWII because of Hitler’s evil crimes. But minus the radical racist ideology, the idea of a national socialism is sounder than the idea of left socialism because national socialism operates within borders of a nation with a people with shared culture, ancestry, values, purpose, and destiny. Also, national socialism was CONDITIONAL in requiring healthy people to contribute to the system as well as receive benefits from it.
In this sense, it had something in common with communism where ‘rights’ were linked to work and productivity of an individual. In neither system could one just sit on his arse and say, “gimme this and that and blah blah cuz it’s they be MY RIGHTS.”
What prevailed in the West was left socialism. Initially, it didn’t do much harm since right after WWII, most European nations were still nation-states in the old sense. The borders meant something, there were few non-European immigrants, and most people hadn’t yet been infected by welfare-socialitis. But the concept of left socialism did have impact on weakening the borders among European states. Since the sacrosanct European conviction following WWII was that nationalism is a great evil–after racism–, the idea of national loyalty, values, heritage, and community were seen as morally suspect and gradually weakened.
WWI ended up with British and French nationalist pride intact while Germans faced only national humiliation and resentment; in time, this led to revival of German nationalism, which led to Hitler’s rise and then WWII. For many, the lesson was that British and French nationalist gloating after WWI led to German rage that led to WWII; therefore nationalism was gradually suppressed for ALL Western nations following WWII. Besides, among Western European nations, only UK could claim victory in WWII, and it was utterly bankrupt and on the verge of losing most of its empire, which it did. So, even the winner was no winner at all. The real winners were US and the USSR, but USSR too collapsed 45 yrs later, and US is now facing major decline by having taken its power and success too easily for too long–and letting liberal Jews and Negroes grab much of the power. (To be sure, the main crime of Hitler was not nationalism but imperialism. He refused to respect the nationalisms of other nations. EU might be called headless imperialism. In traditional imperialism, one nation or people gained dominance over other peoples. There was the mother country and the children countries–or the possession of the mother country. EU is like a bunch of orphans without a mother, a sort of imperialism where EVERY country is a subject country, thus a headless or masterless imperialism. Or perhaps one can say that the master of this new kind of imperialism is an abstraction called progress.) Once the borders of European nations were weakened and a new entity called EU was created, the next logical ‘progressive’ step was to unite EU with other parts of the world. Sarkozy has spoken of incorporating North Africa. Gordon Brown and the British Labor Party want to open British borders to the entire world, especially to Pakistani Muslims and African/Carribean blacks. And since left socialism has expanded the concept of ‘human rights’ as guaranteeing not only political liberty and legal rights to citizens of the state but also providing for the necessities of life to all of humanity, this ideology and movement have no choice but to invite more non-whites into Europe and to forge NWO ties with the rest of the world.

Anyway, will the West go the way of the Eastern Europe? Will capitalism be destroyed by socialism as communism was? One advantage that capitalism has over communism is that it produces the wealth that can pay for socialism–as long as there are considerably more people in the private than in the public sector. Also, unlike communism, capitalism has an inner mechanism that makes people want to work. One can go from rags-to-riches under capitalism, especially if one is smart. Many Hollywood moguls in the early part of the 20th century started small. Some went from floor sweeper to studio boss. Of course, rags-to-riches story isn’t common–most people can only hope for rags-to-clothes–, and the problem of capitalism is it tends to leave some people very far behind. Under communism, the hare is chained to the tortoise, so that wherever the hare goes, it cannot get much ahead of the. In capitalism, the hare can run far afield and leave the tortoise behind. But, under a healthy capitalist system, even those who are left behind materially do better than the ‘equal’ workers under communism. Since talented individuals with freedom produce great wealth–and produce lots of jobs for workers who also pay taxes–, there’s money left over to take care of those left behind. Even people living on welfare in the UK, Sweden, Germany, and US materially live better than the average worker living under communism. Indeed, even poor people in the US had easier access to goods and services than even the members of the Soviet elites did. Even a poor American on welfare can go into a shopping mall and buy what he or she needs. But when Soviet elites entered a store in Germany, UK, or the US, he was shocked by the bounty and choices. Even the privileged elites of communist countries were lucky to have access to what even poor people in the US took for granted.

As long as a nation has a strong capitalist base and industrious private sector producing innovation, expansion, opportunities, and good & services, a reasonable amount of socialism has been affordable. Of course, richer the nation, more socialism it can afford, which is a kind of paradox. Paradoxically, there are indeed two kinds of times when socialism becomes most attractive: hard times and boom times. During hard times, the masses grow angry and resentful, and the rich are blamed as scapegoats for all the misery. There is a natural tendency to ‘take from the rich and give to the poor’ as Robin Hood did. Venezuela is undergoing this kind of social transformation, and it’s proving disastrous. Not because the plutocracy in that country has been a noble bunch but because Hugo Chavez is just another robber-thug practicing a form of crony-socialism. But, not all calls for socialism during hard times are simply for the redistribution of wealth. Proud people with work ethic want JOBS than WELFARE during hard times. In both Germany and the US during the Great Depression of the 1930s, most people were not demanding freebies but jobs so they could work and earn their way. They wanted to use their hands and feet productively than be given handouts. And they were not calling for communism either–the prohibition of private property and free enterprise. They wanted crooked rich people–who had rigged the system in their favor–to be punished, and they wanted the state to devise projects which would hire people and put them to work. Hitler scapegoated the Jewish financial capitalists but didn’t attack all of capitalism. He instinctively understood that there needed to be a private sector. The government would intervene mostly in massive projects like building highways and the war machine.
In the US of the 1930s, most people without jobs were proud and simple white folks who were too proud to take handouts. They wanted jobs so they could feel productive and provide for their families. So, FDR too embarked on massive government projects to produce jobs. To some extent, this led to a stimulation of the economy, but there are some people who believe that these programs and policies only made the problem worse. Germany did revive the economy but with borrowed money. Any nation can produce a short-term boom with borrowed money. And FDR’s programs didn’t do much to pull US out of the Depression. It was WWII which boosted demands for US goods and got the factories running again. Still, to the extent that this kind of socialism was about WORK and PRIDE, it could be called a form of national or fascist socialism, and to that extent Jonah Goldberg’s book LIBERAL FASCISM is half-correct about some of the fascist elements in the New Deal. As far as I’m concerned, that was the GOOD thing about FDR. He was more a (liberal)fascist socialist than a welfare socialist–the worst kind of socialist. FDR’s policies may or may not have been misguided, but he really wanted people to be working again and regain their pride.
The Great Society Welfare Socialism, on the other hand, wanted people to sit on their arses and just leech off freebies and handouts. It robbed the beneficiaries of their work ethic and pride, especially since welfare was rewarded mostly to teenage mothers and the like. It rewarded the WORST kind of behavior possible or imaginable.

Fascist socialism–New Deal and German National Socialism–at least tries to boost pride and productivity through work, but it too can be DEVASTATING if the populace generally lacks national character and work ethic. Compare German National Socialism and Argentinian Peronist fascism. Why did the former work so much better than the latter? While it’s true that Nazi Germany stacked up dangerous amounts of deficits and debts to finance the economic recovery, much was accomplished from 1933 to 1939 in Germany. New roads, new hospitals, new stadiums, new military, and new lots of other stuff were built. It seemed as though Germany could have both guns and butter as consumer goods also filled the shops. Under National Socialism, Germans were provided with things like universal healthcare, but most Germans worked hard in the new order to rebuild their country. They didn’t slack off, and the state was run more efficiently than in Latin countries–Fascist Italy or Argentina. Also, Germans being a hard and stoic people, didn’t demand TOO MUCH or EVERYTHING from the state. When necessary, they tightened their belts and learned to do with less. There was a both a sense of individual pride and communal spirit.

Now, let’s look at Argentina. Up to the early part of the 20th century, Argentina was one of the fastest rising and most promising nations in the world. While it’s true that the Spanish and Italians–two largest ethnic groups in the country–were not particularly known for the work ethic, there was a kind of gaucho pioneer spirit in the Argentinian soul that took risks and embraced new adventures. But the spirit of socialism crept into Argentina and began to poison the well. Eventually, the kind of socialism that took root was the rightist or fascist form of socialism under Peron. It emphasized national unity and power, and all that. Yet, why did it prove to be so disastrous? Because Latins turned out to be a bunch of shallow, self-interested, lazy, and corrupt drama queens. Lacking the national character and deep-rooted work ethic of Germans under National Socialism or Protestant white Americans during the New Deal, Peronist fascist socialism just became an excuse for the Argentinian workers and bureaucrats to demand and get everything.
Socialism can be affordable IF a nation’s private sector produces sufficient surplus in wealth that can be taxed for public services. Without that surplus–and given the Latin(and Mediterranean) penchant for tax dodging–, Argentina went the way Greece(as well as Italy, Spain, Ireland, and Portugal)is going today. The problem was not that Argentina was desperately poor but it promised and spent more than it could afford. A person who makes $20,000 a year and takes on no debt and lives within his means has less to worry about than a person who makes $100,000 a year but blows it all and then borrows another $100,000 to ‘have it all’.
Socialism generally leads to spending money one doesn’t have because the non-productive bureaucracies keep expanding and also because people have been promised this, that, and everything under the roof. Politicians, to maintain their power, must not only keep their promises of freebies but offer yet more freebies as ‘rights’. Also, people who get stuff for free generally have no appreciation for it.
If you work and pay for your food, the food on your table is precious. If you are given free food and whatever else, you think all that stuff grows on trees and demand more and more. More and more people on welfare in the EU and the US enviously eye people who have more and demand what ‘rich folks’ have as ‘rights’ for themselves. If people have computers and cell phones, why shouldn’t EVERYONE have those things?
Worst of all, under welfare socialism, people want those things without doing any work. They feel OWED stuff because they are ‘rights’, even ‘human rights’. So, if some jiveass single-mother welfare queen has 15 children, they all have a ‘right’ to free food, free clothing, free housing, free medicine, free computers, free cell phones, free etc. Thanks to the ‘compassionate conservative’–or conservative socialist–concept of ‘ownership society’, there was even the fiction that home mortgage was also a ‘universal right’ that should be made available to EVERYONE, even those without jobs and living on welfare.
Under welfare socialism, rights have turned into wrongs. Some idiots support welfare socialism out of compassion and guilt–‘ohhh, help those poor poor people’–while others really and insanely believe in its ideological and intellectual validity on the grounds of ‘social justice’–whatever that means. Today, not just far left radicals but mainstream liberals and even many conservatives believe that these ‘rights’ should even be extended to illegal aliens and even to Africans and Haitians. It’s as though every African or Haitian has to be fed, clothed, housed, and aided by rich, evil, capitalist, and neo-imperialist Americans.

This mentality, which used to be limited to the underclass, is now spreading to the mainstream. The underclass grows bigger and bigger because dumb uneducated people have more kids. The middle class is warming to the idea of socialism or statist dependency since many of their jobs have been shipped overseas. They have to maintain their livelihoods or lifestyles somehow. Also, the West no longer operates via social shame. There is little or no shame associated with declaring bankruptcy, just as there’s no longer any shame associated with divorce. It’s do-whatever-you-want. Now, do-whatever-you-want attitude is okay as long as you’re willing to face the consequences with of your actions, but many people wanna do what they want but then dump the blame, consequences, and burden of one’s stupid actions on other people, on the state, on society.
Besides, since so many people feel over-taxed–already having been forced to bail out others–, they want their share of pork from the public trough. If you’ve been working for a long time to take care of people who don’t work, you naturally want everything when you no longer work since “it’s my turn at the trough.”

As for the superrich, they’ve gotten so rich that they no longer have any sense of what real money is. Swimming in excess cash, they think they can afford to ‘take care of society.’
Besides, rich people generally went to best schools, and best schools tend to be very politically correct, instilling their students with leftist PC orthodoxy. Thus, those who are most likely to succeed in business are likely to be liberal and/or socialist-minded.

Socialism isn’t much of a danger if the state provides only that which can be afforded and sustained by the overall economy, but what happens more often than not is people keep demanding more and more. Since they’ve been told by the elite-controlled media that they are owed all these ‘rights’ and that egalitarianism is what ‘social justice’ is all about, everyone with less wants more. They want more not by working more but by demanding what is ‘rightfully mine’.
So, we have less-than-stellar black students demanding higher rates of admission into colleges not because they’ve gotten good grades but because, well, it’s ‘rightfully ours’. With Obama at the helm, this mentality has been spread far and wide. So, Obama told students that they are owed free college education. Prior to Obama, Bush in essence promised easy home loans to just about everyone. Where does the money come from? What does it matter? It’s a matter of rights, thus a matter of principle. They must be provided with their material or ‘positive’ rights, regardless of budgetary concerns. And plenty of neo-Keynesians will jump in and say “deficits don’t matter” and that more spending by the government will ‘stimulate’ the economy. Now, Keynesianism isn’t necessarily wrong. If you have a lot of rich people with a great surplus of wealth, it could be taxed and spent on public projects or services, and the spread of the wealth will indeed stimulate the economy. But a nation with chronic deficits cannot sustain this level of spending. FDR’s programs half-way worked because prior to the New Deal, the tax rates on the rich had been low, and a great amount of wealth had accrued with the super wealthy. We have lots of super wealthy people today in the US, and it would probably be a good thing to raise tax rates on super millionaires and billionaires–after all, these rich people eagerly give whole chunks of their fortune to charity anyway. But the unfunded liabilities facing the future of this country is so astronomical that even taxing everything from the super rich will not even pay a small portion.

Anyway, such are the dangers of socialism. When rights are redefined to include the economic as well as the political/legal, it’s only a matter of time before society begins to decline and rot. This process will be hastened if the nation takes in a lot of non-productive immigrants who are further drag on the economy and if the overall national culture or character has eroded away–more shirk ethic than work ethic.

The Convergence between the Right and the Left in AVATAR by James Cameron.

Introduction: The basic point of this piece is premised on the notion that the ideology of the modern right–Nazism included–was more closely associated with ‘spiritual’ reverence for nature than the ideologies of the modern left were. Many early modern rightists were animal lovers and/or nature worshipers and tended to emphasize the ‘irrational’ and sacred link between man and nature that was said to have been destroyed by Judeo-Christian world view, rationalism and technology, capitalist exploitation, and socialist materialism. The centrality of the hunter-warrior and the wife-mother in the primal-tribal state appealed to the right that feared modernity’s disconnect from the natural essence. For some on the modern right, the purest ‘Aryan’ spirit could be glimpsed in pagan visions and imagination captured through German mythology and revived by Richard Wagner, deemed as the premier ‘Aryan’ artist and genius of his age. The Nibelungen Saga can be considered a precursor to Avatar. Then, why has Avatar been praised or denounced by so many people as ‘leftist propaganda’? How is Avatar, like The Lion King, different from the generally right-wing nature-centered fantasies of the past? Lion King should be rightist as a story featuring hierarchy as a social and natural reality and even ideal. Avatar, as a fantasy about a race/culture of superior strength, beauty, intelligence, and wisdom, doesn’t sound very leftist–that is egalitarian. Yet, Lion King and Avatar have been regarded as ‘progressive’ or liberal entertainments in the current political reality. Why is this so? How did nature worship and aspects of racial/social/spiritual hierarchy become a characteristic of the Left? There are complex and contradictory reasons for this, some of them explored below.
　
Most conservatives seem displeased with AVATAR for its ‘anti-white’ and ‘anti-American’ message while a few alternative right types have defended it as an allegory of a people’s right to survive. Is the movie leftist or rightist? Can it be both?
　
Ideologies are funny. They are like two snakes swallowing each other by the tail. History may be serpentilical than dialectical. Leftism swallows and digests rightism but is then swallowed and digested by rightism which is then swallowed by leftism and so on. And, no ideology demonstrated this as well as fascism, a strange blend of the right and left, the traditional and the modern, the reactionary and the revolutionary. And, Avatar may indeed be fascist above all else. Keep in mind that fascism doesn’t have to be white nor Western. Though fascism is particularist, it can be adopted and used by any race, nation, or people. Some forms of fascism are more left-leaning while others are more right-leaning. Some tend to focus on nature while others on civilization.
　
Consider the rise of National Socialism in Germany. Though many people associate Nazism mainly with airplanes, tanks, monumentalism, and gas chambers, there was a Nature aspect to Nazism.
Though steeped in the Wagnerian operas based on Germanic myths, Hitler cared less for the cult of Nature Tribes than people like Himmler did. Hitler’s paganism was more along the lines of the Classical ideal which emphasized Man & Civilization over Nature & Tribalism. Hitler was also more an ‘Aryanist’ than a Germanist. But, Himmler was an oddball pagan Teutonist and not alone. He had a serious interest in the cultures and beliefs of the ancient pagan Germanic tribes. He romanticized the Germanic barbarian peoples and their connection to sacred nature. Himmler’s fascination with Japan may partly have owed to Shintoism being a form of Nature Worship. Both pagan Germanic peoples and traditional Japan had an animistic view of reality which believed that everything–rocks, streams, trees, animals, etc–was alive with spirit. The world was brimming with a million gods; everything was sacred and beautiful.
Buddhism arrived in Japan but coexisted with than wiped out the indigenous culture. But in Europe, the spread of Christianity led to massive cultocide–‘cultural genocide’–of the indigenous beliefs, customs, and rituals.
One can make a moral and civilizational case for Christianity in the progress of Europe, but neo-paganists in the 19th and 20th centuries charged the intolerant slave-religion of Christianity of having robbed European Man of something vital, virile, and sacred.
Of course, Classical pagan culture had managed to survive and triumph since the Renaissance, when Greco-Roman styles were re-employed to pay homage to Biblical figures and themes or even to the pagan heroes and deities.
There were two kinds of paganism in Europe. High or civilized paganism of the Greco-Roman world and the low or the barbaric/nature paganism of the Germanic peoples and other Northern Europeans. If Hitler favored high paganism, there were others like Himmler who had a thing for barbarian paganism. In a way, Nazism was an attempt to forge the two together to create an invincible and eternal neo-paganism, one that defied the usual cycles of rise and fall in nature and human history. In the art of Japanese sword making, hard(sharp yet brittle)metal is inter-layered with tough(flexible)metal. This way, the sword becomes both sharp and durable. Hitler and Himmler thought they understood the advantages and disadvantages of both forms of paganism. High paganism can produce a great and mighty civilization but then leads to rigid hierarchy, decadence, elitism, abstraction, and/or corruption. It declines either through dissipation stemming from corrupt elites and lazy masses(what eventually happened to the Roman Empire and what is happening to the West today) OR through dogmatism and stasis(as what happened to the Ottoman Empire or the Soviet Union).
a profound spiritual, political, or Low or barbaric/nature paganism, unlike high paganism, is always virile, organic, and pumping with raw blood. But as it lacks higher spiritual or philosophical concepts, it won’t amount to anything more than tribal head-bashng, raping and looting. (Barbarian dominated empires don’t last long as they are held together by brute force than by ideas or values..) So, the Nazis thought they could create a new kind of pagan civilization combining the profundity & complexity of high civilized paganism with the virility & vitality of low barbaric paganism. (A variation of this can be found in the neo-fascist novel WOLF TOTEM (http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/wolftotem.html) in which the Chinese author idealizes the robustness and ferocity of the Mongol tribesmen and argues the Chinese need to be infused with such vitality. It is a reworking of themes once a hallmark of thinkers like Carl Jung in the first half of the20th century. Lu Jiamin is arguing that the Chinese have become too tame and conformist under the pressure of high civilization. Like Avatar, Wolf Totem has elements of leftism and rightism. It’s leftist in championing the ‘little guy’, the nomadic/primitive minorities ‘marginalized’ or ‘oppressed’ by the powerful majority. But, it is also pagan-rightist, or proto-fascist, in admiring the pagan warrior virtues and in embracing Natural Hierarchy.) For this reason, accusations of gangsterism weren’t necessarily insulting to the Nazis.
Nazis understood that ideas are useless without the force of power, and that power is meaningless without an higher ideal to serve. Yukio Mishima contemplated the harmony of the pen and sword. Nazism was an alliance of the beautiful and the beastly. There was a thug element in Nazism but different from gangsterism of street punks or skinheads(especially white trash for whom ideology is just a rock concert). Nazi thuggery was the sword and shield that guarded the sacred and the beautiful. In contrast, gangsta rap thuggery reduces the man to a pimp(rather than elevating him into a noble warrior) and the woman to a skankass whore.
Nazis understood that all civilizations with lofty ideals were founded and defended by violence. Many liberals tend to think in terms of civilization = peace & love vs. violence = barbarism & savagery. But, not all forms of violence are the same. There is the kind of violence prevalent in places like Haiti and sub-Saharan Africa(and Detroit)where the norm is to just grab, loot, steal, rob, rape, and kill. There is also the violence to create a new order by defeating the enemy, to defend the order from its enemies, and to maintain the order by rooting out the internal enemies. In this sense, forms of violence employed by Christians, Muslims, Nazis, Communists, United States, and other peoples were not savage violence or violence-for-violence-sake. They were violence with a certain logic and ‘higher’ objective. Bombing Dresden or Hiroshima was indeed horrible but not without higher purpose: to end the war. Though communists killed tens of millions, they too killed and employed violence for ‘higher’ ends. The Nazis killed a lot of people for the purposes of creating or expanding a new civilization to be ruled by the ‘superior, noble, and beautiful.’ . We can abhor or disagree with all these ‘civilized’ rationales for violence, but not all forms of violence are the same.
　
Anyway, there was an element in the New Right that was paganist, nature-worshiping, and even primitivist. Carl Jung argued that the spiritual realm of the ‘Aryans’ was more fecund and creative than that of the Jews since Europeans came under monotheism much later than the Jews. Since (Northern)Europeans had lived in a natural state(and in tune with natural spirits) longer than most civilized peoples, their collective consciousness was more alive with imagery, dreams, and spirits of a time when man, streams, rivers, mountains, and beasts were one.
There were certain strains in the modern European Right which tapped into this vein and longing. And, though Nazism embraced modernity and technology, it too had aspects centered around nature. The fact that music was the greatest achievement of the German peoples also fueled the notion that Germans had a greater and deeper connection to nature and emotions than other peoples. It’s no accident that German music was one of the most important elements of the German Right. If Hitler’s architectural vision was essentially Greco-Roman, his emotions had been charged with the neo-pagan intensity of Wagner’s music.
　
Of course, Nazism turned out to be a crude caricature of European history and culture, a kind of bazooka bubble gum comic strip. Even so, there were some talented and serious men in or associated with the movement.
Hitler too was an intelligent person with extensive knowledge of certain aesthetic matters, and he could certainly hold interesting–if somewhat repetitive–conversations on art, philosophy, and history. His main problem wasn’t really ignorance but a personality marked by contempt, arrogance, and intolerance which made it impossible to consider any views markedly different from his own. Since he regarded himself as a visionary-genius-sorcerer-Siegfried-Lohengrin sent to save his people and create New World Order, he could only tolerate worshipers and sychopants. Though Hitler had many bad ideas, the main problem was his bad personality, essentially a petty and shabby one that could never admit any wrong. Thus, even though Germans had served him loyally to the end and died in the millions, Hitler ranted about how they had failed him and how all of Germany deserve to be destroyed forever and be wiped off the face of the Earth. Not once did he ever blame himself for what came to befall Europe.
　
The primitivist or pagan-ist aspect of the Modern Right causes problems in political discourse, especially in the United States where rightism or conservatism is so closely linked with Christianity, Zionism, technology, capitalism, development, money, and so on. Of course, there are the cult of hunting on the Right, the cowboy myths, and the idea that the small towns/suburbs/farm villages/low population-density states(like Montana) are better than big cities like NY or Los Angeles. There’s also Conan the Barbarian comic books and movies. Still, the emphasis on the American Right has been Mastery over than being one with nature. There’s a difference between a hunter who seeks adventure and meat AND a liberal outdoors man who wants to commune with nature. Also, many conservative people living in proximity with nature cut down trees and mine for natural resources. Sarah Palin certainly loves the natural wonders of Alaska but is also for exploiting the resources. One can make a good argument for balancing the appreciation of nature with the need for economic development. Indeed, the great Theodore Roosevelt did just that. But, a more familiar face of modern conservatism is the obnoxious swine called Rush Limbaugh who thinks it’s a great idea to clear every forest and kill every animal that isn’t a cat, dog, or cow to make way for another golf course. This kind of philistine fat-ass consumerist conservatism is sadly popular on the American Right.
　
In contemporary politics, we do tend to associate everything pro-nature with the Left. Many see environmentalism as socialism-in-disguise. Many associate nature freaks with hippie naivete or Hollywood liberal fantasies. Conservatives scoff at nature programs on PBS which present nature as wondrous and paradisiacal while the world of man is presented as greedy and insatiable. (If man is indeed greedy and insatiable, it’s because he is, after all, an animal possessed of NATURAL emotions. Any animal will gorge and indulge itself as much as possible. If we do more damage than other species, it’s due to our higher intelligence and capacity for self-satisfaction, not due to some special evil. Do killer whales show any mercy or decency when they come upon seal pups? Or, do they act like a bunch of Rush Limbaughs of the sea?)
There is a great deal of truth to these charges. Many in the environmental movement are indeed closet-socialists who found a convenient anti-capitalist cause following the fall of communism.
And, there is indeed something naive about the liberal Dances-with-Wolves kind of nature-romanticization.
Few movies have depicted nature in its fury and fullness. ‘Aguirre: the Wrath of God’ and ‘Fitzcaraldo’ by Werner Herzog are among the rare exceptions. And, there have been some nature documentaries that show not only the beauty but also the ugly ferocity of nature: ‘Eternal Enemies: Lions and Hyenas’ by National Geographic is maybe the best. But, most of what we’ve gotten are idealized glowing slow-mo images padded with gushy music that turns your stomach.
　
In the 19th century, Americans were too busy settling the continent to really enjoy the beauty. They were more into the bounty. Oddball eccentrics and rich people who could afford leisure were the first people to really see natural beauty as a value in and of itself than in a utilitarian manner. If a pioneer came upon a beautiful valley and staked his claim, he may indeed have enjoyed the scenery, but his primary objective was to make the place productive and livable for his own family and for commerce. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to live like Indian savages. There was simply too much work to be done–much of it by hand even into the early 20th century.
　
So, it’s not surprising that environmentalism developed in cities where people could idealize about Edenic nature. For them, nature wasn’t snake bites, foxes raiding the henhouse, a cougar eating one’s dog, a bear taking off one’s head, or mosquitos eating one alive. It was all that lush images and romantic ideas gleaned from books, movies, TV, or lectures.
Also, there was a sense that though civilization was good and necessary, there was too much or enough of it, and therefore the remaining natural areas should be preserved. (Similarly, Climate Change people argue that everything must be done to prevent the Third World from catching up to the First since the level of pollution and over-exploitation of nature will not only eradicate much that is beautiful but also do irreparable harm to all of mankind.) Hippies had a funny way of embracing nature. They went to upstate NY in 1969 and rolled around in the mud and their own feces for three days. The more savvy environmentalists put on suits and started up NGO’s generously funded by corporations and rich people who want to earn moral credits as ‘conscientious’ businessmen. Besides, everyone who went to college came under the influence of liberal and leftist ideology.
　
There was also a racial element to the politics of environmentalism, at least in the New World. In Europe, the modern right could wax romantic about primitive people living ‘in harmony’ with nature since indigenous pagan-barbarians of pre-Christian Europe had been white or ‘Aryan’. German rightists romanticized Germanic barbarian warriors, the ancestors of modern Europeans. In the New World it was a different story since civilized white people came and conquered–or drove out–the indigenous or savage peoples. To romanticize about primitives in the Americas meant to favor the "American Indians" over the whites. In the European context, even if one favored the Germanic barbarian brute over the civilized Roman, one was still for White Power. One could be pro-nature and pro-pagan and still be pro-white. This wasn’t possible in the Americas where highly civilized waves of white people with superior weapons took the land from the native peoples, and then chopped down trees and turned entire areas into farms, towns, and cities. So, part of the reason why there has been a more muted primitivism and nature worship among white American rightists has something to do with this racial dynamic. Of course, there was the myth of the cowboys or Western gunslingers as icons of the Wild West along with the Indians, but if Indians stood for an eternally savage Wild West, cowboys and gunslingers–despite their attachment to the WILD West–represented the vanguard elements in the eventual taming of the West.
For this reason, the modern paganist right tends to be more European than American.
It’s also true that radical or extreme ideologies always had bigger appeal and greater success in the Old World than the New World. Perhaps, the ideology of extreme reaction had less appeal in the New World since there was less of a tradition or heritage to safeguard and cherish. Besides, the whole point of coming to the New World was to get away from the old one.
It’s also possible that the ideology of RADICAL revolution had less appeal in the Americas since newness was simply an evident fact of social and natural reality. In Old Europe, one needed an ideology of The New in order to feel new since everything was steeped in deep history and tradition. In the New World of the Americas, newness was all around in the form of material evidence. A pioneer merely needed to move westward to find ever new territories and new opportunities and dreams.
United States has long since been explored, conquered, claimed, and settled, but the spirit of The New lives on. Also, US is so large that if one tires of one particular place–say NY or LA–, one can pack up things and move to–and discover–a new world in another part of the country. But, it wasn’t just about land but vision too. Russia still has lots of unclaimed or undeveloped land, but a spirit of newness and discovery has been lacking in the Russian mentality shaped by the repressive Orthodox Church, serf mentality, communism, and authoritarian gangsterism.
　
It’s also possible that there is a psyche of Americanism that idealizes favors immigration because of the perception that immigrants revitalize America. For many white Americans who don’t have many or any children, inviting immigrants is like surrogate parenthood. Parents re-discover the world through the fresh eyes and ears of their young ones. Similarly, established and settled Americans take some kind of giddy romantic pleasure from the notion that immigrants are like the pioneers of yesteryear whose energy and excitement will infuse America with new life. Adults rediscover the joy of Christmas through the exuberance of their children, and settled Americans rediscover the excitement of the New World through the romance of new waves of immigration. Of course, most of today’s ‘immigrants’ are indigenous or mestizo people from Mexico for whom the ‘New World’ is their ‘Old World’ stolen from them by white folks. Mexicans who cross the SW border don’t feel that they are beginning anew in the New World but only feel that they are taking back what is rightfully theirs.
For most Mexicans, it’s reconquista of their old and sacred land stolen by the Gringo.
And tides and tides of Third World immigration is such that the New World may soon come to resemble the Old Third World with all its poverty, crime, disease, and dysfunctions. If current levels of immigration continue, there will be nothing distinctly ‘new’ about the New World.
　
Anyway, there was a primitivist strain in the European modern right, and this element also existed within Nazism itself. Heinrich Himmler for one was an avid ‘scholar’ of ancient Germanic peoples. If anything, many on the Left found this atavistic, childish, barbaric, and ridiculous. The radical left took pride in its rationalism and modernity. To be sure, a powerful and romantic pro-nature aspect in the writings of Rousseau had left a lasting imprint on leftist thinking. And, many great Romantic poets and artists of the 19th century were on the Lleft too. But, there was a dividing line between the romantic irrational left and the radical rationalist left. Marx was of the latter, and he insisted on a wholly RATIONAL and INDUSTRIAL model for society. He insisted on a scientific approach to understand and solve the problems of man–even if many regarded his economic theory as anything but. Since the radical rationalist left was more united, better organized, and had a clearer purpose, they came to dominate the leftist discourse in the 20th century. Even so, there was a connection between Rousseau-ism and Marxism. Rousseau had argued that Man was innately and naturally good but corrupted by social institutions. Rousseau recommended a kind of return to nature. Even if Marxists fully embraced the industrial world, they believed in the Rousseauian idea that human nature was essentially good and should be nurtured by a Just State.
The naturalist strain was more pronounced in fascism–especially Nazism–than in communism. This was also probably cultural. Germans have long loved nature and animals, and this was no less true for many in the Nazi movement. Also, as communist Russia had been a late-comer to industrialization and urbanization and eager to suppress the image of the Russian as a primitive boor who danced and wrestled with bears, it’s main emphasis was on industry and urban growth, not nature and rustic-ism(at least in the first few decades of its rule).
　
In terms of idology–the ideology of imagery and vision–, Nazism was more nature-oriented and primitivist than communism. The most famous iconic images of communism show man and woman dressed up as the proletariat. Both figures look manly, sexually interchangeable in some cases. They are ideological beings than natural beings. The figures may be robust and hale but are usually covered with ideological symbolism–the worker’s overall, the monkey wrench, the hammer and sickle.
Nazi idology, on the other hand, emphasized the naked or natural beauty of man and woman. If communism was about the worker’s uniform, Nazism was about the Aryan’s blood. The Aryan man stood tall and muscular, noble and proud. The Aryan woman stood beautiful and dignified, radiant. Communist idology suggested that the Proletariat is the newest and the final product of human history. Nazism was saying that the Aryan is Eternal(as a natural principle). Communists perceived all of human history as a story of human oppression. Nazis looked upon the past and believed that the Aryan, whatever his cultural manifestation–pagan barbarian, leader, artist, slave, king, businessman, etc–was always a noble creature by the virtue of the sacred blood that flowed in his veins. Nazism was a revolutionary ideology, but it was Eternalist than Progressive. Though Nazis believed in the necessity of change–especially in science and technology–, they regarded some principles to be timeless: racial nobility of the Aryans, the wickedness of the Jews, the natural differences between man and woman, the sacredness of nature, the importance of beauty, man-as-warrior-and-defender, woman-as-wife-and-mother, the hierarchy within mankind and nature.
Nothing is as eternal as nature, and Nazism tapped into the eternal laws of Darwinism. Thus, Nazism was a nature-based ideology even as it directed its energies toward building vast cities and war machines. Their concept of civilization was not one that opposed or existed outside of nature but one that grew from nature’s deepest and truest principles. Thus, Hitler imagined the visionary city of Germania as the natural expression of Aryan genius and creativity. It would rise from the ground of the Aryan just as a magnificent tree rises from sacred fertile soil. Thus, there was a theoretical connection between the natural realm and the man-made realm in Nazi thought.
Of course, one could make a kind of Eternalist argument for communism as well. Man has always sought moral truth and justice. Buddha, Jesus, the Greek philosophers, and sages and saints of all cultures had sought The Great Wisdom regarding the moral and spiritual truth of man. One could argue that the truth is really in each of our hearts, but most of us fail to grasp it because of lack of sufficient thought, reflection, empathy, and wisdom. But, people like Jesus supposedly grasped the truth–for all time and for all peoples. The Truth could argue that all people are equal before God or Science. If there is one god or one truth, then all men must attain this knowledge. And if there is one truth for all men, who are some people–aristocrats or bourgeoisie–to monopolize power and wealth over other men? In this sense, communism could be seen as the culmination of the man’s Eternal search for moral truth and justice. With both Nazism and communism, the methods could be new but the principles could be eternal. Sacred Beauty with Nazism vs Rational Truth with communism.
　
Anyway, the issue of primitivism on the modern right is interesting to us in light of what has become of nature-based ideologies sympathetic to paganism. This is all the more obvious when confronting a movie like AVATAR. Though the American Right may be ideologically and habitually accustomed to seeing the film as anti-white, anti-right, anti-American, pro-leftist, pro-people-of-color, and etc, AVATAR presents multiplicities of meanings. This would be true regardless of the artistic or ideological intention. Even if Cameron sees himself as a liberal and meant his film to be an anti-American-imperialist screed, his film, like all creative works, has a life of its own. Also, the artistic process is as subconscious as conscious. In many cases, the great artist doesn’t really know what he’s doing. He only thinks he knows what he’s doing. Thus, it’s not surprising that many Christian art works convey the spirit of paganism. A work of art that may be superficially puritanical may actually be densely layered with sensuality. Also, the very act of repressing or demonizing certain elements, ideas, or figures in the act of creation could be a confession of fascination with the allure of the ‘dark side’. Horror movies are about good people fighting and prevailing over the forces of evil, darkness, and/or violence, but they also betray humanity’s eternal fascination–even addiction–to the occult and ‘evil’. We want to see the vampire killed at the end, but we also want to see him rise again and again in new books and movies.
So, even if the outward or conscious message of AVATAR is "greedy white man exploits noble people-of-color-and-nature", there may be underlying themes and subtexts unknown to James Cameron himself. Nothing is ever exactly as its makers intend it to be. Thus, communists thought their ideology was purely materialistic and scientific when, in fact, they worshiped a new religion. Many Catholic artists expressed their repressed sexuality through the sensual colors and forms in paintings or through music. This is even more brazen in the black church where all that singing about God and Jesus really sounds like all them Negroes really just wanna jungle-boogie and have an orgy on the disco-church floor. Though many traditional black church leaders condemned the idiomatic uses of the gospel by Ray Charles and his ilk, it never occurred to them that essence of gospel music was masked African sexuality. The real energy wasn’t in the mind or heart but in the groins and buttocks. It’s no wonder so many Christian Negroes are just as crazy and out-of-control as ones who do not attend church.
So, upon a closer look, it should be obvious that there’s more to AVATAR than meets the ear. Cameron tells us one thing but shows us something more multifaceted. And it is in this zone of ambiguity that AVATAR has something in common with the ideology of the European modern right. AVATAR embraces a view that is organic and cyclical. Nature itself may be eternal but no element IN nature is eternal. Forests grow and die, mountains rise and fall, rivers form and erode away, animals evolve into new forms; there is a constant cycle of birth and rebirth.
From this viewpoint, what is–or should be Eternal–is not a particular culture, political power, race, or tradition. The only thing that is Eternal is the organic power of nature and its natural cycles.
Mircea Eliade and Oswald Spengler both developed this view of nature, humanity, and history. Rise and fall of civilizations are natural. For Eliade, the Jewish and the Judeo-Christian tradition violated and cheated this principle. Judaism and its outgrowth Christianity–and Islam–found the secret to eternal life. They defied the ways of nature. Judaism was regarded as worse than Christianity because the latter at least possessed a youthful spirit whereas Judaism was marked by decrepit old dogma. If Christianity discovered the fountain of eternal youth–bound up with excitement of evangelizing the whole world–, Judaism guarded the well of eternal senility. The iconic image of the New Testament is the young Jesus with his young followers. Jesus dies in his youth and his disciples are filled with youthful vigor, even as they grow older. The iconic images in the Old Testament are Abraham in old age and Moses in old age. But, both religions defied the organic law of nature: Nothing Lasts Forever; things must grow, die, and decay, and from the decay, new things must grow. For this reason, though Spengler was worried about the decline of the West, he didn’t necessarily see it as the tragic end of humanity but a process whereby a new order may rise from the natural death of the present one. In this sense, the idea of the 1000 yr Reich had more of a Jewish than a Spengerlian ring. Hitler too was trying to create a permanent philosophical-political order in the world. But, Hitler was a literal-minded fool who believed that a political system could be virtually everlasting whereas the Jews made allowances for the fall of political orders and focused more on spiritual, moral, and cultural principles. Indeed, the secret to the Jewish success was the acceptance of political or secular failures–kings come and go. Jewish genius was salvaging the spiritual-moral core amidst the fall of cities or temples, material wealth and power.
Hitler, on the other hand, invested himself and his ideology into the PHYSICAL ASPECTS of Nazi Germany. But as we all know, when the monuments fell, so too did the ideology.
For this reason, there is a crucial difference between modern rightism and Nazism. Nazism grew out of the modern right but simplified or twisted many ideas to suit its near-sighted or hubris-laden political purposes. It’s no wonder that Spengler soon grew disillusioned with Nazism which he came to regard as a boy scout/comic strip version of deeper stream of rightist ideas. Hitler was like cruddy version of King Midas whose touch turned everything into iron and concrete, and Nazi aesthetics reflected that. For all his admiration for Greco-Roman art, most of Nazi art was stiff, rigid, lifeless, inorganic, obvious, and dull. Hitler wasn’t interested in the wholeness of nature’s forms and processes but only sought to freeze-dry or fossilize what he deemed the best of nature.
In Spengler’s universe, the process is crucial–seed sprouting into a stem, stem producing a bud, the bud blossoming into flower, flower withering, plant dying and decaying, and preparing the ground for the next flower. For Hitler, all that mattered was the perfect form: Take a flower in bloom and turn petal into metal. One can’t breathe freely looking at Nazi art. It was art for those with iron lungs.
The great painters and sculptors created the illusion of life and vitality through paintings and sculpture. Though physically frozen in time, they poetically glowed and flowed with organic power. With Nazi art, it was as if time stood still at the command of a dictator playing traffic cop with aesthetics.
　
If Cameron has something in common with Nazism or industrial fascism, it’s his fascination, indeed obsession, with war machines and technological gadgetry. His dream job might have been designing new weapons for the Wehrmacht or Luftwaffe. But, Cameron has a thing for nature too, and this is where his views intersects with those of the modern right or organic fascism. A great love of both technology and nature may not necessarily be contradictory or hypocritical. After all, technology, whether primitive or advanced, big or small, often tries to mimic, simplify, or expand on nature. There is something awesome about mountains, and so we build artificial mountains in the form of skyscrapers. Man have always dreamt of the looming clouds and the flight of birds, and have replicated their power by building flying machines. The most popular animals in zoos are tigers, elephants, bears, lions, and giant snakes, and why? We admire their power and awesomeness as organic fighting machines. Indeed, early technology employed animals such as horses and elephants to do heavy lifting or serve in battle. And, it’s not surprising that the most powerful German tanks were called ‘Panther’(Panzer V) and ‘Tiger’(Panzer VI), or the American fighter jet has been called the hornet. We use technology against nature but also as an extension of nature. Technology gives us the power or advantages that other organisms or forces of nature has. Our furnaces are like volcanos. Our hearing devices are doggy or cat ears. The telescope is like eagle eyes. Spaceships are like comets and asteroids. And, technology, whatever its form, must obey the laws of nature. We can go around gravity but we can never defy it.
　
To be sure, there are two views of nature. There’s the fluffy-duff hippie version where everything is in harmony. It’s where you go to the forest, drink clear spring water, commune with trees, sing with the birds, and dance with the bears. The movie ‘Grizzly Man’ told the story of a kind of neo-hippie who thought he could party with the bears. This naive view of nature sees nature as being in harmony with itself. In a movie like ‘Koyaanisqatsi’, mankind is stressed out and in conflict while nature is at peace. There is much to be said for nature and for nature-time, but in truth, the forces of nature–especially its living organisms–are constantly at war, not at peace, with one another. Of course, hippie and new age types know full well that animals eat other animals, but they see it as a kind of meaningful ecological balance where every organism is happy to play its part–as if a deer volunteers to be eaten by a cougar. The ecological interdependence of nature is undeniable, but it is also a vicious, cruel, and ruthless system. In short, there is ugliness at the core of outwardly beautiful nature.
　
The modern right view of nature is closer to the truth. Nature is understood to be fierce and brutal. It is also beautiful. Indeed, following Darwinian logic, nature is beautiful because it is brutal–it is brutiful. The healthy, hale, and strong destroy and devour the weak and sickly. Over time, only the most powerful, efficient, adaptive, and beautiful life-forms survive and pass down their superior genes. This is why wolves are more impressive than dogs. This may be why there’s such a white fascination with black physique, musical expression, stronger vocal chords, and sexuality. Whites look upon blacks like dogs look upon wolves: with fear and loathing but also with a kind of envy and admiration. Since blacks evolved longer under harsher natural conditions, only the physically robust/strong and instinctively fierce survived. Though blacks have lower IQ when it comes to logical reasoning, they have faster intuitive reflexes when it comes to many things. Europeans and especially Asians, on the other hand, are physically less robust and ‘charismatic’ than blacks because they practiced agriculture for 1000s of yrs in colder climes. Agriculture led to surplus of food, which meant that even the weak and sickly got to survive to breed. It’s no wonder there are so many geeks and gimps among whites and especially Asians. Just look the woopsy-doopsy skin-n-bones British males.
Also, more close-knit societies that developed in the East and West tended to exile and even kill off more rowdy members. Also, colder climate meant that people had to huddle together to conserve their energy over long winters instead of jungle booging all night long. Thus, the Asian and European temperament grew calmer as the wilder ones conserved less energy in winter and died off–or were exiled by the community. Europeans and Asians became ‘tamed’ genetically like the dogs. Blacks remained more like wolves, which is why it’s harder for them to function in a civilized setting. Their core nature is still wild and rough. But, just as we admire the bigger, stronger, and sharper wolf more than the sappy, slavish, and droopy dog, there is a universal fascination with blackness–especially athleticism, musicality, and charisma–among many peoples around the world.
One reason for Obama’s appeal in US and the EU may be white liberal guilt, but it’s also because there is also a kind of Alpha Male wolfishness about him lacking in most ‘white boy’ politicians.
(When America used to respect the elderly as wise and experienced, older white men could command a certain respect–as Eisenhower and Reagan in their days–, but America has grown more infantile and celebrity-oriented. Just like the biggest movies are made mostly for teens, national politics has become a game of celebrity, and that means younger guys like Clinton, Bush II, and Obama have the advantage. No country for old men, indeed. John McCain, for all his faults, did honorably serve his country and had a long political record on his resume. Bush II and Obama had nothing to show for themselves, but they had right pop appeal image.)
Just as inferior wolf males submit to the top wolf male, a lot of white males submitted to Obama–black man as alpha male. Of course, there are white males who do not submit, but even they feel a great fear of the black male. They will deny it with the usual white-male-pride-and-power bluster, but the fear is real and palpable. Angry black males resent the greater wealth of the white males, but black males do NOT fear the ‘white boy’. Angry white males, on the other hand, are mainly angry because blacks can ‘whup their asses’ in school, public spaces, in sports, in music, and etc. White women willingly run off to the alpha male black male. So, the anger of the white male is not that of the robust and confident alpha male but the fear and resentment of the beta male with wounded pride. This goes back to when Jack Johnson destroyed all the white guys in the world. And, Joe Louis destroyed the ‘Aryan’ Schmeling in a minute or two. ‘White boys’ are in big trouble.
　
Of course, some organisms have evolved to lead a parasitic existence(though one can argue all forms of consumption is a variation of parasitism. Leeches suck blood from the host, we suck oil from the ground. What’s the difference between a flea sucking on the blood of a deer and a cougar killing and eating the deer? In a way, one may say parasites are more welcome than predators. Would you rather have lice on your pubes or be eaten by a tiger? Indeed, parasites require you to live so they can keep sucking your blood whereas a predator will kill and devour you from head to toe. It may be Jews have been successful because they’ve been more parasitic than predatory. Predators come right at you–like the Nazis or Japanese Imperialists–and it’s kill-or-be-killed. You fight and win or lose. Parasites, on the other hand, come and stick onto you like it’s a part of you while sucking your blood.)
　
Anyway, just consider the historical irony of how NATURE WORSHIP has played out in politics. Though there was no single form of leftism and no single form of rightism in the 20th century, the two monstrous forms that clashed were communism and fascism/Nazism. Allied with fascism/Nazism was Japanese militarism which had elements of fascism but was different in one crucial way. Fascism and Nazism, unlike Japanese Emperor-ism or Japanese Divine-Blood-Yamato-ism, tended to be secular and rational in its use of irrationalism whereas Yamato-ism was fully irrational. Fascism accepted the irrational nature of man. It understood that man doesn’t live by facts and logic alone. Man needs the concept of the sacred. There needs to be an emotional and ‘spiritual’ bond amongst the people. The identity of a people is rooted in the myth of history and peculiar scents of its culture–just like different animals have different odors crucial to marking territory. Fascism acknowledged and made use of the irrational, but there was a rational understanding of the fundamentally irrational nature of man.
It’s like the great neo-fascist thinker Joseph Campbell didn’t literally believe in God or gods but had the most profound respect for myths as man’s poetic search for sacred unity with the universe, time, nature, and other men.
In the fascist world view, god was indeed dead–killed by rational science–, but the god-instinct within man was still alive and possibly eternal–or eternally rooted in his psyche. If man is, by nature, ‘spiritual’, what does he do in a world where God and gods have been exposed as nonexistent by rational science? Man must rely on sacred symbols and embrace a metaphorical-mythological view of reality–in some spheres at least. Thus, ‘Aryan’ blood becomes ‘sacred’. Thus, race becomes not just a scientific but a spiritual category. Thus, history becomes a kind of myth, like when Mussolini said Italy must revive the glory of the Roman Empire because inside every Italian is a Roman warrior dying to get out. Even so, Mussolini and Hitler rationally played with these ideas. They didn’t LITERALLY believe that certain things or peoples possessed sacredness in the literal sense; rather, sacredness is something we impose on and value in things for our purposes. Whether something was sacred or not was a function of subjectivity–individual or collective. Hitler did believe that the ‘Aryans’ were indeed the superior race but he didn’t believe them to be a sacred race in the literal sense. Their blood became sacred through the subjective ‘spiritual’ longing and imagination of visionaries like himself.
It was different with the Japanese who literally and truly irrationally believed in the divinity of the Emperor and the notion that the Yamato race had descended from the Sun god and goddess. Nazis made a big deal of Germanic mythology and its sacred place in the imagination and ‘spiritual’ life of the German people, but no one actually believed that Odin or Thor had existed or that the German forests were once populated by dragons and giants. But, the Japanese mythology was taught as a real living religion and history to the Japanese people during the militarist era. Japanese people were told that the Emperor was indeed a living God. Mussolini came to an understanding with the Catholic Church and gave them considerable control over spiritual and cultural affairs, but he was himself an atheist; he made certain concessions to the church because he rationally understood the mass hunger for spiritual life. There were surely many Japanese leaders who were educated enough to know that Japanese mythology was all bunk, but the official ideology of Japan during the militarist era did insist on the literal sacredness of the emperor and unique divine blood of the Japanese people. If Hitler insisted that Aryan blood was superior on a scientific basis–and for that reason deserving to be sanctified–, the Japanese really believed in the divine nature of the Japanese blood. Fascism was a rationalist use of the irrational whereas Japanese Emperor-ism or Yamato-ism was an irrationalist use of the rational. Japanese adopted rational Western science and technology but the core of their ideology, perspective, and beliefs was atavistic and occultist. To be sure, there were some genuine kooks in the Nazi movement too. Both Heinrich Himmler and Rudolf Hess were seriously into the occult, which may explain why Hess has a soft spot for the Hindu stuff and Himmler had a thing for Japanese culture. Interestingly enough, Hess was the most humane of the prominent Nazis whereas Himmler was the most psychotic.
　
Communism, unlike fascism, claimed to be utterly scientific and rational. This didn’t mean communists were out to destroy nature or had no appreciation for beauty, but it did mean that they took a mainly utilitarian view of the world. Nature existed for man to exploit for the well-being of man. Also, man was essentially an animal that could be tested and improved like lab rats. Under a purely rationalist viewpoint, there should be no ‘spiritual’ place for man in the world. Of course, man was higher than other animals, but this had to be proved on a rational scientific basis–such as the observation that man is more intelligent and sensitive. But, one could not say that man was specially chosen by God and is thus absolutely unique from all the other animals. Man was indeed an animal–the most advanced kind. It is difficult to spiritualize or sanctify anything with this rationalist view. Man is a part of nature, but his greatest attribute is his reason and capacity for morality. Only man can use higher reason and understand morality & laws. Thus, it is necessary for man to expand and build a world where all men are raised according to their needs and ability. If cattle or laboratory rats can be raised and taken care of in a rational–clean, efficient, and humane–manner, why shouldn’t this be done with humans as well? The difference, of course, is that cattle and lab rats are raised for the benefit of mankind whereas humans would be raised in a rational-systemized way for their own benefit. However, you slice or dice it, it’s hard to have a romantic view of nature with communist ideology. If love and appreciation of nature did survive during the Soviet era, it owes more to Russian culture which survived than to communism who sought to ‘rationally’ systemize everything.
There were back-to-nature forms of leftism but they remained on the periphery and had no means of gaining much total power. Also, even rustic forms of leftism–such as living in small communes–emphasized social organization and utilitarian application upon the land than a worship of nature. Kibbutzim embraced the agricultural life, not the natural life. Agriculture is a form of technology. Of course, rightists didn’t return to nature either, but the Japanese really worshiped nature as being alive with countless spirits. And the German right was deeply romantic about the dark, powerful, and majestic mystery and beauty of nature–and the mythologies that developed from them. Even if the modern right could not return to nature, its adherents had a ‘spiritual’ respect for nature as the sacred source of all things. They respected not only nature but the laws of nature. Even as Nazism was modern and industrial, its racial science–through advanced medicine and eugenics–sought to mimic the natural processes. Darwinism was understood to be the ‘survival of the fittest’. Many on the modern right felt that civilization was doomed because its wealth and food surplus allowed too many useless and inferior beings to live and breed–indeed outbreed the superior individuals. In other words, the very success of civilization would be its doom. Paradoxically, for civilization–which developed by separating man from brutal nature–to survive and thrive in the long run, it must utilize the laws of nature. Since man cannot literally return to nature and since the natural processes–tooth and claws–are too brutal, the modern right embarked on developing a ‘humane’ system of favoring the superior over the inferior. Thus, Nazi eugenics, though aimed specifically against certain races, was also meant to be used on Germans as well. The less ‘Aryan’ Germans would gradually be weeded out through generations of eugenic policy whereupon the final result would be a society of only the healthy, intelligent, and beautiful.
In this sense, many Nazi leaders could be said to be selfless and self-loathing. Self-loathing because so many of them were ugly, crude, short, misshapen, and gross looking–near Neanderthal in many cases. Selfless because their racial policy would eventually rid the Aryan race of people like themselves in favor of tall, beautiful, and noble blonde-and-blue-eyed heroes and heroines. There could be no one as unpleasant looking as Goebbels or Himmler. No one as fat and gross as Goering. No one as idiotic as Streicher. Of course, it’s possible that Nazi leaders considered themselves to be dashing, handsome, and superior. There is no limit to the power of self-delusion. If Woody Allen and Barbra Streisand could pose as sex symbols in 1970s, why not everyone else? If enough people can be fooled into seeing Sarah Jessica Parker or Sandra Oh as attractive, then beauty is in the eye of the beholden(than of the beholder). Same goes for brains too. There are still people who cling to the notion that George W. Bush was really an intelligent president who was underestimated because he couldn’t speak well!
　
Anyway, there is irony in AVATAR being regarded as a leftist movie solely on the basis of its pro-nature and pro-alien-race sympathies and its anti-technology and anti-human(or white) disdain. Few people seem to wonder WHY Cameron has such admiration for the Navis. Is it not because they are tall, beautiful–depending on one’s tastes–, powerful, and healthy? Aren’t they, in a way, a kind of a proto-fascist Alien-Aryan ideal? Some argue that the Navis are supposed to be stand-in for African tribes, the Viet Cong, or the American Indians. But, even this doesn’t make it necessarily leftist. Western leftism did indeed support non-white peoples against white imperialism or white powers, but so did the Western far right. Nazi Germany sided with the non-white Japan and Arab nationalists against white British Empire and the US. United States–a right-wing imperialist nation in the eyes of the Left–supported the non-white Afghanis against the white Soviet invasion/occupation in the late 70s and 80s. There were many proxy wars where Soviet Union supported non-whites against the ‘imperialist’ whites and where the US and the West supported non-whites against Soviet ‘aggression’. And, there was a lot of this between the British and the French. French hired, supported, and used American Indians to fight the Anglos, and the Anglos did the same to undermine the power of the French. One could argue that the Left acted on principle while the Right acted on self-interest, and there may some truth to that assertion, at least ideologically. But, in truth, communist nations also acted mainly on national self-interest, and there did exist what might be called the anti-imperialist Western right–Knut Hamsun, who reviled British imperialism, was one of them. We have them today in the US in the form of the Anti-War conservatives who warn of the pitfalls of empire building–for peoples of other countries as well as for us. And men like T. E. Lawrence , though no raving leftist, came to sympathize with Arabs fighting for their own nationhood. There was more than self-interest or mere cynicism in his participation in the Arab struggles against the Turks–who were arguably white Europeans.
At any rate, rightism is about white power only if we take a Eurocentric view. To a white power activist, rightism means the interests of his own people. Therefore, there is a fallacious tendency to regard everything opposed to white power as ‘leftist’. But, it’s not that simple. The struggle could be between two right-wing modes of thought. In this sense, American Indians were all right-wingers fighting for their pride, traditions, beliefs, and sacred soil. If anything, American whites who conquered and settled North America with universal principles of human rights, Christian Faith, common laws, and progressive/reformist spirit were relatively far more leftist–ideologically–than the American Indians who were fighting for nothing other than Blood-and-Soil. Because American Indians lost and came to be perceived as a ‘victim group’, they came to be associated with leftism, something that the descendants exploited in order to win more concessions from the white majority. But, American Indians–as proud warriors or a defeated people–were really no more leftist than the Japanese from the Meiji Reform era to the end of WWII. Japanese too came with blows with the West over right-wing ideas. Japan wanted to rule the Asian continent which they saw as their own backyard, and as such, they regarded Western powers as unwelcome aggressors in the Asian sphere. The war between Japan and the West was rather like the war between the British and the Zulus in Southern Africa. It was not a case of left vs right but right vs right. British imperialism vs Zulu imperialism. Also, even leftism adopted by non-white peoples were often employed for right-wing purposes. While men like Mao and Ho Chi Minh were indeed economic communists and true believers in Marxism, they were also fierce nationalists and one of the main appeals of communism was as a weapon for national ‘liberation’.
　
Cameron’s siding with the Navis against the humans may indeed be traitorous, but it isn’t necessarily leftist. I’m not arguing what is better or worse: rightism or leftism. Both have valid ideas. If modernity leans closer to leftism–ideologically at least–, it’s because we rely on reason and universal law. But, all successful nations are also rightist because no society can survive or thrive for long without a unifying culture, common racial or ethnic identity, strong borders, and social discipline founded on confidence and pride. While a totally rightist society would be rigid, static, and undesirable, a totally leftist agenda will only be a utopian dream existing in theory and certain to cause more harm than good if forcibly applied on the real world. Both extreme rightism and extreme leftism extinguish freedom since individual freedom seeks liberation from the confines of established dogma/customs and from the power of the intrusive state.
　
There are two ways of approaching the Navis: As literal manifestation of the wonder and the harmony of nature–a rather stupid and simple-minded fantasy. But, they can also be regarded in the metaphorical sense–embodiment of the SPIRIT of nature. Perhaps, AVATAR should be seen as fairytale, fantasy, or mythology than as science fiction. We tend to literal-minded with the sci-fi universe because it’s dominated by technology, and technology–no matter how outlandish or unlikely–obey the laws of nature. In other words, spaceships operate thanks to some ‘scientific’ principle even if such were invented by the sci-fi author or filmmaker. There should be no magic in science fiction. There can be mysterious beings like the extra-terrestrials in 2001 or the strange planet in Solaris. They may mind-bendingly overwhelm our intellectual capacity, but we are to assume that they too are governed by laws of nature, albeit ones beyond our rational understanding.
In fantasy and mythology, on the other hand, magical or miraculous things do happen, and it’s useless to ask why. We are to assume that magical spirits exist everywhere. There are two ways of absorbing this: literally or metaphorically(poetically). We can enjoy the Greek myths as stories of great heroes fighting actual monsters or we can analyze them as metaphors of our inner struggle.
Same is true of the Bible. Literal-minded people read the Genesis as a real story of how God created the moon and the sun, man and woman. Others read it metaphorically, as a contemplation of man’s place in the universe, man’s relation to nature, the loss of innocence, the dangers of lust, the seductive and dangerous power of knowledge.
　
It could be that AVATAR, like STAR WARS, confused a lot of people because it fuses sci-fi elements with fantasy elements. Star Wars has spaceships and robots but also the thing called Force. Is the Force supposed to be magical phenomena whose mysteries cannot be understood but only tapped by man? Its literal and metaphorical presence in the movie is rather confused.
Are we to see the wondrous qualities of the Navis and their paradisiacal planet as metaphors for the beautiful and impenetrable mysteries of nature–which should be left alone(as similarly urged in the opening segment of Akira Kurosawa’s DREAMS)–or did Cameron intend us to see all this wondrousness as a possible reality in another part of the universe? If the quasi-magical elements in AVATAR are to be taken metaphorically, why did Cameron go to such lengths to literally manifest them to such ‘scientific’ degree?
　
To the extent that the Navis are fighting for their sacred homeland, they are indeed tribal rightists. All tribal cultures are rightist in thinking in terms of us versus them. Though tribal communities are not always at war and find means to trade, intermarry, and cooperate, their main identity is determined by territoriality and/or cultural uniqueness. Just as different college fraternities have their own special rituals, different tribal cultures have ways of distinguishing themselves from others. Even the people who came up with the universal one-and-only-god-for-all-the-world, the Jews, were rightist in this sense. They made a clear distinction between who was and wasn’t a Jew, and membership in the Jewish family was strictly proscribed. If anyone could become a Christian by converting to the creed, it wasn’t so easy to become a Jew. For the more conservative Jews, conversion to Judaismis an impossibility since the Old Testament says only one birthed by a Jewish mother can really be Jewish.
Though there are great differences between primitive societies and modern Germany of the Nazi era, there were some commonalities too. Both were into blood-and-soil. As advanced and sophisticated as modern Germany was in the 20th century, the passions that animated the governing ideology from 1933-1945 were essentially tribal-national-racial. Hitler regarded democracy, human rights, and universal values as either fanciful delusions of the over-educated or means by which the mediocre masses sought unwarranted advantages. If Hitler preferred ‘socialism’ over ‘democracy’–though both had leftist connotations–, it was because socialism could be used to control the masses whereas democracy gave power to individuals. Some people brand Hitler a leftist for his ‘socialism’, but despite some leftist aspects of Nazism, it’s more accurate to say Nazism appropriated aspects of leftism in order to serve a radical form of rightism. Fascism from its inception was meant to be pragmatic and ‘creative’–some would call it opportunistic. Mussolini had started out as a principled leftist. Nothing was higher than ideology–even national interests were theoretically secondary. But once Mussolini became an Italian nationalist above all, everything had to be subservient to the nation(or the nationalist state). If aspects of capitalism could be used for good of the nation, no problem. If aspects of socialism could be used, all the better. Mussolini’s thinking was that science, ideas, and knowledge change; and nothing could be done about that. But, there is something constant and ‘eternal’. The Nation. Whether it was capitalism or socialism or whatever dominating current politics, the one constant was the Italian people and culture. Since nation and culture, rather than ideology, were the true constants, there was no need for the ideology to be strictly one thing or another. One can argue that nationalism was the ideology in Fascist Italy, and that was of course true. But, there’s a problem in designating nationalism as a true ideology. A true ideology is about IDEAS. Nationalism is an idea that defies ideas; it’s about blood and soil. Communism demands that one THINK like a communist–at least ideally speaking–, whereas nationalism demands that one FEEL like a nationalist.
　
To be sure, there is something even more constant than nation, which is race. In this sense, National Socialism was more properly ‘eternalist’ than Italian Fascism. Though there was a racial aspect to Fascism–something about the tough macho Italian he-man–, the main emphasis was on HISTORICAL glories of the people of the Italian peninsula. Thus, Mussolini invoked the great achievements of the ancient Romans and the achievements of Italian culture through the ages. There was, however, not much about what "Italians" had been prior to the rise of Rome.
Nazis, on the other hand, emphasized race. The implication was that the Aryan peoples have always been superior by blood, regardless of their cultural and historical achievements. Also, this greatness was traced to a time when the Aryan race first developed. If Italian Fascists were interested in what happened in Ancient Rome and Italy, National Socialist intellectuals searched far and wide–especially focusing on Central Asia–to discover the true origins of the Aryan race. The element of race made Nazism a more genuinely ‘eternalist’ ideology because, while civilizations have been around for only 5000 yrs, human races have been around for tens of thousands of yrs. Mussolini was saying that Italians became great through culture and history. Hitler was saying the Germanic peoples–being ‘Aryan’–have been great(beautiful, noble, courageous, intelligent, etc)from the dawn of their racial birth.
　
The emphasis on race was also convenient to the Germanic peoples since they were later to come to civilization than the peoples of the Near East and southern Europe. When Egyptians built the pyramids, many Northern European peoples were no more advanced than the American Indians. When Ancient Greece reached its height of glory and power, Northern Europeans were tribal barbarians. The mighty Roman Empire, as it expanded up north, regarded the Germanic barbarians as about on the level of African savages–big and strong but not-too-bright. Romans admired the physical size and prowess of the Germanic barbarians and African savages and often made them fight one another in the Coliseum. We still have something like this today, with the top fighters in the world being either black or Northern/Eastern European. Consider Lennox Lewis or Muhammad Ali. Or Brock Lesnar and Vitali Klitschko, big Germanic or Slavic lunks.
In other words, the Germans had much less to be proud of when it came to historical longevity. Though Italy had fallen on hard times in the modern era, they had a history of greatness that reached back to centuries before Christ. Italy was also the center of the Renaissance. German rise to greatness in culture came much later–and owed much to influences from Italy and other Latin nations like France and Spain. Hitler even found much of the Germanic barbarian stuff embarrassing and didn’t want to make too big a deal of it–unlike Himmler who was fascinated by that stuff. Indeed, Hitler included the Greeks and the Latins in the great ‘Aryan’ family of nations. According to this view(developed by certain 19th and 20th century race theorists), Latins became lesser ‘Aryans’ over the years by having practiced race-mixing. But the original ‘Aryan’ builders and conquerors of Greece and Rome were supposedly blonde-and-blue-eyed ‘Aryans’, the best of the best–whose main rivals were the Semitic kingdoms and tribes. It didn’t matter to Hitler that the Germanic peoples themselves accomplished relatively little in ancient times since, as fellow ‘Aryans’, Germans could take collective credit for whatever the Greeks and Romans had accomplished. To Hitler, they were all examples of ‘Aryan’ genius. Hitler may have been sincere in his delusions, but there’s something disingenuous about this kind of perspective. It’s rather like Mongolians taking credit for the civilization of China since both Mongolians and Chinese are Asian. There’s also a black variation of this with American blacks–of sub-Saharan stock–taking credit for the glories of Ancient Egypt since Egypt is part of Africa and since there was a degree of Negroid mixture in Egyptian blood. We know full well there was a clear cultural and geographical distinction between Egyptians and black Africans. Ancient–and many modern–Egyptians may qualify as black if we apply the one-drop rule. After all, even people who look entirely white will sometimes declare themselves as ‘black’ in America. But, that is an Americo-centric view. Egyptians–ancient and modern–would disagree. Also, if the black American insistence of Ancient Egyptian blackness is predicated on the notion that some black people in the US are light-skinned and have prominent Caucasian features(like most Egyptians), then the argument for the ‘blackness’ of Egyptians has been made possible through the experience of black slavery in the US whereby black genes got mixed with whites genes. If white Americans hadn’t enslaved and mixed blood with blacks and hadn’t declared that a drop of black blood defines blackness, there would be no cultural basis for Egyptians being black. If Egyptians being ‘black’ is so important to American blacks, this is only possible through the ideas, notions, and categories that grew out of white American racial or racist thought.
　
Anyway, there is a common rightist ‘ideological’ thread that links the Nazis with the primitive peoples–whatever their race. There was something essentially atavistic and blood-and-soil about the Nazis(even if Hitler and like-minded thinkers tried to fashion their obsessions and prejudices into a full-blown ‘scientific’ ideology). If we tend to associate rightism with Western nationalism/imperialism and leftism with Third World peoples and cultures, this is really an accident of history. Even the imperialist West was ideologically more ‘leftist’ than the non-white peoples around the world. The British Imperialists were far more open to social change, new ideas, progressive thought, and political reform than, say, the Hindus and Muslims of India. Americans fighting in the Vietnam War were less nationalistic and more liberal(and open-minded) than the North Vietnamese who were diehard nationalists and actually conservative on many social matters–no chance of ‘gay marriage’ in communist Vietnam. The Japanese who resisted the incursions of the West and then only adopted Western methods to repel the West were not leftist either. The ideological and moral basis for their anti-Westernism was essentially right-wing. They were trying to preserve what they considered to be sacred to Japan. And, areas that Japan came to rule–Korea and Manchuria–weren’t left-wing but even more right-wing than Japan, which had at least been socially and culturally altered by its adoption of universal Western science and values.
　
Just as Japan adopted Western ideas and ways to repel the West, one could argue that many Third Worlders adopted leftism to serve what were essentially right-wing causes. Just as Japan adopted modernization to fend off the modern West, Third World nations adopted leftism to fend off the influence of Western Progress–of which imperialism could be seen as one. (Though we associate Western imperialism with greedy white exploitation of non-white peoples, it was also a force creating a New World Order, a means to unify the entire world, to set down common rules and laws that would be the same–initially for white people mostly–whether in London or Bombay. Indeed, today’s globalism would be inconceivable without the achievements of white imperialists who, through arms, trade, and persuasion, unified the world like it had never done before–not even by Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan. Even international communism would have been inconceivable without the world created by capitalist-imperialism. It is for this reason that Karl Marx wisely didn’t regard capitalism nor imperialism as true forms of rightism. They were merely earlier forms of leftism to be superceded by the final leftism–communism. If rightism is about defending the social order and hierarchy and if leftism is about upheaval, then nothing was as revolutionary as Western capitalism, and Marx knew it. Nothing was as productive and powerful, as destructive of the old and constructive of the new. Indeed, there could be no real communism without capitalism according to Marx. Marx believed that capitalism was the NECESSARY revolutionary process that would produce the great cities, the great factories, the great wealth. Communism could not produce those things. The role of communism was to take over the entire economy in the name of the people once the industrial achievements were completed under capitalism. Capitalism eventually had to go for it replaced one hierarchy with another–bourgeois power over aristocratic power–and maintained a new system of privilege and inequality, but it was a great and necessary revolutionary force that swept away the old order like no other system before it. It also uprooted people, brought them together in giant cities, loosened family ties and made possible the ‘modern individual’. There was more freedom for people to produce, buy, move about, organize. But, Marx foresaw the demise of capitalism since its inner logic of ruthless exploitation and competition could only lead to giant monopolies which came to concentrate all the wealth and drive everyone else to penury. When that day came, the people would rise up and bring forth a new order. So, Marx didn’t see capitalism as a right-wing force but a necessary, ruthless, and morally flawed revolutionary force. Capitalism wasn’t seen as just a destructive force–like a natural disaster or war–but a productive force. We tend to think that communism is about totally destroying the existing system and building a utopian society from scratch, but that’s really Marxist heresy of the Maoist and Khmer Rouge kind. The idea of communism totally smashing the status quo and creating a radical utopia gained credence because communism mostly triumphed in backward nations without much modern industry. The communist rulers were often faced with pre-modern culture and values which had to expunged in order to make room for universal modern values. And, they had to grow the economy from ground zero. But, this is not what Marx had envisioned. Yes, communism was to rid the world of capitalism but not the product of capitalism. Social organization would have to change, but the communist would essentially be inheriting–or expropriating–the wealth and industry created by the capitalists.
　
And, Marx wasn’t necessarily anti-imperialist either. He noted the imbalance of power and injustice within imperialism, but he also saw Western Imperialism carrying out a historical duty of smashing down barriers all over the world. Marx had little respect for cultures around the world which he considered right-wing, tribal, primitive, atavistic, irrational, and superstitious. Even if Marx regarded Western imperialists as men of greed, ruthless ambition, and nasty prejudices, he still felt they were playing a progressive and unifying(and universalizing) role in history. They were the necessary destructive force tearing down the barriers among mankind. And, the ideas and methods imperialists spread where ever they went–Christianity, free trade, individualism, human rights, education, science, medicine, etc–were still infinitely more progressive, transforming, and even revolutionary(and radical)than the pigheaded customs and beliefs held by ‘savage’ and ‘barbarian’ folks. Imperialism, like capitalism, would one day have to go, but not before they performed their historical duties of transforming and forcibly uniting the entire world. Since non-white cultures and peoples were tribal, xenophobic, and reactionary, they had to be brought into the New World Order by force.
　
This view got profoundly altered by Vladimir Lenin for two reasons. Russia was less developed than the West, and so Lenin and his cohorts had to change Marxism to make the case that even a backward nation was ready for communist revolution; a nation didn’t need to go through the long and arduous process of capitalist transformation. A mostly agricultural nation can leap frog to industrial communism. (Stalin did accomplish this, with the cost of some 20 million lives. Though gruesome, some leftists still defended Stalin on the basis that at least Stalin victimized his own people for their own future benefit whereas Western imperialists victimized non-Westerners–in Africa, Asia, and Latin America–for their immediate pleasure.) Since Russia was isolated and no advanced Western nation jumped on the communist bandwagon, Lenin revised Marxism so that there was no need for long-term transforming power of capitalism and imperialism. World revolutionaries could instantly take on the Western capitalist-imperialists, overthrow them, and be on the socialist path to full-fledged communism. So, Russian communists fanned the flames of ‘revolution’ in the non-white worlds against Western Imperialism. So, Russian communists tried to win over the Chinese–and nearly achieved this–by showing goodwill and providing support to Sun Yat-Sen that weren’t coming to him from Western powers. Even so, one wonders to what extent this was Lenin’s core principle or a political strategy. It appears he had grave doubts about what communism could achieve politically and economically without the fruits of capitalism to expropriate. Leon Trotsky was likewise skeptical about a mostly agricultural and backward nation leapfrogging to industrial communism and invested his main hopes with revolution in crisis-ridden Germany following WWI. Trotsky believed that Germany was sufficiently advanced, industrialized, and wealthy to make a successful transformation to communism, and as such, a communist Germany would be a great example and a core ally to communist Russia. Indeed, as a communist internationalist, Trotsky had no special love for Russia. It could be said he despised most Russians like most American Jews disdain patriotic white Americans. If Germany had indeed gone communist, Trotsky would have likely argued for Berlin, rather than Moscow or Petrograd, as the center of world communism. It was Stalin who believed with ruthless confidence and iron will that a vast agricultural nation could be transformed into an industrial giant within a decade or two.
　
To the extent that there was an ideological or philosophical link between Nazism and tribal nature-primitivism, it is ironic that something like Avatar should be considered ‘leftist’. Nazism was a form of tribalism, after all, whereas communism was universalist in its economic, political, and philosophical agenda. Theoretically, where-you-are matters far less than what-you-believe within the leftist paradigm In contrast, where-you-are(sacred soil under your feet and of your ancestors)is sacred to a rightist. Of course, a rightist may want to expand territory and the power of his own people, and in this regard, all forms of imperialism are rightist in their agenda. Imperialism isn’t about uniting the world to share it equally but conquering the world essentially for the glory and benefit of one’s own people. Alexander conquered for Greek glory, and Genghis Khan conquered for Mongol might.
But a new kind of universalist imperialism developed with the rise of Christianity and Islam. Christians and Muslims claimed to spread their faith and credo–by words or swords–not out of greed or power-lust but to save all of mankind. This was something new in history. Universalist and egalitarian religions–informed with the idea that the all men are the children of God and that a poor powerless can be the spiritual and moral equal of a rich powerful man–added an idealistic element to imperialism. Thus, the Ottoman Turks used Islam to justify the expansion of their empire in the Near East, Central Asia, and Europe. Thus, Christians rationalized the conquest and control of the world as serving God’s purpose of brining the light of truth to the heathens. To be sure, even the Ancient Romans and Greeks thought they were spreading and sharing their higher civilization with the lesser or lower ones whom they conquered. Or, the cultural invasion could go from the weaker to the stronger. Romans conquered the Greeks but Greek culture informed and influenced the Romans. The Mongols conquered China, but Chinese culture, in time, absorbed and elevated the Mongols. The oppressed Christian community came to culturally conquer the mighty pagan Romans. The weaker power can prevail through a kind of cultural hegemony, especially if it offers something intellectually/artistically superior or sensually more appealing. Though WASPS dominated much of America up to the 60s, the cultural Zeitgeist was swinging in the Jewish direction since Jewish writers, intellectual, and creative forces came to dominate much of the cultural scene. Blacks came to dominate in the realm of sports and popular music because they are stronger and their music is raunchier, sexier, and wilder. Though whites are far more numerous and wealthy than blacks, much of the cultural admiration or fascination is the white-for-the-black. Because blacks came to be associated with coolness, athletic prowess, musical charisma, and sexual energy, there is a great sympathy and admiration among many whites for blackness–history, Africa, political issues, etc. Would so many whites be so worked up about noble, wonderful, and colorful Africa if it weren’t for black figures like Oprah, Will Smith, Jazz musicians, rappers, and athletes?
For many whites, blacks are their heroes(hometown sports heroes), dream fantasies(in funky music), and/or role models(Martin Luther King, Obama, and other NOBLE Negroes). If blacks lacked athletic ability and ‘charisma’, I highly doubt if many Western liberals would be SO obsessed about Africans. Take Bono for instance. His a rock star and knows full well that Rock music is steeped in the Negro musical tradition. So, Bono thinks like "I was a lame Irish boy but was spiritually and sensually liberated by the magical energy and power of the Negro. I worship you, Noble Negro!" Also, the world media–mostly owned and controlled by liberal Jews(even foreign news outlets get much of their news from sources controlled by Jews)–has made white people pee in their pants over the myth of Martin Luther King and other NOBLE NEGROES. So, Bono thinks blackness = cool and noble. Black suffering = especially tragic(since blacks are so cool and noble). Since blacks are so cool and noble(and wonderful), it can’t be their own fault that their societies suck so bad. The blame must fall on white imperialism or current Chinese investment in Africa. Blame EVERYONE but blacks themselves–just like Obama blames everything on Bush Jr. but never admits any wrongdoing or foolishness on his part.
　
Politics creates odd bedfellows and there is no iron law of political alliances. Even so, even enemies can have more in common than friends. For instance, the thirteen colonies had more in common with its enemy, Great Britain, than with its allies such as France, Spain, and Prussia which all had less liberal and representative political systems. In the 1970s, US and Red China forged a political partnership though US had more in common with the USSR–Russians are white and their form of communism was comparatively more liberal than the Maoist kind. So, there’s no guarantee that a nation will necessarily be politically closer to others with a similar ideology or same race. During WWII, white Germany was allied with yellow Japan but enemies with Anglo US and UK and white Russia.
Indeed, similarity of ideology may drive certain peoples into heightened conflict. If two political entities have an aggressive warrior-centered culture or an ideology of triumph-via-conquest, they will likely come to blows. Boxers fight one another because they’re committed to the ‘ideal’ of fighting. But, entities can come to blows even if their similar or shared ideologies champion justice or peace. They may compete for the title of the champion of peace or justice. Thus, the various Christian sects and kingdoms battled one another for the king-of-the-hill title as the Defender of Christendom. We’ve seen much the same among the various sects of Islam over the centuries. Soviet Union and Red China split apart in the late 50s over ideological as over national disagreements. Mao accused the Soviets of taking the ‘capitalist-road’ while Soviets accused Mao of reckless ‘adventurism’; both sought to lead the worldwide communist movement. Similarly, the democratic West shifted its allegiance back and forth between communists and fascists in the 20s and the 30s. Initially, communism seemed the more threatening and alien force on the European horizon–not least because it first triumphed in ‘Asiatic’ Russia. Mussolini became the darling as a bulwark against the Left and new kind of progressive and modern right-wing leader. But when Hitler came to power and created lots of trouble, many in the democratic West argued that they had more in common with the communists since communism too was a product of the Enlightenment.
During the period of the Hitler-Stalin pact, it was argued that Nazi Germany and Soviet Union actually shared more in common than with the ‘decadent’ bourgeois democratic powers. Both were radical, ultra-statist, and social-engineer-ist. When Hitler violated this pact by attacking the USSR, USSR was again ideologically included in the ‘progressive’ and even democratic camp.
So, there are many ways to find or neglect ideological affinities or differences between political or cultural entities.
And, this can be done with primitive peoples too. National Socialists could idealize the primitive state of man–at least ‘Aryan’ man–as one ruled by proud warriors and sacred sorcerers, an idea appealing to men like Himmler. But communists and radical leftists could idealize the primitive state of man as one in which people were communally-oriented and shared things in a social order unencumbered with class hierarchy. (There is a such an implication in Hillary Clinton’s "It Takes a Village" which argues that modern society should be organized along the lines of the primitive African communities where the entire village is said to play a role in raising children and managing all aspects of society as a whole.)
Macho types could idealize primitives where men were men(hunters and warriors)and women were women(mothers and wives). Feminists could idealize primitive societies as ‘matriarchal’ than ‘patriarchal’, as social order where the sexes are more equal. .
War-monger types could respect primitives as fierce tribesmen willing to fight for ‘land and pussy’ and peacenik types could romanticize primitives as nature children living in harmony with nature. What appealed to the right about primitivism was the centrality of ‘blood and soil’ whereas what appealed to the left was the more ‘egalitarian’ sharing of goods and power within the tribe. In this sense, one could say both modern rightism and modern leftism have a primitivist longing in their ideologies. Even as they embraced modernity and progress, they were trying to go ‘back to the Garden’. As to whether this paradise was ruled by proud warriors or maintained by some intuitive egalitarianism was in the eye of the beholder. In this sense, the politics surrounding the Navi Tribe in AVATAR can be interpreted as leaning ‘leftist’ or ‘rightist’ or both. The Navis do seem to be a ‘superior’ race of greater strength, higher intelligence, deeper natural wisdom, and more varied ‘spiritual’ powers. If we are to admire them for their superiority, then the notion of leftist equality is negated. However, they also seem to maintain a society without the kind of hierarchy of power and competitive mania that marks modern human societies. As such, the Navis could represent what humanity has lost in its search for greater wealth and power–the link not only with nature but sacred bond with fellow man.
　
But, let us focus on the rightist aspect of the Navis. They are indeed a tall, handsome, impressive, and intelligent people. Though primitive, they seem to have all the advantages of technology through their natural attributes. If humans need technology to rise above nature, Navis seem to rise above nature within nature. They don’t need airplanes to fly. They don’t need modern weapons to wage war. They don’t need modern agriculture to feed everyone. They are unlike primitive man who must struggle against nature all day and night to have just enough to eat. Navis are less like primitive men than primitive gods. They are closer to the gods worshiped by primitive men than to the men themselves. In the mythologies of primitive peoples, the gods live in the realm between man and animal, between heaven and earth. They travel between past, present, and future. Many have the power of flight. They can take on human form or animal form, thus possess both human wisdom and animal prowess. Primitive humans were a part of nature whereas the gods they worshiped were the very essence of nature. Humans had to struggle with nature which could crush them at any moment. Gods, on the other hand, had the advantage of duality. They could have human attributes but also possessed the power of nature itself. Humans could only live in nature whereas the gods also controlled nature. To the extent that the Navis are ‘tuned’ into nature rather than merely its inhabitants, they can be sad to be more godly than manly. They are like primitive Jedi Knights–not merely mortals but ones who’ve harnessed the central energy or force of the Universe. According to Hinduism, the top branches of the Brahmin caste are not only mortal priests but cosmic sages who hold the secrets of the universe. As such, they can be said to be more powerful than the universe. In AVATAR, it’s as though each Navi is born not only with high intelligence, great beauty, and impressive physique but also with spiritual link with nature.
　
Anyway, there are endless implications to the relations between modern man and primitive man, between man and nature. We are all products of nature and parts of nature. In the larger sense, even civilization can be said to be a part of nature. If Earth is nature itself, then human civilizations seen from outer space are no less parts of nature than rest of Earth. In the larger scale of things, our cities could be no more significant than beehives or beaver dams. Rather than being anti-nature, the world created by humans could be an imposition of OUR version of nature over other forms of nature. A bird builds a nest up on a tree. Prairie dogs dig underground tunnels. They all create their own version of nature which is hospitable to themselves and maybe hostile to others. Humans have done the same except on a larger scale. But, what we’ve created could be considered to be a form of nature to–if seen from a larger perspective.
So, there can be no definitive answer to the ideological questions of nature, and it should be this way since everything about both man and nature is too complex and multi-faceted for simple facile explanations.