by Peter Wilberg
Imperialism: still ‘the highest stage of capitalism’
Is the EU an empire? No. Is it not rather the weak confederation of nations under US economic and political hegemony of the sort that Hitler long predicted that Europe would become in the event of a German defeat? Yes. Is China a full-fledged empire? No - and will not be for a long time yet. Is the US an empire? Most definitely and in every sense of the word 'empire' - the most powerful empire the world has ever faced - and one with a history of outright colonialism reaching back to its earliest history (Mexico, Hawaii, The Philippines etc.)
It should therefore surely be obvious by now that essentially there is only one game in town - how to respond to and resist the Moloch and monstrosity that is US imperialism and the US-raeli empire. This Empire has a long, brutal, cynical and genocidal history, responsible for 20-30 millions deaths since 1945 - and that forgetting its long history of earlier imperial war crimes, not least at the end of WW2, and including the bombing and rape of not only German but French cities and civilians).
What both the British and all other peoples of the world face today is just the apogee of that imperial history, an apogee which is also an expression of the acute contradictions and conflicts of capitalism and their expression in competing factions of the ruling elite in the U.S. and that of other countries too, including Britain and those of the EU.
In this context, therefore even to talk of terms like 'globalism' or 'globalists' is misleading. That is because the US Imperium is now openly engaged in a form of total war on the entire globe and all its nations and peoples. This includes, of course, the American people who have long been subjected to total censorship of the media, and exploited by Wall Street, The Fed., the medical-, agro- and military- or CIA-run cyber-industrial complexes such as the web, Google etc. - as well as a massive prison-industrial complex, all backed up by total militarised-police preparedness for any form of internal insurrection.
This Total Planetary War of the US Empire is aimed at all competing nations and powers, and brooks not the smallest elements of opposition or hesitation even from its vassal 'Allies' (including both the EU and Britain). And its allies even include even the Visegrad group - all of them unquestioningly pro-US, pro-NATO, and pro-Israel. Indeed Israel declared the Czech Republic its “best friend” in continental Europe and the US has forces on Polish soil.
The Empire's war is a 'globalist' war only in the sense that it is a war aimed at nothing less than total economic, corporate, cultural, ecocidal, military, intelligence, media, information and cyber control over the entire globe - using any and all means.
US Imperium is thus the sole 'spectre' currently haunting the entire world - not communism or socialism, and certainly not 'liberalism' - which only serve to disguise rampant economic neo-liberalism and militarised police violence and murder even of countless American citizens. And what a spectre it is - for this global Imperial war is an 'omnicidal' war and which now threatens all life on the planet.
Its most powerful tool is not military and financial power but media-sustained ignorance - agnosis. Ignorance not just on a political or even a geo-political level but on a profound spiritual and philosophical level - perpetuated by the destruction of all true education.
Historical knowledge and inner knowing or gnosis are the greatest enemy of the Empire. Thus it has successfully, and in a deliberate way, planned long ago, also used its universities to eradicate it. (One need only be aware that there is barely a single economics professor in the US who has even read Marx). It is for this reason that purely economic, political or even military opposition or resistance to The Empire is, by itself, futile.
Instead one question remains in this situation, long ago asked by Heidegger.
"How is it possible to preserve a tradition [the tradition of gnosis] that has been underground for so long?"
The best that Heidegger hoped for was that historical knowledge, deep thinking and gnosis would survive in small 'cells' - comparable to the small groups of monks in the Dark Ages who preserved the remnants of classical Greek philosophy preserved and enriched by Islamic scholars and left over from the burning of ancient texts, the destruction of the library of Alexandria - and the violent persecution and murder of philosophers by the wave of Christian fanaticism unleashed by Constantine's 'conversion'.
Brexit or Remain then, is not the question of the day. That question, at its heart, is, as Gilad Atzmon reminds us: Athens or Jerusalem?
But there is far more even to this question than meets the eye. For the question contains questions within questions that have not yet even begun to be touched upon in human thinking. That is why when Heidegger spoke of ‘preserving’ a ‘tradition’ he did not mean going back to it but seeking a new foundation and beginning for it - what he called ‘The Other Beginning’.
"What is to be done?"This new and totally ‘Other’ beginning requires above all deeper and new ways of thinking. Deeper thinking, in turn requires deeper levels of questioning dialogue too - which is a quite different matter from polemical debate.
Yet questioning dialogue cannot in any way be deepened and renewed unless the entire focus of political thinking, parties and organisation is shifted from an obsession with competing ideologies and their ready-made 'solutions' or 'policies'?
Mere debates or polemics based on agreement or disagreement about political policies, positions and solutions assumes we already know what the essential questions are for which these policies or positions are intended as a solution.
Thus the old pattern of establishing and sticking to a militant party-political position or policy on particular questions - and then recruiting militant party adherents to it, needs to be unlearned. Instead it is the questions themselves that need to be rethought in a deeper way - one that transcends old frameworks, formulae and ideologies. Only in this way can a genuinely new thinking arise that prepares for ‘The Other Beginning’ - one that responds to the questions now confronting humanity - by questioning them more deeply.
Yet instead of this, what I see along the entire spectrum of Alt-Left groupings is a regression to a form of discourse based on ideological identity politics - as expressed, for example through the need for ideological brand identities such as Strasserism. Juche-ism, Hoxha-ism, Green Syndicalism, Stalinism - and, what amounts to the same thing, 'Marxism-Leninism' (a term coined by Stalin).
I do not see how any of these '-isms' can be reconciled with Marx's famous words: "I am not a Marxist" - or with any form of ideological identity politics oriented towards establishing, advancing and defending a 'position' and pitching one form of political brand identity or ‘-ism’ against some other - like 'Liberalism'. Marx himself did not present utopian recipes for change but instead sought an ever-deeper understanding of the underlying but still inadequately addressed questions hidden under the surface behind social, economic and political beliefs, systems and events.
In a word, I find myself once again affirming another saying of Marx:
"Question everything!"
A trite example: when and why did the term 'Liberalism' become the fashionable new term for Capitalism? Or when and why did the term ‘cultural Marxism’ become a new ‘meme’ within the Alt-Right and Alt-Left - when in reality those figures most often associated with it were among the most hard-hitting critics of degenerate capitalist pop-culture, i.e. of cultural capitalism and its global mono-culture of consumerism and commodification - a phenomenon which has now reached a point at which even personal identity has now become a mere marketplace of gender identities to be invested in, exchanged and flaunted like shares or personal commodities!
As in advertising capitalism offers an illusion of ‘diversity’ that conceals a homogenous uniformity. A 100 brands of identical toothpaste or washing up liquid - no different in principle from varieties of branded gender identities all manufactured from the same virtue-signalling ingredients!
Politics and Philosophy…Even the geopolitical question posed to humanity by the rampant destructive hegemonism and tyranny of the US Empire is therefore far from being a merely geopolitical question, as even 4PT of Dugin recognises - why else would he write a book on Heidegger, now censored (see Alexander Dugin Martin Heidegger, the Philosophy of Another Beginning), like his other books, by Amazon? Because he recognised that politics and philosophy cannot in any way be separated - that all philosophy is political and all politics is philosophical - rooted in metaphysical assumptions and beliefs.
This is one reason why I wrote an essay critiquing the standard 'medical model' approach to politics. For what this model forecloses is any attempt to question and understand the deeper nature and meaning of the 'illness' symptomised by political and geopolitical events and realities. Idealistic or utopian political 'cures' for this illness, old or new, are, from this perspective merely a form of ideological pill-popping or drug-pushing - and the political militancy that accompanies them is all-too-often a mere symptom of despair in the face of still unthought questions - unthought because they involve, at least in part, also essentially deep metaphysical and philosophical questions - many of which have also remained unthought throughout human history.
This history is of course far more than just a political-economic history or a history of class struggle. It is also a history of theo-political cultures and conflicts. That is why, as I argue in From New Age to New Gnosis, it is no accident that today’s Iraq had its roots in the ancient Sumarian civilisation of Mesopotamia, Syria in the Assyrian civilisation, Europe in Greek civilisation - and Iran in Persian civilisation.
And what is capitalism itself if not a theopolicial cult or religion itself - combining a monotheism of money with the worship of technological know-how serving cyber-control and the corporate arms industry. And what is modern 'science' except an anti-religious cult which has become a new religion and cult in its own right? Today however, it is only in Russia and Iran that we see the struggle against The Empire of Money understood - if only by just a few clerics and prominent thinkers such as Dugin - as a spiritual-philosophical and religious struggle and not a merely 'national' one.
Thus in contrast to the cult of Juche - which seeks to turn the nation itself into an artificial and atheistic state religion, and its Leader into a god - the Islamic Socialism of Iran has deep roots in the gnostic tradition of Shi-ite Islam. It is not a godless 'modernist' socialism of the ‘Marxist-Leninist’ sort - and nor does its supreme leader claim omniscience or divinity of any sort - something that goes entirely against the grain of Shi-ite orthodoxy, which respects knowledge and truths still hidden from view by the so-called 'occultation' of the 12th Imam.
That is why it is also important to understand that it is only in Iran and to some extent also in Russia that we see some recognition that the battle being fought is a spiritual one. No wonder that Iran was the main target to be taken out at the end of the list of less challenging regime-changes hatched by the Imperium well before the Mossad-CIA false flag of 9/11 - and as preparation to seize the wealth of Russia.
On Brexit again...Long ago, I made my position on Brexit pretty clear. It was a way to turn Britain into an overseas territory of the US-raeli Empire, one which supports the economic war being waged against not just North Korea and China but primarily against Iran and Russia. Is this not now perfectly clear for all to see?
Is the EU the enemy? Or is it the ZIO-US-EU-NATO alliance against Russia. Does the EU have independent nukes that can strike Britain. No. Does Israel have submarines that can nuke both Britain and Europe. Yes. Something to think upon maybe? Is the EU or Russia engaged in a military encirclement of Britain. No. Is it engaged in the military encirclement of Russia? Yes. Is the EU imposing economic sanctions on Britain? No. On Russia? Yes.
And what an irony it is to have just seen Britain itself seizing an Iranian oil tanker on the grounds that is was ignoring oil sanctions on Syria that apply only to EU countries!
Is it not time therefore, to sign up for a spiritual-philosophical jihad against the US-raeli Empire, instead of protecting British Imperialism - along with its centuries old strategy of doing everything to prevent the emergence of a new Eurasian civilisation, one unburdened by the waves of migration fostered by The Empire's wars of aggression, military-backed coups, and corporate neo-colonialism - and that in every continent of the world?
My biggest question to the SMPBI therefore: what good is talk of socialist proletarian nationalism if this nationalism is not fundamentally and primarily anti-imperialist - anti-USraeli, anti-Zionist, anti-Ziocon, anti-ZOG? This question is also what makes Iran so important. For the Trotskyists would have us believe that Iran is a reactionary capitalist theocracy. In fact its economy is now more socialist than that of Cuba! See:
https://thesaker.is/what-privatisation-in-iran-or-definitely-not-that-privatisation/And so it is that Iran now finds itself in the same position that Cuba has always been in and that Germany found itself in already in 1939 - under economic blockade, and explicit threat of 'obliteration' (total obliteration through of Germany having (see Germany Must Perish, 1941!) having heen the main goal of Churchill and his Zionist backers). No wonder then, that the Iron Curtain of brazen Amazon and now also YouTube censorship has come down not only on so-called 'Holocaust deniers' but also on any challenge to the mainstream US., British and Zionist account of the 20th century and its two world wars.
Summary: one does not need to be a Muslim or Islamic socialist to sign up for an educational, cultural and philosophical as well as political jihad against the Empire - instead of ranting against and scapegoating its meek and subservient EU vassal states. One only needs to expose, as Goebbels taught, the 'Big Lies' of the Zionist press, media and cyber-giants that prevail as much (if not more) in Britain that in the countries of the EU. The big problem with the Europe - as with Britain - it that it still tries to ensconce itself in a blind and delusory bubble world - one in which the total global war being conducted by The Empire is not even recognised by a media-indoctrinated populace, let alone fiercely resisted or fought. And yet all other issues - ecological, environmental, social and economic - are secondary to this War - being mere effects of it. The only exception to this the understanding that even to conduct any fight against Imperialism and for sovereign nationhood is ultimately impossible without sovereign national and public money creation - something both Iran and Russia still need to learn.
So what can be done?The basis of all ‘evil’, even that of the Imperium itself - is ignorance - agnosis. This takes two forms: firstly unquestioned belief systems such as neo-liberalism, Christian Zionism, US exceptionalism and ‘Manifest Destiny’ etc., i.e. those of the warmongers in the ‘Deep State’ - and, secondly, the economic, cultural, philosophical and historical ignorance that both lies behind and is necessary to sustain these belief systems.
‘Trumpism’ is nothing but the fully revealed face of this ignorance in both its sides. For the ignorant rulers of the Imperium, ignorance is therefore also their biggest ally - and sustaining their own and other’s ignorance is their main weapon of defence. Hence the censorship, distortion and erasure of historical knowledge. Indeed the clearly stated plan of the Imperium is now is to use the media and cyber-censorship to eradicate all sources of historical knowledge that could expose the lies - and lies by omission - being constantly being churned out by the media. Yet the sad fact is that even many of these lies are an expression of ignorance on the part of ruling elites and the media themselves.
Yet given current plans for total global cyber-censorship via Google and other cyber-giants, perhaps we need to consider preparing to return to old-fashioned low-tech method of paper leafleting on the streets. Not in order to rant against Trotskyism to a youth population most of whom (even here in the Czech Republic) have never even heard of a man called Stalin!) but in order to lay out in simple fashion the historical facts surrounding each of any number of issues given - or not given - publicity in the Imperial Media - whether this be the 'Holocaust', Israel and Palestine, Russia, Iran, Yemen, Somalia, the arms industry and the Sauds, the deaths caused by both austerity politics and The Empire's economic sanctions and blockades, the concentration camps which constitute the corporate prison industry in the US, not to mention the whole history of Anglo-US-Israeli war crimes - or the really existing magic 'money-tree' of central banks such as the Fed (which feeds an annual 36 billion dollars of interest payments to Wall St at taxpayers expense - and at the expense too of even the most minimal investment in the real economy).
For when all is said and done, what chance has any European or British political party of leading a process of social transformation among a populace that is steadily but surely being reduced in a highly planned way and using the most advanced technologies to a state of almost total historical ignorance of the sort we already see in the U.S. itself - where literally millions of Christian Zionists, ignorant even of the history of Christianity itself, regard Trump as 'the chosen one' - and so are gagging for global Armageddon through the likes of Pompeo (himself a Christian Zionist). Never has it been more important to see our struggle as a war for knowledge and truth, even if only based on the simplest leaflet-style listing of historical facts. For what use is a 'Workers' Party' without even the most elementary workers' education?
For what use a vehemently anti-Trotskyist platform to people who have never heard the name Trotsky or Stalin in their lives? What appeal has a pro-Palestinian or anti-Zionist stance for the masses who know nothing about the Nakba - or even the nature and history of Zionism itself? The list could go on and on... So maybe it is time to forget the political and ideological dressing on the cake - and begin by just informing people of historical knowledge and facts they don't and increasingly won't have a chance to learn from anywhere else (including the internet). In a word, less preaching to the converted and those ‘in the know’ and instead just talking to people - by which I simply mean all those (and there are many who I am sure that each of us know personally) who don't even know what they don't know. Yet even this is not enough…
Making ‘another beginning’ …For any individual or group of individuals wishing to find ways of responding to the challenges facing the world today, the greatest danger I see lies in the need, borne of insecurity, to cobble together or latch onto an admixture of ideological and political ‘answers’ or ‘policies’. Instead the first step should be to humbly admit to there being many questions that remain to be asked and formulated. To admit to the existence of important but still unasked questions is not a mark of ignorance but of courage.
Therefore I suggest to any individuals or groups of individuals such as the SMPBI with an earnest and passionate desire to change the world that they should begin by each seriously asking, and seeking to formulate as best they can, what they regard as the most important questions that they still have. Only by pooling and then discussing a set of questions can they then truly work together, through dialogue - in making ‘Another Beginning’. Finding the right questions requires thought and effort of another sort entirely to coming to or debating a set of ideological positions or political policies. Yet if a political group were to begin its life and work again in this other way - by first coming to a decision on what they see as the most important but still unasked or unanswered questions are (whether to do with socialism or anything else) then stating those questions publicly and inviting authentic dialogue around them would indeed be something revolutionary in itself. The ‘other thinking’ that Heidegger spoke of is all about questioning. It transcends the polemics of mere agreement or disagreement on what policy or political stances to adopt or decide upon. Instead it is all exploring the m
ost decisive questions.
