RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/03/reflections-on-socialism-and-nationalism/

THE relationship between socialism and nationalism has become a no-go zone for the Left in the West, where it has loudly proclaimed its internationalism, laid out the welcome mat for Third World “refugees” and blamed supposedly impending climate catastrophe on the bad economic choices of fellow citizens, seeking to infuse them with a sense of guilt for their alleged racism, xenophobia and greed. All this at the same time the Left seeks to exploit minority grievances and weaken the bonds of patriotism and identification with the nation state. For those with an hour to spare, this SBS discussion of arranged marriages might serve as a guide to the mainstreaming of ideas and practices once shunned as unacceptable in a former Australia.

In one sense, this might seem to be a reversion to classical revolutionary Marxism, except for the fact that a key element of the dogma, international class struggle, has gone missing. Indeed, in recent years the West’s working class has become decidedly hostile to the leftist programme. Look to Trump’s 2016 presidential victory, Brexit and the ongoing of Yellow Vests protest in France. All this and more has seen the Left in need of an alternative. If the current population refuses to give its consent, then a new population should be imported under the cover of humanitarian blather. Perhaps Bertolt Brecht’s famous poem, The Solution, has a new relevance today:

After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

What all this might indicate is that socialism sans nationalism can only be imposed on advanced Western democracies if a revolutionary elite succeeds with a massive programme of population replacement. Historically, Marxist-Leninist regimes, devoted to international revolution across national borders, had to rely on coercion and terror. Such methods “worked” in Russia and China, neither of which had any developed structure of civil society. Alternatively, such regimes were “occupation regimes”, as in Eastern Europe, imposed by imperial Soviet power.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13826/france-project-transform

“It is up to us to give a political meaning to the [“yellow vest”] revolt. The goal is not simply to challenge an increase in taxes, but the political system that induces it…” — Elias d’Imzalene, French Islamist preacher, November 23, 2018.

“Macron hates the yellow vests and wants them to vanish. He wants to win European elections and needs the Muslim vote. He knows perfectly well who the anti-Semites are today, but will not attack them. He needs them. He attacks [only] those who are dangerous to him. “— Éric Zemmour, French author, February 19, 2019.

Other people noted that holding a demonstration that excluded the right-wing National Rally party was a move aimed at diverting attention from the real anti-Semitic danger. They also suggested that political parties which support the murderers of Jews were precisely those which deny that radical Islam is a danger.

After sixteen Saturday demonstrations by the “yellow vests,” who began in November by protesting French President Emmanuel Macron’s increase in fuel prices, the controversy seems to have taken a darker turn.

That seems to have come to light on February 13, when a small group of demonstrators started hurling insults at a French Jewish philosopher, Alain Finkielkraut — who was born in and lives in Paris — after they spotted him on a sidewalk. One man, shouted, “Shut up, dirty Zionist sh*t,” “Go home to Tel Aviv,” “France is ours,” “God will punish you.” A cameraman filmed the incident, then shared the video on social networks. A scandal ensued. The “yellow vests” movement as a whole was immediately accused by the French government of anti-Semitism and “fascism”.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273039/first-they-came-tommy%E2%80%A6-bruce-bawer

In recent months, even as a majority of the politicians in Britain’s two major parties have seemed to be doing everything they can to cancel or water down the EU exit for which the British people voted, the same establishment has been striving to stifle, and if possible destroy, the man who, more than anyone else in the country, articulates the rage and fear and hope of the British working class – and of no small number of middle-class Brits as well.

For years, British authorities have harassed, threatened, and imprisoned him, their objective plainly being to scare him into silence. Last summer they engineered an unjustified arrest, rushed him through a mockery of a trial, and shipped him off to prison, obviously hoping he wouldn’t come out alive.

Meanwhile, Britain’s mainstream media have demonized him, all of them singing from the same hymnal. Almost invariably, they prefix his name with the words “far-right.” Of course he is far from the only prominent figure in the Western world to be libeled in this way. You can be a liberal in pretty much every way, but if you are so consistent in your liberalism as to be a critic of the appalling illiberalism of Islam, then you are, in the lexicon of the mainstream media, “far-right.”

He’s also routinely identified as the founder of the English Defense League (EDL). Often this is combined with the term “far-right,” as in “founder of the far-right English Defense League” or “far-right founder of the English Defense League.” Very rarely is it mentioned in the mainstream media that he left the EDL years ago precisely because it was turning into a far-right organization and he didn’t want to have anything more to do with it.