Alt Left: More on Ukrainian Ultranationalism/Fascism/Nazism

This whole war is about Ukrainian nationalism. Ukrainian nationalism is a form of fascism, period. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. And even those Jewish presidents are in on it. Over there, Nazism means “kill the Russians,” not so much “kill the Jews.”

20-3

There are a few Ukie antis and pacifists, mostly in the south and east, but not too many. Even Ukie “antifa” is fascist and Nazi. The Russian antifascists are all antifa. Most of the Ukrainian antifascists, including those who are not pro-Russian, have had to flee Ukraine in the last eight years as many of them have been arrested and some of them have been killed. Where did they flee to? Russia, of course! Which country are the antifascists fleeing from due to persecution? Ukraine. Which country is taking in all these persecuted antifascists? Russia! Tell me again about how Russia is a fascist country.

I would not say most Ukies are Nazis. The figure for true Nazis is ~2

Why did this Zelensky just give a medal to the Nazi Azov Battalion? Why did he say that Stepan Bandera was one of the great heroes of Ukraine? Why did former president Poroshenko drive around in cars the other day with Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera’s portrait on it? His picture is everywhere in Ukraine. There are statues to him and his pals in most every city.

Why did an openly Nazi party, Svoboda, get 3

Bandera was a Nazi collaborator. ALL of the heroes of Ukrainian nationalism were Nazi collaborators. Before them, the earliest Ukrainian nationalists in 1917-1923 were full-blown fascists too. They led pogroms that killed 30,000 Jews. That’s the root of Ukrainian nationalism. It’s not just Russians they hate. These Jewish presidents have deputized these Nazis to patrol cities as citizen cops. They tormented the Greeks in Mariupol for eight years and the Hungarians in the west for just as long. You know why? They’re ethnic nationalists. They hate everyone who’s not a pure Ukrainian.

Ukrainian nationalism has been about ethnic purity since 1917. Before that, the earliest strains of Ukie nationalism were formed from a base of Ukrainian village culture in the southwest which engaged in repeated anti-Jewish pogroms in the early 1800’s until most of the Jews in the region were crowded into Odessa. This is the root base of Ukrainian nationalism.

Let’s listen to Ukrainian liberals: A Ukrainian liberal head of military medicine just gave the order to castrate all Russian POW’s.

A Ukrainian liberal on state TV just said we don’t just need to kill all the Russian adults. We need to kill their kids too. Because nits make lice.

A Ukrainian liberal on a top TV channel said the Donbass was overpopulated with 4 million people. Its population needed to be reduced by the extermination of 1.5 million people. They’ve been trying to do just that in the Donbass for eight years now, firing shells at cities and towns.

The Ukrainian liberals all cheered when 40 Communists were burned alive by Nazis in Odessa.

The Ukrainian liberal vice president’s favorite band was a Nazi hard rock band.

If this is how the liberals act for God’s sake, just think of how the out and out Nazis act!

Alt Left: Nazism in Ukraine – An Overview, Part 3 of a Four Part Series

NAZISM IN UKRAINE – AN OVERVIEW Part 3 of a Four Part Series

This war in the 1930’s was a class war more than anything. As I said, 7

The Ukrainian Jews which had swarmed to the Reds in the Civil War, also remained serious supporters of the USSR during the Holodomor period. The ONU Ukrainian ultranationalist fascist group was founded in the late 20’s and started waging attacks at that time. All through the 30’s, the NKVD was killing a lot of them.

Even before the Nazis even invaded Ukraine in1941, the ONU under the hero of the Ukrainian nationalists Stepan Bandera started killing Jews in Lviv already in 1940. The Lviv pogrom was horrible. There is footage of it on Youtube. Bandera’s ONU pursued the Nazi “Jewish Bolshevism” theory that “Communism was Jewish.” Judeo-Bolshevism continues to animate Ukrainian ultranationalist Nazi theory to this day, a movement supported by 20-3

Bandera’s group also killed Poles, Gypsies, and Russians. In the end, they killed 200,000 Jews and 90,000 Poles. The SS turned over to the ONU tasks that even the SS shied away from, like killing children. The ONU relished in such tasks. The ONU was so bad that many Ukrainian Jews sought refuge from the Wehrmacht to save them from the ONU! The Wehrmacht was not the SS, and although it committed many crimes, in other times, they saved and protected Jews as it was not a force that was ideological at its core. It was mostly the SS and Einsatzgruppen who were the Jew-killers.

The ONU had massive support in Western Ukraine, and Bandera and all of his associates are the heroes of Ukrainian nationalism. All of the heroes of Ukrainian nationalism were Nazi collaborators. The Ukrainian nationalists from 1917-1923 are best seen as proto-Nazis or pre-Nazis. As the USSR reconquered Ukraine, the US and UK hustled the Ukrainian nationalists out of the country to the US, Canada, and Australia.

Alt Left: The Latest Lies of the Russo-Ukrainian War

Civilians Being Targeted: False. I have yet to see one single of case of civilians being deliberately targeted by Russia. Sure, there have been civilian deaths and injuries. These always happen in wars no matter how hard to try to avoid them. Civilians typically get targeted in wars nowadays, but I haven’t seen any cases of the Russians doing it.

On the other hand, Ukraine has targeted civilians many times in the Donbass and in Mariupol. Ukraine considers them to be enemy civilians and hostile. After they withdraw from an area, they often shell it and level the whole place. They abuse the civilians in the cities they control. They won’t even let them go outside. When they go outside, sometimes they are targeted by Ukrainian snipers. When people try to get out of these pro-Russian areas, the Ukrainians shoot at them.

We have a number of videos from citizens of Mariupol. All of them are blaming Ukraine for everything and the Russians for nothing. And many say that Ukraine shot at people who were trying to leave. They also told residents that they were not allowed to leave and if they tried to leave they would be shot at “by Russians.” Much of the structural damage in Mariupol is being caused by Ukraine just shelling the buildings, especially as they withdrawal. Once again this is from testimony from Mariupol civilians.

I have no information about Ukraine targeting their own people when they try to flee in pro-Ukrainian areas. That would seem to be stupid. Armies target hostile civilians, not friendly ones.

Russian bombing of Mariupol theater: False. Three days before this incident occurred, pro-Russian sources announced that according to civilians in Mariupol, the Azov Battalion had wired the theater with explosive and were going to blow it up to blame Russia. Sure enough, three days later, an explosion occurs at the theater exactly as predicated and Russia was blamed. But there were no Russian aircraft active anywhere in Mariupol on that particular day.

Furthermore, Russia was aware of the situation in the theater where Azov was holding people as human shields and using the upper floors for firing, and the theater had been removed from the target list. Yes, Azov had written CHILDREN in huge block letters outside the theater, but they wrote that in front of every large building in the city no matter who was in there. They did this to make it seemed like Russia bombed a theater even though CHILDREN was written outside, apparently just to be evil.

Russia knew there were civilians in there and said so and  removed it from the target list. However, 9

Azov told people to leave before they blew up the theater. But there were still many people in the bomb shelter in the basement which was not damaged in the attack. Nevertheless, there are still people down there buried under the rubble. Russia knew they were in that basement. Why do they blow up their own supporters and bury them in rubble? That makes no sense.

We now have videos coming out from people who were in the theater saying it was indeed full of civilians and Azov had mined the roof and wired the ceiling. As they withdrew, they told people to leave, and everyone left except for the people in the basement. Then Azov withdrew and blew up the theater. We also have another video from a woman in Mariupol who also says, “The Ukrainians blew up the theater.”

So it’s settled. The whole attack was faked. Why would Russia announce that Azov was going to do a false flag in the theater and then go ahead and bomb it anyway, just because they really, really wanted to bomb a theater full of civilians? It makes no sense! On the other hand, Azov is highly motivated to blow up a theater full of hostile civilians who support Russia in order to blame Russia.

Russia has been shooting at people trying to leave Mariupol and other locales in the Donbass. False. We now have interviews on video of Mariupol residents and residents of Volnovakha. The Mariupol people are all saying that Ukraine shot at people trying to leave and forbade people to leave. They even shot at buses of people trying to leave. There’s video testimony from the victims themselves! What more do you need?

The majority of Mariupol refugees are fleeing to Ukrainian controlled areas near Dnepropetrovsk. False. In fact, only

Russia won’t allow aid convoys to come into Mariupol. Unknown. I have no information on this, but it seems odd as those convoys are made up all of Russian vehicles. Is it possible the situation is still too dangerous?

Russia is kidnapping people from Mariupol and putting them in camps in Russia where they are torturing them. False. I have no idea what they are talking about. As noted, 9

Russia has mined the Black Sea, which is dangerous as the mines have done loose and now threaten shipping in the Bosporus in Turkey. False. Ukraine laid a lot of sea mines which have now come loose and are floating around the Black Sea.

Russia will throw Russians in prison for 15 years if they criticize the invasion or call it a war. False. First of all, “Putin the dictator” did not do that. The Duma did and it was democratically elected. To date the worst offender has been an anchorwoman who jumped behind a newscaster and waved a sign saying, “Stop the War.” She was just sentenced to pay a $300 fine for this rather grievous offense.

18 million Russians openly oppose the war. They can’t arrest 18 million people. They will have to triage.

I am on pro-Russia Russian sites, and pro-Russians call this a war all the time on there. I got tired of counting how many times they said. Those sites are also full of either Ukrainians or antiwar Russians. The antiwar Russians are pretty bad, and they’re practically traitors. There are many of them on these forums. Nothing is done to them. They’re not even banned! People just insult them.

The woman demonstrating with the sign on Russian TV fears for her safety and that of her child. False. Give it up.  She had to pay a whole fine of $300. Now they’re going to murder her? No way.

All opposition media in Russia is shut down. False. Depends what you mean by opposition media. The media that was shut down represents a section of society that gets

Russia is running out of manpower, fuel, and food, and its supply lines are badly stretched. Hence it has stalled out and can go nowhere. False. Progress indeed is slow as it is supposed to be when you are trying to minimize civilian casualties. Keep in mind that this nonsense is coming from the Pentagon, “US intelligence” (glowies), and military analyst media talking heads, all of whom are worthless in my opinion. They’re all lying to spin this as badly as possible for Russia. I haven’t found any good evidence that anything in the first sentence is true.

Ukraine is winning the war; Russia is about to be handled a humiliating defeat. False. The Western media features endless stories about Ukrainian success on the battlefield, how they are winning or are going to win and how Russia is losing or is going to lose.

On the contrary, Ukraine is losing the war and Russia is winning the war as best I can tell. The Ukrainian Air Force is gone. The Ukrainian Navy is gone. There are desertions. In some places, soldiers have run out of food and are raiding local homes to get enough to eat. I will grant that the Ukrainians are fighting very hard and well, and I credit them for that. They are being very brave and noble in many places on the battlefield.

Russia has lost 7,000 men KIA in this operation. False. This is from US intelligence glowies. Not buying it. That’s way too high. Try 2,000 KIA. I will agree with that figure.

Russia has lost 18,000 KIA and Ukraine is trying to repatriate 14,000 Russian KIA to Russia for burial. False. Forget it. Get out. It can’t be more much more than 2,000, and I doubt if many of them are in Ukrainian hands.

Ukraine conducted a counterattack in NE Kiev and Russia suffered major losses. False. On the contrary, the counterattack was fought off by Russia, and Ukraine sustained serious losses.

15 killed, 21 wounded by Russian shelling in Kharkiv. Unknown. I suppose it’s possible. These things happen in urban warfare.

1 killed, four wounded in Kiev when Russia targeted an elementary school. False. Ukraine shot down a Russian missile, and it landed on an apartment building, hence the casualties. There was an elementary school right nearby, but the missile was not targeting either the school or the apartment building.

Russia is deliberately targeting schools and hospitals. False. I’ve seen no evidence of this, and this goes against Putin’s directive to spare as many civilians as possible.

Zelensky made a video with a backdrop of Kiev, proving he is still in the capital. False. All of my information is that he is in Poland, and he has been there for a while.

Zelensky made a video showing a conference between him and leaders of Poland, Slovakia, and Czechia taking place in Kiev. Russia was warned and cleared the way for the train. False. This entire video was faked. We know this from analysis of the film and also from sources inside Poland. None of them ever left Poland. Instead it took place in Poland on the border with Ukraine.

The train was a train parked at that city. The part of the video where they are having a conversation in a train while going to Kiev is faked. The train is standing still. In the video there are journalists present but we believe there were no journalists at this fake meeting. Instead those men are Polish Secret Service posing as journalists. One of them ended up next to Zelensky in the meeting but he forgot to take his bulletproof vest off.

A number of Western stenographer-whores, I mean journalists, know full well that this whole video was faked but they reported it as it happened anyway. Sickening.

Russia will soon run out of lifesaving medicines. False. They have enough for 3-6 months and the foreign companies that supply them will continue to do so. Also many of them are made in Russia, and the Russian government is now forcing these companies to produce these drugs, and they will not be allowed to stop.

Russia will be thrown off the GPS system. False. You can’t just throw a country off of the GPS satellite system. There’s no way to do it. Also Russia has its own alternate GPS system that works just fine anyway.

China is embarrassed by their alliance with Russia; the US will be able to separate Russia from China with sanctions on China. False and probably false. The first part is not true at all. They have a strong alliance, even stronger now because they both know they are in the same boat. I do not think the US will be able to throw a wedge between the two countries.

Putin is a dictator. False. The Duma passes most legislation and if they won’t pass bills, they won’t get passed. Putin is not Stalin. Putin is quite limited in how he can act towards his political enemies because he has to follow the law, and this limits him a lot. The Russian people do not want to have a dictator anyway and do not think Putin is one. To them a dictator is Stalin.

Putin is a fascist. False. He seems to disagree with this movement pretty strongly. I’m having a hard time understanding how it is that Putin is a fascist. Can someone clue me in here? He’s coming from the anti-fascist tradition of the USSR. Remember this guy is former KGB.

Putin is a Nazi. False. He hates Nazis and he has nothing against any ethnic group. At any rate these groups have much greater rights in their country than they do in ours. The Russian Empire has long been multiracial and multi ethnic. Yes, there are Nazis in Russia, but Putin doesn’t like them, and a number of those organizations have been made illegal.

That’s about all for now! I’ll have more tomorrow when Ukraine, the US, the West, and NATO will dole out another huge helping of lies! See you then!

Alt Left: The Russian ‘Denazification’ PR Disaster: How, Why and What To Do

The Russian ‘Denazification’ PR Disaster: How, Why and What To Do

by Ramin Mazaheri for the Saker blog

Maybe it’s worked in Russia, but a military operation in Ukraine based on “denazification” has been a total public relations disaster everywhere else. Quite simply: Russia should have known that the use of the word “Nazi” totally shuts down any discussion in the West. Russia is waging a new type of military operation but they lazily or foolishly thought that “denazification” was a new enough concept to base its justification around for non-Russians — they have paid a price of total intellectual defeat so far in the battle for hearts and minds.

They could have known it was coming – I wrote about this issue just two weeks prior to the start of the Ukraine operation, in an article on France’s elections titled, France’s conservatives cry out for National Socialism – Zemmour’s response?:

“Ah, old Adolf – we can’t bring him up in the West, can we?

Many have heard of Godwin’s Law, or the rule of Nazi analogies: an Internet adage asserting that as an online discussion grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches. However, an important corollary is that whenever someone compares someone or something to Nazism – that person has lost the argument and/or the argument is summarily over.

Essentially, the world is to accept that all discussions of Western politics cannot discuss the anti-Western Liberalism ideology which was German Nazism.”

Yes, Russia should have accepted that in February. Practically nobody west of the Oder River understood what Moscow meant by “denazification”, and they still don’t after a month of Russian explanations.

Russia’s military operation has made much harder by failing to recognise the iron Western cultural reality of Godwin’s Law, and the reality that the West only associates Nazis with anti-Semitism and – not at all! – with Russophobia, despite the 20+ million Russian deaths at the hands of the Germanic Nazis.

This is how iron that law is: Political science PhD holders have responded to me with, “But… Ukraine’s president is Jewish – how can there be Nazis?” If you cannot even get Western political science PhD holders to see where you are coming from – even remotely – you have zero chance to get the average Westerner to understand you.

Thus it’s a total, ongoing public relations catastrophe.

It’s not an easy problem to fix

It’s such a huge problem I actually have to discuss it in detail in my new book on the Yellow Vests, in a chapter titled: “Where the West is stuck: The fascism of the 1930s and the ‘fascism’ of the 2020s”. The West is stuck in misunderstanding what fascism is, and in 2022 Russia has not solved this problem; they have maybe even made it worse?!

It’s not an easy problem to fix, but in April 2014 I must say that I was farther along than Russia is in 2022 – well, at least I tried to propose some solution in a column for PressTV titled, “Ukraine: The Rise of the ‘Nalis’”.

I can’t find a link for it anywhere – I’d complain about how Iran’s PressTV has been so deplatformed but – thanks in part to the awful Russian public relations campaign – Russia has now become even more deplatformed than us, wow! If someone finds a link, great, but these highlights show the idea still holds up: the combination of rabid Nationalism and far-right Liberalism (in economics, politics and in anti-socialism) is still the problem in Ukraine. The column began:

“The combination of ultra-nationalists and ultra-liberals who have overthrown the Ukrainian government is indicative of a new type of political party in the region: National Liberals, or ‘Nalis’. They are to be differentiated from ‘Nazis’ – National Socialists – only by the economic ideology of liberalism (otherwise known as free-market capitalism).

But it is a mistake to call the protesters in Ukraine “Nazis”. Yes, at Maidan Square there was plenty of footage taken of neo-Nazis, fascists, violent anarchists and other types who showed up to a political protest in camouflage and armed with a firearm. But they are actually “Nalis” – National Liberals.

That’s why not all of Ukraine’s protesters should be called Nalis: There are true progressives who were calling for legal, constitutional changes to the corrupt Yanukovych government. Unfortunately, they have been outgunned by the Nalis, who have deposed a president unconstitutionally, voted to ban the Russian language and whose violent tactics have created the real possibility of civil war.

Many of these people are true Nalis: economic nationalists who do not even want to join the EU.

But the moneyed set of the Nalis certainly do. They want to work with the US and the EU to institute IMF-led austerity reforms. They want to reduce pensions, reduce government subsidies on things like heat, reduce wages and increase corporate protections to foster a capitalist society. All you need to do is look at their proposals and it’s clear: they want free market liberalism…but of course for the benefit of themselves and the other moneyed Nalis.

Two things are certain: Western politicians will back the Nalis to the hilt. Of course, always putting the best interest of the EU or US or Germany (or many others) well-before the interests of the Ukrainian people.

And two: The Western media, passionately pro-Nali and just as passionately anti-Russian and anti-Putin, will also be unquestioningly backing the Nalis until the bitter end.”

Did “Nali” catch on? No, but did Russia come up with anything better?

Are they even strenuously pushing the term “Ukrainian Civil War”, which is no longer just a “possibility” but today’s reality, in my estimation?

I understand how Russians would use “Nazism” synonymously with “Russophobia”, just I understand how Jews would use “Nazism” interchangeably with “anti-Semitism”, but clearly most Westerners do not understand the former and only the latter. Given that the “Nalis” have been around since 2014, and given that the US has used shameless Russophobia to distract from the political failures of the two mainstream parties in their 2016 election, I’m surprised that Russia couldn’t come up with a better way to express “pathological and murderous hatred towards Russia”?

“Anti-Russianism”, “Russophobic paramilitaries”, “Nalis” – somebody better come up with something better than “denazification” because it takes more than hating Russians or Jews to make a Nazi, and because “denazification” has clearly not worked. If they don’t come up with something – anything – other than “denazification” they will never explain the situation in Ukraine correctly. Take Nali, or improve upon Nali, but come up with something to increase diplomatic understanding.

However, Russia needs to not only admit they got it wrong, but they need to get at the root of why they got it wrong, and this is actually much harder for Russia.

Russians need to ask why they get – as their failed PR campaign proves – “Nazi” as wrong as the West does

It’s not really that the times have changed and “Nazi” is outdated – it’s that “Nazi” was never accurate to begin with in Ukraine, as I wrote back in 2014.

Racism or xenophobia – the hating of Russia – isn’t enough to make one a Nazi, merely a racist. Germanic Nazism had political and economic components, and to ignore them is only ignorance and only causes more ignorance. The West only associates Nazis with anti-Semitism, and that’s foolish, but some Russians think associating Nazis with anti-Russianism is a complete picture, and that is just as foolish.

Incorrectly believing that it does is to totally ignore the economic factor, and the factor of political structure, and to merely make ethnic/identity politics the only factor – it is also to lay the foundation for total PR failure outside of Russia, and that cannot be denied.

The obvious difference is that Russia is on the right side of being against the “Nalis”, but… they don’t even know what that means, or what being anti-Nail implies for their society going forward – and the implications are revolutionary-big.

The Western and Russian elite leadership both misuse “Nazi” because it serves them – cui bono applies here too.

Both Russian and Western elites do not want to seriously talk about the economic/political aspects of socialism – of any variety – whatsoever. This is because post-1991 both regions’ elites began to wrongly take for granted that Socialist Democracy is a failure (China has emphatically disproven this, thankfully) and thus Russia adopted many aspects of what I term “Western Liberal Democracy”.

I can list a half-dozen synonyms: liberalism, neoliberalism, ultra-liberalism, English parliamentarian oligarchy, Western democracy, Nali-ism, etc. It all comes down to the same thing: liberalism, which is the ideology that emerged after the downfall of absolute monarchy in 1789 and before the establishment of socialist democracy in 1917.

The West is fighting for Western Liberal Democracy, and thus they do not permit honest discussion and honest critiques of Western Liberal Democracy. This explains why there is no admission regarding the historical reality that Nazism and 1930s European fascism won power precisely because so many people realised that Western Liberal Democracy was nothing but awful oligarchy. Most of Russia does not understand this either – not since 1991 – and thus they are stuck between aping Western Liberal Democracy and rejecting Socialist Democracy.

Putin definitely doesn’t want to talk about socialism honestly – or even acknowledge its achievements in Russia – because socialists are not just an ideological rival but an actual political one, unlike in the West: The Communist Party is the main opposition party in Russian parliament. Clearly, Western Liberal Democracy still has plenty of detractors in Russia.

But Putin is thus at an absurd and contradictory place in his political outlook: He wants to oppose Western Liberal Democracy’s surprising counter-attack on Russia with… more Western Liberal Democracy in Russia? It’s illogical, and thus it can’t work, and here’s why:

Putin is essentially saying that he wants Russia to take the Iranian road of taking total sanctions war head-on, but… without the influence of 1917? It won’t work. In 1979 Iranian political leaders were aware of Marxism, Leninism and Maoism, and they were also aware that Western Liberal Democracy was an awful economic and political model, and as a result they nationalised the economy to a degree only surpassed by North Korea and (maybe, I contest) Cuba – that’s the only way to beat sanctions!

What Russia is proposing in response to the Western counter-attack is truly radical for them in the sense that it is a total overturning of the economic and political choices of Western Liberal Democracy, and thus of many Russian choices post-1991. I don’t think Russia realizes how radical what they are proposing to do in response to sanctions really is, and how much it requires a complete rethink in political terms and interpretations of history – is Putin willing to embrace the USSR’s political and economic past?

What’s certain is that if Russia wants true sovereignty and independence as a response to the Western sanctions war – if they want to follow the Iranian road, as I first posited here, in an article which deserves way more attention, given that Russia now has 5

Yes, the EU isn’t sanctioning Russian fossil fuels, but France just announced they want no more Russian gas by 2027. The EU sanctions and what they portend are serious.

The Iranian road led to sovereignty – and maybe even an actually-signed JCPOA which would be more proof its correct choices – because Iran rests on totally different (i.e. revolutionary) economic power and political power structures than those of Western Liberal Democracy. Russia cannot defeat a sanctions campaign with Western Liberal Democratic structures – it’s a system geared to protect oligarchs, of course.

Does Russia have oligarchs? Of course, to Western Liberal Democrats west of Russia “oligarchs” only exist in Russia, never in the West – absurdly and falsely. Listening to Westerners, “oligarchs” must only be a region in Siberia, perhaps? But oligarchs are not going to help counter sanctions; they are not going to accept mass nationalisations; they are not going to accept price controls, profit limitations, central planning, etc. and etc. and etc.

If Russia continues to face off with the West a la Iran they can either have a revolution in thinking or they can fail. Western Liberal Democracy will not save them, as Russians were told in 1991.

Perhaps Putin is just bluffing about his totally anti-capitalist response to the Western sanction war? Or perhaps it’s truly a new world, with China-Russia-Iran leading the way?

But the fact that no one in the West can easily grasp Russia’s intellectual campaign for the war indicates a major problem. Russia needs to think and talk honestly about political terms, and I recommend starting with “denazification”. This will, I think, necessarily take them into bigger issues, such as how a “bring on your sanctions” stance necessarily reacquires very revolutionary (or perhaps return-to-revolutionary, for Russia) changes.

Should Russia fail to realise this, it may reveal that they are as intellectually stuck as the West: If the conflict in Ukraine is only about Russia-hating, then they have succumbed to the same identity politics worldview of the West – they have made “race” the end-all be-all of their political-economic discourse. It will be proof that they have ignored the class warfare lens, the imperialist lens and 1979’s “maybe we do need some spiritual morality in our socioeconomic policies?” lens. These are all lenses which came around between 1917-1991, which current Russian leadership has rather disavowed.

These are strong, serious ideas, but they are motivated by the catastrophic failure of the “denazification” idea outside of Russia, which seems like thus far the biggest failure in Russian planning for their military operation.

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.

Alt Left: The Basic Culture of Ukraine Is Ukrainian Nationalism, Which Is a Form of Fascism and Sometimes Nazism

Alt Left: Western Claims about Russia in the Russo-Ukrainian War

The Western media and states have made all sorts of claims about the Russian military in this latest war. Unfortunately, most US military analysts, including those out of the Pentagon, are simply propagandists. They’re not there to tell you the truth. They’re there to lay out war propaganda. I’ve also been told that US analysts, including those in Pentagon, did not understand Soviet military doctrine and do not understand Russian military doctrine. If all they want to do is propagandize and lie, then why would they need to know the truth about the military doctrine of the other side.

However, this is unfortunate because I think a lot of Western analysts, including those in the Pentagon, come to believe their own lies. This is not a good thing. You need to know the complete truth about your adversary in wartime. Propaganda is fine for the masses, but the actual analysts need to know the straight story.

Claims:

A 40 mile convoy of Russian military vehicles had run out of food and gasoline due to supply line problems, hence they were stuck outside of Kiev. First of all, it was only 3.5 miles long, not 40 miles long. Some people measured it. It was 40 miles outside of Kiev though. I assume this is where they got the false 40 mile long figure. The truth is apparently that the convoy was waiting for the Gostomel Airport to be fully cleared, and this took some time. Once the airport was cleared, the convoy moved in. Now Russia has a huge supply depot at the airport. I think Western analysts were just wrong on this one.

Russians are experience serious supply line problems of food and gasoline. We’ve never been able to verify this on the Russian side. Perhaps they are, perhaps they are not. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem to be true.

Russian troops are suffering from very poor morale. We’ve not been able to verify this on the Russian side either. The Chechens seem in high spirits as do the militias of Donetsk and Luhansk. Perhaps they are, perhaps they are not.

Russia is running out of reserve soldiers. Russia has only committed one-fifth of its reserves.

The US and Ukraine say that Russia has lost up to 10,000 men. This is false. I am not certain of Russian losses, but I would put them at 1,000 men lost so far.

The Russian people hate this war and are rising up against it. Fully 1

The war has bogged down and Russia is basically stuck and can’t go any further as Ukraine has fought them off. Russia is simply going very slow in this war. In part this is to avoid civilian losses but another reason is to minimize Russian losses. Russia and the separatist militias are advancing slowly, maybe 3-10 miles a day.

Russia has kidnapped several mayors on towns it is occupying. They are being taken away with bags over their heads to be tortured. We have no information about this one way or the other. It sounds dubious but you never know.

Three Russian generals have been killed so far. I believe the Russian side has said that one of those generals is still alive. No word on the other two generals. Perhaps they were killed, perhaps they were not.

Putin removed his Defense Minister, Gerasimov. That’s just not true. Furthermore, military doctrine is you don’t change horses in midstream.

The initial Russian plan was a failure so they had to go to Plan B. We don’t know if the actual Russian plan was to take Ukraine in a blitzkreig seige. Perhaps it was, perhaps it was not. But this argument suffers from a fallacy. First of all, in a mission of this sort, the Russian general staff will draw up perhaps 10-20 different plans dealing with every conceivable contingency. So even if the initial plan did not work out, they simply shifted to one of the other plans. Russian analysts keep saying that the venture is going as planned.

Russians are deliberately targeting civilians. This does not seem to be true at all. There is urban warfare in the cities, and civilians will be hurt and killed in such combat. Everything we have heard is that Russia is going to great lengths to avoid harming civilians. In fact this is said to be the reason that they are moving so slowly. This also means that they will take casualties rather than put civilian lives at risk.

The Russian sites are full of angry commenters demanding that Russia take the gloves off and quit  pussyfooting around trying to save civilians if it means Russian soldiers are harmed. They wouldn’t be saying that if it wasn’t true. The best analysis seems to be that Russia is indeed going slowly to try to minimize civilian casualties.

A Time Magazine reporter was deliberately targeted by Russians and killed. There are Western reporters everywhere in this war. Russia hasn’t been targeting any of them so far. Journalists get hit by stray fire all the time while covering wars. This seems to be the best analysis for the death of this war correspondent. It now turns out that this man and his colleague were shot at a Ukrainian Army checkpoint by Ukrainian soldiers.

Russia deliberately bombed a maternity hospital, apparently just to be evil. We’ve gone over this before and this looks like a Nazi battalion false flag attack against an empty hospital. The star of the video, a pregnant woman, is an actress, and the photographer is a professional photographer who has been engaging in Ukrainian propaganda for years. We have testimony from staff that the hospital was emptied and turned into a base on February 25. Russia also stated two days prior that the hospital had been turned into a base.

Russia won’t let civilians leave the cities and shoots at them if they try to leave. This just seems to be false. Russia says that the Ukrainians are the ones who won’t let people leave, especially the Nazi battalions. We have videotaped interviews with refugees saying that the Nazis would not let them leave and fired on them if they try to escape. The Ukrainians are the ones who benefit from having civilians as human shields. The Russians gain no benefit at all. Their only motivation would be to clear the civilians out of the city. This charge seems false. It is the Ukrainians who are blocking civilians from leaving.

2,600 civilians killed in Mariupol. Probably not. There would be so many photos of dead bodies, wounded people, stretchers, ambulances. We see none of that. The figure is false.

Zelensky is in Kiev. False. The video of him visiting wounded soldiers was shot in mid-February. He is accompanied by a female physician. She died on February 26, so the video must have been shot before then.

Russia bombed itself with a Tochka missile in Donetsk, killing 20 and wounding 28. False. The missile came from the Ukrainian side from Kramatorsk. Also Russia quit making that missile in 2013 and in 2019 the last ones were cleared out of storage. This was obviously payback for the missile attacks on the barracks of the foreign mercenaries in Lviv.

Russia attacked 15 miles from the Polish border. This means he’s going to expand the war to Poland. False. They hit the base where the mercenaries and supplies were coming in.

35 were killed in the Russian attack on the base near the border. This is the tally for Ukrainian soldiers. It does not appear to include the mercenaries of the Foreign Fighter Brigades. Members of those brigades say they were decimated and lost 180 men in the attack. Surviving mercenaries fled to Poland afterwards. It’s also reported that they are being rushed into combat in Kiev with very little training and old automatic weapons that do not work well. Morale amongst the foreign legion is very poor.

Russia shut down all opposition media. This is not so. I’m on Russian sites all the time and there are vigorous debates going on there. They did shut down some particularly virulent opposition media.

Keep in mind that this type of opposition has no more than

On the Russian pages I went to, it was about 50-50 split between support for shutting them down and opposition to it, which shows right there that the opposition viewpoint is allowed. 1

A woman wounded in the maternity hospital attack has died along with her unborn baby. There is one woman, a model and actress, who plays two different pregnant women in this production. She was in Istanbul, but suddenly she showed up in Mariupol. Reports indicate that she just gave birth to a baby, however, she also plays the second woman who supposedly died along with her baby. But it was one crisis actor playing both women.

Russia reported to the UN that Azov was using that hospital as a base four days before. And it doesn’t even look like Russia attacked the hospital at all. All of the windows are blown out and all of the 110 rooms destroyed and there are only 17 wounded? No way. See the US bombing of the hospital in Kunduz because they were treating wounded Taliban fighters. Look at the damage to the building. It’s covered in soot. 42 people died and many more were wounded. That’s what happens when you bomb a hospital.

Also in the maternity hospital production, the victims have no soot on them. With all of those windows blown out, there would be many glass injuries. There are none. The blood on the actress does not look real to me. It looks fake.

Russia is planning a chemical or biological attack. There’s no evidence to suggest this when Russia is winning the war. This comes on the heels of the bioweapons labs of the US discovered in Ukraine. US officials said that they are not bioweapons labs first, and second, that if any chemical or biological attack occurs, it will be Russia’s fault. How do they know one will occur? How do they know Russia will do it? This is what they did in all of the lead-ups to every one of the fake White Helmets chemical weapons attacks.

They always said Syria was going to do a chemical weapons attack. Then Russia would usually say NATO was planning a fake attack. Then the attack would happen and it was always fake. So there is a serious risk of a fake biological or chemical weapons attack in Ukraine along the White Helmets model. US media and citizen suckers fell for it over and over in Syria, so they’ll obviously fall for it again in Ukraine.

Also chemical or biological weapons attacks serves as a casus belli for attacking with a military force as the UN allows nations to go in and attack governments that use chemical and biological weapons. That’s why WMD’s were used as a casus belli in Iraq and Syria and now possibly in Ukraine – it gives us an excuse to attack!

The US has no bioweapons labs in Ukraine. That we do is Russian-Chinese disinformation. I’ve been studying these labs forever. There may be as many as 200 of them. When Congress ended the bioweapons program, the Pentagon simply shifted them out of the country to many other countries.

The US says they are just “biological” laboratories and there is nothing off about them. Then why are they run by the Pentagon? Why is all information about them classified? Why is the Pentagon busy scrubbing the webpages and shredding the files about these labs? If there’s nothing weird going on there, why is Victoria Nuland, the monster, so worried about this material falling into the hands  of the Russians? When I first heard about these labs, what I read contained extensive documentation, but I didn’t really believe it. It was way too out there. Now it turns out that they are real.

I know all about these labs. They are not “biological research” labs. They are out and out bioweapons labs, period. Everywhere these labs go in the world, weird mini-epidemics of never before seen diseases seem to pop up in the country where the lab is. I don’t know what’s going on and how this stuff is getting out of the labs into the local population.

Georgia complained that a lab in that country resulted in an outbreak of an odd strain of Hepatitis never before seen in the country. The lab was also collecting samples of Russian DNA and sending it back to the US. This was almost surely for making a bioweapon to target a specific population group.  They were working with many highly virulent agents at this lab and the research involved trying to find ways to weaponize these agents.

Whatever the Hell on Earth those labs are doing, I’m not really sure, but I don’t trust the government and this stinks to high heavens and looks like a bioweapons program. Every one of those labs needs to be shut down right now and all of those pathogens need to be destroyed pronto.

Alt Left: Ukrainian Nationalists Are “Kill the Russians” Nazis, Not So Much “Kill the Jews” Nazis

This article refutes the claim that the Azov Battalion is Nazi. Sorry I forgot to include the link.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/03/about_those_neonazis_in_ukraine.html

Yeah, that’s BS and I haven’t even read it yet.

Go talk to them. They talk crap about Jews and most of them are Holocaust Deniers. And all of their heroes, 10

Yes, recently the leader of the Azov Battalion said they’re not antisemitic. In fact, he said Israel is the model for the fascist ethnic state they wish to create. Not exactly a compliment for Jews, is it!

“Hey Jews, you guys are great! This Nazi guy said your shitty little hate state is a model for the Nazi country he wants!”

Keep in mind that Azov and the rest don’t just hate Russians and  Jews. They hate Poles about as much as they hate Russians. And since 2014, Ukrainian nationalist battalions have been tormenting Hungarians in the Carpathians and Greeks in Mariupol. They hate all non-Ukrainians. They hate the Greeks and Hungarians because they won’t give up their languages and cultures and turn into Ukrainians. Ukrainian ultranationalism isn’t really about biological race. Ukrainian Jews speak Ukrainian and have adopted Ukrainian culture. Perhaps that’s why the nationalists don’t talk about them much.

Except it turns out that this leader of the Azov Battalion recently ordered all Ukrainian Jews to leave Ukraine except the Karaites. Wait. I thought he wasn’t antisemitic. I thought Israel was a model for the Nazi country they want to make. Turns out we have to take all that back.

You need to understand. These are more “kill the Russians” Nazis as opposed to “kill the Jews” Nazis. The kill the Jews part is on the backburner for now that they have these Jewish presidents. By the way, Zelensky has to do what those Nazis say, and if he doesn’t, they say they’re going to kill him!

In the US, “Nazi” means genocidal antisemites, Holocaust, Shoah, 6 million dead Jews. Only 6 million people died in World War 2. Wait. It was 50 million. Nope. Those 44 million non-Jews don’t count! All that counts is that special, precious 6 million!

In Russia, when you say Nazis, they don’t think genocidal antisemites, Holocaust, 6 million dead Jews, etc. The Russians are antisemites themselves, albeit not homicidal or genocidal ones anymore. They think “27 million dead Soviets” and Hitler’s plan to more or less exterminate the Slavs, in particular the Russian people. I think half were to be killed outright, 1/4 of the most Germanic ones turned into Germans, and the other quarter slowly worked and starved to death. So the Germans had an agenda to kill 120 million Soviets, mostly Russians. This was called Generalplan Ost.

Ukraine has always been the flat plain that every invasion of Russia has ever used from Napoleon to the Nazis. It’s the Invader Highway to Russia. So Russia cannot possibly let Ukraine fall into the hands of its enemies, especially Nazis.

To the extent that Azov and the rest are “kill the Russians” Nazis as opposed to “kill the Jews” Nazis, I do feel that they are absolutely Nazis.

Alt Left: For the 5,000th Time, There Is No Irridentism

https://beyondhighbrow.com/category/regional/africa/east-africa/somalia/puntland/

Let me remind you of your glory days on WordPress. Does Ukraine not have the right to secede from the USSR? You can counter with does not Donbass and Crimea have the right the to secede from Ukraine? Maybe if that was their intention. But Crimean and Donbassian independence just seam like cover Russian irridentism. Look maybe they do belong to Russia in a common sense way. Again, it doesn’t excuse for bombing Kiev.

Why don’t we just lob a few fucking nukes at Moscow then to stop the war? Perfectly justified IMO. Let’s nuke Xi and Our Dear Leader while we’re at it The ends justify the means up to a point.

Ukraine did secede from the USSR. Done.

Nope. Russia doesn’t want the Donbass.

Crimea was Russian forever. It was never Ukrainian. It got moved from one part of the USSR to another part of the USSR. It didn’t get put in another country. And when Ukraine went independent, immediately Crimea held a referendum and said they wanted not to be part of Ukraine and either wanted to be independent or part of Russia. And the Ukrainian nationalists came in right away and threatened to kill every Russian in Crimea. This is an old problem. Ukraine ignored the poll and Russia didn’t push the matter for 14 years.

If Russia’s irridentist, why didn’t it demand that Crimea go free right away? Why did they ignore the independence poll? Russia wanted to keep Crimea Ukrainian as long as possible because things go smoother that way. In 2104, the US and NATO went in and did a violent coup called Maidan and overthrew a Democratically elected president. And they murdered a whole bunch of people in the process.

The reason for the coup was because the president said he was going to enter an economic alliance with Russia. The reaction of the US to that was a violent, murderous coup and the installation of radical Ukrainian ultranationalist fascists and Nazis. Since 2014, Ukraine has been home to a psychotically anti-Russian government that has baited and attacked Russia every chance it got.

As soon as the NATO Nazis came in, they immediately said they were going throw Russia out of her only warm water port in Sevastopol and turn it into a NATO naval base. Well, Russia can’t lose that port and have it turned over to her enemies. So she went in and grabbed Crimea and “annexed” it, but it’s never been anything but Russian anyway.

A referendum was held and 9

There is no irridentism in Donbass. The Donbass people revolted when the murderously anti-Russian regime came in. They overthrew bases and police stations and armed themselves. I was on websites at the time where people were in deep with both Moscow and Donbass people. For a long time, Russia refused to help Donbass. The sites were full of cursing at Russia for not helping. Eventually when the Ukies started killing them, Russia helped them with “the military surplus store” and sent a lot of older out of date equipment to the Donbass.

But Russia was not happy with the successionism from the start, and they said so. People on the sites kept repeating that Russia doesn’t want Donbass to go independent and they think the  whole thing has turned into a huge mess. They thought it was too destabilizing. From the very start Russia pushed for Donbass to be part of a federal Ukraine with autonomy.

That’s all Russia ever wanted. The Minsk accords created that federal Ukraine. Ukraine agreed to implement the Minsk accords that they signed and then they refused to honor them for seven years while they shelled the cities of the Donbass, killing many civilians. The US ordered Ukraine not to implement the accords.

There is no independent Ukraine. Ukraine is just a NATO cat’s paw to pummel Russia with. They have no independence. They follow every order the US and NATO gives  them. I assume that if a Ukrainian President starts defying the US and NATO, we will probably just have him murdered. That’s what the US typically does in cases like this. So Zelensky obeying orders from the US while we point a gun to his head.

The US and Ukraine angrily rejected federalism (Why? It works great in Switzerland and Spain) because they wanted to start a war in the Donbass with the eventual hope of baiting Russia into attacking so they could lower the hammer on them. At one point, Russia did send in some troops, but they never admitted it. The war ended with a cease fire, and the Russians all went home except for some OMON (Russian military intelligence) people and  some advisors.

Nevertheless NATO and Ukraine have been lying and saying it’s been the Russian Army fighting in Donbass all these years.

They held a referendum in the Donbass and 8

They have way too many problems with the people and land that they have and they don’t want or need anymore land. Also the Donbass is a ruined hellscape and an economic basketcase. Russia would have to spend billions to rebuild it and they don’t want to do that. Even now with the recognized independence, Russia still doesn’t want them to join Russia.

South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Transniestria have been agitating to join Russia for fifteen years ever since they went free. Russia has refused to let any of them join Russia.

How the Hell is Russia irridentist if all these regions keep clamoring to join and Russia keeps telling them to get lost? This idea of Russian irridentism, Russia trying to conquer new land, Russia trying to reform the USSR, is all crap. I’m on sites with people deep in with Kremlin leadership for years now and we never heard one word of this. All we hear is, “Russia doesn’t want to annex any land.”

Putin has dealt with the recreating the USSR canard many times. He has said that the fall of the USSR was a tragedy, but what’s done is done, and it’s time to leave it. He keeps saying we have no interest in recreating the USSR.

With this overwhelming evidence that Russia has no irridentism, does not wish to conquer and annex new land, and does not with to reform the USSR, how can you keep insisting that this is true. Just because the liars in the West keep screaming that this is true doesn’t mean it is. I’ve been studying this forever with an open mind and the answer is clear to me: the nations and media of the West are all lying their fool heads off. Or maybe they actually believe this crap. But if they had decent intelligence services, they’d know it was nonsense.

Why do we have a right to lob nukes at Russia or China. This war has absolutely nothing to do with the US or anyone in the West. What relationship does the US have with Ukraine? Nothing. No treaties, no nothing. Just a bunch of Goddamned Nazis we use as a club to beat Russia with. It’s not our fight. You can’t attack a country that’s not attacking you or a threat to you. We have no right to “go in there and stop any war.” Wars will go on until the warring parties sort it out. You don’t get to go in and attack some country that never did  anything to you “to stop a war.” That’s BS.

They have perfect right to invade Kiev and go in there and clean out those Nazis. Putin sees this as 1939 all over again. If Russia could have stopped them in 1939, they should have. He sees it as 1939 now and 1942 at some point in the near future and he’s correct. He wants to nip this in the bud before it gets more out of control and dangerous than it already is.

Alt Left: Ukraine Is a Fascist Country, Full Stop

All Ukrainian nationalists are basically Nazis or fascists. I suppose he’s not an actual Nazi himself, but he uses those Nazi groups to stay in power. They are the muscle behind the regime, and everyone has to do what they say. If you go against them, they will overthrow you or put a bullet in your head.

Zelensky ran on a peace platform, but after he got in, he found he could not implement it because the Nazis would not let him. Those Jews there use those Nazi ultranationalists to stay in power and fight the Russians.

More to the point, the Nazism they like is of the “kill the Russians” variety. Nazis hated Russians and killed 27 million of them, remember. All of the heroes of Ukrainian nationalists were Nazi collaborators during WW2, hence all Ukrainian ultranationalists are Nazis by default. They don’t seem to focus much on Jews, as they focus most of their rage towards Russians. On the other hand, the Nazis have been terrorizing the Hungarians and Greeks in Ukraine ever since 2014.

Like all ultranationalists, they hate all non-Ukrainians and want them all to become Ukrainians. It’s not so much that they hate them for being Greeks or Hungarians. It’s more that they hate them for not giving up their culture. They hate Russians not for being Russian ethnically but for speaking Russia, being culturally Russian, and supporting Russia.

A person with a Russian background could simply stop speaking Russian, start speaking Ukrainian, and adopt Ukrainian culture and no one would mind. As you can see, Ukrainian ultranationalism or Nazism is not racial. It’s more of a cultural Nazism. Assimilate and everything’s fine. Keep your language and culture and you need to be killed.

Also there are Ukrainian speakers who are pro-Russian and Russian speakers who are pro-Ukrainian. What language you speak doesn’t always equate to your politics.

Everything was fine in Ukraine until with Maidan we overthrew the democratically elected president Yanukovitch. After that, a radical Ukrainian ultranationalist regime was put in. The main opposition party of the Russian speakers was outlawed, its deputies were murdered, and they tried to kill the leader by setting his house on fire, but they set his neighbor’s on fire instead. He fled to Russia.

They also outlawed the Communist Party (they got 1

They introduced laws banning the speaking of Russian in public and forbidding Russian speakers from holding government jobs.

This is why the people in the East rose up. They hate Nazis over there because it reminds them of World War 2 when Ukrainian nationalists rampaged through Ukraine, killing Russians.

Russia is opposed to Gay, Trans, Feminist, and anti-White Identity Politics and the Cultural Left.

They had to do this. Ukraine was an out and out menace, and it had to be shut down. It was a mad, wildly Russian-hating monstrosity on Russia’s border, and Russia can’t have that.

In 1992 with the first independence, Ukrainian nationalists went to Crimea and said, “Crimea will either be Ukrainian or deserted.”

For some reason, the Ukrainian Jews have gotten off light. As long as those Jews support the ultranationalists, they will stay in power. Kolomoisky is a Jew and is one of the richest men in Ukraine. He’s also a thug and a criminal. He has thugs who go in and intimidate businesses into letting him take over their companies. If they don’t obey, he sics his thugs on them. He’s the one who shot down that M17 jet to blame Russia. The Ukrainian government didn’t even know about that.

He runs his own private army almost over there in Dnepropetrovsk. It’s called the Dniper Battalion and yes, they are Nazis. All of the Nazi battalions in Ukraine are armed and trained by this Jewish thug Kolomoisky.

The Jews of Ukraine are very weird. First, they are basically just criminals, like an organized crime gang. Second, they work very closely with out and out Nazis.

You must understand that in WW2, Ukrainian Jews led anti-Jewish pogroms and put Jews in temporary camps.

Ukrainian nationalists cut their hair in the style of Stepan Bandera, the hero of the Ukrainian nationalists. He led the Ukrainian nationalist army ONU in World War 2. They collaborated with Nazis and killed 200,000 Jews and 40,000 Poles. They are vicious Russia-haters. After the war, the US ferried them out, with many of them going to Canada.

The ink was barely dry on the armistice papers with Germany when the OSS was setting up these Ukrainian Nazis to fight the USSR in Ukraine as guerrillas. This war went on for ~10 years. It is the descendants of these Nazis from World War 2 who today make up the Ukrainian ultranationalists.

NATO has long collaborated with Nazis. However, it was probably more of a marriage of convenience than a marriage of ideology. NATO was set up as an anti-Soviet alliance, and Nazis tended to be the best Communist haters and killers of all. NATO set up the Gladio Network or Stay Behind Network made up of fascists and Nazis all over Europe in every NATO country. They were supposed to engage in guerrilla war after the USSR conquered Europe.

But in Italy they mostly did false flag attacks where they pretended to be leftwing guerillas. They set off bombs in train stations and killed hundreds of people. This was called the “Strategy of Tension.” It was all being run by NATO’s intelligence arm. The Gladio Stay Behind network was activated in 2014 in Ukraine. These are the people who carried out the Maidan coup. And the Gladio Stay Behind Network is basically the group that has been in power ever since 2014.

In Mariupol and Nikolavea in Ukraine, since 2014, the Nazis beat and killed Russian speakers and threw them in jail and prison. Those that remained were ordered from their homes at gunpoint. Any remaining left and went into exile.

There are videos on the Net showing Nazi lynch mobs rounding up Russian speakers, tying them up, and beating them. This is going on as I type this. One man is tied to a pole. Nazis shot a Greek in Mariupol last week for speaking Russian. I saw a video where the Nazis tied a Russian speaker to a pole and then set it on fire, burning him to death. The Nazis have been shooting people who have been trying to leave Mariupol.

Alt Left: Why The Republican Party is Now Literally a Latin American-Style Rightwing Authoritarian or Fascist Political Party

Fascism: A Popular Palingetic Dictatorship against the Left

This is if we define fascism as any rightwing dictatorship or rightwing authoritarian system. I think it’s a good argument that any rightwing dictatorship is basically a fascist political system if we define fascism according to its excellent new definition of “a popular dictatorship against the Left.”

It also tends to have nationalist or ultranationalist palingetic properties in many cases, palingetic referring to a project along the lines of the mythic bird rising from the ashes that seeks to restore the blood and soil glory of the ancient nation before it was destroyed by insurgent anti-nationalists, typical liberals or minorities.

Trumpism, Erdoganism, and Hindutvadism: Three Fascist Ideologies

Viewed through this mirror, you can see how Trumpism, Erodgan’s Ottoman Islamism, and the BJP Hindutva regime in India are all classic fascist political parties. Note the strong support by the middle classes of all three projects, in particular the Hindutvadi one. Religion is wedded to religious bigotry in all three nations – Christianity (albeit in a mild form deeply associated with regressive Judaism) in Trump’s case, a religio-nationalist Islam in the case of Turkey and a religio-nationalist Hindusim in the case of India.

In the latter two cases, religious minorities are associated with treasonous insurgents who needed to be eliminated from the body politic, which they are seen as literally poisoning. In Trump’s case, the prejudice is not so much religious as it as against liberals and liberalism and apparently even democracy, the twin enemies of fascists everywhere dating all the way back to 1930’s Germany. Liberalism and democracy makes the nation soft and allows the national enemies, who happen to be minorities and liberals, to worm their way into the body politic and eat away at the nation itself like termites.

Alt Left: The Chameleon-Like Nature of Fascism

I wrote this in objection to a paper under review right now on Academia by a Left professor of Somatic Psychology, a PhD and a very smart man, who quotes Wilhelm Reich, a Jewish pro-sex and anti-fascist writer, as saying that fascists are out of touch with their bodies. Presumably antifascists are in touch with their bodies and not repressed. Apparently sexual repression and being out of touch with your body is part of the genesis of fascism. I don’t agree. Here is my response, in part.

I think that quoting Reich on fascism is not the greatest idea. He’s not the best person to ask about fascist theory. The modern intellectual descendants of Reich (the Cultural Left) don’t have a very good view of fascism.

Further, Reich was an extreme sexual libertine who may have molested his sister and raped his maids as a boy. Reich’s sexual libertinism was rejected by all Communists in the last century and is still condemned in existing Communist countries. So Reich’s critique is ill-formed, as the Communists were just as bad as the fascists when it came to Reich’s libertinism.

Fascists are sexually repressed? I don’t know. I’ve run into some MAGA women lately who are ridiculously libertine to the point of being degenerate or depraved. They’re about this far from becoming out and out porn stars. Yet fascists they are. A friend used to be an actor in the porn industry. He told me that the industry is full of conservatives. I’m aware of a few pornstars who were basically White Supremacists.

Donald Trump’s fascism was nearly a “pornographic fascism.” He cavorted with pornstars, cheated on all of his wives, made lewd remarks about his own daughter and the teenage underage daughters of his friends, reportedly attended sex orgies, and may have raped a 13 year old girl and forced a 12 and 13 year old girl to have sex with each other. He’s as libertine as Reich, yet he’s a fascist.

Better definitions are coming out of serious scholars of the Left. There area number of modern scholars who are trying to pin down exactly what fascism is. Almost all are operating from the Left. Among these superb modern theorists of fascism are David Neiwert who blogs at Daily Kos, the authors of a blog called Three Way Fight (not sure if it’s still up), along with excellent political scientists working out of the universities.

Better older analyses of fascism also come from Lenin and especially from Trotsky, who wrote some of the best essays on fascism ever written.

A “popular dictatorship against the Left” seems to be the best definition. “Palingetic nationalism” is another, referring to the bird that rises from the ashes in mythology. Fascism appeals to “the everyman,” “the man on the street” – “the shirtless ones” of Peronist fame. That’s the appeal – to your “basic man” and “basic woman.” It also appeals to strong primitive drives of aggression, violence, projection of failures onto outsiders, expansionism, often imperialism, an opposition to liberalism and democracy. It also opposes equality and in favor of hierarchy.

Fascism involves a reverence for sacred violence bordering on the religious, a worship of “the greatness of the ancestors,” a dialogue to restore “the glory days of yore” from the ruins of the “degenerate present”, ruined by liberals, democracy, anti-nationals, nation-haters, and traitors.

Fascism has historically supported a return to traditional values and a rejection of degenerate modernism, but as we can see in the “pornographic fascism” of Donald Trump, that’s not necessarily the case anymore.

Fascism also always advocated a return to traditional male female role models, but that need to be a hindrance to basic equal de jure rights for women, as seen in the many successful MAGA women and the many often-religious MAGA men who love and cherish their wives.

Fascism has typically targeted minorities and has been racist. People think that fascism is inherently anti-Semitic, yet many early Zionists such as Jabotinsky were open fascists and supported the fascist movement in Europe. Some of the early Israeli guerrillas were Jabotinskist fascists.

I’d argue that Israel has been fascist from Day One, but certainly with the coming of Sharon and Netanyahu, the ideological descendants of Jabotinskyist fascism, Israel became literally a fascist country. Jacobinsky is the hero and spiritual founder of the Likud Party. He was an early Zionist who wrote a book in 1921 called The Iron Wall. He and his followers were strong supporters of the fascist parties in Europe in the 1920’s and 30’s. Some of the early Zionist guerrilla organizations were Jabotinskyist fascists.

In Lebanon, the Gemayalist Phalangists named after a general named Gemayal, are an actual literal fascist party. Even their name is fascist as phalange is a popular name for fascist parties. They are Christian Maronites who see themselves as transplanted Europeans, descendants of “Phoenicians,” who despise Arabs and Islam. They are also the most pro-Israel party in Lebanon. This founder of this party had photos of Hitler in his school locker when he was in high school and the party’s ideology is modeled on the classic European fascism of the 30’s.

Israeli fascism is not anti-Semitic at all, and many White Supremacists actually support Israel as the model for the racist state they wish to set up. Many dislike Jews in the Diaspora who are seen as anti-national, but have no problem with the fascist Jews in Israel and see them as fellow fascists.

A number of the anti-immigrant Right parties in Europe are pro-Israel, including the National Front in France, the AfD in Germany, and the neo-Nazi party in Austria! They often like Israel because of its strong anti-Muslim orientation. Along the same lines, the Muslim-hating Hindu nationalist fascists ruling India in the form of the BJP party, are very pro-Israel.

The pro-fascist Spanish and Italian conservatives, remnants of former large fascist movements in those countries, are pro-Israel. The fascist Saudis, Bahrainis, Egyptians, Moroccans, and Ermiratis are now pro-Israel. They’ve always been Rightists so it’s no surprise. So philosemitic fascism is absolutely possible and even existing.

Arab nationalists have always been quite fascist despite their Leftist trappings. Saddam was a fascist, as was Hafez Assad. Some think Bashar Assad is a fascist. The North African leaders, all Arab Nationalists, were fascists in the sense that they tried to destroy the Berbers’ identity and make everyone into an Arab. The Assads and Saddam also attacked Kurds and Assyrians, in both cases in attempts to turn everyone into an Arab. Saddam also attacked Turkmen. And he discriminated against Iraqis of Iranian background in the South so much that he threw hundreds of thousands of them out of the country.

The Moroccan fascists are even expansionists, having invaded Spanish Sahara. The Indonesian fascists committed genocide in East Timor and Aceh and in the entire country against Communists when they unleashed a genocide in 1965 that murdered 1 million Communist in less than a couple of months. It was as bad as the Rwandan genocide.

All of these are examples of “Muslim fascists,” so fascism and Islam are quite compatible.

There seems to be a view in the West that fascism must be White Supremacist and of course it must be anti-Semitic.

None of the above were White Supremacists. They were all non-Whites, and none were self-haters.

Also as you can see above, fascism need not be anti-Semitic.

I also listed a number of fascist and anti-Islamic movements, rightwing dictatorships along with the post-fascist conservatives in Spain and Italy. The former fascist followers of Mussolini and Franco simply melted into the rightwing movements of both countries. In Spain it was the Conservative Party, a party with fascist roots.The Francoists simply changed clothes and melted into the Conservative Party. Francoism is still extremely popular, mostly in the form of anti-separatism, these days. I’ve been to their very popular websites.

Burlusconi in Italy has inherited the descendants of fascism in Italy. A fascist and racist separatist and somewhat White Supremacist movement has formed in Northern Italy. They are White Supremacists in the sense that  they claim the are Celts or “pure Whites” and they despise Southern Italians as de facto “niggers.”

A friend in Italy told me that fascism was still very popular in Italy to this very day, although it was also widely hated as the Left in Italy is often Far Left or almost Communist. There are cities in Sicily were the leftwingers are all Communists and the rightwingers are all fascists. They engage in street battles all the time.

My friend told me that the Red Brigades, an anti-fascist Far Left group of Communists that attacked the state, was extremely popular in Northern Italy, particularly in Vicenzia Province where he lived. His sister was a strong supporter of the Red Brigades, and she came from a normal middle class background in Trieste.

Fascism is said to be anti-Muslim, yet we have Islamic fascism in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Brunei, Morocco, and probably the Taliban in Afghanistan. Turkey and Azerbaijan are classic fascists of the 1930’s type, however they have married this to Ottoman imperialism and Islamic jihadism, particularly the genocidal variety that held sway in Turkey from 1880 until 1940.

That the Taliban are a new sort of fascism was an argument of the Leftists at Three Way Fight. I’m not sure I agree with that. Other Muslim fascists used to rule in Indonesia,  Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Iran. Above I listed more Muslim fascists in the Arab World, who might better be described as rightwing dictatorships.

Fascism is chameleon-like and changes shape endlessly to mirror and capture whatever times it is in. I can even see chameleon-like fascists adopting yoga, meditation, and bodywork, the “Left” body psychology mechanisms the author refers to. Hitler was a vegetarian and a good animal rights supporter, if terrible in so many other ways.

This aspect of fascism of what makes this political mercury blob so hard to pin down. Indeed, many fascists pose as anti-Nazis and anti-fascists and accuse anti-fascists of being fascists! I’ve seen this with my own eyes.

Problem is the Modern Left starts talking about fascism, and it immediately degenerates into propaganda and nonsense where we push views that line up whatever biases our Left formation is pushing du jour. The Cultural Left, which is almost devoid of intelligence or intellectual honesty of any sort, in particular cannot be relied upon, as almost everything coming out of there is propaganda and a lie in some form or another. For instance, the Cultural Left argues that White Supremacists, anti-feminists (or what feminists would call misogynists), homophobes, and transphobes are all “fascists.”

That’s utter nonsense as none of this Identity Stuff has anything to do with the Left in the first place, as the Left is only about economics and many Communists of the last century were in fact social conservatives described under the epithets above. Many of the antifascist fighters fighting in the Allies in World War 2 were White Supremacists, racists (in particular, racist against Blacks), “misogynists” (or at the very least strong sexists), and virulent homophobes. Trannies didn’t exist back then, but they would have been hated much worse than gays.

The very racist White Southern Democrats of that time absolutely despised Hitler, Mussolini, and the rest of the European fascists along with the Japanese, who were promoting a sort of “fascist militarism.”

The Cultural Left would have us believe that Stalin, Mao, Castro, Hoxha, Deng, Ho Chi Minh, the Bulgarian Communists, etc. were all fascists because they were social conservatives. Homosexuality was banned as a bourgeois vice in the Eastern Blog. The Shining Path executed homosexuals and cocaine abusers (another bourgeois vice). The Khmer Rogue were terribly racist. I don’t think anyone will deny that they were Communists.

Even Strasserites are Communists, granted they were odd ones. Further, Strasser had no biological race-based objection to Jews. He had an economic objection. And he wasn’t the best anti-Semite. He kept asking the others why they were so overboard on the Jewish Question.

Stalin wasn’t the best on women’s rights.

The Bulgarian Communists had opinions on race that would be considered Nazism nowadays.

As noted, homosexuality was banned in all of the Communist World. Castro put them in labor camps. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation even today doesn’t have the best policy on gays nor on Jews for that matter. I’m pretty sure they are Communists.

Trans people were not even acknowledged by any Communist country ever.

We have to completely rethink our view of fascism.

It is perfectly possible to have a libertine fascism in a porn-drenched society, which is what we just went through with Trump. MAGA folks are not repressed at all in my observation. They’re not out of touch with their bodies. The Sex Revolution of the 60’s which I was a part of took care of that.

MAGA fascism even allowed for equal rights for women. MAGA women do not appear to be discriminated against legally. A lot of them made a lot of money and held high positions.

Fascism has always been homophobic, yet the Nazi brownshirts were full of homosexuals, and I’ve talked to many gay MAGA types.

I assure you that there are gay MAGA folks. I’ve talked to a number of them. Mitch McConnell is a lifelong homosexual. He’s as fascist as they come. The first brownshirts were full of homosexuals. The Republican Convention welcomed an open fascist, the founder of Ebay, to their convention. They gave him a standing ovation.

I’m aware of Neo-Nazis to this day who are open homosexuals. James O’Meara was one. A number of White Supremacists have been outed as closeted gays. One was murdered by his young Black boyfriend. A friend used to be involved in these groups and he told me that was a LOT of homosexuality in this scene.

Brazilian fascist integralism was multi-racial and formally anti-racist, populist to the core. But Bolsonaro does not come from this milieu; he represents an actual throwback in some ways to classical European fascism of the 1930’s.

Fascism has traditionally been racist, but Black and Indian fascism is a real thing. I believe that fascism knows no color. The Tonton Macoutes of Haiti were black fascists. The Black Hutu government in Rwanda was fascist, as was Mobutu in Zaire and Samuel Doe in Liberia.

A fascist indigenist Indian rights activist is running for President in Ecuador. He’s pulled support from Cultural Left morons who support his Identity Politics while overlooking his fascism, a typical error of IP types, who are the a scourge of the Left.

Obviously modern fascism opposes transsexualism, but that’s not necessarily the case into the future. Caitlin Jenner, a fully-transitioned transwoman, is MAGA.

In the future we may see even forms of fascism that offer equal rights to gays and maybe even transsexuals.

Alt Left: (((Biden))) Bombs Pro-Iranian Militias and Builds New Bases in Syria

(((Joe Biden)))* just bombed pro-Iranian militias in the Syrian War for the Jews today. Why in the Hell did he do that? Also, (((Biden))) is increasing the number of US bases in the Syrian War for the Jews. In addition, (((Biden))) will reportedly say nothing at all as Israel expands settlements in the West Bank in the next four years. In the past, it was a ritual that the US would condemn settlement building in the very mildest of terms that didn’t change a thing but at least were symbolic.

Meanwhile, (((the US))) vetoed all UN resolutions condemning Israel for building settlements. In addition, (((Biden))) will not change the location of the US Embassy from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. And worst of all, (((Biden))) is going to say nothing at all while Israel annexes the entire West Bank, including all of the Palestinian territories. This was always verboten and beyond the pale. Why is that US foreign policy regarding Israel seems to get worse and more reactionary with each passing year? I don’t get it. We just get worse and worse with no end in sight.

The Palestinians then will be residents of Israel in a sense, but they will not be included in population counts on censuses and they will not have any rights whatsoever. They will live in Israel only as ghosts, in effect, neither counted as residents nor as citizens  and without any rights of residents or citizens of the land.

Boy, those Jews sure are progressive people, aren’t they? Yeah, progressive in the Diaspora. Far rightwing ultranationalist fascists in their own country! What’s up with that anyway? Why are Jews leftwing in the Diaspora and far right fascists in their own land? What gives? By the way, what a bunch of lousy hypocrites, progressives and fascists at the same time. When they put on a progressive suit, they are progressive. Then they change clothes and put on a fascist suit and they are fascists. What a bunch of lowlifes these people are.

One thing I like about the US is all the choices we have, especially in foreign policy:

(((US Democratic Party))) foreign policy: More wars for the Jews! (((US Republican Party))) foreign policy: More wars for the Jews!

Wow that’s some choice! I can hardly decide which one to choose!

P.S. Ever notice how silent the woketards are about Israel? You could hear a pin drop. And where is Black Lives Matter on Israel? How about on all these imperial wars we are involved in? How about US imperialism in general? Crickets. See? BLM and worketards are Fake Left. All they care about is Identity nonsense, abolishing police, jails, and prisons, playing the race card, hating White people, and opening US borders wide so 1/3 of the world’s population can flood in here completely unscreened. Economic issues? Foreign policy issues? On these questions, BLM’s silence is deafening. Fake Left!

*All Israel-firster  people and organizations get coincidence marks. You don’t have to be Jewish to get one. Really coincidence marks just mean Israel-firster.

Alt Left: Fascism and National Socialism: An Attempt at Some Definitions

Fascism:  An Attempt at a Definition

You can define a fascist country as an ultranationalist ethnic nationalist nation founded on a blood and soil mindset with an ideology based on Lazarus, the bird that rises from the flames. In fascism, there is a nationbuilding effort whereby the nation is seen to have fallen apart, typically by too much liberalism, pacifism, degeneracy, chaos, or economic problems.

The fascist comes in saying that they are going to bring back the glorious days of the founders of the land. So from the ruins of the present, the past will be mined to create a national myth and this mythos will be used to rise the country up from the ashes of ruin to the greatness it deserves.

Typically the unfortunate present moment is blamed on others, minorities or other countries that are singled out for hostility and blame.

Military missions of conquest are not unusual as the nationalist myth often if not always says that the borders of the land used to extend further than they do. Hence the project is Greater Ruritanian and reuniting all of the former Ruritanian lands which were stolen by the Other, the non-Ruritanians. In addition, if there are any Ruritanians residing in nearby lands, the project will be to reunite those areas with the homeland.

Fascism is typically conservative as the present moment is seen as tainted with modernism and democracy, both of which are associated with cultural degeneracy. Traditional sex roles are reinstated and the woman’s role is resigned to the kitchen, church, and home.

There is an exaltation of heroism, aggression, raw power, and even brutality, often in defense of the homeland. There is a self-sacrificing tendency where to die for one’s land is the greatest honor. And there is an exaltation of violence, usually for repression or invasions but sometimes in a Sorelian sense, violence simply for the sake of violence because violence is seen to have a mythic cleansing power especially over the permissive, excessively free, and degenerate present.

The military is exalted, battles of the past are discussed and exalted,  and often defeats are spun as victories as in the Battle of Kosovo with the Serbs in 1389. Men are exalted to be masculine, heroic, and sacrificing. Effeminate men, sexual outliers, crossdressers, and homosexuals are typically persecuted as grotesque and degenerate aberrations from tradition sex roles, which are seen as nearly divine.

School curricula are rewritten and often you end up with textbooks full of lies from front to end as in the nationbuilding in Poland after WW2. Statues are built to the greats of the land. Often there is Garden of Eden effect such that humanity is seen to have arisen exactly in the country.

At other times, the land is seen as the center of the Earth around which all other lands revolve. Examples in the Land of the Rising Sun in Japan and the land of the Four Winds in China.

The Land of the Rising Sun implies that when the sun rises in the morn, it first shines on Japan, hence Japan is the first nation to be brightened and in a sense becomes a satellite around which other lands revolve.

The Land of the Four Winds in China refers to the belief that the north, south, west, and east winds all arise directly in China itself and flow outward to the rest of the world from there. So China is the source or ground zero for all of the wind and moving air in the land. It’s literally the center of the world if not of the universe.

Trumpism is indeed fascism. Make America Great Again. See how that is talking about the ruins of the present and going back to an earlier time when the nation was great.+

A lot of out and out nationalist lying about history, minorities, languages – Hell, you name it, nationalists lie about it – usually goes into the construction of this mythological great past.

It’s called blood and soil because the ethnicity is seen as the “sons of the soil” or land itself, land that has been fertilized with the blood of the ancestors especially in n nationalist impulses where they fought invaders or minorities.

The blood also refers to the fact that there is only one ethnicity in fascism.

In Ruritania, all of the minorities have to become Ruritanians. Stop wearing minority clothing, practicing minority festivals and and lifestyles, give up the minority religion and especially stop  speaking the minority language.

Hence all minorities will become Ruritanians simply by assimilating to Ruritanian culture. Standard fascism gives minorities a break in that they are merged with the ethnic group even though they are a different ethnicity.

Racist Fascism or National Socialism

Racist fascism or Nazism is much worse because the minorities don’t stand a chance as their very blood itself itself is tainted, hence there is no way to escape minority status and become a Ruritanian. They are dealt with by segregation, expulsion, or murder, which can be genocidal.

They will be repressed, arrested, beaten, impoverished, uneducated, and often the state will move Ruritanians into their neighborhoods to drown them out. They will be tortured, their homes will be demolished and their neighborhoods will be bulldozed. Often their churches and monuments are targeted for destruction.

The intelligentsia  and the leadership of the land may be attacked and even killed, sometimes in  large numbers. This is done so the minority will be leaderless and even without thinkers.

They will also be killed, often in small numbers, but sometimes in much larger numbers, into the tens and hundreds of thousands or even a million as in National Socialist Rwanda. There were millions, 15 million, exterminated by the Nazis in World War 2. You keep hearing about the 6 million Jews, but did you realize that another 9 million people were also murdered? Well, they don’t count because they’re not Jews so they’re not special, as only Jews are special or “chosen.”

They are also often expelled from the land as their presence is seen as a literal toxin upon the body politic. Hence words like cockroaches, vermin, rats, infection, disease, virus, plague are used to describe the minority group. Nazis referred to Jews as rats and vermin and disease metaphors were also often used.

It is often stated that the nation has an “infection” – that is, it is literally infected with the minority group, which is a plague upon the land itself. Look around you and see how people act during plagues. Also, what do you do with a tumor? You cut it out. So you cut the minority out of the land, slicing them away with a scalpel. How do you treat an infection. You pour drugs at it to kill the infectious agents. Hence mass killing  of minorities is can be seen as germicidal and even a measure of positive public health.

The dehumanization makes it easier to mistreat them or even kill them.  After all, in Rwanda they were not killing humans. They were literally killing cockroaches. Six foot tall cockroaches with two arms and two legs, but cockroaches nonetheless. What do you do if you see a cockroach? You stomp on it and grind it into the floor. Hence “grinding the minority into the floor” is transferred to the minority group and mass murder is nothing more than squashing bugs on floors. Human bugs but bugs nonetheless.

Alt Left: An Overview of the Political Parties in Israel

Israel will never go along with being “guests” of the Palestinians in their own land, especially now that Israel is officially an ethnic nationalist ultranationalist country, in other words, Israel is literally a fascist country along the lines of the fascist nations of Europe in the 1930’s. Indeed, many early Zionists were admirers of fascism and wanted to create a fascist state in Israel.

The Iron Wall by Jacob Jabotinsky (1921) is along those lines. And he wasn’t the only one, trust me. The movement he founded was called Revisionist Zionism, a very rightwing and arguably fascist form of Zionism.

Israel has arguably been a fascist country from the very start

Their very blood is seen to taint them as Arab blood taints Arabs in Israel, so in this sense, Israel is a racist fascist country or a “Nazi” country. A better term would be a national socialist country. There is nothing inherently anti-Semitic about national socialism. National socialism can unfold in most any land, particularly where there are not a lot of minorities.

Jabotinsky’s spiritual heirs later because the Israeli guerrillas such as Irgun who fought against the British and the Arabs in  1940’s Palestine. And the spiritual founder of the Likud, the party of Netanyahu that has been running Israel forever now is Jabotinsky himself. The party sees themselves as the heirs to his movement. They even say it in their very own words.

Most of the other Israeli parties are now just “Likud without calling themselves Likud.”

Our Israeli Home is a good example of that.

Labor has been on the outs forever now in Israel.

Meretz is the Israeli Left, but they have 1

I like Habash, the Israeli Communist Party. It’s an Arab and Jewish mixed party. They’ve had a principled line from the beginning.

There is an Arab party the name of which includes Land that seems to get most of the Arab vote. Arabs are 2

Alt Left: A Bit on the North American Terrorist Organization (NATO) and Its Fascist Gladio Stay Behind Network

The North American Terrorist Association, otherwise known as NATO, is the Western alliance in Europe set up to oppose the Soviet threat. Speaking of which, the Soviet threat is gone.

Time to smash this fascist monstrosity once and for all. And yes, NATO is very much a fascist organization. Research “the Gladio stay-behind network” for more. This was an organization of actual out and out fascists, mostly supporters of the Axis from World War 2, who were to run a stay-behind guerrilla network in the event of a Soviet invasion and conquest of Western Europe. Gladio was notorious for doing all sorts of nasty things. After the USSR fell, Gladio was not dismantled.

The NATO/Gladio Network Role in the Ukraine Nazi Maiden Coup

Most recently, they participated in the Ukraine Nazi Maidan coup. Gladio sharpshooters were trained in Poland, now effectively a Nazi country. Then when the Maiden coup got underway, a group of Gladio snipers from Lithuania (effectively a fascist country along with the other two Baltic states) and Georgia (presently in the throes of a nationbuilding ethnic nationalist ultranationalist or fascist project) were sent to Kiev as a classical musician group. Except that in their instrument cases were sniper rifles. They took up position in a building in the square and commenced shooting both the Berkut police and the demonstrators.

Multiple investigations by the Ukrainian Parliament found that the bullets used to shoot people during the riots did not come from the Berkut because the Berkut had no bullets.

Then we got a tapped phone conversation from an EU bureaucrat in Lithuania who was recorded as saying that the snipers had been sent by NATO to shoot at both sides.

Last we had videos released out of Georgia by men by some of the snipers, admitting what they had done. They hadn’t realized exactly what they were doing in the operation and now they felt bad about it.

NATO Fascist Snipers in the Egypt and Thailand Color Revolutions

NATO snipers have done this very thing of shooting at both sides in a number of color revolutions since, especially in Egypt and Thailand.

Venezuelan Rightwing Fascist Snipers in the 2002 Venezuelan Coup

It’s a well-known fascist tactic, and it was also used by the Venezuelan fascists in their brief coup of 2002.

A Similar Fascist Sniper Operation Run by the Pentagon During the Recent Iraqi Color Revolution

This fascist tactic was most recently used in Baghdad during the wild riots recently when many people were shot. Donald Trump was pressuring the President of Iraq to do what he wanted, which was to rescind the Iraqi Parliament order (still in effect by the way) ordering all US troops to leave the country.

When the Iraqi leader refused, Trump said he would set off riots all across Iraq. Remember those wild riots that killed 600 people that raged across Iraq recently? Apparently they were initially set up by the US military and the CIA. After that, they took on a life of their own.

After the President refused to budge, Trump said he would start shooting at demonstrators. Soon snipers were shooting both riot police and demonstrators both. The President of Iraq said Iraqi intelligence determined that the snipers shooting both sides were US Marines firing from rooftops and the US Embassy. Later other people started shooting, including possibly the Iraqi police of the Iraqi military. Once again the President refused to cave in.

Next Trump said if he didn’t say uncle, Trump would have the leader killed. The leader refused again. The attempt on his life was never made. See how US foreign policy works? We literally shoot dead leaders of countries we don’t like. How do we know all of this? Because the President of Iraq revealed all these threats by Trump and resulting CIA/Pentagon machinations in an interview. Patriotards say he’s lying. What are the odds that the President of Iraq made this stuff up in an interview?

The Role of NATO Intelligence and the Gladio Network in the “Strategy of Tension” in Italy in the 1970’s

Remember “Strategy of Tension” in Italy in the 1970’s? Supposedly, left and right wing terrorist groups were setting off bombs in places like railway stations, sometimes killing up to 80 people. Well there were no left and right wing terrorist organizations setting off bombs.

It was all NATO intelligence using the Gladio Network fascists posing as either right or left wing terrorists. Most of those groups setting off those bombs didn’t even exist. Many of the rest were probably infiltrated.

Nevertheless, I will always have a warm place in my heart for the Red Brigades of Italy. I had a friend who lived in Trieste, Italy. Trieste has long been more of an “Austro-Hungarian Empire” city that what we think of as an “Italian” city. James Joyce and Ezra Pound spent some time there in the early 20’s. Joyce was working on Ulysses at the time.

My friend was on the left politically as was his sister. He told me that in that part of Italy, the Red Brigades had massive support even among regular middle class people. His sister in particular was a strong Red Brigades supporter. They did kill Aldo Moro though…

Alt Left: A Reasonable Project for “Soft” Taiwanese Independence to Assuage PRC Fears

Vicmund the Han: What do you think of Taiwanese based on your observations?

You’re going to hate me for saying this, but I think they should go independent. But I would like a peace treaty with China beforehand, an economic agreement, CCP military bases in Taiwan dual staffed, Taiwanese military bases in China dual-staffed, perhaps some sort of integration military or econonomic-wise like the CIS or better yet, Belarus. Transform it into a deep alliance and work together. The radical independencists will have to be sidelined.

The main thing is to make it so an independent Taiwan is not a military threat to China. No US military bases in Taiwan, integration of both nations’ policies towards the US and maybe on a lot of other things. Brotherly countries with a strong alliance who agree to disagree on certain things, but when they do, they are “brotherly opposition.”

There is only one China. There are two countries, Taiwan and China. Taiwan is not China. It’s Taiwan. The only China is the People’s Republic. Two Chinas policy was insane, but one China policy is crazy too as it says that Taiwan doesn’t even exist!

The problem is that most  Chinese, including the CCP, are stark raving nuts about this question, so I am really worried that they will not want to put this project into effect. China sees Taiwan as a rebellious province of China. Well, it’s a part of China that fought a war and  achieved their independence from China via military might. So it’s not a rebellious province anymore. It’s like Eritrea split off from Ethiopia. It’s a new country.

Chinese nationalism is ok in a sense, but it’s also ethnic nationalism in a sense and it’s definitely ultranationalism in a revanchist way. You can’t go back and retake land you lost in wars. That’s what those world wars were all about. Irredentism and revanchism have got to go. Chinese nationalism suffers from a lot of the insanities, toxicities, and mental disorders of any nationalism. It is fascist in a sense that all extreme nationalisms or patriotardisms are, though only in a very broad sense of wanting a restoration of a Chinese empire.

It’s nation-state nationalism or patriotardism like exists in many countries, including the US.  It differs from almost all fascisms in not being ethnic-based and in not being part of a nation-building project where all non-Chinese Han/non-Mandarin speakers have to turn into Chinese Mandarin-speaking Hans. They all have to get rid of their languages, ethnic identities, and religions and cultures and become Hans in a sense. Chinese nationalism doesn’t work like that.

It’s inclusive rather than exclusive, offers autonomy instead of forced assimilation, and retains in a sense the notion of self-determination of nations in that nations in  China are free to  speak their languages, practice  their cultures and religions, etc. Pretty typical of the national policies of many Communist countries, though certainly not all of them! It’s more like Soviet nationalism. The Soviets went after breakaway provinces too you know.

Eastern Europe was quite hostile to minority languages, ethnicities, and cultures. Polish and Yugoslavian nationalisms were nation-building projects. I’m not sure how minorities were treated in Slovakia (Hungarians), Romania (Germans), etc. There was much persecution of the Rusyns in Poland, ethnic Germans everywhere, and Italians and Chakavian-speaking Istrians on the islands in Croatia after World War 2 of course. They were accused of siding with the enemy.

Alt Left: Why Identity Politics Is Alive, Has an Individual Ego, Does Not Wish to Die, and Is Essentially Fascistic at Its Core

Polar Bear: The Social Left is more loony and emotional than ever. “Whites need to be silent but we also need to end White silence.”

Sure, I work in mental health, and I assure you that the Social Left is essentially mental disorder spread out over an entire movement. People don’t understand. They think only individuals get mentally ill. It’s not so.

Entire groups of people get mentally ill at once. We call it a shared disorder. Entire ethnic groups or societies can become mentally ill, and the disorder looks exactly like it does in an individual. In that sense, groups themselves actually have egos, psyches, etc.

What is an individual? An ego. What is a group of individuals? A mass of egos all together. As an individual can become egotistical, paranoid, projecting, etc., so can a group. In that case the amassing of individual egos creates something like a “group ego.”

So we can see entire ethnic groups and nation states as having “individual” egos, defense mechanisms, projections, psyches, and mental disorders. Every part of an individual’s psyche can probably become part of the group psyche. In this sense, entire ethnic groups and even nations are like “people” or can be constructed as a person, the way turn of the century cartoons had avatars that represented entire countries, for instance, France represented as Beatrice.

And this is why nationalism  is so dangerous. All Identity Politics is just nationalism and suffers from all of the problems(and I would argue mentally disordered thinking) that goes along with nationalism. For Identity Politics is just the “nationalism” of whoever your identity nation is.

Normal nationalists may be Syrians, Turks, Russians, Chinese, or whatever, but in IdPol, people are members of the Female Nation, the Gay Nation, the Black Nation, the Jewish nation (although this blurs with actual nationalism), the Woke Nation, and even, yes, the White Nation because White nationalism is just as insipid and mentally disordered as any other IdPol, except it’s probably worse because the hatred is so severe, on the surface, and often acted out with violence.

Politics can become nations. Communists are often members of the “Communist nation,” being all Communists. Antifa adherents are members of the Antifa Nation, to the extent such a thing can exist at all with anarchists. Even politics now, ordinary Left and Right, seems like forms of nationalism. Democrats are members of the Liberal Nation or Democratic Nation. Republicans are members of the Conservative Nation or Republican Nation.

What is interesting is that all of these IdPol groups will behave precisely like the nationalisms of ethnic groups or nation-states. Look at how nationalists act, especially ultranationalists, which is another word for fascists. Look at the similarities with IdPol.

This is how IdPol in its extremes seems fascistic.

Feminazis anyone? But feminazis often call themselves socialists. Ever heard of Gay Nazis? Black and Hispanic nationalists can seem fascistic, though they often call themselves Communists. Look at Farrakhan (a “Black Nazi”) and the Azteca Movement (“Hispanic Nazis”). Both look surprisingly fascistic, all the way down to the typical antisemitism of so many fascist movements.

In this way, a lot of “Communists” in the imperial core are actually fascists. Any “Communist” who supports separatisms such as female or lesbian separatism, Black separatism with a Black state in the South, or Hispanic separatism with an Aztlan state in the West is really just a fascist. If you were a real Communist, you wouldn’t be shutting the door to other workers just because they’re White or men or whatever.

Communism and Left Populism tends to be inclusive and led by the oppressed or underdogs.

Fascism and Right Populism tends to be exclusive and led by privileged or ruling groups who bizarrely say they are being discriminated against by their own minorities! Mostly they are afraid of losing their power due to some economic, political or demographic threat.

Hence, “Communism” in the imperial core, with its support for the various mental disorders known as Black, Hispanic, female, and lesbian separatism, has always been more fascist than Communist. This is probably one reason why it has failed so badly. It demonizes far too many proletarians for having the wrong skin color or genitals.

White nationalists of course have always been true fascists and often more or less Nazis in one way or another.

Although they really aren’t, conservatives call Antifa fascists. They’re more Communists but you can see above how these fascist movements often cloak themselves in the colors of socialism and Communism because they see themselves as oppressed.

Antifa is exclusive as it deliberately excludes and discriminates against Whites in some places like the Autonomous Zone in Seattle, and their “fascism of the oppressed; i.e. Western Leftism” is really not a whole lot different from the true fascism of a ruling group threatened with the loss of its power either politically, economically, or demographically. For an example, see American White nationalists. They’re coming from completely different places, and they typically want to murder each other, but really they’re more alike than different.

Zionazis? Ever heard of people calling Israelis fascists? Israel is indeed a fascist country, especially now under Netanyahu, a classic fascist on the model of the fascism of the 1920’s, which is he reduplicating via his heir Jabotinsky. See The Iron Wall by Jabotinsky, 1921. Not only does Jabotinsky express admiration for existing fascists, he lays the blueprint for a Jewish fascist state. And the project in the book looks like a printout of the Likud Party’s positions.

The group is alive. All groups are alive. As individuals don’t want to die, groups often don’t want to die either. That’s why movements like feminism and gay rights won’t just disband and take off already even though they’ve gotten most of what they want.

“Feminism” is like an individual person; the movement itself is “alive” like a person is alive. In addition, many mentally disordered people (this is especially prominent in feminism where almost all of the women are disordered) gain a sense of identity or even have their entire identity tied up in the movement.

Furthermore, the movement, while being an extension of their own disorder, also needs to stick around in order to keep the disorder going. Typically the disorders in movements like these are characterological, and at any rate, they are very ego-syntonic. No woman is wailing about how some part of her is forcing her to become a feminist against her wishes. That would be a neurosis or ego-dystonic anxiety disorder.

Without the movement, these people tend to flounder. They are quite characterologically disordered, so this gets in the way of a lot of real relationships in actual Meatspace, itself being different from the “space” inhabited by the movement. They get quite lost and typically start looking around for another movement to attach themselves to gain a sense of purpose in what is now a purposeless life.

They  often grab the nearest movement that comes along, even one in complete contradiction to their previous one, to attach to like a remora onto a shark. This is why you see people flipping from fascist to communist and vice versa (the turn from Far Left in university to Far Right at 40 is typical of many upper class Latin Americans). You see feminists becoming radical anti-feminists. You see far Leftists like David Horowitz and many other neocons doing complete flips and becoming raving reactionaries, albeit with a Wilsonian window dressing to cover their “humanitarian massacres.”

Alt Left: Viewing the Kurds through the Left-Right Prism

Turkey itself is a fascist state, and probably 8

The Grey Wolves are at the extreme end of Turkish ultranationalist fascism. Basically Turkish Nazis. There are many outside of Turkey in Europe, especially Germany, but there are many more in Turkey, including vast numbers in the military. Even worse, I am convinced that there is more than a little Grey Wolf in 8

A lot of Kurds are Communists and Leftists, but not all of them. The PKK is Leftist and has 6

“Kurd” isn’t a racial classification in Turkey. Turks don’t do ethnic nationalism in a racial sense like that. Turkish nationalism is more assimilatory. Quit speaking Kurdish and give up Kurdish culture and speak only Turkish and embrace Turkish culture, and wa-la! A Kurd becomes a Turk. See how that works?

The PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) started out Marxist as a typical Marxist revolutionary group seeking independence. If you look at revolutionary nationalists all over the world, you will see that they come in two varieties – a hard left, socialist or Communist type; and a hard right type which looks like some form of fascism. Those are the two directions revolutionary nationalists seeking self-determination can go.

If a group is very repressed, they often go for Left revolutionary nationalism because this logically appeals to them. Examples are present in the West where the Hispanic and Black ultranationalists are basically Commies because they see themselves as repressed. White ultranationalists in the US are basically fascists because they are on top.

Fascism is about preserving the interests of the ruling class and the capitalists in a time of extreme pressure from the Left. It is “a popular dictatorship against the Left” and its basis is “palingetic nationalism” (MAGA, anyone?) – picture the Lazarus bird rising from the dead. Fascism promises a return to the blood and soil glories of the past during a time when the nation has badly deteriorated. The claim of resurrecting the greatness of the ancestors is very appealing.

The PKK were formed in 1986 out of a long history of Kurdish Leftism as a typical Left revolutionary nationalist independence group. Their leader, Abdullah Ocalan or Apo, was a Marxist. They’ve recently renounced Marxism but they are pushing some sort of Libertarian socialism that looks pretty communist.

The Syrian Kurds are Leftists of the Libertarian socialist type.

The Iraqi Kurds are divided into a more typical Left and Right, neither of which is extreme and both of which are frighteningly corrupt. The Right is more traditionalist and the Left is more modernizing. They’ve sold out their own people to the Turks and have let the Turks set up bases in their land and bomb their own people all the time. All for money apparently. Or possibly fear. Or probably both.

The Iranian Kurds are also Leftists.

The Iraqi, Syrian, and Iranian Kurds are already with the US, and we are with them. Just to show you the insanity of geopolitics, the same group we support in Iraq, Iran, and Syria, we label terrorists when they happen to be in Turkey, where we help Turkey kill them. When this group is fighting our enemies, they are good guys and get our support. When they make the mistake of fighting our friends, they are our worst enemies.

There are no good guys in geopolitics. There are bad guys and worse guys, and that’s it.

Antifa loves the Kurds because antifa are anarchists. The Syrian Kurdish project was seen by anarchists as close to anarcho-socialism (Libertarian socialism) or anarcho-communism. That’s why they support them.

People claim, falsely, that the Kurds and Turks have been fighting forever. They must either have short memories or they never bothered to open a history book. I’m not sure that the Kurds and Turks fought much during the Ottoman Empire. The fighting all started with the breakup of the empire and Ataturk’s ultranationalism. In the last 100 years, Turkey has literally massacred hundreds of thousands of Kurds. Of course, genocide is something the Turks do very well. Hitler is even said to have modeled the Holocaust on the Turks’ genocide of the Armenians.

Uzbek, Kazakh, and Kirghiz

A recent What Language Is This post featured Uzbek. A commenter just got the correct answer today. Hence it is time for a post on Uzbek and two neighboring Turkic languages, Kazakh and Kirghiz.

Uzbek

Uzbek. Uzbek is a well-developed language. I see scholarly papers written in Uzbek. In addition, Uzbek is two separate languages. The well known language to the north, Northern Uzbek, that is the official language of a nation and another language to south, Southern Uzbek, spoken by 2.5 million people in Afghanistan, which has no official status. The two  Uzbeks are not mutually intelligible.

Kazakh

Kazakh has a lot of problems. A lot of people don’t speak it, and there are many ethnic Russians who speak Russian there. They live in the north. There was a lot of talk of them leaving with the independence of Kazakhstan, but most of them stayed. Insane Russian ultranationalists claim the northern part of Kazakhstan for the Russians and wish to incorporate it into Russia (just to show you how insane those lunatics are). A lot of people would rather speak Russian than Kazakh, even a lot of ethnic Kazakhs.

They have had a hard time developing Kazakh into a full modern language, and there are a lot of issues with Kazakh in the schools. Furthermore, there has been profound Russian influence on the language in terms of vocabulary, phonology, and possibly morphology.

There are many Kazakh speakers in China, over 2 million of them. They have gotten caught up in the Uyghur political mess.

New information shows that they speak a separate language from Kazakh in Kazakhstan. So many Russian words have gone into Kazakh since World War 2 that Kazakh speakers in China can no longer understand the Kazakh TV and radio broadcasts which can be heard in China. Therefore, Chinese Kazakh is a separate language, and within Macro-Kazakh, there are two languages, Kazakh and Chinese Kazakh. I didn’t get this new information in time to incorporate it into my book chapter published in a recent book (Lindsay 2016) when I redid the Turkic language family, creating a number of new languages.

Kirghiz

First of all, it is not entirely certain that Kazakh and Kirghiz are separate languages.  In my book chapter (Lindsay 2016), I decided that this was one language called Kirghiz-Kazakh, with two separate languages, Kirghiz and Kazakh. This is because they are largely mutually intelligible. However the communication is more one way than two ways. I believe that the Kazakhs can understand the Kirghiz well, but the Kirghiz have some problems understanding Kazakh. However the difficulties were not great enough for me to split it into a separate language.

However via communication with a Kazakh speaker, he insisted that Kazakh and Kirghiz were definitely separate languages. I forget the reasoning but he had an intuitive sense of whether a pair of languages consisted of one being a dialect of the other or whether they were two separate languages.

That is, native speakers have excellent intuition on the language/dialect question, which shows how preposterous the Linguistics profession is that the language/dialect split is not a scientific question. If it’s not a scientific question, how is it that native speakers the world over have an intuition over whether a lect is a separate language or a dialect of another language? Apparently humans have excellent intuitions about things that simply do not exist in a scientific sense. Who knew?

Kirghiz has a lot of problems. I think just about everyone speaks it, but the problem is the language is not well developed into a modern language yet, so all sorts of technical and modern terms have had to be invented. Even whole new dictionaries have been created. Bottom line is Kirghiz is not really ready to serve the functions of a national language even for the state. I believe they might use Russian, instead but I am not certain.

References

Lindsay, Robert. 2016. “Mutual Intelligibility among the Turkic Languages,” in Süer Eker and Ülkü Şavk. Çelik. Endangered Turkic Languages, Volume I: Theoretical and General Approaches: Before the Last Voices Are Gone (Tehlİkedekİ Türk Dİllerİ Cİlt I: Kuramsal Ve Genel Yaklaşimlar Son Sesler Duyulmadan), Ankara, Turkey/Astana, Kazakhstan: International Turkish-Kazakh University and International Turkic Academy.

Alt Left: Wikipedia, Ziopedia, Saffronpedia, or CIApedia?

Wikipedia Is Run by the CIA (among Other Groups)

Wikipedia (which I refer to as CIApedia), is now  partly run by the CIA (among other groups and states such as Israel and Hindu nationalists which also run their respective areas of interest to them) such as, still accuses Libya of the crime and says that the Iran theory is a crazy conspiracy theory. CIApedia has covered up all of the assassinations above, helped frame the patsies, and trashes the truth as “conspiracy theory.”

I know that the top levels of CIApedia administrators are completely infiltrated by pro-Israel Zionists and Indian Hindu nationalists. That’s been proven to me for nearly 15 years now.  I now believe that the US Deep State and the CIA have also seriously infiltrated these same upper levels of admins, although I admit that I can’t prove it. You know, Bellingcat types (Bellingcat is Deep State and CIA)

I swear every time I go to CIApedia to read about US foreign policy, it seems like that website is simply “the history of the world according to the CIA.” I think the CIA has infiltrated the leadership of CIApedia as noted above and has agents and assets who alter articles to promote whatever fake version of reality that the CIA is promoting in whichever US foreign policy event.

Alt Left: All Identity Politics Groups are “IP Nazis”

All Identity Politics groups divide the world into followers of the IP (the good people) and opponents of the IP (the haters or traitors). They are extremely quick to throw people into the hater/traitor group because like all forms of IP, they are paranoid and see enemies everywhere, even though 8

You see this even in Jews, and in fact, most Jews practice what boils down to Jewish Identity Politics. Some might say that Jews were the original IP group. I doubt that because I believe all IP is just tribalism. All IP also resembles any nationalism or ultranationalism, and that is why when IP groups get extreme, people start calling them Nazis.

All IP is really just tribalism, and that’s why all IP resembles nationalism or ultranationalism because all nationalism is just tribalism, and all ultranationalism is just fascism. To the extent that it is human nature to be tribal, we are all nationalistic in one way or another, and many to most of us probably have fascist tendencies.

Because most indigenous human tribes were extremely racist and were frankly fascists. The tribe’s rules are there are the good people (us and may be a few allies) and everyone else is an enemy. All the other tribes and the non-tribalists in your own group, who are called the traitors.

Starting to see  how feminism, etc. looks exactly like nationalism and tribalism? Starting  to see how all forms of IP look like ultranationalism and tribalism? Since tribalism and ultranationalism are two of the plagues on the human race, why on Earth should any decent human or especially anyone on the Earth support IP at all? They shouldn’t.

If you oppose  tribalism and ultranationalism (fascism) as any good person on the Left should, then you must also hate all forms of IP.

This is where the antifas who hate fascism and ultranationalism don’t make sense. Sure they hate ultranationalism and a few forms of IP such as the IP of the “enemies.” So they hate White IP, Men’s Rights IP, and even Straight IP if it exists. Those are all evil and must be wiped off the face of the Earth.  They’re all “fascism.”

Nevertheless, all antifa support feminazis, gay Nazis, tranny fascists, Black fascists, etc. They hate Jewish IP but Palestinian or Arab IP  (Arab nationalism) is just fine, when really those are just two types of fascism, Jewish fascism and Arab fascism.  So some fascists are ok (the marginalized or oppressed fascists) and other fascists are evil and must be exterminated (the ruling or oppressor fascists).

Obviously this is incoherent. A fascist is a fascist. A true antifa would hate all forms of ultranationalism and also all the fake nationalisms or IP’s (Identity Nazis):

Feminazis.

Gay Nazis. Many of the anti-gays are remarking that the Gay Politics types are increasingly acting like fascists, and they are correct.

Jewish Nazis (Zionists).

Black Nazis (Black separatists, Nation of Islam).

White IP (White nationalists are obviously real Nazis).

Alt Left: Repost: The Failed State of India Grew from the Indian Mind

A very nice old post. People started commenting on it again today and I went to read it and thought it was worth a repost. The original post got 118 comments! Boy those were the days, huh? Should still stimulate a few comments even on the repost.

And it’s quite well-written if I do say so myself!

Seriously? writes: This blog tries too hard, and still only manages to draw one or two angry Indians — if that.

There is no hatred of the ‘White man,’ including even of the British, because Whites aren’t special enough to warrant hating. While there’s a consistent income gap between Black and White Americans, there is an even larger Indian-White income gap in favor of Indians.

India’s relationship with so-called White nations is similar to that of Japan. We don’t feel threatened and are progressing quickly enough to put history behind us.

But I think you’ve missed a fundamental shared characteristic of Indians, so much so that this blog can never be reconciled with reality. In fact, of all the stereotypes of Indians, I think this is the only one with any real merit. Indians have a kind of “brotherly love” predisposition which is hard to describe.

The second a Pakistani, for example, shows any type of support for an Indian, he or she can expect an endless stream of positive responses and absolutely no negative ones.

Recently there was a poll done to determine India’s second (after Gandhi) “greatest” individual. India’s first Muslim president received the most votes, even over the likes of even Nehru, who only ranked 15th. Despite the poll’s assumption that Gandhi was bar none the greatest Indian, polls including Gandhi invariably show Ambedkar (India’s Dalit activist and philosopher) ahead, usually ranking Ambedkar first or second.

But I guess you still may be able to twist this around to still trash Indians.

I suspect the main motivation for this blog and the posters on here is that Indians you come across don’t consider you as great as you consider yourselves. This ends up coming across as arrogance to you, so you feel the need to react by trying to situate them further below you in the imaginary hierarchy you had before meeting them. Indians don’t react as negatively as you had hoped and so the effect is repeated and overall magnified.

Combine that with confirmation bias and then you eventually reach the conclusion that Indians have no good qualities whatsoever, have never accomplished anything, and are scheming to take over the world. But you can’t afford them anything positive, so you then say they don’t have the capability to do anything special like take over the world in the first place. It’s all pretty sad, really.

That is very interesting about that poll.

But how come every Hindu one meets has an extreme hatred of Muslims and/or Pakistan then? What’s it about? If Ambedkar is such a hero to most Indians, then why is India still mired in the most barbaric casteism known to mankind?

It doesn’t make any sense.

And I am starting to think that like most Indians, just about everything “Seriously?” says is a lie. There is hatred of the White man, and it’s most prominent among Hindus. Among Hindutvadis and on Hindutvadi websites, hatred for European White Christians and their civilization is quite extreme. I have even seen some of it in Indian nationalist Sikhs (most of the Sikhs in my town are actually strident Indian nationalists, not Punjabi nationalists).

I treat Indian people the same way I treat any other human. I thought they were extremely cool for a long time until I finally started to figure out what was really going on with these people, and since then, I have been less than impressed.

The most arrogant of all Indians around my town are surely the Hindus. They are much worse than the Sikhs. They have a strange attitude. They really do think they and their civilization is superior, but on the other hand, they are not going to tell you two words about it, and if you ask them anything about it, they get suspicious and hostile and act like they think like you are an enemy spy, and they clam up and shut down.

What you have here are people who have extreme pride in one of the backwards, barbaric, and reactionary civilizational structures known to mankind. From a Left POV, that is nothing to cheer about.

Then you look at the country they have created, or really destroyed, and you start to put it all together. This throwback socio-religious culture has created one of the most outrageous and pathetic civilizational trainwrecks and failed states on the Earth. Of course the civilizational pileup we see on the ground was created cognitively and emotionally by the barbarism inculcated in the Indian mind. The two must be connected.

As long as backwards barbarism continues to rule the Indian mind, we will continue to see the smoking ruins on the ground.

How I Determined Intelligibility For Turkic Lects

Steve: This is amazing. Well done. But how can you possibly know the degree of mutual intelligibility between two languages you don’t speak or know if something is a language or dialect when you don’t speak it? That seems strange. How is it worked out?

Linguists don’t speak all these languages we study. We just study languages, we don’t necessarily speak them. This is confused with the archaic use of the word linguist to mean polyglot. Honestly, many linguists do in fact speak more than one language, and quite a few of them have a pretty good knowledge of at least some of the languages that they study. But my mentor speaks only Turkish and English though he studies all Turkic languages. I don’t believe he has ever learned to speak any Turkic lect other than Turkish. In reference to my paper here. We are not looking for raw numbers. We just want to know if they can understand each other or not. A lot of it is from talking to native speakers and also there was a lot of reading papers by other linguists. I also talked to other linguists a lot. Linguists typically simply state if two lects are intelligible or not. Also there is a basic idea among linguists of what the boundary is between a language and a dialect, and I used this knowledge a lot. Can they understand each other? Yes or no. That’s pretty much about it. Also at some degree of structural difference, we can see the difference between a language and a dialect. It’s a judgement call, but linguists are pretty good at this. There is a subsection of very loud linguists, mostly on the Internet, who like to screech a lot about this question cannot be answered by answered because of this or that red herring or some odd conundrums that work their way in. The thing is if you ask around enough, you will be able to get around all of the conundrums and you should be able to eventually reconcile all of the divergent responses to get some sort of a holistic or “big picture.” You finally “figure it out.” The answer to the question comes to you in a sort of a “seeing the answer as part of a larger picture” sort of thing. The worst red herring is this notion that speakers from Group A will lie and say they do not understand speakers of Group B simply because they hate them so much. If this was such a concern, you would have think I would have run into it at some point. A much worse problem were ethnic nationalists who lie and say that they can understand neighboring tongues when they can’t. The toxin called Pan-Turkism or Turkish ultranationalism comes into play here. It is almost normal for Turks to believe that there is only one Turkic languages, and it is called Turkish. All of the rest of the languages simply do not exist and are dialects of Turkish. I had to deal with regular attacks by extremely aggressive Ataturkists who insisted that any Turk could easily understand any other Turkic language. Actually my adviser told me that my piece would not be popular with the Pan-Turkics at all. I don’t really care as I consider them to be pond scum. Granted, some of it was quite controversial and I got variable reports on intelligibility for some lects like Siberian Tatar vs. Tatar, the Altai languages, Kazakh vs. Kirghiz, Crimean Tatar vs. Turkish. Where native speakers differ on such questions, often vociferously, you simply ask enough of them, talk to some experts and try to get a feel for that what best answer to the question is. Some cases like Gagauz vs. Turkish probably need raw intelligibility testing. That’s the only one that is up in the air right now, but it is up in the air because the lects are so close. Intelligibility between Gagauz and Turkish is somewhere between  70-10 It is also starting to look like Nogay is a simply a dialect of Kazakh instead of a separate language, but that might be a hard sell. Some of these are seen as separate languages simply because they are spoken by different ethnies who do not want to be seen as part of the same group. Also they have different literary norms. Karapalkak is just a Kazakh dialect, but the speakers want to say they speak a separate language. Same with Bashkir, which is simply a dialect of Tatar. The case of Kazakh and Kirghiz is more controversial, but even here, we seem to be dealing with one language, yet the two dialects are spoken by different ethnies that have actually differentiated into two separate states, each with their own literary norm. Kazakhs wish to say they speak a language c called Kazakh and Kirghiz wish to say they speak a language called Kirghiz although they are probably really just one language. We see a similar thing with Czech and Slovak. My recent research has proven that Czech and Slovak are actually a single language. But the dialects are spoken by different ethnic groups who claim different cultures and histories and they have actually divided into two different states, and each has its own literary norm. It is here, where dialects become languages not via science by via politics, culture, history and sociology, that Weinrich’s famous dictum that “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy” comes into play. Scientifically, these are all simply dialects of a single tongue but we call them languages for sociological, cultural and political reasons.

A Very Unusual Request to My Readers

I know this is a very unusual request, but bear with me. I have a friend in India. He absolutely hates India, he hates the culture, the religion, everything. To him, it’s just rotten. And of course he is right. It is rotten. India is where you soul goes to die. He’s a Christian, so the whole society offends him. He is a very smart guy, an intellectual, and he’s quite learned. He seems to have quite a bit of money. He is part way through completing a course in Accounting. I have no doubt that he can become an Accountant. He seems to be a nice looking guy to me, but I am not much of a judge of male looks. He is 36 years old. His English is excellent, albeit with a strong accent. He is very Aryan in looks. Honestly, if you met him, you would not even know he was Indian. He looks like a European, albeit a rather swarthy one, maybe a Med. He’s not particular at all about women. He has almost no requirements that way.  Just under 40, speaks English and no Indian women for some reason. This guy wants to get out of India even though he has money. The place is literally killing him, basically because he is a good  person, and Indian society is rotten. He is also very afraid of the new fascist BPP party in power. He says there is no place in India for people like him and he is afraid that the Hindutva fascists will beat him up or even kill him. He will do anything to get out of that place. He figures his best shot is to marry an American woman. However, he absolutely does not want to do a VISA fraud immigration marriage. That’s a fake marriage just to get into the country. It’s a felony and he wants nothing to do with that. He was formerly married to a Frenchwoman, so he is compatible with Western society and Western women. As Indian men go, he’s not much of a pig at all. He genuinely loves women. He will only marry in a real marriage to a real woman who really wants to marry him. Anyway there’s nothing in it for her for a fake marriage anyway.  He won’t pay her a nickel for that. She  could talk to him on Facebook, and he can call her and talk to her on the phone. He calls the US all the time. If she talks to him on Facebook and on the phone and likes him, he will fly her to India so she can meet him. She can spend some time with him there to see if she likes him or not. He wants a woman under 40. The thing is, if one of my readers can help me with this  problem and run an amateur marriage bureau for this fellow and find him a wife, he can make it very much worth our while. And there is nothing whatsoever illegal about that. If he is lying to me and he is really trying to do a fake immigration marriage, well, that is a felony and he may well be caught. At that point, he will have to face the music. I do not get involved in shady schemes, but this is 10 My haters are going to rake me over the coals for this post, but so what. The thing is that if one of my commenters can help me with this, this fellow promises to pay for being a marriage bureau for him. And he will pay well. Most  people are going to say this is nuts and blow it off, but if you think you can do it and you want to make some money, comment or shoot me an email and we will talk about it. Thanks in advance.

Internet Hindus Don’t Like Me

Oh noes!

Some people are just mean! Oh dear, what is one to do?

What could be worse than being insulted by Indian ultranationalists and Hindutwadis?  One shudders to think!

Let’s see what they called me: chutiya?, White Supremacist, degenerate Hindu hater (RL: Thank you), huge faggot, Lundsay?, toxic person, skinny, formerly homeless, degenerate fag, and maderchod?.

Robert Lindsay is a White American and a degenerate Hindu hater. He will take any opportunity to bash Indians and Hindus. He’s essentially an Abrahamic supremacist.

Thank you for the kind words, sir.

He is definitely a huge faggot. A Randian once posted Lundsay’s blog on r/india, saying that we must not look at those “harsh words” and rather self-reflect. Self-reflect, my ass.

Try it some time for once.

Lol, I remember sending multiple email death threats to Robert when I was pissed off reading his anti-India posts. He bans people from his blog for disagreeing with him, perfect twat to become a Randian mod. I was 17 back then. I never had encountered such a toxic person.

Why thank you.

He’s a skinny white 50 year old who used to be homeless, who cares what that degenerate fag thinks?  Indeed. Who the Fuck is this Lindsay? The hater is right about the shitting though. It’s a fucking deep cultural malaise. I have traveled to piss poor countries and even they don’t have this massive problem of shitting on the roads or indeed stuff like absolutely disrespecting road rules and all that.

One word: Designated!

Turkey – The Sick Man of Europe, a 100 Year Running Joke

The Turks make up a single race – Turkic-Armenian-Kurdish-Ashkenazi Jewish. The Turks tried to turn most of these people into Turks by eliminating their ethnic identity via abandoning their religion and language. The Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians refused to give up their languages but most importantly their religion, so the Turks killed over 2 million of them for that sin. The Kurds continue to see themselves as a distinct ethnic, cultural and linguistic group from the Turks. The Turks wish to eliminate the Kurdish language, culture and even ethnicity. and that is why the Kurds are slaughtered like flies over there. Turks are a profoundly backwards people, and they like it that way just fine. In fact, it infuriates them that anyone demands that they act civilized. Turks don’t exactly have European Enlightenment values – in fact, they have exactly the opposite. Erdogan is an Ottoman imperial Sultan and Caliph combined with a murderous Young Turk mixed with an Ataturkist ethnic ultranationalist. He’s literally one of the worst human beings on Earth, and the Turks worship this man like a God. The Turks are enraged that Europe sees Turkey for the Sick Man it is. Hence they refuse to let them into the EU. Letting Turkey into the EU would be catastrophic. First of all, Turkey is incapable of abiding by the EU’s European White Christian Enlightenment values which now verge on Culture Left parody. The Turks don’t even believe in the Renaissance. Why would they believe in the PC SJW Left? Get real. In order to join the EU, one must do a minimum number of things, including have a minimal base of European civilized Enlightenment values. These include basic human rights, limits on corruption, basic rights for minority groups and their languages, religions and cultures, etc. Turkey fails as miserably on all of those counts as they did a century ago when the Young Turks unleashed their Shoah/Islamic Jihad. Turkey is a land frozen in time or worse where clocks actually run backwards instead of forwards like they do everywhere else. An example of this is how Erdogan has recreated 19th Century Turkey as the new imperial Sultan/Caliph. A good guess of how backwards a nation is is whether or not the Left has been driven to such desperation and exasperated rage that they have take up arms. Nowadays, the Left only takes up arms in the most reactionary of holes. The Turkish Left has been so abused that they have been armed for decades. They carry out regular bombings and assassinations. Turkey is the Colombia of Europe, the India of the Near East. The only way to let Turkey in would be to so weaken these EU ultra-liberal laws to the extent that they barely existed anymore. Further, poorer Turks would flood all through Christian Europe, further Islamicizing an already badly Islamicizing Europe. Even with only a few Muslims, they are causing havoc and chaos all through Europe. Imagine 10’s of millions of Turks given free reign to move to any part of Europe that they wish. Turks have moved to Germany in large numbers and they have assimilated very poorly. Many of them hate Christian Germans, both their culture and their religion. They stage regular riots calling for the death of Jews, etc. Many are sympathetic to radical Islam. In Germany, many Turks have turned to street crime. Honor killings continue. There are already far too many Turks in Christian Europe. Let’s not let 10’s of millions more in please. There is of course a minority of more or less progressive Turks often working in and around academia, the opposition parties and the media. There are good people in the opposition, even in Parliament and there are many fine journalists, including some of the bravest and most daring investigative journalists. I work with a lot of Turks like this now. They bear no resemblance to what I just wrote above other than perhaps denial of their land’s backwardness. These are finest sons and daughters of the land. Sadly the more forward-looking Turks have long been a minority, though they may make up 20-3 Like the Colombians, every four years, the Turks march off to the polls to vote for another reactionary ultranationalist nut. I would say that Turkey is hopeless. 20-3 There is nothing a Turk hates more than a mirror. It’s like a cross to a vampire. Turks refuse to look in a reflection and see what its really there. Instead they wrap themselves up in Rube Goldbergian fortresses of psychological defense because the truth is too ugly to bear. You can’t begin to cure an illness until you diagnose it, and until Turkey looks deeply into the illness of its body politic, it will remain, as always, the Sick Man of Europe, first as harsh truth a century ago, now as pitiful caricature and running twisted joke a century later.

He who is not busy growing is busy dying. – Bob Dylan To thine own self be true. First of all, know yourself. – famous aphorisms

 

How the H-1B Job Scam Works

The H-1B scam is a scab-hiring scam engaged in by all US IT corporations, both parties of Congress almost bar not one Congressman, and the entire US media with no exceptions designed to create a fake IT job shortage in order to fire US workers and hire phony Indian “guest workers” at 6 This is how the phony scam works. A job is advertised. They interview a number of Americans for the job. All of them are mysteriously not hired. Then the company puts in an H1B application, lying and saying that they could not find an American to do the job. Then they import the lousy H1B worker who performs poorly and is paid 4 In fact, many White IT workers have left the Industry after being fired and replaced by Indians or having been driven out by Indians. Many White IT workers have given up on the industry and retired or gone into other fields. Others move around all the time from job to job. At many shops most to all of the American IT workers are fired by the new Indian manager. The new Indian manager comes in and replaces all the Whites with Indians from his caste, extended family, tribe or ethnic group. Whites working with Indians in IT report appalling behavior by high caste Indians in the industry. Casteism is rife among these high caste Indians and seriously disturbs many IT projects. Indians refuse to work with or deliberately sabotage the work of the other castes in the workplace. Many of these Indians are Indian nationalist Hindutavadis who have an extreme hatred of Whites, Westerners and Christianity. White IT workers have to listen to their hate-filled rants all day long. At one shop, an Indian IT worker kept threatening to dose the White workers’ drinks with HIV. Nothing happened to him. Usually nobody does anything to the Indians because the managers are Indians too. Quality of work usually falls off greatly because almost all Hindu 1B’s are lousy workers. Nearly all or all of them have phony degrees saying things like “Masters in Computer Science.” Supposedly this means an MA in Comp Sci, a highly prized degree in the US. In reality, India is full of phony, crooked, lying schools that are little more than sleazy degree mills. You enroll in the “nationally accredited  world-renowned Indian Computer University” with no background in IT whatsoever, take six months of Introduction to Computer Science courses, and you get a Master’s Degree in Computer Science. Pitiful. And the worst is that all of the US IT executive scum know full well that 9 The Hindu 1B thing has been a huge flop. Indians are notoriously lousy cut and paste coders, and most of them could not code their way out of a paper bag. The mangled, barely readable, never commented spaghetti code produced by Indians often doesn’t work or barely works at all. Typically it has to be sent to another IT shop full of American coders who have to spend a lot of time to fix it up and get it up to par. So apparently this wicked scam is not even saving much money. Many IT professionals say that the quality of computer code produced has declined markedly precisely in line with mass offshoring of IT jobs to Indian “programmers” in India and the replacement of quality American IT people with Hindu 1B scabs. Yet no one wants to stop the Hindu 1B fake guest worker scam. Both parties are 10 I am wondering if Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump mentioned anything about Hindu 1B’s. I think Bernie mentioned it early in the campaign before he went full Cultural Left retard, but whether he still holds to that position is uncertain. After all, Hindu 1B’s are these glorious things called immigrants. Immigrants, our new Gods. Immigrants, these special workers that we worship over and above all other workers, especially American workers, who all need to be replaced by these glorious holies called immigrants. I remember Counterpunch ran one article against Hindu 1B’s, and ultra Leftist (((Louis Proyect))) otherwise known as “Lou the Jew,” flipped out and wrote a piece having hysterics about Counterpunch’s “racism” for daring to attack these holy immigrant scabs. For Proyect, I suppose there’s no limit to the number of American workers who can be replaced by immigrants. I suppose he would just as soon replace every one of us with an immigrant.

Aryan Invasion Again and Why Narcissism Is the Core Indian Personality

Nelly (note fake British female name) an Indian nationalist, writes:

I personally find it so funny that so many people hold onto the Aryan Invasion theory with such tenacity. This theory was made popular by Hitler, which is really funny because he was also the same person who said that the superior people were those with blonde hair and blue eyes, and also went around claiming that Jewish people were evil and should be exterminated. Today, the majority of people know that those with blonde hair and blue eyes are not superior to any other people nor are Jewish people evil and should be eliminated. That being said, why do so many people still believe the Aryan invasion theory even though it came from a man who did nothing but spread lies in an effort to brainwash people? Why are you guys so selective in what you want to believe as being true? Why does Hitler’s credibility suddenly increase for the entire Aryan theory? I don’t usually get involved in these debates because I realize that everyone is entitled to his or her opinion and I respect that. But, there is a difference between what is an opinion and what is a fact. And the fact is that the word “Arya” is Sanskrit for “noble.” Max Mueller, who came up with the idea of two Aryan races, used this discovery as a means of showing the common ancestry between the Indians and Europeans, not as a form of racism (Esleben, 2008, F. Max Müller, Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas (1888), Kessinger Publishing reprint, 2004, p.120; Dorothy Matilda Figueira, Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority Through Myths of Identity, SUNY Press, 2002, p.45). There is also a mountain of evidence that debunks the idea of there ever having been an invasion. Archeologists and researchers have never found any indication that an invasion occurred as the skeletons discovered never suggested that an invasion ever occurred  (Gregory L. Possehl, 2002, The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective, Rowman Altamira, p. 238, ISBN 9780759101722). The majority of Western scholars don’t refer to it as an “invasion” because they are educated enough to know that it isn’t. Those who still call it an invasion are not viewed as being credible by the rest of Western scholars, but are rather seen as racist. (Witzel, Michael, 2005, “Indocentrism”, in Bryant, Edwin; Patton, Laurie L., The Indo-Aryan Controversy. Evidence and Inference in Indian History (PDF), Routledge). Again, I’m not expressing any opinions in the last three paragraphs. I’m literally just stating facts. That is, information that has been proven to be true by people who are experts in this topic. So, if you choose to attack me, then I don’t know what to say except go hash it out with the experts who, after years and years of research, came up with these theories instead of me.

My remarks: The Aryan Invasion Theory was not created by Hitler. The Indians called themselves Aryans. They didn’t need Mueller or Hitler to make it up. Iran means “Aryan.” Almost all Western scholars agree that the theory is true. Only a few crackpots and nuts disagree, and they are very isolated and cannot even publish in peer reviewed journals because their theories are so antiscientific. It is not a fringe theory. It is cutting-edge modern social science. Further, I believe that there is excellent evidence of an actual Aryan Invasion that resulted in a vicious war that left many dead and entire cities in the Indus Valley razed to the ground. And you won’t get called racist for calling it the Aryan Invasion Theory either. You might be called that by some idiot Indian, but who cares what Indians think about this or much of anything really? This response is also interesting. First of all, in order to show how well read they are, this Indian nationalist peppers her comment with a lot of nice references. I admit that the references are nicely done, and I commend the commenter for her scholarship. However, I must painfully point out to this apparently blind commenter that every single one of those quotes that she quoted actually supports the Aryan Invasion Theory instead of opposing it. So her references do not support her thesis; instead they disprove it! I see so many Indian nationalists and Hindutvadis come here adopting European-sounding names, both first names and surnames. We even had an extreme Indian nationalist here posting under “Snow is fun.” Snow is white. It’s white and cold, and there’s not much of it in most of inhabited India. To me, giving himself that name meant that he secretly wanted to be Scandinavian. And in fact, he was an Indian expat posting from Sweden. Others post under names like “Arya” and then proceed to rip the Aryan invasion theory to shreds. And note how many of the wildest Indian nationalists have long bailed out of Shithole India for the hated White Man’s Land, where they paradoxically live so much better than they do in glorious Bharat Mata. They hate Whites, but they disguise their identities under White first names and last names. They hate Whites and consider them inferior to superior Indians, yet they left superior India for inferior White man land where they somehow live much better than in Mother India. They call themselves Arya yet viciously attack the Aryan Invasion Theory. They hate Whites but post from Sweden. They hate Whites but call themselves Arya. They hate Whites but come from a society that worships White skin like a God. They hate Whites but give themselves names describing white things like snow that are only found in cold climates were Whites are common. They hate Whites but call themselves “Snow is fun,” which to me means “I love Whiteness.” In other words, almost all of these Indian nationalists are absolutely crazy. The cognitive dissonance here would deafen you. Furthermore, obvious psychological complexes such as inferiority complex, envy, reaction formation, projection, denial, narcissism, false confidence, etc. are painfully evident here. The “Indian complex” seems to be characterized by hatred and envy for their “inferiors” who they secretly ape, emulate and live among. The painful recognition that their “inferiors” are actually superior to their falsely “superior” selves is blatantly on display. Hatred, envy, false and fragile overconfidence, an inferiority complex and especially the subconscious knowledge that their “inferior” rival is actually better than their “superior” selves and the resulting shame and rage that this engenders is almost a textbook definition of the narcissist. I suggest that narcissism is the base personality of many Indians, especially the nationalists, ultranationalists and Hindutvadis.

"Time of Monsters," by Peter Tobin

Peter Tobin is a Marxist activist and author who is an experiment on the recent goings in in Nepal especially with regard to the Maoist revolutionaries who recently fought a brutal civil war there and are now part of the government. Turns out that with disarmament, a lot of the Maoists sold out completely on almost all of their revolutionary principles, become rightwingers and in the process become millionaires with huge mansions. In addition, as you might have guessed, all and I mean all of the Maoist leaders were Brahmins. And this was an anti-caste revolution. In this part of the world, caste is like dirt. No matter how many times try wash the dirt off, there’s always some on your skin. And no matter how many attempts are made by South Asians to cleanse the body politic of caste, there’s always some of it remaining on the skin of their culture. you can’t take enough showers to wash all the dirt off and you can’t do enough reforms to wash caste out of the culture. It’s looking like caste in now an integral part of South Asian culture like curry, saris or gurus. Warning: This work is very long. If it was a book, it would be 60 pages, long enough for a novella if it was fiction.

Time of Monsters

by Peter Tobin

The cartoon above reflects a widespread perception among many Nepalese that the four parliamentary parties are servants – in varying degrees – of New Delhi. It appeared in the 2013, August edition of Nepal – a popular monthly – showing Prachanda (UCPN(M), Nepal (UML), Sitaula (NC) and Gaddachhar (MJN), (Brahmins all!) blubbing uncontrollably as Nepal against history and the odds beat India 2-1 in the South Asia Football Championships in July 2013.

Nepal’s Brahminical State and Problems of Legitimacy

From Machiavelli:

What’s more, you can’t in good faith give the nobles what they want without doing harm to others; but you can with the people. Because the people’s aspirations are more honorable than those of the nobles: the nobles want to oppress the people, while the people want to be free from oppression. Machiavelli, The Prince, 1516, p.39. Penguin 2009.

To the present day:

How can people trust them to run the state? Our boycott is therefore a political act to expose the failure of this parliamentary system. To build a new democracy and renew the revolutionary process we must go in a different direction. – Mohan Baidya, ‘Kiran’, Chairman, CPN-Maoist, October, 2013

Introduction

Political parties in all societies reflect specific histories and display the balance of social and political forces at any point in their narratives. Nepal is no exception to this truism; the classes and strata arising from the socio-economic conditions obtaining in the country’s history gave rise to caste, party and faction. The aim of this article is to provide detail of their historical gestation as a means of examining and explaining the present impasse in Nepalese society. This is presently evidenced by argument as to whether a Consultative Assembly, elected in November 2013 in a disputed ballot, has authority to promulgate a new constitution and is another issue of serious division that pervades every sphere of Nepalese society – political, cultural, social and economic – that cumulatively call into question the legitimacy of the essentially unreconstructed state founded by Prithvi Nararyan Shah in 1769. The article will argue that discord has been inherent since the state’s inception in the mid-18th century, with the campaign of unification driven by a minority elite imposing a nationality upon a multi-ethnic majority and which despite changing modalities of state power in the succeeding two-hundred and fifty years, remains the dominant power in Nepalese society, surviving monarchical absolutism, feudal clan autocracy, constitutional monarchy and multiparty democracy, successively appearing as contrasting if not antagonistic systems. It is certainly the case that internecine power struggles among ruling Nepalese elites, regarding modalities of power, are crucial to understanding the forces shaping the present. However, evident systemic discontinuity should not obscure persistence of upper caste, particularly Brahmin ascendancy, surmounting every upheaval, and turning every change of polity into a vehicle for retention of power and privilege. Responding to the pressures of the modern world, and with long experience in judging the vagaries of historic authority, these same castes have melded seamlessly into the local bourgeoisie – domestically hegemonic but internationally subservient. Not every ancien regime is oblivious or impervious to demands for change from formerly subaltern classes. Note the nationalist leader Tancredi’s maxim, in di Lampedusa’s epic novel The Leopard about the 19th century Risorgimento (Italian unification):

“Things have to change so that everything can stay the same.” (“Tutto deve cambiar perche tutto reste uguale.”) (Il Gattopardo, G. di Lampedusa, 1958)

The Nepalese ruling castes are exemplars of this paradox, having survived successive changes in polity, a point underlined in contemporary Nepal where the major constitutional parties and organs of state are dominated by the same higher caste/class, as supreme in the new democratic republic as they were under the preceding Hindu God-Kingdom created through war and conquest by their Brahmin/Rajput ancestors in the 18th century. Unification was more empire than nation building, pitting a warlike Indo-Aryan warrior caste against a rural majority comprised of over sixty Tibeto-Burman ethnic groups, each with its own languages and specific Buddhist/pantheist/shamanist cultures. Over time this may not have precluded the forging of national identity: consider the example of Britain, which emerged from English subjugation and colonization of the tribal Celtic peoples that flourished on the periphery of the later named, with breast-beating triumphalism, British Isles. Similarly the English had emerged as a distinct people following military invasion and occupation by French Normans over Anglo-Saxon natives. Christianity in the form of Roman Catholicism already provided a common ideology for conqueror and conquered. In the centuries following, the former lost both their French language and territories with the European feudal system they imposed upon Anglo-Saxon England taking root and dominating until the emergence of bourgeois capitalism in the Late Middle Ages. Nepal has never overcome the contradictions engendered by its violent birth which was compromised by its Hindu ruling castes retaining political, cultural and economic ties with caste peers governing India the sub-continental empire, and who, since Bhimsen Thapa, Jonge Bahadur and the Ranas, have, unlike the nation-builders of medieval Europe, proved unable or unwilling to act with national impunity. The notion of the present ruling caste elite representing the national interest is presently even more unlikely as their growing cosmopolitan class interests political, ideological and economic necessitate the country continuing as neo-colony of Brahminical India, subject to the ubiquitous, all-conquering global market and the multinational institutions established by US and other First World powers after 1945. The last serious threat to centralized caste power was the People’s War from 1996-2006, which saw a 12-point peace agreement between parliamentarians and revolutionaries, following the success of these two former bitter enemies allying to overthrow King Gyenendra in the 2006 second Thulo Jana Andolan (Great People’s Uprising/Revolution). It did not, as promised, lead to a ‘New Nepal’, instead seeing the elites of ‘Old Nepal’ regrouping, and remaining ensconced in power. This had also happened after the 1990 Jana Andolan, when the Brahmin leaders of the democratic movement summoned the Janjatis (ethnic minorities) and oppressed castes and classes to join the struggle for democracy against King Birendra and the feudal Panchayat system. Promises made, offering cultural and political autonomy to redress historical injustices, were later reneged on, with the subsequent constitution drawn up by the victorious New Delhi-backed political parties even retaining Nepal’s status as a divine Hindu Kingdom. It was not until 2008, with the declaration of a republic, that the monarchial system was finally abolished. However, that was the only tangible political gain from ten years of People’s War, while the major socioeconomic and cultural inequities that had provoked it were left in place, with attempts to ameliorate them blocked or sabotaged by a resurgent rightist bloc that seized the political and military initiative in the years following the 2006 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Nepal’s political parties are defined by which side they take in relation to this history; whether they want to either preserve the existing system, albeit with minor tweaks and modest reform, or completely replace it with a new dispensation. Conservatives and revolutionaries are adversaries in the struggle for the body and soul of the nation. First, some empirical details about the country that provide the inescapable, epidemiological conclusion that the socio-economic antagonisms fermenting in Nepalese society point inevitably to further eruption.

Economy and Society

Nepal is an aid-dependent, landlocked country, accessed principally from India, with a population of approximately 28 million. It has over sixty ethnic groups or Janjatis (called Adivasis in India) reflecting a rich linguistic and cultural diversity. Over 8 The CIA World Factbook estimates its labor force at 16 million: 7 As its contribution to GDP shows, the manufacturing sector is small, with carpet weaving dominating its light industrial sector and the rest made up of skilled handcraft production in metal, stone and wood. Since the decline of the jute industry based in Biratnagar, heavy industry is negligible, and Nepal has to import everything from cars to computers – necessities of modern life – which add to its trade deficit. Nepal has always faced the difficult situation of being a small economic power next to a big one that is denied economies of scale that accrue from size, thus insuring that Nepali companies could not compete with bigger Indian ones in the home market. This problem has, for example, caused the virtual collapse of its cotton and garment industry. Exports are inhibited because India imposes high import duties to protect its own industries. The pan-Indian Marwari Corporation/Clan dominate the domestic industrial and commercial sector in collusion with the traditional caste elites of Ranas/Shahs. A further aspect of its neocolonial status is that Nepal is forced to concede an open border with India and must endure a ‘take or leave it’ in terms of trade with India, a market that accounts for nearly 7 Nepal’s manufacturing base was further weakened by the global march of neoliberal capitalism (4) that saw, for example, Structural Adjustment Programs introduced in Nepal from the mid-1980s’. SAP’s are loans to aid-dependent, underdeveloped or economically unstable countries that have strong conditional clauses requiring adoption of rigorous free market policies, including privatization, trade and finance-sector liberalization, prices determined by the market and precluding and retreating from state intervention in any form. They were implemented by the IMF and World Bank, acting in a ‘bad cop/bad cop’ scenario and affected all sections of Nepalese society; the removal of subsidies on such items as cooking gas hit many homes, while those on fertilizers reduced agricultural production. Privatization programs ended public enterprises, many of which had been initiated by a dirigiste Rana regime in the 1930’s in a desperate attempt to modernize. There was, for example, sustained pressure from multilateral development financial institutions – the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank in particular – forcing a sale of water utilities, resulting in their complete privatization by 2006. Tariffs protecting indigenous industries were also removed and the penetration of multinational capital was facilitated across all sectors.

Inequality and Poverty

This regime, which does not even manufacture a needle in the name of a self-reliant and national economy, has handed the whole economy to a dozen families of foreign compradors and bureaucratic capitalists. This handful of plunderers has become billionaires, whereas the real owners of this country and the national property – the toiling masses of Nepal – are forced to eke out a meager existence of deprivation and poverty. – (CPN(M) leaflet, distributed on the eve of the start of the People’s War, 13th February, 1996.

The UN Human Development Report 2014 listed Nepal as the 31st poorest country in the world and among those classified low in Human Development indices with glaring inequalities in incomes and lifestyles that has the top 1 Government Household Survey statistics for 2010/11, by contrast, estimated deprivation at 2 While the majority of Nepalese are rural dwellers, the agriculture sector is weak and inefficient; hilly and mountainous topography with subsequent scarcity of arable soil apart from the southern Terai plains allows mostly for only subsistence farming. A poor infrastructure of roads and communications inhibits movement of produce. The continuing failure to reform land ownership sees huge, growing numbers of landless Dalits, Muslims and other minorities, especially in feudal and populous Terai. The failures to implement scientific management and introduce modern technology combine to render Nepal dependent on importing foodstuffs from or through India. The failure of the present system to provide necessary conditions of existence for an expanding demographic adds greater urgency to the antagonisms between the Establishment Right and Radical Left. These will be further accentuated given that India’s newly elected BJP administration has signaled the intention of pursuing more aggressively expansionist policies and is fully committed to the neoliberal economic project. The latter is being promoted as ‘shock therapy’ necessary for economic lift-off that will rescue the Indian people from poverty and deprivation. It is it problematic because it is set out as an ideological as opposed to an economically rational project deliberately masking the aim of increasing the penetration of Western monopoly capitalism into the Indian economy through the mediation of the Brahmin/Banyia oligarchy. One of the new regime’s first acts was to increase hikes in diesel prices, allowing the state subsidy to shrivel, while signaling an intention to do the same to fertilizer subsidies. It has since announced that the health budget is to be slashed in a country that already has one of world’s lowest expenditures in this sector. When all such state aid is rolled back, if wealth ‘trickles down’ perhaps by the conspicuous consumption of luxury commodities and lifestyle of a privileged cosmopolitan caste elite or charity (not a noted Brahmin characteristic) and alleviates some poverty – so be it, but it will be serendipitous. Such an outcome is not what drives au courant ‘capitalism with its coat off’ mutation, (4) so eagerly embraced by India’s caste elite as greed is a noted Brahmin characteristic. However, for all the Hindutva histrionics and bravura posturing of the demagogue Modi, his BJP regime is in fact morphing effortlessly from Mohan Singh’s Congress Party Administration’s line of march. This became apparent in 2005 US/India Memos of Understanding (MOU) which, inter alia, initiated opening up India’s agricultural research establishments to American monopolies and activated policies of ‘rapid commercialization’ of already hard-pressed Indian farmers. One commentator noted at the time:

The treaty is a partnership between two unequal partners. American agriculture is highly mechanized and organized, energy-intensive and market-centric. Indian agriculture, by contrast, has been for millennia the way of life for the vast majority of the population. (8)

The present Nepalese establishment invariably marches in step with New Delhi and accordingly rolled out the red carpet for the newly-elected PM Modi’s August 2014 official visit to Kathmandu. Addressing the Nepalese Parliament, he emphasized his government’s neoliberal economic priorities and the benefit Nepal would derive from deepening existing bilateral links by “…taking our relationship to an entirely new level.” Nepal’s establishment parties were receptive, as the post-1990 administrations had closely shadowed India’s descent into neoliberal policies, and Modi’s regime was seen as continuation of this course. The August visit was also marked by concluding agreements that increased Indian access to Nepal’s vast untapped water resources, which the revolutionary opposition denounced as a blatant example of neocolonial subservience to Indian expansionists and betrayal of the national interest. The argument over this abundant but as yet untapped natural resource constitutes a longstanding fault line in Nepalese politics that bears examination; it concentrates many existing socioeconomic and political contradictions in one issue.

The Politics of Water and Unequal Treaties

On September 6th 2014 the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist announced its intention to publicly burn copies of the Power Trade Agreement (PTA) recently negotiated between India and Nepal which allows for the construction of hydropower projects by Indian companies so as to facilitate energy trading, cross-border transmission lines and grid connections between the two countries. (9) The coalition government concluded a further agreement with the Indian company GMR to construct a 900MW hydropower project on the Upper Karnali. It was claimed that combining these two accords would enable Nepal to utilize its hydropower resources to produce enough surplus to permit the already agreed export of electricity to India and help reduce the country’s trade deficit. The extraction of Nepal’s water resources began in 1920 when the Indian Raj signed the 1920 Treaty of Sarda that secured access to the Mahakali. After independence, India’s Nehru’s Administration continued in a similar manner with the 1954 Koshi and 1959 Gandak Treaties that saw dams constructed solely to irrigate the thirsty Gangetic Plains of North India. There was outrage at these one-sided deals from Nepalese nationalists and communists, which led to greater caution by successive regimes faced with India’s insatiable water demands paralleled with failed attempts in securing international aid or a loan from the World Bank to develop the country’s hydropower resources independently. After the 1990 upheaval that ostensibly reduced Birendra to constitutional status, the fledgling democracy experienced renewed pressure from New Delhi that led to the 1996 Mahakali Treaty which was described as revealing:

“…the larger neighbor as bulldozer and the smaller one as hapless and internally divided.” (10).

While this treaty was supported by the both the constitutional communist party, the Unified Marxist-Leninist Communist Party which turned full circle from the anti-Indian position of its mother party in the 1950’s, and the always reliable pro-Delhi Congress Party (NC), it was denounced by CPN (Maoist) spokespersons who pointed out that Nepal would only get 7 out of the projected 125 megawatts output. (11) The symbolic burning of the present PTA as ‘against the national interest’ by the new Maoist party was manifestation of an ongoing campaign for retaining Nepalese jurisdiction over its water resources, resisting New Delhi’s strategy to monopolize them. This is underscored by observation that Nepal has huge hydropower potential estimated at 40,000 MW but is presently realizing only 600 MW. All of this is happening against a backdrop of daily power cuts and the fact that 6 Lenin famously stated that for USSR: ‘Communism was Soviet power plus electrification’ to which Nepal’s unreconstructed Marxist-Leninists paraphrase the end as: ‘plus hydropower’; reflecting the importance of this power source for realizing an independent socialist Nepal. The PTA is described by patriots of left and right as yet another unequal treaty among the many that began with the 1816 Treaty of Sugauli imposed by the East India Company. This is now seen a British land grab that resulted in Nepal ceding one-third of its territory to the Company, including Sikkim and what is now called Uttarakhand. The reduction of ‘Greater Nepal’ to its present territory resulted from military invasion and defeat. Treaties covering trade and resources have been facilitated by the Nepalese ruling caste/class acting in collusion with first imperial Britain then Brahminical India . The Brahmin/upper caste supporters of the power deal tend either to not recognize or to remain oblivious to the idea that any treaty agreed with brother India has ever been ‘unequal’. The same political class once again faced a 2011 furor over by the ‘Bilateral’ Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (BIPPA) which allowed for greater penetration and increased security for Indian capital in Nepal. This sellout document earned the parliamentary apparatchiks, parties and the Bhatterai Administration who negotiated and agreed to it epithets from the stooges and hirelings of the extra-parliamentary Maoist opposition and royalist factions. The definition of unequal agreement is where an imbalance of power, political, military or economic, exists between the parties to the agreement. Chinese nationalists and communists in the 20th century used the term to describe all treaties extracted from China in its ‘century of humiliation’ at the hands of Western imperialists in the 19th century. These treaties between Nepal and India involved loss of Nepalese sovereignty over territory and domestic markets and facilitated imports of commodities, including, notoriously, opium produced by East India Company, accompanied by the threat or use of superior military force. The period also saw the emergence of indigenous merchants acting as East India Company agents/intermediaries described as ‘compradors’. Nepalese patriots use the term “unequal treaties” to describe a history that began with Sugauli, was carried over from the East India Company to the Raj and continued in postcolonial India with the 1950 Peace and Friendship Treaty formalizing Nepal’s neocolonial status by allowing India increased access and control of the Nepalese economy and veto over Nepal’s foreign relations with third parties. It guaranteed Nepal as a captive market for Indian commodities and along with further revisions and succeeding agreements allowed exploitation of Nepal’s natural resources, principally water as described above, and access to cheap Nepalese migrant labor. New Delhi was driven as much by geopolitical considerations; Nehru saw Himalayan Nepal as a bulwark on India’s northern frontier against Communist China, and serving along with Bhutan and Sikkim as part of a “chain of protectorates,” so described by Curzon, a particularly bellicose, expansionist Raj Viceroy at the turn of the 20th century. Nehru was a ruthless autocrat and saved his fine words regarding nonintervention and non-aggression for the Pansheel Principles set out as a stratagem to bamboozle Mao’s Communists, burnishing India’s Gandhian credentials and non-aligned status in 1954 Treaty with the PRC. Nehru accordingly extracted the 1950 Treaty from the last Rana PM three months before he authorized an invasion of Nepal from India by a joint royalist/ democratic army which signaled the beginning of the end for Rana rule. Independent India under the imperious Pandit owed more to the martial warrior spirit of the Maharbarata than it ever did to the myth of Hinduism’s essential ahimsa (pacifism) peddled by the casteist charlatan Gandhi. Recent information shows that Nehru may have slaughtered even more Muslims in Manipur in 1947 than Modi managed in Gujarat in 2001.

Constitution or Revolution?

The new Maoist party, the CPN-M, is extra-parliamentary and does not accord legitimacy to the present institutions of state, distinguishing it from the three major parties in the Constituent Assembly, who supported and negotiated the PTA. In descending order of electoral strength, they are: Nepali Congress, Unified Marxist-Leninist CPN; and Unified CPN (Maoist). The first two are in coalition government, with the NC leader GP Koirala as Prime Minister. Koirala’s family is a Nepalese political dynasty akin to India’s Gandhis. A split in the third biggest party, the UCPN(M), in 2012 led to the launch of the CPN-M by cadre led by veteran Maoist leader, Mohan Baidya (‘Kiran’) (12), increasingly disillusioned with perceived growing revisionism of the UCPN(M) under the leadership of Prachanda and Bhatterai. They concluded that following the 2006 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the UCPN(M)’s political practice had degraded into reformism, conforming to Lenin’s bitter reasoning for the ultimate treachery of the German SPD’s voting for war credits in 1914:

…by making a fetish of the necessary utilization of bourgeois parliamentarianism and bourgeois legality.

In the view of many cadre, the party had lost its revolutionary edge and has been remade to suit New Delhi’s requirements. The party was guided by two leaders, Dahal (Prachanda) and Bhatterai, reconnecting with their Brahminical caste roots. The final betrayal was the surrender by Bhatterai’s ostensibly Maoist-led administration of the People’s Liberation Army and its weapons to the Nepalese Army in 2011 after being laagered in UN cantonments following the 2006 CPA. In reaction to this and policies such as handing back expropriated land to the feudal landlords, the new CPN-M declared a return to revolutionary first principles and building on the foundation of the principle of People’s War as a precondition for future political work. A fourth political bloc represented in the Constituent Assembly (the National Assembly – an upper house created in 1990, was abolished in 2007, and Nepal now has a unicameral system) is the United Democratic Madeshi Front representing landed property class parties from the Terai, a region of flatlands in southern Nepal and topographically an extension of the Gangetic Plains of North India. Ethnically and culturally the Terai’s upper castes are closer to India, so this group’s political support for increasing bonds between the countries is guaranteed. The Terai was formally a NC fiefdom, but party membership collapsed when leaders and activists principally drawn from the Bhadraloks (Terai upper castes) deserted the party which they believed had become dominated by the Brahmins of the Kathmandu and the Central Hill regions referred to as Pahadis (Hill People). This political bloc, following the 2006 Peace Agreement, appeared to upper caste Madeshis to be too weak to stand up to the Maoists, perceived as all-powerful after ten years of People’s War and a real threat to feudal and zamindar (landlord) interests in the Terai. Madeshi parties subsequently emerged seeking either regional autonomy or direct integration with India. The more militant among them advocated armed struggle and were instrumental in driving the 2006/7 murderous conflict with the Maobaadi (Nepali for Maoists) in order to defend the status quo in the region. Indian security services were rumored to have been heavily involved in arming and funding these groups, signaling New Delhi’s growing alarm at the threat to Indian interests posed by the Nepalese Maoists as they stood on the verge of a takeover. There are 22 other parties represented in the CA, the largest two being royalist – the Rastriya Prajantra Party (Nepal) and the Rastriya Prajantra Party – representing the ancient regime and seeking in one form or another a return to divine Hindu monarchy abolished when the Prachanda’s 2008 UCPN(M)/UML coalition government declared the republic. However, many monarchists are patriots with a deep distrust of India to the extent that some prefer China in all circumstances. After the RRP(N) and the RPP, there are many small socialist, communist and peasant parties reflecting the patchwork and multirepresentational nature of Nepalese politics. This plethora of parties is also apparent among the forces outside the CA led by CPN-M in a 33-party alliance. The CPN-M (13) and its allies – other communist, socialist and social democratic parties along with Janjati (ethnic) organizations – came together in 2013 to boycott the November election for a second Constituent Assembly. They argued it was a ‘phony, rigged election’, promoted by the same forces that had blocked a progressive federal constitution in the first CA. Now the parliamentary ‘Four Party Syndicate’ was seeking a mandate to forge an anti-people constitution ensuring that power was retained by upper castes and that in any event, asserted the boycotters, would be written in New Delhi. Among the international supporters of the second CA election were the US, China, EU, India, the UN, NGOs like the Carter Center, ANFREL etc. 70,000 police, army and paramilitaries along with 50,000 temporary police personnel were mobilized to counter the campaign organized by the CPN-M, leading a 33 party alliance around the slogan:

Boycott this corrupt/so-called election (Kathit nirbaachan bahiskaar gare).

The election duly took place, pre-weighted through the creation of a High Level Commission that excluded all other parties, ensuring the ‘Four Party Syndicate’s unchallenged control of proceedings. Rs 30 billion was allocated to pay for it, a staggering amount considering only Rs 2.8 billion was spent on the 2008 election. The election was further tainted as turnout figures were disputed, with nearly five million voters disappearing from the 2008 election rolls. There was also no postal vote provision for the estimated two million émigré workers scattered through the Gulf States and South East Asia. Each side claimed higher or lower percentage turnouts, but the significant result was the major setback for Prachanda and Bhatterai’s revisionist UCPN (M). The party lost its place as the biggest party gained by a shock victory in 2008 election, where it garnered 4 In any event, the CPN-Maoist ‘Dashists’ did not halt the election, but held their nerve in spite of powerful domestic and international enemies, a sustained hate campaign from the Brahmin/bourgeois controlled media sequestered in Kathmandu led by the Kantipur Corporation, Nepal’s largest media house, and internal party tensions. Notwithstanding the final number of votes cast, the election showed that the boycotters represented a critical mass of the citizenry. Whatever the outcome of the charade, Kiran said emphatically, they would burn any constitutional declaration emerging from the new CA and “write one in the streets.”

The Caste System & Democratic Deficit

However, it may also be stated that most Dalit leaders are right when they blame the ‘Brahminical’ order of society for the grievous discrimination practiced against them…the reification of the caste system, even to this date, depends for its authority on the socioreligious observances of Brahmins, the high priests of Hinduism. – V. Rajan “Dalits” and the Caste System in India, p 3, 2010)

As in India, it is formally illegal under the Nepalese Constitution to discriminate on grounds of caste, and the education system is also nominally open to all. In reality though, the caste system remains pervasive with the upper castes constituting 70-8 The Kathmandu Valley Newaris, for example, form A more recent study in 2004 showed little change. Brahmins, while forming 1 Nepalese Brahmins in politics, culture and business defer easily to fellow Brahmins ascendant in India, claiming a realism similar to the pragmatism of a small boy before a bigger sibling. This assumes that Nepal and India are ‘family’, albeit one where might confirms right. They also note admiringly that Indian Brahmins have since Independence retained power and privilege in alliance with the Kshatriyas, the military caste, and the Banyias, the commercial and merchant caste, making a mockery of the great Dalit scholar/statesman Ambedkar’s 1947 Constitution prohibiting discrimination on grounds of caste and guaranteeing equality for all citizens. Words were also cheap in the 1972 Amendment to the Indian Constitution that added the words ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’ to the original declaration of ‘sovereign, democratic republic’. Against the evidence and from the beginning India was also touted in the capitalist West as rival to Red China’s ‘totalitarian ant heap’ and gushingly described as the ‘World’s Biggest Democracy’. Yet caste and democracy are mutually exclusive; caste rule is anti-egalitarian, and democracy requires equality. India and Nepal are clear examples, still controlled by the same caste configuration that in the political sphere refracts into parties and factions with acquired skills, resources and enough cohesion to collectively jump through regular electoral hoops. Effective democratic camouflage disguises elective oligarchy. A lesson well learned from the White Sahib’s mastery over and increasing sophistication in the dark arts of electoral manipulation and illusion, important because the popular mandate confers legitimacy to uninterrupted ascendancy of the bourgeois capitalism. The Dashists and their allies program the end of the upper caste monopoly of state power by establishing a New Federal People’s Democracy that represents the hitherto excluded Janjatis, Dalits, minorities, working classes and urban underclasses. Federalism is crucial to New Democracy as it means breaking up the centralized Brahminical state by devolving power to previously oppressed national minorities. It will correct the historic wrong that began with the autocracy founded by Narayan Shah and extended by the Ranas through King Mahendra’s Panchayaat and continued since 1990 with elective dictatorship coalescing around establishment parties as they cartelized political and state power. It was significant that one of the organized manifestations that followed victory in the 2006 Andolan was the mocking of Prithvi Narayan Shah’s statue in Kathmandu by Janjatis, indicating both that there is continuing antipathy to the oppressive central power he founded and that this historical wound remains very much open. The event was complemented by royalist outrage at such desecration, further testament to the irreconcilability of contending forces in Nepalese society.

Maoist “New Nepal”

From Marx:

…the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world market, and with this, the international character of the capitalist regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation… Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 73

To the present day:

Gender, Dalit and regional issues are important, and they are tied into the class struggle. But working to solve just these issues will not bring a full solution. This can only be reached by completing the class struggle. – KB Bishwokarma, Prakanda.

The CPN-M Dashists affirm their wish to break with global capitalism and establish economic autarky featuring tariff walls to protect infant industries along with land reform and infrastructural development, all through socialist state planning and ownership. Nepal, they argue, has failed to straddle the transition from feudalism to capitalism, and its traditional ruling classes have been incapable and unwilling to provide effective governance to tackle deprivation, poverty and inequality. Since 1990 it has increasingly aped India’s development, a huckster capitalism overseen by wholly corrupt caste elites dressed in “emperor’s new clothes” of bourgeois Western multiparty democracy. Maoists maintain that socialist transformation will improve conditions for the people and ensure genuine national sovereignty. Kiran, citing Mao and Stalin, argues that the national question in the case of Third World countries like Nepal is a class question. These weaker states have become subject to the interests of a dominant First World requiring them to be maintained in various stages of underdevelopment and to enable open markets for imported goods and foreign investment and to increase the plunder of their natural resources to feed insatiable Western consumer societies. Third World countries are further valuable sources of low-paid indigenous labor for production of cheap commodities intended for the Western market, dramatically highlighted by the 2013 Rana Plaza clothing factory tragedy in Dhaka. These nations also provide a reservoir of migrant labor for international capital projects, graphically exposed by the slave-like conditions endured by émigré workers, many of them Nepalese, on the notorious Qatar World Cup project. Even if not dramatically affected as migrant workers, neoliberalism, through international institutions led by IMF and World Bank, impacts on the Nepalese masses by shackling its government along with those in other impoverished, underdeveloped Third World countries to market-based austerity policies and denying whole populations benefits of modernity, decent infrastructure, modern schools, basic health care, access to clean water and sanitation, decent housing &c. Measuring everything by market criteria also blocked welfare programs, food subsidies and all state intervention aimed at reduction of poverty or stimulating domestic growth. In Nepal it has led to growing numbers of Sukumbasi (squatters), increasing, persistent mass unemployment, landlessness, rural flight to towns/cities, especially Kathmandu, exacerbating already high urban poverty, bonded, émigré and child labor; all salient features of a failed state, where a traditional elite continue to flourish, retaining social and economic privilege. This elite increasingly lives in ‘forts of gold’, while the world and the city outside crumbles over the head of the excluded and increasingly impoverished majority. Kathmandu is symptomatic, where, as in many Third World urban centers, the spectacle of private affluence for the few contrasts starkly with increasing public squalor for the many. Hope for a more egalitarian Nepal following the 1990 transition from monarchical absolutism to multiparty democracy was quickly dashed in the years of corruption and reaction that followed, when a newly empowered political elite proved even more venal than the Panchas they had supplanted. Ideologically colonized, like the Brahmins of Congress India, they were transfixed by western liberal democracy, whose representative institutions and personal freedoms, they were conditioned to believe, enshrined universally applicable and superior European Enlightenment values. Whereas imperialists once hawked a Christian Bible, their contemporaries now peddle the snake oil of capitalist democracy as salvation for, in Kipling’s infamous phrase from the poem Recessional, “lesser breeds without the Law”. Just as missionary societies once flourished, now Human Rights industries thrive and NGO’s promoting Western values and practices proliferate, employing some indigenous educated and enlisting them into the comprador class while sustaining patchwork schemes in a parody of development. From the beginning the conditioning of native elites through education invariably inculcated western values and ideologies which, on one hand informed and articulated claims to national independence and produced the leadership for anticolonial struggle, while one the other, ensured the same leadership was sufficiently psychologically colonized to slavishly adopt after independence the parliamentary model, including the flummery. An exotic plant in wholly unsuitable conditions. (16) As Franz Fanon caustically opined:

 The colonialist bourgeoisie, in its narcissistic dialogue, expounded by the members of its universities, had in fact deeply implanted in the minds of the colonized intellectual that the essential qualities remain eternal in spite of all the blunders men may make: the essential qualities of the West, of course.(17)

Bourgeois parliamentary institutions emerged in the Europe of the Late Middle Ages as a revolutionary and contingent challenge to residual feudal control by divinely mandated monarchs scattered across the kingdoms of Europe. Increasingly, with bourgeois power assured, they became functional requirements for regulation of class interests and instruments of chauvinist aggression against other nations, initially in Europe. In their early gestation they provided an arena for systemic compromise where differences could be aired and reconciled by parties representing old and new forms of propertied ruling classes in given historical transitions. This occurred in England following the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688, establishing a constitutional rapport between Whigs, the nascent bourgeoisie, and Tories, the old landowning class, but significantly this same transformation did not emerge from Les Etats Generaux of Bourbon France, making inevitable the 1789 Revolution and bloody, bourgeois victory over L’Ancien Regime. However, modern First World states, despite the potential democratic threat of universal suffrage, increasingly stabilized, and bourgeois capitalism established unchallenged supremacy. Parties are now even less class-based, representing sectional interests within the ruling class competing for control of the state apparatus, with elections determining which of the intraclass rivals accedes to government, enabling exercise of executive power and policy implementation until the next poll. Among the mature Western democracies this increasing homogenization of parties barely masks elective bourgeois dictatorship, now tricked out in ballot box ritualism, steeped in what Marx derided as ‘parliamentary cretinism’ and nailed by Engels as:

…an incurable disease, an ailment whose unfortunate victims are permeated by the lofty conviction that the whole world, its history and its future are directed and determined by a majority of votes in just that very representative institution that has the honor of having them in the capacity of its members. – Frederick Engels, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany, 1852, ME Selected Works, Vol 1, p. 370)

Yet this system was adopted by the ex-colonies of the British Empire in Asia and Africa, all of which have signally failed. India is the worst example, especially after the collapse of Nehru’s dreams of socialist democracy involving state ownership, five year plans, and deficit spending within integument of a mixed economy, etc. all evaporated in the early 1960’s, following the disastrous defeat in the war of aggression launched against China in the Kashmir Aksai Chin. Nehru had always allowed for a degree of corruption, but after him it was unchecked; reflected in the Lok Sabha which degenerated into the kleptocracy presently extant. In Nepal, similarly, after 1990, the new democratic state institutions quickly became synonymous with cronyism, nepotism and carpetbagging. A pervasive corruption disfigured Nepalese society and subsequently Nepal scored 2.2 on the 2011 World Corruption Perception Index, where 10 is ‘very clean’ and 0 is ‘highly corrupt’. (18) The economist Arun Kumar further estimated that the Nepalese black economy, in 2006, accounted for $4 billion in contrast to an official GDP of $7 billion, an even higher percentage than India where the same phenomenon accounts for a still eye-watering 5 Like a fish stinking from the head, the godfathers or Thulo Hakimharu of NC and UML contributed to this state of affairs by pursuing a brazen policy of enrichessez-vous as vigorously as the state campaign of terror and foreign-funded mayhem they unleashed before and during People’s War against the Left and rural agitators who challenged the new corruption. Nevertheless, communists are not anarchists, grasping that participation in bourgeois elections is often a tactical necessity, so that if on occasion normative bourgeois control of electoral process as a result of political, economic or military crises is problematic, then communist parties should participate, particularly if it offers them the possibility of advancing proletarian interests. It was on such practical eventualities as well as principles that Marx and Engels campaigned for universal suffrage in the Communist Manifesto. They saw communists using the extended franchise to subvert the elective dictatorship of the bourgeoisie:

Transforme, de moyen de duperie qu’il a ete jusqu’ici, en instrument d’emancipation. (Changed by them from the usual means of deception, into one of transformation.) (K. Marx, Manifesto for French Workers’ Party, 1880. ME Selected Works, Vol 1, p. 546)

It was in this spirit that the  CPN (M) following the CPA entered the 2008 election campaign for a Constituent Assembly from which it emerged as the biggest party with 4 The Maoists were aware that they had considerable support in towns and cities but could not connect with it as People’s War had reached military stalemate, with the PLA controlling the countryside and the RNA and Armed Police Force (APF) paramilitaries the urban centers, particularly Kathmandu. It was a logjam that had to be broken if the Prachanda Path strategy, the fusion of Maoist protracted rural struggle and Leninist urban insurrection, was to succeed and the revolution carried through. In any event, the CPN (M) formed an administration in alliance with the UML with Prachanda as Prime Minister. The administration’s first act was to abolish the monarchy and declare a republic, but an attempt by Prachanda to bring the army under civilian control by sacking the insubordinate CoS, Katawal and the royalist generals around him for refusing to integrate PLA ex-combatants en corps into the NA as per the CPA provoked a virtual coup openly orchestrated from New Delhi involving its Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) foreign intelligence service acting in collusion with NA officers and apparatchiks from NC, UML and UDMF. This resulted in Yadhev, Nepal’s first President, significantly one of the few remaining prominent NC Terai Madeshis, exceeding his constitutional authority and reinstating the insubordinate Katawal. The UML, following instructions from New Delhi, pulled out of the coalition, and with the Maoists now unable to secure a majority in the CA, Nepal’s first Maoist-led government collapsed after only eight months in office. What provoked New Delhi to act with such speed and malice was triggered by Prachanda’s challenge to India’s right of veto over Nepal’s foreign policy by ‘playing the China card’, repeating Birendra’s ‘mistake’ with an attempted arms purchase from the PRC. Any hint of a China/Nepal alliance was anathema also to the Nepalese officer class and high command, who were historically close to India, and had, post-9/11, forged a deep relationship with Washington and the Pentagon, based on dollars, weaponry and training in return for allowing Nepal to become another link in the US chain surrounding the People’s Republic. When Biplav (Netra Bikram Chand) was asked during the 2013 boycott campaign why he opposed elections, he replied that Maoists were not opposed to them per se as they were a ‘relative matter’. He opposed this specific one as political and financial larceny on a grand scale, attesting: “It is a criminal conspiracy against the Nepalese working class.” The 2009 coup showed that electoral results as democratic expressions of the popular will are also, when the occasion demands, a ‘relative matter’ even for those who peddle democracy as a universal panacea at least when it serves class interest but are as quick to ignore or subvert it when it doesn’t.

Class and Patriotism

It would not be incorrect, if very insulting, to say that Nepal’s top leadership vis-à-vis India, has been morally bankrupt, greedy, hypocritical and have served as no more than errand boys. People are tired of these slick, fast-talking politicians. In fact their reputation has gone down the drain. In a culture aimed above all at seizing power, with material motivations, political democracy and thereby sustained peace is unlikely. – G. Thapa, Republica, Nepalese daily newspaper, September 30, 2013.

Marxist-Leninists argue that nation and class are linked in Third World countries. In these countries, traditional ruling elites and the emerging bourgeoisie have been suborned by transnational capitalism and accept neocolonial status as preferable to revolutionary change and national independence. It is therefore not in their increasingly cosmopolitan class interests to seek genuine self-determination; only the exploited working and marginalized classes have a genuine interest in such an outcome. (19) The symbiosis of communism and patriotism is therefore contingent to the epoch of imperialism. The lack of concern of the present ruling elite for its people is shown in the case of Nepali migrant workers in Qatar, cited above, because their remittances contribute over 2 Aside from BOP advantages, the money sent back also reduces governmental responsibility for the alleviation of poverty, especially in rural areas. Consequently there has been little or no representation from successive governments for the rights and well-being of the estimated 2.2 million émigré Nepalese presently working in India, Malaysia and the Middle East. (20) This echoes an early initiative of Jonge Bahadur, who established Rana power after 1846 Red Kot Massacre by reducing the monarchy to titular status. He negotiated a payment per head for every Ghurkha recruited into the British Army. (21) This was one aspect of a new strategic alliance with the East India Company through which the new rulers began to draw material benefit from trading their subjects as commodities in the form of mercenaries, while being left unchallenged in Nepal to establish Rana monopoly control over all trade and to plunder state coffers and lands with impunity. The arc that connects the establishment of Gurkha mercenaries with migrant labor is one where benefit accrues to the same high castes exercising state power, albeit under superficially different political systems by different means of extraction in different epochs. Kiran’s Maoists, in this sense, expand the concept of patriotism beyond concern for territory and existing culture into one that includes the justice and welfare of the people. This criterion goes beyond but does not ignore traditional concerns: the defense of borders against constant Indian encroachments, ending the shameless political obedience to Delhi, the rolling back of foreign ownership in vital economic sectors, and protecting Nepal’s largely untapped vast hydro resources from continued Indian predation. The CPN-M Dashists are equally quick to point out that they are only anti-Indian to the extent that they oppose the Indian government’s neocolonialist meddling in Nepal. The hatred of Brahminical expansionist policies does not extend to the Indian people, who they argue have and are beginning to make their own revolution against the same enemy. This internationalist perspective is axiomatic for the patriotism of national liberation struggles in countries oppressed by imperialism and distinguishes it from bourgeois chauvinist nationalism that breeds racist hatred and jingoist aggression. This was the ideology that fueled rivalry between the nascent European states and then mutated into the racial superiority engendered by the subsequent colonization and subjugation of native peoples in Africa, Asia and the Americas. Imperialism no longer requires direct colonial occupation but operates in neo- or semi-colonial form. Exploitation of peoples and resources continue, and even intensify, but are now fronted by local ruling elites, comprador upper castes and classes, conditioned and rewarded to front for and spare imperialist powers from the obloquy and resistance engendered by 19th century European colonial empires. Mao described the modus operandi:

When imperialism carries on its oppression not by war but by milder means – political, economic and cultural – the ruling classes in semi-colonial countries capitulate to imperialism, and the two form an alliance for the joint oppression of the masses of the people. – Mao Zedong, On Contradiction, Selected Works, Vol 1, p.331

The present Nepalese ruling class, in this respect, cannot represent the national interest, Maoists aver, as they constitute an anti-patriotic bloc sustained by and servant to international capital and great power geopolitics. Kiran concluded:

Both the King and the Nepali Congress Party represent the feudal, bureaucratic and comprador bourgeoisie.

Patriotism in Nepal and similar Third World countries, is not, argue the Maoists, ‘a refuge for the scoundrel’, but rather a home for the homeless and the hope of the hopeless. In this regard Pushpa Lal, when founding the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN) in 1949, absorbed Mao’s definition of patriotism and learned how the Koumintang degenerated from the patriots of Sun Yat Sen into the quislings of Chiang Kai Chek. He also derived lessons from the Soviet Union’s Great Patriotic War against Germany’s virulent, fascist imperialism. Patriotism in the modern age was, by these examples, anti-imperialist by definition. Therefore, in the epoch of imperialism, the mantle of patriotism falls upon the shoulders of the proletariat in the oppressed Third World. The bourgeoisie in the metropolitan heartlands invoke it to mask imperial aggression and aggrandizement, while the big bourgeoisie of monopoly financial and industrial capital have transcended the nation-state and its parochial ideology, instead pledging allegiance to the ascending global megalopolis of money.

Communist Politics: 1949-2014

Inspired by China’s liberation in 1949, the newly founded Communist Party of Nepal took up arms against the Rana regime, which was in power via an alliance with NC led by the Koirala brothers and royalist forces under King Tribhuvan (Nepal’s Ivan the Terrible to the Ranas’ Boyars) Together they forged a Mukti Senaa (Liberation Army) which invaded from India in 1950/51. These activities were supported, with arms, funds and facilities and funded by Nehru’s Congress government, and even included providing officer staff from Bose’s recently demobilized Indian National Army. Nehru had already godfathered the creation of Nepali Congress in 1948 from progressive Nepalese democrats exiled in India, and wanted to settle accounts with the pro-British Ranas. In the final event India limited their support to the NC, forcing it into a three-way peace agreement with the Ranas and the King. There followed a short-lived NC/Rana coalition government, the collapse of which signaled a decade of political struggle between the NC and the King, followed by thirty years of monarchial executive government, with New Delhi steering a seemingly contradictory ‘Two-Pillar’ policy of supporting the monarchy and the aspiring democrats of Nepali Congress. Lal, who, in 1949 first translated the Communist Manifesto into Nepalese, linked armed struggle to a domestic program, principally advocating a ‘Land to the Tiller’ policy in tandem with breaking up big feudal estates and following the example of China’s ‘New Democracy’ also proclaimed the intention of promoting state-sponsored national capitalism. The party also advocated a Constitutional Assembly, which was agreed among all the parties, foreign and domestic, but reneged on by Tribhuvan’s successor, Mahendra, who, following the 1960 coup, replaced the parliamentary system with a feudal Panchayat, a series of interlocked consultative committees, starting at village level and ending with the King as final arbiter. It was in these conditions of a Shah/Brahmin autocracy and the international US-led post-1945 onslaught to roll back Communism that saw the Communist Party and movement grow, recruiting from the intelligentsia, disillusioned radical NC members, urban workers, Dalits and oppressed rural minorities. However, aside from having to operate underground, it faced the same problem as that of succeeding communist parties and cadre in maintaining a united revolutionary line. Lal’s CPN split in the early 1960’s between pro-Moscow reformists such as Tulsi Lal Amatya and pro-Beijing revolutionaries. There was a parallel split between the Rayamajhi faction which scuttled off to serve the Panchayat system and Puspha Lal, who remained committed to proletarian revolution against domestic reaction and international US imperialism, supported by Mao’s communist China,  at least until Deng Xiaoping’s 1976 Rightist coup left the proletariat at home and abroad to its own devices. After the Japha Uprising in 1971, Nepal’s first communist armed struggle, the UML emerged. But by 1990, it was fully committed to multiparty democracy and conciliation with Delhi, following the lead set by its homologues in Communist Party of India (Marxist). Its transformation into a comprador bourgeois parliamentary party epitomized when the short-lived 1994 UML Adhikary administration instigated the Integrated Mahakali Treaty, which, under its NC successor, signed after an orgy of corruption, ceded sovereignty of the river to India. The UCPN (Maoist) path from People’s War into parliamentary politics and accommodation with Delhi has already been noted. However, Nepalese communism, while disputatious, has shown great vigor, and unlike the post-1945 Western communist parties has never surrendered intellectual or political hegemony to the bourgeoisie. Schisms and splits followed deviations, but the result always ensured that the torch of patriotic, anti-imperialist revolution was passed to a new generation and party. The CPN-M is the latest manifestation of this cycle of action and reaction and may not be the last, but it has inherited the legacy of Puspha Lal Shrestha at a time when Luxemburg’s historical option of ‘Socialism or barbarism?’ confronts with even greater urgency, a century after she coined her prophetic question.

Jo Chor Usko Thulo Sor (Proverb: ‘He Who Steals Shouts Aloud’)

The feudal system was by no means brought complete from Germany, but had its origin, as far as the conquerors were concerned, in the martial organization of the army during the actual conquest, and this evolved after the conquest into the feudal system proper through the action of the productive forces found in the conquered countries. – K Marx, Feuerbach – Opposition of Materialist and Idealist Outlook, Selected Works, Vol 1, p.72)

Nepal was unified in 1769 when the Gorkhali warrior state subdued the three kingdoms in the Kathmandu Valley and created a myriad of fifty or more smaller principalities under the leadership of Prithi Narayan, who became its first Shah and centralized royal power in Kathmandu. It was not an organic process with common national identity evolving from a shared history, economy, language or culture but one of force majeure that involved conquest and subjugation over many indigenous ethnicities, each with their own language and customs. Narayan Shah’s ruthless empire building was partly driven by desire to forestall the inexorable northeastern expansion of the East Indian Company, then easily colonizing small kingdoms in its path. The creation of a martial Greater Nepal did indeed halt the feringhees (foreigners) advance, which appeared unstoppable following Clive’s decisive victory at Palashi (Plassey) over the Nawab of Bengal in 1757. This battle secured Company rule over India until the precise centennial challenge of the first War of Independence in 1857, denigrated by the British using the euphemism, ‘The Indian Mutiny’. However, a decade after Plassey, in 1767, Narayan Shah’s Gurkhali army routed a British expeditionary force under Captain Kinloch at Sindhulighadi and kept the greedy, expansionist British in the guise of the East India Company out of Nepal until the second decade of the 19th century and, many claim, helped ensure that the country was never formally colonized. It necessitated creating a domestic power imbalance with a minority ruling a majority that, apart from some cosmetic modification, exists to the present day and for a century was marked by Rana regimes so servile to British interests that invasion and colonization were rendered unnecessary.

1769 – The Dawn of the Hindu Kingdom

The extent of dominion had been acquired entirely during the last fifty years, by the systematic prosecution of a policy likened by the Goorkhas themselves, and not inaptly so, to that which had gained for us the empire of Hindoostan. – HT Prinsep, The Goorkha War, p 9, 1825)

Prithvi Narayan Shah established a state in Nepal that in many way was analogous with those of European feudalism that emerged from the collapse of the Roman Empire and lasted until the rise of capitalism in the late Middle Ages. It also was an agricultural society presided over by a divinely ordained monarch, nobility and priesthood existing on the labor and produce of a mass of serfs. Even the manner of its inception by force of arms echoes Marx’s comments on the origins of feudalism in Northern Europe as a response to anarchy and decay of the times:

From these conditions and the mode of organization determined by them, feudal property developed under the influence of the Germanic military constitution. (Marx-Engels, Feuerbach – Opposition of Materialist & Idealist Outlook, p.23. ME Selected Works, Vol. 1)

In this respect, Narayan Shah’s unification of Nepal was similar to the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, where advanced military forces involving disciplined infantry and cavalry in integrated battle tactics was decisive in sweeping aside patchy and ill-coordinated Anglo-Saxon resistance. In terms of comparative logistics and technical support, it was complemented by Narayan Shah’s adoption of modern weaponry and training of a third of his army along British lines that proved crucial to eventual success in a grueling twenty-year campaign culminating in the declaration of Nepal as a Hindu Kingdom in 1769. Gorkhalis and Normans conquered foreign lands and peoples, and Kings William and Narayan used countrywide grants of confiscated lands to their warrior and clerical castes as both reward for past service and to secure the future of the central regime. In each case repression was used to entrench the system and reduce respective populations to serf/Shudra servility. The speed and ruthless nature of Norman expropriations was such that by the end of William’s reign in 1087, 2 It was a more attenuated process in Nepal, but by the time of the Ranas in mid-19th century, similar patterns in ownership and access to land were firmly established that, despite some fragmentation and formal abolition of feudal land titles, remain into the 21st century for want of serious reform. A 2004 Human Development Report, UNDP, reported the top From the birth of the new state, each of the subjugated peoples were subject to feudal rent in labor, goods or money in the case of Nepal where a sizable portion took immediate monetary form, while in Europe such remittance mode emerged gradually, attenuated by feudal society fragmenting under the impact of a growing urban society of flourishing markets and small-scale commodity production. In this situation money’s use-value as means of facilitating commodity exchange enriched and accelerated the rise of an increasingly prosperous merchant burger class that finally burst the constraints of European feudalism.

Land Tenure Post-1769

Should the direct producers not be confronted by a private landlord, but rather, as in Asia under direct subordination to a state which stands over them as their landlord and simultaneously as sovereign, then rent and taxes coincide, or rather, there exists no tax which differs from this form of ground-rent. Under such circumstances there need exist no stronger political or economic pressure than that common to all subjection to that state. The state is then the supreme lord. Sovereignty here consists in the ownership of land concentrated on a national scale. – Marx, Capital Vol 3, p 791, New World edition)

Aside from the geopolitical considerations of blocking the feringhees, the Gorkha state was driven by hunger for land, and Narayan Shah particularly desired the fertile Kathmandu Valley. Brahmins and Rajputs who had settled across Nepal, having being uprooted from North India by Mughal invasion and settlement, were also instrumental in securing the new system established by Narayan Shah from the Kathmandu center. They were particularly enthusiastic participants in the abolition of tribal land rights and the creation of a royal monopoly over all land under the Raikar Law. This allowed for individual/family use and transfer as long as taxes were paid to the King’s state treasury. Private ownership of land eventually mutated from this private use, creating a largely Brahmin landlord class. When Raikar was abolished in 1950, the system accounted for 5 The Guthi system further allowed for state or private grants of land to religious institutions and was free from tax and repossession by the donor. This continues to the present time but accounts for only A specific subset of Birta was Jagir tenure, which was land in lieu of pay to army personnel, both officers and privates, which intensified expropriations of a scarce resource and entrenched the new order by, as one historian notes:

…granting of Jagir lands to such of them as received appointments in the government and army was an important factor contributing to the stability and organization of the newly established regime. Without the Jagir system it would have been virtually impossible for the government to distribute rewards to its nobility and military personnel. – Land Ownership in Nepal, p 74, MC Regmi).

Certain ethnic groups in Eastern Nepal had traditional rights to common land under the Kipat system. The Limbus in particular had these rights as quid pro quo for their agreement in 1774 to accept merger with Nepal under Narayan Shah’s sovereignty, which extracted a pledge that Kipat land would remain outside the Raikar system in perpetuity. This was never honored by succeeding shahs and particularly the later Rana regimes that relentlessly encroached upon these lands during the 19th and 20th centuries. The Limbus suffered especially as literate and legally informed Brahmins exploited their skills to dispossess them of their traditional lands. It was comparable to the enclosures of Tudor and Georgian England, where the gentry used Acts of Parliaments to dispossess an equally unwitting rural people of their common lands. Rai Kipat land was largely untouched, reflecting the uneven development in the extension of royal autocratic hegemony mingled with deliberate divide et impera strategy. It shows how oppression was relative, with some national minorities eventually binding to and serving Narayan’s state, even applying stratification by caste among their own peoples, acquiescent in their deities’ acceptance as avatars of the Hindu God, &c.

Caste and the Feudal State

When born in the same way – all are one. None superior –none inferior. What is the use of caste that discriminates between human beings? – From Basavanna’s Vachanas, written by a 12th century Indian philosopher/statesman.

The modalities of tenure imposed by the first Shah were pivotal in creating the economic and political sinews of a strong central state and went hand-in-hand with the imposition of the Hindu caste system throughout the country. This showed that feudalism in Nepal, while it shared features with the European variety, was deeply rooted in the culture of Indian tributary societies which flourished in the Middle Kingdoms between the first and thirteenth centuries. The caste system originated as a means for a colonizing group of light-skinned Indo-Aryans to distinguish themselves from the indigenous dark aboriginal peoples (Adivhasis) they were colonizing by establishing three Varnas (Varna denotes color) – Brahmin, Kshatriya and Vaishaya in order of superiority. However, according to scholars, by the time of Gupta Dynasty around 100 AD, this structure was recast as a socioeconomic hierarchy after large grants of land were given to the Brahmin priests, administrators, astrologers, temples and monastic institutions. This largesse had earlier been declared a sacred duty in the Dharmashastra, Hinduism’s foundational scripts where Brahmins are declared Pratigraha, the one caste entitled to receive gifts. There are further references along these lines in the epic poem Mahabharata. The fourth caste, Shudras, were called forth during this period as an agricultural labor force in servile symbiosis with a rapidly expanding landlord class. Slaves at worst, chattel at best; a Shudra could be killed by a Brahmin with impunity. They were untouchables, subject to enforced endogamy and exclusion. The peasantry of contemporary village India are their descendants. Eventually a fifth category evolved, Dalits (Hindi for oppressed) which took over menial tasks connected with bodily waste, pollution and dirt – they and other tribal subgroups became the ‘Untouchables’. This essentially was the system that Narayan Shah and his Gorkha warriors imposed upon Nepal, notwithstanding the Shah’s attempt at inclusivity by describing his Kingdom as ‘a garden of four castes and thirty-six subcastes’. No rosy description could, however, mask the reality of a ruthless struggle for land (intensified by salient, topographical fact that only 2 Janjatis were accorded the same status as Shudras and Dalits, and aside from extractions of surplus and rent, had to provide free labor for specified periods and military service as necessary, under the Jhara Code, comparable to Corvee Labor in European feudalism. Hindu patriarchal law deprived Janjati village and farmstead women of property rights. This was accompanied by a sustained campaign to ban ethnic languages and culture that culminated in the Panchayat slogan: ‘One nation, one king, one language.’

Religion in Tributary/Feudal Society

In Kalikot, Hinduism has incurred into disfavor after the Maoist uprising, temples have been abandoned or even demolished. There was no use for them after the upper castes lost their land and moved to the city. In this place we had a temple of Dedhedu, and we were not allowed to enter the temple from this area onward. If we are not allowed to worship the idols that we ourselves made, then there is no point. We came to understand this and stopped maintaining the place.” – Interview with Dalit Kalikot resident.

The Panchas did not add ‘One God’ to the attributes of the Khas nation as this was axiomatic to the state’s divine Hindu conception where religion was integral, functioning as means of ideological control over the laboring masses. It is strikingly similar to the role played by the pre-Reformation, Roman Catholic Church in European feudalism. The Church of Rome preached that serfs were chattel, a property category introduced into the world as divine retribution for the original sin of Adam and Eve and carried from birth by their descendants. However, by virtuously accepting his/her lot and offering it up as penance in this life, a serf could attain a ‘state of grace’, ensuring admittance in the next life to Heaven at Dies Irae (Judgment Day). The Church was also a great land and serf owner and had a vested material interest in the temporal status quo. As is so often with organized religion, the basest of motives were tricked out as divinely inspired credo by ferocious, proselytizing clergy. Their Hindu Brahmin homologues achieved the same end by teaching Shudras, Dalits, and other lower castes that their reward for accepting low caste in this life and creating good karma would be reincarnation into a higher one in the next. There is a potentially endless cycle of life, death and rebirth expressed in the concept of Samsara until the totality of Karma, achieved by soul’s migration through various physical manifestations is sufficient to achieve final mukti (liberation). There are, of course, significant differences between Catholicism and Hinduism – one a transnational, centralized, corporate entity, the other a syncretic, subcontinental, decentralized network, but in credal terms of ‘justifying the ways of God to Man’ as mechanisms for strict hierarchical control, they were equally prescriptive. The Brahmins are as fanatical about  prohibiting intercaste marriage or upholding Sati as Catholic clerics were about burning heretics for denying the Trinity or Transubstantiation doctrines. Each presented priestly castes functioning to reconcile the exploited and submerged masses to their inferior position by rationalizing the respective socioeconomic systems as ‘divinely ordained’ and eternal. The historian Kosambhi’s assessment below on role of caste in Hinduism could be equally applied to that of the Catholic Church in medieval Europe.

Caste is class at a primitive level of production, a religious method of forming a social consciousness in such a manner that the primary producer is deprived of his surplus with the minimum of coercion. – D. D. Kosambhi, Combined Methods in Indology, p 59.

Consensus and Conquest

Whatever the arguments concerning the urban genesis of Indian feudalism (25) in the Gupta period (300-600 AD), there is no doubt that in Nepal it was driven from a central urban power in Kathmandu. Whereas towns and cities in Europe rose in opposition to the feudal countryside, in Nepal the city of Kathmandu was instrumental in superimposing a unified feudal system in a region, and the process was marked by an uneven impact upon urban and rural populations. For the former it was consolidation or even preservation, for the latter – a ’Big Bang’ whose reverberations, like the cosmic microwave background, are still detectable. In this regard, the unification of the petty principalities, city states and major kingdoms within the Gandaki Basin of Central Nepal ranging from Pokhara to Kathmandu was facilitated by shared Indo-Aryan ethnicity, religion and language among the various protagonists. The regional ubiquity of Hindu upper castes – Brahmins, Chetris, Newaris, Thakuris and Rajputs – in various independent micropolities, petty principalities and kingdoms thus enabled Narayan Shah to develop a strategy that allowed for guile, diplomacy or force of arms to be juggled as necessary on a shared terrain as predominantly a manageable political or dynastic problem. Most of the town and city statelets absorbed were, nolens volens, either feudal or proto-feudal, with rural lower castes and untouchables producing the agricultural surplus appropriated by urban higher castes. Devout Hindus obviously welcomed the extension of the caste system that underpinned their privileged conditions of existence but were also roused by the Gorkhali King’s call to defend Hinduism against the Christian feringhees’ inexorable advance – Bible in one hand, rifle in the other. The warrior castes, forged in the wars against Buddhism and the later Mughal incursion, responded with particular fervor, ensuring them an influential position in the ruling elite thereafter. For the Janjati Tibeto-Burman (26) peoples it was a military conquest by Indo-Aryans subjecting them to economic exploitation and cultural coercion. It created multifaceted oppression based on ethnicity, caste and gender that intensified under the Ranas who, led by Jonge Bahadur Rana, seized power in 1846. The Ranas were Rajput warriors (the name means, ‘field of battle’) raised originally by Narayan Shah, and their century-long rule was marked by persecution, corruption, and debauchery. In return for being left alone to plunder the country, a succession of mostly Shamsher Ranas developed a neocolonial relationship with the British that began seriously starting with the 1857 War of Independence. Domestically, they used the Birta system extensively in order to seize more land, which increased rural deprivation and landlessness. Birta was particularly applied to award large tracts of the fertile Terai Plains to the Rana clan and other upper castes such as Thakhuris, Brahmins, Chhetris and Rajputs. The 1854 Muluki Ain (Country/Civil Law) was essential to the process of freezing Nepal in the Middle Age. This set of laws derived from orthodox the Hindu sanctions and laws of the Dharmashastras, giving legal validation to the caste system by, inter alia, prohibiting intercaste mixing, regulating submission of peasants before landlords, and generally preserving the sociocultural and economic status quo. It also continued the tradition of Brahmins being exempt in law from capital or corporal punishment. There was always resistance in some form to Rana autocracy – for example, the Gurung and Magar Risings in the 19th century and the mass movement inspired by a young widow, Yog Maya, a campaign for rural justice and against caste discrimination which lasted for two decades until the early 1930s. The response to any challenge to the existing order, whether socioeconomic or political, was always repression. In 1940 activists from the Prajaa Parisad (Citizens’ Council) Party were hung for daring to advocate a constitutional monarchy. While the Ranas’ political grip was loosened after 1950, it has maintained military influence in the officer class and high command of the Nepalese Army, with the present Chief of Army Staff, J. B. Rana, one of the seven Ranas out of eleven occupants of the post since 1974.

Failure of Post-1950 Land Reforms

Towards the end of the uncertain 1950s’, Nehru’s duplicitous Delhi Compromise disintegrated, with the Ranas retiring from political, but not military, power. Nepali Congress and King Mahendra entered a struggle to determine ascendancy, as the democratically elected 1959 Koirala government tentatively began land reform with the twin aims of raising agricultural productivity and alleviating rural poverty. This was undermined in 1960 by Mahendra’s military coup, proroguing parliament, banning political parties and trade unions, and beginning direct monarchical rule through a Panchayat system of ‘managed democracy’, and in 1962 implementing a pro-landlord program. This provoked the American agronomist who had helped draft the previous NC administration’s progressive legislation complaining, in a 1963 letter,that landlords were an obstacle to reform because:

They opposed any attempt to improve the situation of tenants. They were content with low productivity because it generated enough surplus that would be at risk from reform. They were pursuing narrow caste/class sectional interests at the expense of national prosperity and advancing the forces of agricultural production. (27) Garibiko Bahas. Discussion on Poverty

However, by this time Mahendra had consolidated power with help of a ruling elite that included a significant tranche of landlords and therefore substantial reforms such as setting upper limits on land ownership, increasing access to land for marginalized groups, and greater legal protection for poorer tenants were rejected. Subsequently, his successors, kings and democrats alike, emulated this approach, paying lip service to land reform and radical transformation of the agricultural sector. Probing Mahendra’s support for the landlords encapsulates the premise of this essay, limning a ruling elite that established its caste predominance by force majeure in 1769 and was still clinging to political power and economic privilege. Looking at the composition of the landlord class extant at Mahendra’s accession provides a microcosm of Nepalese history, with soldiers and high civil servants from established Brahmin and Chetri castes forming a core of absentee landlords. This was leavened by in situ landlords who became the activists and officers (Panchas) of the Panchayat system and were instrumental in implementing the 1967 ‘Back to the Village’ campaign and generally eliminating rural opposition to the absolutist regime. From 1964 on there were a succession of five Land Acts, none of which led to any perceptible change to the basic inequities suffered by the rural masses. Hopes for restructuring the sector were dashed when both NC and UML’s ‘Land to the Tiller’ policies failed to survive the transition from underground to legality, following the 1990 Andolan that humbled King Birendra and established for New Delhi a more amenable multiparty system. The short-lived 1996 Adikhari UML-led coalition administration tried to pick up the pieces and set up the Badal Commission which recommended measures to increase access to land by hitherto marginalized rural peoples. Its recommendations fell with the government that commissioned it, and reform was off the agenda, as successive administrations preferred stasis to reform. The NC-led Deuba regime, in 2002, did propose a program of radical change, ostensibly to aid poor farmers and tenants but which in reality turned out to be a political stratagem rather than a serious reform initiative, the purpose of which was to neutralize and outbid support for the Maoists’ truly radical rural agenda at the height of People’s War. The only changes attempted by the many governments from 1990-2006 were guided by neoliberal policies enforced on loan-dependent Nepal by the IMF and World Bank. Permitting only market mechanisms, they enabled the landlord-moneyed class to acquire even more land through a Land Bank. Furthermore, land registration and government improvement grants were designed to benefit big Hindu landlords. Meanwhile, the governments resisted ceilings on land ownership aimed at sharing land more equably by creating tenancies among the hitherto landless and marginalized rural populations and also rejected improving rights and security of tenure for existing small and single family tenancies.

Failure of Post-1990 Land Reform

It was significant that the landlord class, following the collapse of the Panchayat system in 1990, flocked into the ranks of Nepali Congress, entrenching it further as a formidable conservative bloc, winning the 1991 election that, after a hiccup, saw the ferocious anti-communist GP Koirala installed as Prime Minister. He needed little urging to launch a harsh campaign of state repression against the urban Left and their Janjati allies in the countryside. This commenced in April 1992 with police shooting demonstrators in Kathmandu and led remorselessly to the notorious 1995 Operation Romeo which subjected the western district of Rolpa to sustained police terror, lasting weeks and featuring arbitrary killing, rape and mass arrests, followed by detention and often torture. This insensate, brutal operation was decisive in swelling the ranks of a nascent Maobaadi (Maoist) PLA, and provided the spark that ignited a prairie fire of rural revolution marking the decade following 1996. Dr. Bhatterai provided an overview:

The most disadvantaged regions within the country include those inhabited by indigenous people since time immemorial. These regions, which were independent tribal states prior to the formation of the unified state in the latter half of the 18th century, have been reduced to the most backward and oppressed condition due to internal feudal exploitation and external semi-colonial oppression. They have been left behind in the historical development process because of the blockade of their path to independent development and the imposition of sociocultural oppression along with economic oppression with the backing of the state, by forces that came from outside. B. Bhatterai, Political Economy of People’s War, 1997, from PW in Nepal, Seddon-Karki, p 153)

It was no accident therefore, that the Maoists in 1996 chose to launch People’s War from rural West Nepal, beginning with the ransacking of an Agricultural Development Bank office located, with appropriate historical symmetry, in Gorkha District. Loan agreements lodged there, which extracted rent from tenant farmers by usurious repayments, were seized and torched, while ownership documents, held as collateral against the loans, were carefully retrieved and returned to respective titleholders. It was no accident that land reform was a key element in 2006 negotiations for CPA, where Maoists wanted further confiscation of land from the big landlords without compensation and the application of ‘scientific management’ to agriculture. In so doing they were echoing longstanding communist aims of land reform, highlighted in the 40 demands promulgated in 1996 by CPN (M) and whose anticipated rejection was the trigger for People’s War. Communists and anti-imperialists argue land reform is crucial for underdeveloped Third World countries if they are to gestate into modern genuinely independent societies. Forgetting the propaganda about it being the ‘world’s biggest democracy’, India is presently the world’s greatest failed state, with staggering levels of poverty and deprivation. This stems from the failure to transform its inefficient feudal land system after independence, because, prior to it, Gandhi and Nehru had made an alliance with the feudal landlords and guaranteed their property and privilege. The much vaunted ‘Green Revolution’ of the 1960’s came and went without altering the systemic depressing reality noted by a leading economist:

Famines in India were very frequent during the period 1940’s to 1970’s. Due to faulty distribution of food and because farmers did not receive the true value of their labors, the majority of the population did not get enough food. Malnutrition and starvation were a huge problem. Sen, A. Poverty and Famine, 1981

In 2008 the World Bank estimated the global poor at 1.29 billion, of whom 400 million were in India. Communist China by contrast expropriated its landlord class and created over 70,000 communes that overcame residual difficulties and not only eliminated famines by 1970, but also, against the background of the mid-1960’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, provided the springboard for Deng Xiaoping’s launching China in the direction of state capitalism (28) after 1976. Other socialist countries have followed this path: DPRK, Vietnam, and Cuba. Even Japan, post-1945, under MacArthur’s US imperium – initiated land reform clearing away feudalism as precondition for a capitalist future and a bastion against the march of communism in Asia. In all cases it was intended as precursor to industrial development and national autonomy. It is the only way for semi-feudal (29) and feudal societies to advance beyond  subsistence agriculture – by planning, collectivization and ‘scientific management’ in order to expand reproduction and accumulate the surplus necessary to feed the urban populations. It is especially crucial in supporting a growing working class engaged on infrastructural projects or in domestic industries that hopefully flourish when protected behind tariff walls. The nature of the society shapes its revolution’s priorities; as Dr Bhatterai, then in camp of revolution, detailed:

In a semi-feudal agriculture based economy like Nepal, the New Democratic revolution means basically an agrarian revolution. Revolutionary land reform, is, therefore, the biggest and the most important economic program of the New Democratic revolution. (B Bhatterai, ibid, p 158)

Summary – Historical Constituents of Discord

The imposition of a feudal system from the urban center created unresolved contradictions in Nepalese society. These contradictions are intensifying under pressurized conditions effected by the modern global capitalist market, but their provenance lies in Narayan Shah’s successful, ruthless unification campaign. More conquest than consensus, it seeded the antagonisms that continue to flourish in a divided, heterogeneous society and are recapitulated below. 1). The urban and rural paradox, which saw an urban center dominating the countryside as was touched on earlier, was an inversion of European feudal experience where towns and cities grew in dynamic opposition to the stagnant nature of rustic society. This caused Marx to remark in the Communist Manifesto that the one thing you could thank the bourgeoisie for, was that they built cities and rescued the mass of the people from ‘rural idiocy’. On the contrary in Nepal, unification and comprehensive extension of Hindu feudalism/Brahminism was driven by an autocratic, central state that remains largely intact and unreformed. As with many capital cities in the developing world, Kathmandu has also come to epitomize uneven development, with the city growing into a First World citadel, in a Third World society, a progression expedited because its ruling elites in politics, the civil service, the armed forces, business and, increasingly, the media have been suborned by global and regional imperialism, manifested in mixtures of military, economic and cultural Soft Power. In today’s Nepal, continuing resentment of central power, even dressed up as ‘democracy’, is revealed in dissension between those defending it against federalists seeking to liberate national minorities in the regions. The CPN (M) placed decentralization among its 40 demands in 1996, and it has since provided detailed policy necessary to establish a federal state. The major parliamentary parties are opposed, wanting to either retain power in the Kathmandu center or gerrymander a federal state that ensures continuing upper caste/class hegemony. 2). Narayan Shah’s triumph is echoed in the confrontation between Hindu Khas chauvinists and Janjati national minorities, with the former from the outset dressing up socioeconomic oppression of the latter in religious and linguist garb. The Rana record of attempting to stamp out the many ethnic languages and cultures is attested, but successive Shahs and soi disant democratic politicians were no better. As late as 1994, the Adhikari UML administration launched a Sanskrit radio station and tried to make its teaching compulsory in schools. Something to note – Sanskrit, the root of all Indo-Aryan languages as Latin for the European ‘Romantics’, has no linguistic connection with any ethnic minority language in Nepal, and the strategy of its imposition was another cultural humiliation, provoking an anti-Sanskrit campaign led by Janjatis. This event was a particularly salutary example of the gulf between the UML’s communist appellation and its political practice, which in this case was distinguished by arrogant, implicit Hindutvaism. Reflecting back to the 1066 conquest of England, Marx, quoted earlier, noted that the Norman system was grafted onto a pre-existing embryonic form of Anglo-Saxon feudalism. It could also be said that the two peoples shared the Catholic faith, perhaps offset by the Papal blessing given to William, rewarding his Ultramontanist credentials and the Church’s temporal interest in extending this more efficient and proven pious Norman feudalism and its own theological-political hegemony. However, even points of concurrence did not disguise a brutal invasion followed by a century of military oppression at the hands of a French-speaking army and a new nobility ensconced in castle, on expropriated land. The evolution of feudalism into the more benign form of manorialism and the consolidation of Royal and Papal power in England was greatly facilitated by fact that within four generations, the hitherto alien invaders, kings and nobles alike, had abandoned the French language for an evolving English one. This linguistic event was crucial to the formation of the modern English language and vital in establishing a cohesive national identity. It was not, therefore, unification by force-of-arms at the behest of foreign invaders that has precluded a similar Nepalese national identity from appearing; rather it is the failure to heal the original divisions created between vaunting conqueror and resentful conquered. 3). Landlord and tenant antipathy is rooted in the appropriation and expropriation of land that continued until the second half of the 20th century. The abolition of feudal land tenure and its subsequent mutation from private use to private ownership under market conditions benefited upper caste landlords by enabling them to consolidate their lands, with access to capital giving them immediate preference in acquiring released former royal/state lands. As shown previously, the pattern of land ownership has scarcely changed since the covetous Ranas and upper castes used the state and its repressive apparatus to monopolize swathes of it. Reforms such as setting ceilings on land holdings were either resisted or circumvented. Small tenants were given few protections, and they either fell prey to usurers or were driven into sharecropping and landlessness. This last group have swollen to include almost 3 4) The crucial component defining the relations of production in the tributary system established by Prithvi Narayan Shah was the rigorous application of the Hindu caste system and the enforcement of it on Buddhist, pantheist, or shamanist Janjatis. The ideas of the ruling class, as Marx observed, tend to constitute the dominant ideas in any society, and in the subcontinent, caste was the Brahmin elite’s mechanism for maintaining and rationalizing oppression and exploitation. It expressed a fusion of ideological and economic function in a society characterized by the rigid hierarchy of caste and rendered immutable by divine genesis and command:

The rich man in his castle The poor man at his gate God made them high and low And ordered their estate

This Christian hymn’s maxims are paralleled in the precepts of Hindu casteism as set forth, among other sources, by the God Krishna in the Bhavagad Gita:

“The caste system has been created by me…According to the differentiation of…Karma” Ch 4, Verse 13 “…of (the castes) the duties are distributed according to the qualities born of their nature” Ch 18, Verse 41

The continuing grip of this system, however informal, is evidence of residual feudal mindset and practice. A contemporary Brahmin is just as likely today to be a newspaper editor, political boss, professional, or civil servant, as a Pujaari (priest) or Jyotisi (astrologer), but this has not diluted the influence of the caste; rather it has equipped it to expand into the many crevices of power in contemporary civil societies. In all events, the secular opinion-former or the Thulo Hakim (party godfather/boss), laagered in Kathmandu, is no less the arrogant, prescriptive Brahmin, than is the cleric, functioning as interlocutor between humanity and God, under the gold roof of Pashupatinath Temple, on the banks of the Bagmati River that flows through Kathmandu and from where Dalits, as with all temples, are barred from entering. Caste in Nepal often overlaps with class, with Brahmins and Kshatriya morphing into bourgeoisie, and Dalits in their designated laboring and semi-skilled occupations recalibrating as workers and forming unions. Whatever the taxonomy, caste discrimination remains deeply ingrained in a society dominated by upper caste Hindus, despite the advent of multiparty democracy. Dalits and their organizations and unions have consistently supported the Maoists, seeing the revolution as the means of consigning the system into the dustbin of history. In this respect the CPN (M) were decisive in purging caste-discriminatory practices in liberated base areas, setting an example that stills cries out for general application. 5). The creation of Nepal under the auspices of deeply patriarchal culture was a qualitative setback for gender equality as post-pubertal females under Hinduism were regarded as domestic chattel to serve and gratify male needs and reproduce the species. This conflicted with the more liberated mores of Janjati societies based the villages and valleys of the hinterland. They represented the close-knit, gemeinschaft ideal, where survival in a harsh, unforgiving environment, was problematic for both sexes, precluding prejudice and requiring cooperation and mutual respect. Consequently women were influential in the community and could obtain and inherit property. This was prohibited under Hindu religion and law; women were also stopped from working in the fields under this rubric and generally subject to humiliation and constraints that marked their low status. They suffered the twin oppressions of class and gender, expressed in economic, social and political forms. The Maobaadi slogan was:

Working Women of the World, Unite. You Have Nothing to Lose but Your Double Chains!!

There is also significant empirical evidence that discrimination has deleterious health effects, especially to lower-caste women. Nepal is unique because female life expectancy has always lagged a few years behind that of males, an inversion of the normative death rate gender differential obtaining in most societies. Up to 2000, the country had one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the world – 875 per 100,000, and it is little better now. Lower caste women suffer further sexual oppression, are subject to rape with impunity by high caste males and are forced into sex slavery and prostitution. Hindu women, especially in urban centers, are made to observe Teej (husband worship), and the fifth day Tihar (Nepal’s Deepawali) is set aside for Hindu sisters’ Bhai Tikka (brother worship). However, People’s War raised a challenge to the subordination of women in Nepal; the CPN (M) was committed to female liberation, from Marx to Mao a consistent communist principle, and proved this in the red base areas. There were dramatic effects on women in these zones, both indirect and direct. In the first place the conflict caused male displacement into PLA and militia and accelerated the increasing flight of men into migrant work, leaving the work traditionally assigned to them, from plowing the fields to repairing roofs, to be carried on by females. That many women enthusiastically took up these challenges and supported the revolutionary cause is further demonstrated by the fact that by the time of CPA, one-third of the 30,000 PLA ranks were women serving alongside men in the front line. As with caste, the Maoists promoted and enforced equality, in stark contrast to the patriarchal and chauvinist Hindu culture of towns and cities. Even these urban centers were affected, as there was an increase in women’s’ organizations and agitation which owed as much to the impact of cosmopolitan petit bourgeois feminism as it did to urban Maoist women engaging in those legal or semi-legal campaigns for women’s rights that were open to them. However, there remains a long struggle for full equality between the sexes on the subcontinent. The appalling treatment of many, especially Dalit, women in India, highlights the worst effects of Hindu male chauvinism. It is also apparent in culture with the Soft Power of Bollywood and in politics with the election of a Hindutva BJP government showing that patriarchalism is systemic and pervasive on the subcontinent. For Nepal, it forms part of Narayan Shah’s enduring legacy, and for those of Indo-Aryan stock, secular or Hindu, male chauvinism is reinforced by cultural and political mores emanating from ‘Mother India’.

Patriots and Compradors

The major divide between patriots and compradors is not directly attributable to the first Shah but began with the deliberate neocolonialist turn taken by the military clan he had called forth as the monarchy’s Praetorian Guard, the Ranas. Following Jonge Bahadur’s precedent, their subservience to the British rendered direct colonization unnecessary. In the light of the post-1857 rebellion which the Ranas helped the British put down, the new Raj was more concerned with consolidating what he held than advancing into new territory and he actually returned to Nepal parts of the Terai seized following the 1814-16 Anglo-Nepalese war and Sugauli Treaty. While the Ranas suffered for their pro-British proclivities in 1950, with Nehru aiding the King and NC invasion, the returned Shahs from Tribhuvan to Gyenendra were always ambivalent towards India. Mahendra, for example, was quite willing to play the China card after its decisive military victory over India in 1962 by securing Peking’s aid in constructing a modern highway from the Tibetan border to Kathmandu. Birendra’s humbling in the events of 1990 Andolan was precipitated by an Indian blockade on Nepal that closed four out of the five major roads and quickly brought hunger to Kathmandu. This was prompted by the King’s attempt to purchase anti-aircraft equipment from China without consultation with and the agreement of New Delhi. These and other royal stratagems were nevertheless exercises and attempts at national sovereignty opportunistically exploiting interstices in the bedrock of Nepalese general political, cultural and economic deference to India and pragmatic royal acceptance of India’s strategic interests as the regional superpower. This ambivalence continues today as even the two RPP royalist parties are divided by pro- and anti-Indian sentiment. It is all the more surprising that, from Nehru onward, Indian administrations maintained a ‘Two Pillar’ policy towards Nepal following the collapse of the Delhi Compromise which supported the king and the political parties. It was never a rational option; attempting to balance the conflicting interests of Royalist absolutism and popular democratic sovereignty was destined to end with the victory of one group or another. Tigers want blood – not grass, and New Delhi appears naïve not to have understood this. It was especially puzzling that it involved India, as mentioned, supporting frequently freewheeling monarchs and marginalizing its natural allies in NC, and latterly UML, who had followed their Indian CPI comrades onto the parliamentary road and establishment status. New Delhi had a major geopolitical stake in ensuring a compliant regime in Nepal as a bulwark against the threatened proletarian expansionism of the PRC and yet tolerated often opportunist, awkward Nepalese monarchs who, in their turn, were trying to maintain neutrality and pursue and independent foreign policy. They were conscious of Narayan Shah’s warning that: ’Nepal was like a yam between two stones’, therefore, cunning and room for maneuver was required to avoid being crushed. Why successive Indian administrations continued to tolerate an, at best, ambivalent monarchy, when it had much more congenial partners in waiting is puzzling, especially given that the policy was not abandoned until 2005, when New Delhi finally lost patience and facilitated talks in India allowing the prorogued seven parliamentary parties and the Maoists to forge an anti-Gyanendra alliance. NC, after all, was created under Nehru’s aegis, and he effectively betrayed the party in the aftermath of the 1950 invasion, with first the Delhi Compromise and next with the subsequent Two Pillar policy. It may be argued that as the supreme arbiter of power on domestic and international issues, Nehru’s quixotic and capricious nature – if not Brahmin presumption – led to unchallenged contradictions. But even that does not fully explain the persistence of this approach post-Nehru, especially after the 1990 Andolan, which New Delhi precipitated and again drew back from by agreeing to having King Birendra stay on condition of accepting constitutional status (yet crucially allowing him to keep control of the army) in a ‘parliamentary democracy’. A former Indian diplomat turned critical establishment sage noted in exasperation in 2003:

“There is a serious inherent conflict between the interests of multiparty democracy based on the concept of popular sovereignty and the King’s political aspirations and self-perceived divine role to rule. Even in 1990 the coexistence between the King and the political parties was neither natural, nor sincere nor honest.” (31) – S. D. Muni

As this essay has argued, it was obvious from 1990 on that the parliamentary parties, governments and upper castes were either supine or in active collusion with Indian interests against the interests of the nation. They stood in even greater neocolonial submission to India than the Ranas before the British Empire. Their anti-national character was reinforced by functioning as agents/functionaries/transmission belts for imperialism in all its manifestations. There is no role for independent states under the present global imperium. The modern state was called forth by the European bourgeoisie during the early progressive birthing struggles against feudalism. These states later degenerated into a struggle between these new nations across the European continent. It was nationalism distinguished by a xenophobic hatred, intensified when rivalry spread from the continent to a world stage in the age of mercantilism and colonialism as each European power fought rivals for a ‘place in the sun’. The aim of these various rampaging states was to either exterminate or exploit native peoples and by blocking independent development maintain their subjugation. The aim of the First World has always been to kick away the ladder of protection it climbed up, from under Third World countries preserving them as arenas for super-exploitation. If there are domestic capitalist sectors in underdeveloped countries, they are crushed by unfair competition or leveraged out by multinationals using the dominant financial and political institutions and instruments of international capitalism. Since national capitalist sectors are not permitted in underdeveloped countries like Nepal, no national bourgeoisie can exist. Only one that is comprador can flourish. Individuals from upper caste/bourgeois backgrounds do at times betray their caste/class interest and join the struggle for national liberation, and their contribution is not negligible, but patriotism finds critical mass among the rural and urban working masses because it is materially intertwined with class interest and takes political counteroffensive against oppressive conditions created by international capital. For the ‘wretched of the earth’, Fanon’s memorable, passionate characterization, in Nepal and other Shudra states of the present global dispensation, there is no ‘trickle-down’ from the engorging imperial heartlands. The much-touted benefits of capitalism are chimerical, a Coca-Cola sign on a Third World shanty mocking poverty inside. The gap between a banker on Wall Street and a sharecropper in an Assamese paddy field is as wide and unbridgeable as that between a patrician Brahmin or Newari Thulo Hakim in the gated Lazimpat area of Kathmandu and a barelegged Dalit sanitation operative sifting city filth and inhabiting a hovel in a less salubrious quarter. Capitalist imperialism has overseen Brahmin and bourgeois class rule equalized by mutuality of greed and hierarchical praxis.

Material Basis of Social Contradiction

Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history; the simple fact hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means of subsistence and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even on ideas of religion, have been evolved,…..” – F. Engels, Speech at the Graveside of Marx, 1883, Selected Works, Vol 3, p 162.) “…an economic rationale can be provided for the origins of the Indian caste system as it can for European feudalism. All the great Eurasian civilizations being dependent on plow intensive agriculture needed some institutional means to tie labor…..Serfdom, indenture, slavery and the caste system were all ways to do so.” D. Lal, The Abuse of History, p. 2.

The genesis of Nepal’s divisions principally lies in the system imposed by Narayan Shah after 1769. This was an economic process galvanized by political means, with a ruling elite extracting surplus from downtrodden peasantry in an agricultural society through control of the land. Following Professor R. S. Sharma’s taxonomy (32) of this phenomenon in India during the first millennium AD, the appellation feudalism is used. Asok Rudra created the term ‘Brahminism’ (33) to emphasize the unique nature of the Indian system, rejecting parallels with European feudalism. What unites them, however, is mutual recognition that, whatever its discrete mechanisms and subsequent nomenclature, this was a tributary society. In other words, a type of pre-capitalist economic formation marked Eurasian history in this period. It was characterized by two main classes – first, a peasantry deployed in communal production, and second, a ruling class comprised of a priesthood, a nobility/military and an absolute monarchy that appropriated the surplus product/labor through control of land by repressive and extra-economic mechanisms There were marked divergences in the forms taken by these societies in Europe, India and China, but all instantiate the level of class struggle at this historical stage, albeit subject to differential momentum, development trajectories and cultural configurations. This is applying the methodology of historical materialism, précised in Engels’ quote above, which posits a sociopolitical superstructure arising from and sustained by an economic infrastructure which is appropriate to specific historical stages and the development of the forces of production therein. These successive modes of production encompass therefore not just the technological level of the productive forces but the corresponding relations of production under which they operate. The conditions under which social formations organize immediate physical necessities such as food and shelter shape their culture and provide a dominant worldview consistent with specific modes of reproduction. There have been qualitatively distinct historical stages in systematizing preconditions of physical existence, each sustaining its appropriate ideology. Marx reasoned:

“The hand mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam mill, society with the industrial capitalist. The same men who establish social relations in conformity with their material productivity, produce also principles, ideas and categories, in conformity with their social relations.”(34) – Karl Marx.

Therefore European feudalism gave rise to Roman Catholicism with all souls subsumed in the Corpus Christi (Body of Christ) and with divinely ordained functions complementing hierarchical society. Capitalism, for its part, produces bourgeois individualism as an appropriate ideology for a dynamic or even unbridled society that is in constant flux. Similarly the caste system on the Indian subcontinent, as has been argued earlier and noted by Lal above, is a socioeconomic phenomenon brought forward by exploitative elites applying superstitious doctrine to rationalize and mask their extraction of surplus. It is, as Dr. Ambedkar rightly concluded, a mechanism for the ‘social division of labor’ within an ’unequal hierarchy’. Just as Hindu metaphysics spawned numerous avatars and manifestations of Para Brahman (the Supreme Being), increasing refinement in allocation of fixed, discrete socioeconomic functions gave rise to a plethora of subcastes and Jatis that remain determinate to this day, despite the impacts of urban cosmopolitanism and the phenomenon of many Dalits and lower castes forming their own organizations and joining trade unions. Hinduism’s credal syncretism contrasts strikingly with the rigidity of its hierarchical stratification by means of caste. Religion is an ideological component within a general culture and along with political and legal systems is a constituent element of the superstructure which consistently corresponds to the economic base. It is called forth and shaped by ruling classes to serve the base and changes accordingly as it does. It cannot be otherwise. It is not economic determinism, acknowledging there is a reciprocal relationship between the two. So, for example, changes to the social relations of production in the base give rise to distinct world views; while conversely, political activity in the superstructure such as revolutionary upheaval can transform the base. Feudalism gave way to capitalism, which reduced religion to residual role and developed education as mode of enculturation. These are Blake’s “mind-forged manacles,” prefiguring Gramsci’s concept of hegemony in civil society, showing how a dominant class maintains ideological control over exploited classes and thereby complements its monopoly of the physical means of repression. Human societies have always commingled consent and coercion in varying combinations according to circumstances and history, but all rest on specific, sequential economic infrastructures that are ‘determinate in the last instance’:

“… According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimate determining factor is the production and reproduction of life.” (Engels to J. Bloch, 1890. ME Selected Works, Vol 3, p.487)

Conclusion

The ideal for any ruling class is where its ideology takes root and is accepted by the subordinate classes as expressing normative, eternal human verities. The lower classes then, as Marx held, “…share the illusion of that epoch” (35). In this essay I have argued that the brutal genesis of modern Nepal continues to engender resistance that precludes mass popular consent to such ‘illusion’ because its inceptional arrangements remain largely intact. The caste system therefore remains pervasive and influential, if sotto voce, because the upper castes it benefits retain political and economic power, despite changes in polities from monarchy through the Ranas back to the return of monarchy and finally culminating in the multiparty parliamentary system, with each in turn representing a different modality of Brahminical predominance. This elite has lasted nearly two-hundred and fifty years, and it has managed to preserve a feudal/tributary mode beyond its epochal termination elsewhere. Although circulation of money, small scale commodity production and burgeoning private property penetrated this society assisted by inherent Brahmin avariciousness mediated as hucksterism, it did not produce a strong national capitalist sector. Therefore, it was easily sold out by entrenched upper caste interests ready to accommodate the socioeconomic and geopolitical authority and objectives of India’s Brahminical oligarchs and international capitalism’s power elites and institutions. Consequently the heirs of Narayan Shah via the neocolonial Ranas have mutated into today’s comprador ruling class, equally marked by cupidity, corruption and cultural capitulation. The Seven Party Alliance was squeezed between Gyanendra’s royal coup complete with dissolution of parliament and banning of parties on the one hand and the Maoists, strengthened by the gains of Protracted People’s War, on the other. The parliamentary parties in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement gave formal assurances to the latter in order to defeat the former regarding restructuring the state and army. In the following years, re-energized as a reactionary bloc and assisted/prompted by New Delhi and Washington, the same parties, led by NC and UML, decisively reneged on those commitments which they had conceded in a moment of weakness. Those promises, if translated into effective policies, would have effectively ended their role as Nepal’s traditional governing class functioning from the Kathmandu center. Thus discord continues to disfigure Nepalese society and is characterized by a plurality of contradictions reflected variously as antipathy between landlord and tenant, Brahmin and Dalit, Khas Hindu and Janjati, comprador and patriot, casteist and egalitarian, capitalist and worker, patriarchalist and feminist, centralist and federalist, Maoist and Status Quoist. They are all aspects and expressions of fundamental class antagonism, with a ruling elite on the right confronting the interests of the popular masses on the left. Finally, I will conclude with a quote from an assessment made just after the 2006 CPA outlining the steps necessary to avoid a repetition of Protracted People’s War. It encapsulates the arguments made at greater length in the preceding pages. It is not from class warrior ‘usual suspects’ or any of more erudite and equally committed Nepalese specialists, but it hails from a well-meaning and of course well-funded Norwegian ‘Conflicts Resolution’ NGO:

The long-term conflict trends in Nepal are linked to whether or not one succeeds in replacing social, political and economic exclusion with more inclusive institutions, processes and practices. Continued exclusion on the basis of caste, ethnicity, gender or other means of distinction will provide the basis for continued armed conflict, including the possibility for further violence. In political terms the key issue revolves around the ongoing efforts to establish legitimate political institutions accepted by all groups in society. In socioeconomic terms, this system will also have to, over time, succeed in becoming more genuinely redistributive that the current system. In the short term, several factors might trigger increased violence in Nepal, including: Increasing poverty: As noted above, the poverty and exclusion issue will remain central, in particular for the new regime when it will be established. Meanwhile, the government should succeed in providing at least some symbolic progress on the economic front in order to encourage belief in the system and indicate the way forward. Ethnic mobilization: With widespread exclusion and discrimination still the norm across Nepali society, the danger will remain that some groups may mobilize on the basis of violence. This danger will grow unless the government and Maoists succeed in driving the negotiations forward and ensure redistribution in broad terms. (36)

These aims, necessary for Nayaa Nepal (New Nepal), have been either ignored or had their implementation blocked by a revived Brahminical status quo that despite its rampant corruption and its inability to provide functional government or generally represent the national interest still clings to power and privilege. Meanwhile the country decays and the people grow poorer while a younger generation takes up the challenge of the unfinished revolution.

“The old world is dying away, and the new world struggles to come forth: now is the time of monsters.” (Gramsci, A. State and Civil Society, Prison Notebooks, p 276)

Gramsci’s apercu applies to the present right/left impasse in Nepalese society – for the moment.

Postscript

In these poor, underdeveloped countries, where the rule is that the greatest wealth is surrounded by the greatest poverty, the army and the police constitute the pillars of the regime; an army and a police (another rule which must not be forgotten) which are advised by foreign experts. The strength of the police force and the power of the army are proportionate to the stagnation in which the rest of the nation is sunk. By dint of yearly loans, concessions are snatched up by foreigners; scandals are numerous, ministers grow rich, their wives doll themselves up, the members of parliament feather their nests, and there is not a soul down to the simple policemen or the customs officer who does not join in the great procession of corruption. – F. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 1961, p. 138)

At the turn of the millennium, the Royal Nepalese Army had a complement of approximately 35,000 front line personnel, and bolt-action 303 rifles (first issued to the British Army in 1892) were the standard infantry rifle. Now, post-2008, as the Nepalese Army is 105,000 strong the and standard issue weapon includes the much more deadly American M-16 fully automatic, state of the art, high-velocity, assault rifle, replacing the substandard, fault-prone INSAS light machine gun, India’s generic AK-47. This results from Washington’s geopolitical strategy of encircling a rising China with a chain in which Nepal forms an important potential link. Egyptianizing the Nepalese Army was important in advancing this aim. Under the pretext of post 9/11 ‘War On Terror’, following the 2002 Powell mission to Kathmandu, Washington agreed to help Gyanendra by equating Maoist rebels with Jihadis in a spurious world ‘crusade’. In the following years, except for the brief blip of Gyanendra’s absolutist rule, guns, guidance and greenbacks have flowed in to the army as US military advisors implemented a strategy of re-equipping the army. The US has supplied the army with improved weaponry. In the air, the US is supplying aerial reconnaissance and attack capability with helicopters and short take-off-landing aircraft (STOL). And the US has introduced counterinsurgency training. All of this for an army that, prior to being sent into serious action against the PLA following the pro-Maoist King Birendra’s assassination, was only experienced in UN peacekeeping duties in various hotspots. Through the Office for Defense Cooperation, Nepal’s top military convene monthly at one of the two US Embassies in Kathmandu under the auspices of the US Commander in Chief – Pacific (CINPAC). (37) Many of the NA high command and officer class are Sandhurst trained, and like their Indian Army homologues are willing Koi Hais, the Indian colonial term for a native servant. Collusion with Uncle Sam, allowing him a forward base in Nepal in return for practical assistance turning the NA into a primarily domestic counterinsurgency force, came easily with this pedigree. Aside from the Pentagon’s infantry weaponizing of the NA, most of the army’s supplies have come from India. In 2013, India resumed its role of supplying most of the army’s other military requirements, including means for ground and air mobility. This followed an eight year break that had begun in protest against Gyanendra’s coup but was also motivated by suspicion and resentment at growing US presence in India’s traditional sphere of influence. The recent unity of purpose between Washington and New Delhi in regard to Nepal is evidence of a broader and deeper economic and strategic partnership between the two countries. This has been extended into the military sphere with the Pentagon providing guidance for Operation Green Hunt, a counterinsurgency campaign launched in 2009 aimed at defeating Maoist and Adavasi rebels who are resisting the plunder of resources and destruction of their traditional lands by insatiable multinational corporations in the five states comprising India’s ‘Red Corridor’. There is also a 40,000 strong paramilitary group, the Armed Police Force (APF). This group was originally set up under Deuba’s NC 2001 administration to offset Gyanendra’s NA monopoly of state repressive potential. With the advent of the republic, it morphed into common purpose with NA, giving the state nearly 150,00 armed personnel at its disposal. The UK, with twice the population of Nepal, has an army half its size of the NA. Further, Britain’s imperial heritage marks it as a singularly bellicose state, permanently at war with someone somewhere, usually as faithful deputy in various American campaigns of international aggression. Apart from the People’s War, the Nepalese Army fought a minor war in the 1970’s, routing a marauding Khampa rabble in Mustang Province that had been trained and primed by the CIA to cross into Tibet and continue America’s war-by-proxy against the People’s Republic. Nepal is not threatened by imminent military invasion from either of its neighbors and has a particularly casual arrangement of an open border with India without even a dedicated border guard. The Nepalese Army’s UN peacekeeping duties involve 4,000 personnel at most at any one time. It is obvious that the NA and APF are primarily intended as forces for domestic repression; they are ostentatious and ubiquitous across the country, with six fixed army divisions straddling the regions, backed up by three mobile specialist brigades. They have used the years since 2006 to improve fortified positions and entrenchments in rural areas and are everywhere in urban centers. Katmandu City itself is like a military camp, with never less than 20,000 personnel in barracks dispersed across the City like chocolate chips in a cookie. Soldiers regularly patrol streets and thoroughfares, man major chowks (public squares and intersections) and parade in Tudikhel Park, a private army marching ground in the center of the city which, apart from the national football stadium is the only grass covered area in Kathmandu. Strutting their stuff, the soldiery are designed as much to intimidate as impress. The army is the elephant in the room in the Nepalese situation, and has been referenced throughout this paper for its role and influence at key points in Nepal’s history from its birth under Narayan Shah, to the early years of the 21st. century. In the last decade it has become bigger and better armed, equipped and trained than at any point in its history. It proved politically decisive in forcing Gyanendra’s surrender that signaled the victory of the April 2006 Andolan, and crucially succeeded in overthrowing Prachanda’s administration when it attempted to enforce the CPA provision that the PLA regulars be integrated as a corps into the NA. The further seizure of PLA weapons from the UN cantonments in 2011 on paper cemented the Brahminical state’s monopoly of violence in Nepal. Its comprador officer corps and high command, well-groomed by American and Indian patrons, have demonstrated in such interventions decisive executive ability; dumping a malfunctioning, hubristic King, blocking army reform, martialing the phony 2013 election, and holding an informal veto over policies or proposals inimical to the status quo. The officer corps is dominated by Chetris and Thakuris and represents a military ascendancy formed under the banner of Narayan Shah. It stands ready for counterrevolution either as a state of emergency or military dictatorship as possible options should the existence of the state be problematic or in imminent danger of collapse. The State’s political class presents no coherent power, and in any event is presently sunk in corruption, paralyzed by the specific difficulty in getting the existing order ratified in a bogus constitution and its sheer general uselessness in providing clean, functioning government.

Unfinished Revolution

War hath determined us, and foil’d with loss Irreparable: terms of peace yet none Vouchsafed, or sought: for what peace will be given To us enslaved, but custody severe, And stripes, and arbitrary punishment Inflicted? And what peace can we return, But, to our power, hostility and hate, Untamed reluctance, and revenge though slow Yet ever plotting how the Conqueror least May reap his conquest, and may least rejoice In doing what we most in suffering feel? Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 2, lines 330/40.

However, the People’s War may resume in some form based on the announcement in early December that barely two years after the CPN-M (Dashists) broke from the UCPN(M) (Cashists), the CPN-M (Dashists) haves also split, with a faction led by Biplav (Netra Bikram Chand) forming the CPN Maoist. At the time of writing, the Two-Line Struggle’s policy differences that prefigured the rupture are not fully understood, but the new party is driven by what it perceives as the treachery and reversals of the eight wasted years since 2006 and declaring that if provisions given by SPA on behalf of the status quo are not honored then struggle will resume, and organs of dual power will be revived in re-established liberated zones. The split does not appear as politically and ideologically rancorous as that between the Cashists and Dashists and may exhibit a generational difference regarding timing; Biplav and many around him are in their forties but have considerable battlefield experience from the People’s War. On the other hand, Kiran’s close comrades are in their fifties and sixties, and while many are primarily political figures, they also include active-service veterans. Each party recognizes that the stalled revolution is certain to recommence at some point, but the lack of technical support makes any attempt in the short term to ‘go back into the jungle’ or resume any form of armed struggle against a new, domestically refocused, re-equipped, and expanded state repressive apparatus militarily inadvisable if not suicidal. A more immediate likelihood is military and police repression of the party that, whatever its evident caution, has openly declared the task of completing the revolution, sooner rather than later. That is why its launch was held at a secure location in the Kathmandu Valley, but there was still a palpable sense of urgency behind Biplav’s opening statement that, failing the NC-led elite unblocking and implementing the reforms of the 12-point agreement of 2005 between the SPA and CPN (M) that were ratified the following year with the post-victory CPA, there would be a return to:

Armed struggle in order to protect national unity, integrity, sovereignty and rights of people. (38)

The Nepalese security establishment and its foreign advisers have every reason to take Biplav seriously. He was an effective military leader during the People’s War. With his close ally Khadga Bahadur Bishwkarma, Prakanda (Mighty) offered a vision of a reformed PLA with the creation of a youth wing in the CPN-M, the National Volunteers, that made a strong impression during the 2013 election boycott with uniform red T shirts and formation marching. It is a proto-army and significantly, most of its cadre have gone over to the new party. State surveillance agencies will also note Kiran’s statement:

We will meet if Chand will raise arms and fight for people (39).

All of which makes a pre-emptive strike by security forces a rational option. It also demonstrates that the understanding that ‘political power comes out of the barrel of gun’ is the one point of agreement between implacable enemies. This is not only perceived in abstraction, an axiom that distills a precondition for establishment and maintenance of power in human society from its tribal origins to the contemporary nation-state, but it is directly informed and shaped by Nepal’s recent history since unification in the late 18th century. The major and inescapable lesson is that violence was the midwife of the new state and has marked every significant subsequent upheaval since. From Prithvi Narayan Shah to Jonge Bahadur’s seizure of power in the Red Kot Massacre that established a century of brutal Rana despotism to the NC/Royalist 1950 invasion and uprising to Mahendra’s 1960 feudal coup to the People’s War and Andolans of the last decades to the 2001 assassination of Birendra which paved the way for Gyanendra – all of these events combine to confirm that there has never been any significant change in Nepal without the use of physical force. All of the present political parties have their roots in violence; the RPP, NC, UML, UMF, and UCPN(M) all emerged sequentially from Nepal’s history through force of arms. This paper commenced with Machiavelli’s comment on the right of the people to engage in struggle against the ruling class nobility of his time and so will conclude with an equally apposite rubric from the first great European political scientist. It expresses a truth understood by revolutionary communists everywhere on necessity for the revolution to have an experienced, disciplined, combat-ready armed wing, and is reflected in the author’s his rueful conclusion on witnessing the execution of the charismatic Florentine preacher Savonarola in 1498 following Rome’s condemnation of heresy:

That is why the visionary who has armed force on his side has always won through, while unarmed even your visionary is always the loser. – Machiavelli, The Prince, p 23, Penguin ed.

Peter Tobin, December 2014

Citations/Footnotes

(1) Index Mundi, Nepal Economic Profile, 2014. (2) Karobar National Economic Daily, 05/10/2013. (3) Economist, “The Trouble With Ghee”, June, 2008. (4) A political project to re-establish the conditions for capital accumulation and restore the power of economic elites. See A Brief History of Neoliberalism, D. Harvey, p 19. Harvey provides further elaboration of neoliberalism’s elevation of market criteria over all aspects of life, particularly the shrinking of the state’s responsibility for welfare, economic planning, subsidies, &c. From the 1970’s on, it began dethroning Keynesian policies, with neoliberals believing that the Keynesians’ emphasis on state deficit spending as means of stimulating employment and production distorted the market and lacked fiscal rectitude. The phenomenon has also been described in popular parlance as, “Capitalism with its gloves off.” (5) OPHI Country Briefing: Nepal,  2010. (6) B. P. Bhurtel. 17/10/2013. “Rich Man’s World as Wealth Gap Grows in Nepal.” The Nation/Kathmandu Post. (7) However, it can be argued that the link between bourgeois capitalism and bourgeois democracy is purely contingent, with neoliberal capitalism flourishing equally in dictatorships and democracies both. It is worth noting in this respect that Pinochet’s Chile was chosen by Washington as an experiment in extreme free market capitalism, dispatching Friedman monetarist acolytes of the ‘Chicago School’ to Santiago and placing them in charge of the Chilean economy. This is not because contemporary transnational capital is neutral but because it has become a superior executive power reducing political systems and governments to irrelevance. A review in Le Monde, 10/10/2014, of the German scholar Wolfgang Streeck’s Du Temps Achete – La Crise Sans Cesse Ajournee Du Capitalisme Democratique (Borrowed Time – The Postponed Crisis of Capitalist Democracy) quotes his comment describing advancing global capital as class avatar:

“…elles est inapte a tout fonctionment democratique, par le fait qu’elle pratiquee en tres grande parti, en particulairement en europe, comme une politique international – sous la forme d’une diplomatie financiere interetatique.” – Wolfgang Streeck. Borrowed Time – The Postponed Crisis of Capitalist Democracy.

A rough translation of which argues that it is incapable of functioning democratically, because it is, in fact a politically dominant power, especially in Europe, in the guise of interstate financial diplomacy. He uses the word ‘post-democracy’ to describe this stage of the present era. (8) K. P. Prabhakaran Nair. February 2006. Grist for US Mills. GMWATCH. It is salutary to note that up until 2014, over 250,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide as a result of such policies reducing rural populations to immiseration and destitution. (9) Republica (English language Nepalese daily newspaper) 07/09/2014. (10) D. Gywali/A. Dixit. April, 2000. “How Not to Do a South Asian Treaty.” Himal South Asian. (11) H. Yami/B. Bhatterai. 1996. Nationality Question in Nepal. (12) ‘Kiran’ is a nom de guerre for Mohan Baidya. It means Ray of Light. All Maoist leaders adopted one during People’s War. ‘Prachanda’ (P. K. Dahal) means ‘Fierce’, ‘Biplav’, (N. B. Chand), means ‘Revolt’, &c. (13) Colloquially known as ‘Dashists’ because of the –M in their name. Conversely, the UCPN (M), the party the Dashists split from, are called the ‘Cashists’ by their opponents because their leaders and many cadre were accused of falling before ‘sugar-coated enemy bullets’ after ‘coming out of the jungle’ and decamping to Kathmandu and corruption in 2006, following the CPA. (14) 1991. “Caste and Ethnicity,” Ch. 7 in Nepal – A Country Study. (15) R. Dangal. Administrative Culture in Nepal,  p.95, Table 9: Caste Distribution of Higher Civil Servants. 16) This needs an essay in itself! Briefly parliamentary/presidential, multiparty systems emerged as systems to meet needs of emerging bourgeois capitalist society in the West. The various parties represented class interests devising contingent institutional solutions. Part of Western hubris is claim their necessity in all circumstances. It was applied unilaterally by an indigenous elite in many postcolonial situations. Apart from a democratic deficit, adoption of this project indicated loss of nerve and residual ideological colonization among otherwise resolute anticolonial political leaders of independence struggles such as Nehru, Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Kaunda, and Bandaranaike, &c). But the main reason it proves ‘wholly unsuitable’ is total failure to provide effective governance in postcolonial situations anywhere and to have descended into nests of thieves and similar mechanisms of naked class aggrandizement when not replaced by sanctioned western ‘strongmen’ or red revolution. Going hand in hand with capitalism and its contingent institutions demonstrated how indigenous elites were fostered and suborned by their colonial masters. Marx, enthused, saw the inception of the program:

From the Indian natives, reluctantly and sparingly educated at Calcutta, under English superintendence, a fresh class is springing up endowed with the requirements for government and imbued with European science. – Marx, Future Results of British Rule in India, 1853, M/E Selected Works p. 495.

Nehru is an exemplar of the success of this project:

“By education I am an Englishman, by views an internationalist, by culture a Muslim and Hindu only by an accident of birth.”

He epitomized Macaulay’s ‘Brown Englishmen’. His pretensions, along with his secularization of Hindutva, are set out in his 1943 magnum opus, The Discovery of India, (written in English of course) where he establishes the existence of a precolonial Hindu ‘golden age’ civilization and his particular ancestral call to restore its historic harmony expressed in language reflecting his Cambridge education in the classics with references to Pericles, Demosthenes, et al, although when required he could refer to:”..the old Vedantic spirit of the life force.” (17) Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, p. 36. Marx benignly notes emerging use of education as conditioning and improvement mechanism, A hundred years later Fanon is responding to its deleterious postcolonial effect as the ideological component of a comprador class. Vide (16) above re Nehru shows how this strata were eventually conditioned to reproduce bourgeois polity, albeit in ersatz, parodic form. (18) WCPI, 2011. Transparency International, (19):

…the peasantry constitutes the main army of the national movement…there is no national movement without the peasant army, nor can there be. That is what is meant when it is said that, in essence, the national question is a peasant question. – J. V. Stalin, The National Question in Yugoslavia, Works, Vol 7, pp. 71-72.

(20) Prachanda’s short-lived 2008 administration might be excused, as it was forced out by a military coup orchestrated by New Delhi in league with NC & UML. But Bhatterai’s second ‘Maoist’ administration, 2011-13, had less excuse for being so supine. (21) Ghurkhas are not an ethnic group but, according to their websites are a warrior caste claiming descent from the Hindu Rajputs and Brahmins of Northern India. Their valor, tenacity and loyalty deeply impressed the British enemy. After a successful invasion and defeat in 1814-16, the East India Company began recruitment into a specially created regiment that, in modern times, has been mainly drawn from the Rai, Limbhu, Magar and Gurung ethnic nationalities. The added glory of Hindu provenance (possibly a retrospective embellishment), but their cry “Jaya mahakali – Ayo gurkhali!”  (“Glory to great Kali – Gurkhas are coming!”), shares an evocation of Kali as the goddess of destruction and death with the Rajputs, belonging to the Kshatriya warrior caste, spread across Northern India, many driven into Nepal by the Muslim invasion of North India. In the Terai they became one of the ruling Bhadralok castes mutating into professional occupations as doctors, lawyers &c. Also Narayan Shah was from a Kshatriya jati, although he was pragmatic enough to recruit given national ethnicities into his army while raising up Hindu upper castes and establishing a divine Hindu Kingdom. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the etymological root of Gurkha as:

 ORIGIN name of a locality, from Sanskrit goraksa ‘cowherd’ (from go ‘cow’ + raks – ‘protect’), used as an epithet of their patron. – Oxford English Dictionary

This lends credence to Gurkhas’ claims of provenance from Hindu warrior castes. (22) J. Adhikari. 2008. Land Reform in Nepal, p. 23. (23)  CPN (M). 1997. One Year of People’s War in Nepal. GS’s Report. (24) J. Adhikari. Land Reform in Nepal, p 39. (25) The early Marx claimed centralized despotism as the essential feature of the Asiatic Mode of Production – a pre-capitalist form that he believed existed in static, ossified, oriental societies. He infamously commented:

Indian society has no history at all, at least no known history. Marx – Future Results…ME Vol 1, p. 494. 1853.

and, while acknowledging the base motives of the English colonizers, he thought that imperialist incursion would, nolens volens, drag it into the modern world. However, after the first War of Independence in 1857 and subsequent study he revised AMP and undermined the despotic, stagnant society premise by declaring the uprising a ‘national revolt’, and expressed support for the insurgents. Though he never accepted that India, precolonial incursion, was feudal, he conceded that it could be described as in transition to feudalism. In this respect he wrote in 1859:

In broad outlines, Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois modes of production can be designated as progressive epochs in the economic formation of society. Marx – Preface to Critique of Political Economy, ME Selected Works, Vol 1, p. 504, 1859

The concept has been an issue for polemic and debate among Marxists and communists and survives more as an analytic than a descriptive term. Whatever the taxonomy, Marx, by looking at the relations of production, outlined how an elite could appropriate surplus using the state as a mechanism for generalized exploitation. Dalits and Sudras stood before their Brahmin masters in the same relationship as a slave before a slaveowner, a serf before a lord, or a worker before an employer. (26) These are linguistic categories used by modern ethnographers, and while there were obvious physical differences between the two groups that added to perception in the case of Nepal, they are not a racial classifications. For example, the other linguistic group in South India is Dravidian, with minimal physical differences between its speakers and those of the Indo-Aryan bloc. (27) J. Adhikari. 2008. Land Reform in Nepal, p. 25. (28) ‘State capitalism’ is as fraught a term as feudalism, with multiple definitions, inspired by political polemics not only expressed between left and right but also a lively source of debate within the left denoting ultimate political allegiance . For the right, it can mean any state intervention either through ownership or control such the post-1945 policy of Dirigisme in France where, apart from extractive and heavy industry, private ownership dominated in a free market but was subject to indicative planning from a government setting national objectives. It could also be applied to the Scandinavian and British mixed economy model that was discarded after the 1980’s. In the case of France, state intervention predated capitalism and the rise of the bourgeoisie, and in the form of Colbertism, was initiated under Louis IV’s first minister, J. B. Colbert. The concept of ‘state monopoly capitalism’ has also been applied by left wing and extreme rightwing free marketeers to describe the state protection and support for the big corporations in the USA. The Military-Industrial Complex that emerged in the new triumphal global imperium following the Second World War is often cited as example because huge contracts are awarded rather than won, characterizing a cozy symbiotic relationship between business and the political functionaries of the American ruling class. For anarchists, Neo-Trotskyites and the Ultra Left, it is what happened after 1917 in Russia and 1949 in China, or indeed anywhere else there has been a socialist revolution. It assumes that party apparatchiks and bureaucrats inevitably become a new ruling class, owing to their control of the means of production and the appropriation and direction of the resulting ‘social dividend’ (surplus value). For Marxist-Leninists/Maoists it is what occurred in the USSR after Stalin’s death with Khrushchev’s failed attempts to follow Yugoslavia’s ‘market socialism’ and re-occurred with a vengeance in the PRC after Deng Xiaoping’s seizure of power in 1976. Apologists for China’s system describe it as a ‘socialist market economy’, where the commanding heights of the economy, the banking sector and land are state owned and where the state is responsible for macroeconomic policy with microeconomic decisions left both to management of state enterprises and licensed capitalists operating as private companies in designated Special Economic Zones. Therefore the political decision to allow free market mechanisms to determine price and allocations of goods and services with retention of profit by private companies, commentators opine, is more indicative of state capitalism especially when set against the background of scrapping the egalitarian, ‘Iron rice bowl’, full employment guarantee from the heroic period of socialist construction and mass mobilization. Therefore, it should be said that, like feudalism and indeed semi-feudalism, the concept of state capitalism is often used subjectively, indicating class or political orientation. See following note. (29) ‘Semi-feudal’ obviously relates to accepting the thesis of pre-existing feudalism on the subcontinent, Samantabaad is the Hindi and Nepalese word for feudalism and derives from the nobility of the Gupta Period, which some historians claim led the emergence of feudal society in India. The Samantas were also influential during the Licchavi Dynasty (400-750 AD) who established the first central state in Nepal. Even those who do accept the taxonomy applied recognize that it was a tributary society of a type that flourished the early city states, empires and later, nascent nation-states. European feudalism was one type of tributary society, with the exception that it enabled the growth of classes and productive forces that eventually burst its integument and established the capitalist society and mode of production. Marx did not recognize this dynamic in the Orient, and his AMP was his initial response in distinguishing its ossified despotisms with those of medieval Europe. It was this formulation that, while recognizing the utter venality and brutality of the British, nevertheless led him describe them as unwitting agents of progress, in breaking down the ‘Chinese Walls’ of societies incapable of generating internal change. Subsequently it has been argued that Indian society, pre-colonization, was subject to change, but that compared to Europe’s historical transformation it was imperceptible (as indeed was most of its history at that time). This had important political ramifications for Indian communists because they refused acknowledging any positive results from imperialist incursion and applying the term feudal to describe periods of Indian history implicitly underpins this position. Plus ‘Down with feudalism’ is less of a mouthful than, ‘Down with the Asiatic Mode of Production! The notion of semi-feudalism follows this thesis because it posits transitional developments. In the case of Nepal, it is marked by backwardness of the productive forces, sharecropping, increased tenancies and the growth of usury. The last are linked, representing the dominance of money payment in feudal rent, reflecting generally growth of a market economy but specifically the transition of feudal owners into capitalist rentier landlords. Semi-feudal is also used to describe relations of production continuing after their originating conditions of existing have changed, as expansion of agricultural capitalism has led to increasing numbers of landless and sharecroppers, who are objectively proletarianized but are learning to recognize residual feudal deference as subjective flight from their objective class reality. As descriptive tools, these terms are a continued source of argument not only between Marxists and bourgeois, but also intestinal within these respective groupings. As a slogan, however, ‘Down with Feudalism’ and the commitment to abolish ‘neo/semi-feudalism’ is a political call to the oppressed to break free of feudal/exploitative relations in order to confront the reality of capitalist modes of employment and exploitation in the agricultural sector. (cf: Pushpa Lal’s CPN’s program and Mazumdar’s for the Naxalite struggle in 1960s.). (30):

The informal rural credit markets of Nepal seem to be characterized by an aggregate constraint at the village level and oligopolistic collusion on price discrimination. Entries of new lenders are likely to be rare, due to high initial information cost. Lenders need to interact with the borrowers for a long period to be able to screen the borrowers and enforce payments…. Although it is reasonable to target poor households, the analysis indicates that one may as well target the higher priced segments. The analysis thus supports credit programs that target low status castes. Examples from Nepal are programs that target ethnic groups living in Terai. These households pay real interest rates that are almost double of the rates paid by high castes living in the hills. – M. Hatlebakk. 2000. “Will More Credit Increase Interest Rates in Rural Nepal?” Technical Report and Recommendations, pp. 42-43. Nepal Rastra Bank.

(31) S. D. Muni. 2003. Maoist Insurgency in Nepal, p.61. Muni is perhaps too close to see the Brahminical tree from the wood, he is a pragmatic, secular ex-diplomat critical of and puzzled by the ambivalence of Nepalese policy that allowed King Mahendra, e.g. to block: “India’s legitimate and enlightened interests in Nepal.” (ibid, p 62). His views are an apologia for Indian expansionism, pitting progressive capitalism against residual feudalism, which synchronically informed the position of Dr. Bhatterai, earning him the sobriquet of ‘Mr. India’ in anti-revisionist Maoist ranks. I would also speculate that the attitude towards the last divine Hindu monarchy was schizophrenic, with even ostensibly Westernized secularists like Nehru acknowledging the weight of Brahminical Chaturvarna tradition and unconsciously deferring to caste supremacy, however apparently exotic and uncongenial to a Cambridge-conditioned cosmopolitan world statesman. Nehru was a Hindutva with an occidental humanist face. Successive Indian administrations, particularly Rajiv Gandhi’s administration, elided further into more open Hindutvaism, which, mixed with growing accommodation with Western capitalism in triumphalist form following the suicide of Gorbachev’s USSR and collapse of Soviet Bloc, was Modiism avant la lettre. (32) R. S. Sharma, Indian Feudalism, 1965. (33) A. Rudra, Non-Eurocentric Marxism and Indian Society, 1988. (34) Marx. 1847. The Poverty of Philosophy, p.105. (35) Marx, Feuerbach. 1846. Opposition of Materialist and Idealist Outlook, ibid, p 43. (36) NORAD. 2007. Report on Conflict Sensitivities, pp. 67-68. (37) Tobin, P. 2011. “Balance of Military Forces in Nepal” Beyond Highbrow – Robert Lindsay, website. (38) http://www.ekantipur.com, Chand Announces CPN Maoist, 02/12/2014. (39) Republica, D. B. Chhantyal, 06/12/2014.

References

Adhikhari, J. Land Reform in Nepal – Problem & Prospects. Bhatterai, B. Monarchy vs. Democracy & Articles, Essays from People’s War. Dangal, R. Administrative Culture in Nepal, 1991. Fanon, F. The Wretched of the Earth. Karki/Seddon, (eds.) The People’s War in Nepal – Left Perspective. Kumar, A. The Black Economy in India. Lecomte-Tilouine, M. (ed.) Revolution in Nepal, Collected Essays. Marx/Engels, Selected Works. 3 Vols, Poverty of Philosophy, Anti-Durhring, Capital, Vols 1 &2. Maxwell, N. India’s China War. 1970 Muni, S. D. Maoist Insurgency in Nepal. Nehru, J. The Discovery of India. Prinsep, H. T. The Gurkha War – 1814-16. Regmi, M. C. Land Ownership in Nepal. 1976 Sharma, R. S. Indian Feudalism. Thapa, D. A. Kingdom Under Siege – Nepal’s Maoist Insurgency – 1996-2003. Upadhyaya, S. P. Indo-Nepal Trade Relations – 1858-1914 .

General

Rough Guide to Nepal. Studies in Nepali History & Society, Vol. 15.

Reports/Commissions

NORAD (Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation) Report on Conflict Sensitivities in Nepal – 2007. Transparency International. “Nepal.” World Perception Corruption Index – 2011. UN Human Development Report – 2014.

Articles

Ambedkar, R. B. The Annihilation of Caste. Basnyat, P. S. Nepalese Army in the History of Nepal. Dak Bangla, Nepal’s Civil and Military Relations and the Maoist Insurgency. Habib, I. Kosambi. Marxism & Indian History. Lal, D. The Abuse of History. Puniyami, R. Hiding the Truth About Caste. Rajan, V. ‘Dalits’ and the Caste System in India. Tobin, P. Balance of Military Forces in Nepal – in Relation to PLA Integration – 2011.

Newspapers/Journals/ Periodicals/Websites

Dak Bangla – website. Democracy & Class Struggle – website. Economist – magazine. Himal – South Asia – magazine. Himalayan – newspaper. Kathmandu Post. Nepal Monthly – magazine. Red Front – One-off English language version of Krambaddha (Continuity) Pro-Kiran 2012 journal, editor, Prem Darnal, Bikalpa (Alternative). Republica, newspaper. Worker, English-language journal of CPN (Maoist).

Worst Terrorist Attack in Turkey’s History

Here.

86 dead, 186 wounded. The attack hit supporters of the Kurds. They were having a peace rally denouncing the latest violence between Turkey’s army and the Kurdish PKK. President Erdogan has waged all out war on the PKK as a fake pretext for fighting ISIS. Also he is furious that the YPG (PKK Syrian force) has conquered so much territory in northern Syria from ISIS. Turkey supports ISIS to the hilt. No other nation supports ISIS more than Turkey.

A suicide bomb blast went off at a rally of Kurds near the Turkish border a while back, killing many Kurds. ISIS was blamed, but the Kurds said local police was in on it. A few days later, the PKK killed two Turkish policemen who it said were working with ISIS. Then the all-out war on the PKK was on. Turkey has unleashed the full force of its military against the PKK. However, the PKK is a pretty strong force with better weapons now, including IED’s. The PKK kills Turkish soldiers and police every single day. Probably over 100 Turkish security forces have been killed since the violence started. Videos show Kurds digging trenches in the southeast to guard against the Turkish military.

Although this was an ISIS hit, the government may have been in on it as the Turkish state works closely with ISIS. After the attack, survivors rushed to the scene to try to assist survivors. Turkish police teargassed them to prevent them from going to the assistance of their comrades. Later an ambulance rushing to the scene was blocked for no apparent reason by Turkish police. There was a media blackout on the attack across all the media.

The worst terror attack in Turkey’s history, and the controlled media carried on as normal. Turkey also blocked Twitter and Facebook in the country so people could not post about the attack. Turkey has never been a democracy for one day, ever. They’ve never had one minute of a free press and they don’t now.

Most Turks are ultra-rightwing ultranationalists (frankly fascists) though, so they could care less. Turkish fascism is the legacy of the Christian Genocide of 1915-1924 which Turkey has never owned up to and Kemal Ataturk, the child of the genocide, who built a secular and rather fascist state on the bodies of the murdered.

Now this secular fascism is combined with a strain of radical Islam that looks back to the Ottoman Empire and sympathizes with the most radical strains of Islam. Recently there were riots in the southeast as Turkey would not permit Kurds to go to the defense of their people while they were besieged by the IS in Kobani. In the course of the riots, hundreds of Turkish police fighting the rioters chanted pro-Islamic State slogans.

This is modern Turkey, one of the worst countries on Earth, down there with Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Sudan, Indonesia, Morocco and Pakistan.

Notice something about this list of the worst countries on Earth? They are all staunch US allies.

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