Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

Lately I’ve been having heretical thoughts. Thoughts I’d have dismissed out of hand a couple of years ago.

For someone who grew up in the seventies and where I grew up, we’re living in very strange times.

People are rising up. All over the world. In Iran, they’re rebelling against the mullahcracy. In Hong Kong those poor kids lasted much longer than we expected, and the media could not keep them quiet. In France the Yellow Jackets go on despite media blackout. In Holland and Germany (Germany!) the farmers are taking to the streets with their tractors. And yes, in the US the Tea Party though reviled, lied about and infiltrated arguably started it all, and arguably had the greatest influence in growing the sullen resistance of the people.

In fact, judging by the sales of gun and ammo the one thing Americans haven’t done is quiet down. Also judging by how many houses we looked at a couple of years ago that had elaborate survival schemes, we’re not confident everything will be well. And we’re certainly not confident on anyone to protect us. Partly, of course, because we no longer trust our governments or those so called elites. Which is partly—in the US—traceable to the net and the existence of a complete, parallel system of information.

I realized as I was about to type this paragraph that I actually don’t know if this is true in the Asian countries, because—you know—my direct contacts there are free. However with that caveat, in the west it’s easy to presume that the unrest is caused by the internet, by access to other forms of information, even by the ability to contact people across the world for practically no cost. However I’m going to tell you right now and right here that this does not apply in Europe. Sure, they took to the net like a duck to water for all the things we initially took to the net for: recipes, mommy blogs, pictures of grandkids and, of course porn.

What they don’t have is political blogs, alternate news blogs, places where heretical views are spoken or any of that.

Now, if you say “It’s because they have different laws” I’ll say “Sure, whatevs. But they had different—and more repressive—laws before, and it was more expensive to get ahold of the equipment, and yet people still did and had pirate radio stations and what not. Also this is not China, you know, they should be able to get hold of ways to anonymize themselves.

Now, it’s possible it’s just a lag-time. Europe usually lags ten to twenty years behind the US, even when the same tech is available, possibly because we culturally (maybe genetically, but there’s no proof of that) have a tendency to be innovators who jump on things first. Maybe in ten or fifteen years Europe will be a forest of contentious blogs.

Anyway—they have the unrest, even without the blogs—and you know what’s weird? Outright unbelievable for those of us who grew up in the seventies: No communists.

Oh, sure, Europe has black block and antifa. And they’ve managed to enmesh themselves with the yellow jackets—France, what’s up with them, even?—but they are not the majority or—except by college professors—considered a spontaneous movement.

Look, through black-lives-matters and the pussy hatted spectacles, and now with antifa, you don’t even have to dig very deep, or very far to see beneath the surface the money flowing in, from chartered buses to identically printed signs, to— It’s Soros all the way down. Which is like turtles, only malevolent, soaked in the sins of the 20th century, and either trying to avenge himself on the world for the Holocaust that stole his childhood, or seeking redemption for the things he did then and continued to do to enrich himself, in all the wrong ways. I don’t know which, and I doubt he does.

But one malevolent man can cause a lot of strife, and he can convince a lot of idiot women that the most important thing in the world is to wear a pussy hat and hit the streets to protest against whatever the hell they’re protesting against today. But it’s also obvious that it’s taking no root: Antifa only acts truly horribly in safe (to them) places like California, Oregon, the lefty East coast and France.

What we aren’t seeing is any kind of vast, clamorous, pro-communist movement, in any of these protests. No, the communists are at the other end of it, in universities and usually in government and bureaucracy, wondering why “can you hear the people rising” is not in their favor, why the world isn’t coming to them to finally crown them as rulers of the world in the bestest system evah.

So what is going on? And this is my heretical thought: the world is returning to normal.

I confess part of this thought came from D Jason Fleming’s article yesterday. When he mentioned the domino theory, it reminded me of how it looked, back then, in the past: every revolution, every single uprising, red flags would come up, and the ridiculous shouts about “The people, United.” And if you’d seen a few of these—thanks to Portugal I’d seen a few—you could recognize the signs on TV when they showed others. For instance, why in hell would both the Portuguese and the Iranian revolutions wave red carnations? And why the shouts of “The people, united, shall never be defeated” the exact same shouts in Iran, Portugal, in the various revolutions in Africa and South America in that time? And why was there a sameness to the signs?

It wasn’t anything you could point out and say “here’s proof” and DEFINITELY it was nothing you could point to people who wanted to believe. But like with the antifa demonstrations, if you saw a few of them you started getting a feeling “This is not a spontaneous uprising. This is a part of a corporate machine that creates revolutions.”

My heretical thought is that the feeling was right.

Look, it’s not even that heretical. There are books out showing how much money the USSR poured into fomenting revolution abroad. A country with a GDP between 2 and 4% what the US had spent most of its money fomenting revolution. This was well advised of course, because the only wealth coming in—and boy, were they broke—came from leeching from other countries that fell under their sway. And “communist” countries of course went to the USSR because by then they’d become convinced—or their elites had—that the US was out to get them. And got stripped. What the Russians (it was always the Russians, even when their extended empire was the USSR) did to Africa is unprintable. And mostly they did it by using Cubans as shock troops.

But what if that was all of it? All there was? What if communism really was and remains a theory so stupid that only overeducated intellectuals believe in it unless they’re being pushed, bullied, paid by trained professional agitators to buy into the illusion?

What if the entire idea that communism appeals to the dispossessed, latches on when there is a great inequality, and somehow is part of a dark current in the human mind is completely wrong?

In other words, what if the Domino theory is right, but not in the way we thought in the seventies? What if it wasn’t “They see the other countries rise, and join in” but rather “As soon as the Soviet Block (What we should actually call Black Bloc) absorbs another country, they have some solvency to pour into fomenting revolution in another country?” And thus the hydra grew.

There is some—slight—proof of this. Take the French revolution. It was crazy in ways that communism is crazy. Actually exactly the same, including being run by batshit crazy intellectuals. But it didn’t spread.

Oh, sure, okay, there were “republican” revolutions throughout the world. But weirdly most of them were not like the French revolution. They weren’t comfortable, and many of them weren’t precisely sane (I’m not actually sure, I’m sorry, that anything that ever happens in Portugal or Spain is sane for instance. And I wouldn’t put Greece, Italy or Ireland very far behind on that.) But they were not the horror show insanity the French revolution became. Now that could be because of French culture, but I’d say Nah, bra. While crazy France is not an exception in Europe. See above. And I’m sure I’d throw other countries in, if I knew more about them.

And yet, the insanity of communism, not that much different, propagated. To wit, it propagated the minute the USSR came into being after WWII. Before that it was a cult of intellectuals and madmen.

In fact, right after the fall of the USSR there were—briefly—glimpses that the whole Communism International Inc was falling apart.

Those disappeared when Putin got power. He probably still had his intelligence contacts, but more importantly, he’s a Russian nationalist. His take over meant the old firm was back in business. As I said, behind the smoke and mirrors, the USSR was Russia, and their “internationalism” was Russian nationalism and supremacy.

And as much trouble as Russia is in, they still have money, and more importantly they still have the machinery of foreign contacts, of people they hold kompromat on in various universities and governments (same as it ever was) and yes, probably international corporations and tech too.

So, why is the world rising now, and rising in a distinctly non-communist way?

Oil.

No, seriously, oil. Despite Obama’s heroic efforts with preventing fracking, the US has become a major oil producer. And oil prices can no longer support Russia’s need for $$$ to foment communist (because it’s useful, and because most of the useful idiots abroad buy this shit) insurrection and (ultimate) Russian power.

Hence why they’re working so hard to overturn the US and make us “Democratic Socialist” aka communist, because that’s what they called themselves in the 70s. Because strip mining the US would give Russia and the communist machine the ability to subjugate the rest of the world. Look how wealthy we are! (I think they’re wrong, btw. We’d not only crash so hard that we’d be net drains, but the insurrection would be a net loss. But they don’t know that.)

Meanwhile they’re doing what they can by bleeding corporations and millionaires. Some, maybe, because they’re true believers (and dumbasses) and some because… well… the Russians always had dirt on people. That’s how they got all the aristocratic British spies.

But it’s not enough. And people, real people who haven’t grown up so privileged that they implicitly believe bullshit to make themselves sound “smart” aren’t buying this.

Even the clown car of Dem candidates has to stop and ask Elizabeth Warren “What do you mean Medicare for all? Show us the money.”

Now, it doesn’t mean the dems won’t win and bring the glories of communism here. They have for over a century fine tuned their fraud machine, and motor voter made it impossible, in fact, for us to “true the vote,” even before vote by fraud mail and the “convenience” of voting early (so the left knows how many votes they need to manufacture.) Each of our votes is maybe 1/10th what it should be weighed down by massive amounts of dead and non existent people voting.

And yep, they still lose, at least now and then.

Think about it. They control government, education, news, entertainment (at least the traditional venues.) They propagated their narrative everywhere from the courts to your local newspaper.

And they’re still losing…

Because honestly communism is such a load of fecal matter only those who REALLY want to believe can believe it.

Hark, can you hear the people rising? And they’re not communist at all.

Whether we stand or fall (and I haven’t given up hope, yet) in ten years it will all be different. If the propaganda and fake insurrection machine manages to take over the US, it might be the final poison pill that kills them.

They ain’t seen nothing like us yet.

In the end we win, they lose. Because reality persists, past all the propaganda.

Be not afraid. Stay chill. Prepare and build. And be ready to rebuild when the smoke lifts and the mirrors are all broken.

 

Reprinted from According to Hoyt for November 23, 2019