Americanization of UK Political Culture, Poland Hemmed in on All Sides, ESG as Corporate PR Bullshit, Shoving Nerds Into Lockers, Chad Shkreli and the Journo
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Jul 2, 2022·edited Jul 2, 2022Liked by Niccolo Soldo
I often think of George Friedman's 90s era predictions that, by roughly our current decade, the four major powers of the world would be the USA, Japan, Turkey, and Poland. He also predicted that both Russia and China would collapse and split up by now, thus neutering them as international actors of any significance.
Pretty easy, in retrospect, to laugh at these predictions because of how far off the mark they are in hindsight. At the same time, I don't really think Friedman is a *complete* moron--in particular, the notion that Poland had the potential to become a major military and economic force in the world isn't implausible. Maybe in an alternate timeline in which NATO had fallen apart and the EU had stayed in a smaller corner, a Visegrad alliance led by the Poles could have fulfilled Friedman's prediction. Perhaps they'll come to regret missing their chance to go for gold in order to become an American client state; assuming they don't regret it already.
Niccolo, in the intelligence community any failed predictions, if published, can be explained away as successful psyops/disinformation. The bastards have every angle covered.
Why the obsession with becoming "a major military and economic force in the world?" That has never been Poland's role and never will be. It is a buffer between Germany and Russia. It's security lies in remaining scrupulously neutral in its relations with those two countries.
Niccolo makes the point that Poland and the Baltic states are indefensible in the short term. The collapse of the Warsaw Pact was not really resisted by the USSR and the later collapse of the Soviet Union was entirely voluntary. Russia has made NO effort to re-absorb the Baltic states into a Russian Empire, even after constant provocations and scare-mongering by NATO. Why provoke a nation that has made no attempt to control your internal affairs and committed no aggression against you? Even after the construction of nuclear capable launchers in Poland and Romania, Russia has not threatened invasion. It seems to me Poland and Romania would both become MORE secure by demanding the abandonment of those launchers, especially given the proof in Ukraine that the West is a hollowed-out shell, its industry incapable of producing the volume of ammunition that would be capable of defending against an all-out Russian assault. What guarantees the independence Eastern-Central Europe is Russia's negative experience of hegemony. Maintaining that hegemony was very expensive, and that expense was a major reason for the Warsaw Pact collapse. Russia has learned the lesson of empire and is not interested in repeating the class. The wounded animal NATO, not Russia, is the major threat to the peace and security of Europe, mainly due to its subservience to the US.
Would Lithuania have made the bone-headed decision to block internal Russian supply without consultation with its masters in Brussels and Washington? Doubtful. And now it can't blow the whistle without its leaders admitting to being a mere puppet. Europeans need to develop spines rather than allow the US to devastate their economies with Russian "sanctions" while the US continues to import laundered Russian heavy crude from 3rd parties. Washington and Brussels are destroying their own economies; there's no need for Poland to play that game.
Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic States are going through what I consider an inevitable historical process regarding separation from Russia. It's a trite cliche, but only time can heal wounds. I see no reason other than historical grievance as to why Poland can not be on friendly terms with both Berlin and Moscow,
Yes, it crossed my mind that the wounds of Soviet communism for Poland are far more recent than the wounds of WW II, and I meant to mention that but it somehow got lost. Thank you.
That said, people need to be able to put such historic wounds behind themselves much more rapidly. We've got people like Vindman and Freiland in the US & Can that never experienced any of that history themselves but still carry the chip on their shoulders.
TBH the Sun has yet to rise on the English Commonwealth and I hate to see such wasted potential, and I’m ☘️.
I don’t think its still time healing wounds (half the commonwealth misses them and would be in England tomorrow) its us, its the baggage that being our poodle brings.
Good grief me Feinian grandfather would weep to see this - and he hated them.
The non-emergence of English nationalism is a political question of enormous significance, every bit as important as the old question of 'why no socialism in America' that vexed people in the early twentieth century. The possible answers to this question may hold the key to the possible fate of America itself.
My guess is that the strength of the class system (the security of the elite and the middle classes) in England ensured that there was no need for a unifying political project along nationalist lines.
"Oikophobia" in England was one of the first manifestations of what we know as wokery. Orwell wrote about it nearly 100 years ago. Think of the way no blue American would display the stars and stripes these days. The Union Jack has been like that for decades now, Britpop a mere aberration. The rough Norfs might wave it between cracking skulls at soccer matches, but you certainly don't want Norf next door.
Great expression "oikophobia". It clearly has precedents throughout history and across the world. Probably a straightforward expression of class affiliation or status: the higher classes in many societies have been cosmopolitan or even foreign-descended (i.e. the Norman French), the masses native or indigenous. So status-seeking people develop an aversion to all things local. In the UK is is all overdone to a degree approaching madness, at least in relation to Brexit.
Thank you. One of the greatest mysteries to me is the degree to which dissident political movements throughout the EU are co-opted. As Krupa reports Wielomski complaining, "'Most of Confederation’s members, as it turned out, entered the Sejm under anti-system slogans only to knock on the System’s door and report their readiness to serve it.' This is all attributable to what Wielomski calls a peculiar 'disease of the Polish soul.'"
Indeed, here in the US we have the excuse of a first-past-the-post, "two party" political system that makes it almost impossible to form third parties, while the iron discipline of Democrat and Republican leadership influenced by big money guarantees the "political hegemony" of the "power elite" (per C. Wright Mills) as well as its already formidable "cultural hegemony" (per Antonio Gramsci). The submissive authoritarian expediencies of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and her "squad" are as understandable as they are reprehensible and do not represent the soul of the majority of even Democratic voters let alone the majority of independent voters and non-voters. Despite the burden of this first-past-the-post system that leads to "lesser evil" voting and maintains de facto single party Repuclocrat rule, several fringe parties in the US gain a few adherents, like the Libertarian Party, the Green Party and several others, though it's almost impossible for them to maintain ballot access.
The inability of European alternative parties such as the Confederation or the German Greens to remain true to principles once elected can only be explained as a "disease of the soul" of a majority of non-elite voters. If party leaders (and members) were truly committed to the principles of their party, one would think traitors to party principles would be denied access to the party's electoral list in future elections, allowing low information voters to vote the party name and platform, thus somewhat negating the "cultural hegemony" of moneyed elites.
I think that the answer may in large part be social and economic. Politicians expect to achieve a lifestyle comparable to that of the corporate managerial class. Standing true to one's principles would mean risking the loss of opportunities needed to attain or maintain this. It is as simple as that. There have always been sellouts, but in the past politics attracted people who were prepared to sacrifice or who had modest ambitions re lifestyle. This was easier then. Times were tougher. Frugality was the norm. Today we live in a society with a near universal fixation with consumerism. The prospect of not eventually securing a seat on a board of directors or a consultancy terrifies people into conformity.
Poland is frankly already being devoured. That’s actually part of this , Poland is our new money/ arms/ contractors 💶 laundry service, as Ukraine was, as Russia was before Putin. Poland would need a Putin to survive, instead its going to be corrupted, looted, ruined. Poland can see its future in real time to the east.
And since Poland is a democracy which means its elites love money not nation it cannot escape. The future of Poland is the present of Ukraine, and sorry Nico the fate of Yugoslavia recently.
Now Poles are a people not a nation like Yugoslavia cobbled together by Diplomacy and force, but the Poles haven’t saved themselves for centuries.
They would need a leader on the order of Mannerheim at least (if not ah a bit worse) and an ally or at least protective power nearby- they’d also have to expel 🇺🇸.
It can be done, but that’s like the Ayatollah Khomeini level Catholic Pope instead of John Paul II, and they need a big friend and who?
Another excellent column. With so much contained therein, I'll respond to a common theme (through so much of your writing): the Americanization of _______, (where ______ could be Canada, the UK, or most any other country in the world). And I can't help thinking of that mid-1960s movie, "The Americanization of Emily", which takes place in WWII London. Briefly, USN LtCmdr Charlie Madison (James Garner), whose job is to provide women and other things for senior-level US military officers, falls in love with Emily (Julie Andrews). In one scene, she asks, "Am I behaving like a whore?" Charlie replies, "Whoring is a peacetime activity." How would Winston Churchill have answered? de Gaulle? Other European leaders? Asian? Is it sufficient to say that today's world is forever in a state of war(whore), and leave it at that?
Jul 3, 2022·edited Jul 3, 2022Liked by Niccolo Soldo
There is a great scene in Nicolas Roeg's very esoteric EUREKA in which Joe Pesci plays a villainous mobbed-up Florida politician. The action takes place during WW2. Pesci's character explains that the Germans and Japanese just don't understand that they are really Americans.
I've lived and worked in Asia and have been all over Canada and the U.S. Unfortunately was never able to make it to Europe or other areas. That changed a few years ago: I went to Stockholm for a few days on business. The people I met were gracious, hospitable, thoughtful, witty, articulate while also having a genuine quality. I was surprised, however, how caught up they were with the detailed minutiae of American political life: the politics of the political celebrity and all the trash info that stems form that outlook. Living in Canada makes this experience inevitable; I hadn't realized that the power of the celeb culture extended so deeply into more distant regions.
One would think that the perceived decline of US hard power would co-relate with the ebbing of its soft power, but it's not the case at present. The 4.5 year long US media state of emergency due to Trump has only heightened this trend.
The spectacle itself is powerful. The narratives spun from it will dominate politics across the world for at least a generation or so. The US itself will extract every possible advantage from this attention. It will market its own dysfunctions and gain some sort of profit from every degradation.
The weakening of US soft power will become apparent amongst the elites at first. The most observant and far-sighted of these have already begun to realise that US higher education is overrated. This is very obvious in China, which no longer sends its best student to the US for undergraduate study.
Always struck me as the epitome of a Nerd. A trash-talking, conspiring, law-breaking Nerd, but a Nerd.
He's the Nerds, after college, when their nerdy computer skills have earned them millions, they live in a mansion with a pool, drive a Lamborghini, and dim-witted blonde journalists throw themselves at the rich nerds.
Ok, man, was starting to wonder about your insights! In the early days of the internet, you'd use "/sarc."
Otherwise, spot on.
The sleazy US ambassador with the Polish opposition, standing in front of the US and rainbow flags, promising a globo-homo-ized Poland is disgusting. Thanks for sharing, had not seen that.
The ambassador, Marek Brzezinski, is the son of the infamous Zbigniew Brzezinski who came up with the idea to incite unrest in Afghanistan to draw the USSR into a trap to bleed them. The family are aristocrats who owned estates in what is now Ukraine. Zbigniew's father was a diplomat who was in Berlin when the authoritarian Polish government negotiated a treaty of friendship with Hitler. Having a Bzrezinski working as Panem's local representative to turn Poland into a Slavic parody of a Blue state utopia is weirdly appropriate. It is a fitting illustration of the transformative power of empire and the degree to which its servants will go to remain viable within the system. NATOSTAN deserves such proconsuls.
Strategic success then for 🇺🇸 as regards Europe. Europe shall be ours , not China’s. Certainly not Europe’s either. The Russians return to their classic role as the brooding Centaur in the forest * and 🇺🇸 shall SQUEEZE its Satrapies to buy our oil, our LNG, our weapons.
SQUEEZE Raban, I need revenue.
Oh where is Feyd when you need him? (Dune).
*do watch White Tiger, in particular Hitler’s reveries, - let me help-
Europe fell in 1945.
For it to even think of being Europe again, DC will have to fall.
Then again for America to be American again DC will have to fall.
control the media and you can control the narrative... it seems all those ap, reuters and api wire services are doing the trick, like they do here in canada... it is quite depressing actually how easiy duped people who read the msm are... i suspect this is what is happening in europe as well, although i can't verify being here in canada... thanks for your article..
Lots of idiots in our Global Village. A good description of many of them, but by no means all.
Being American, I can’t wrap my head around “Your Worship.” Did they really say that?
“Constable” I could get used to. Do woke Canadians now paint “Defund the Constables” on the streets of Ottawa when they riot?
My grandfather was born in Poland but the family got him out. He thought it was Russia. The Russians did too, actually. Europeans are so weird and gullible. They actually think that Joe Biden is President of the USA.
This transhumanism stuff is hype, and nothing more. Hive mind?
Hyperreality.
Disneyland.
But I’ve always been a nerd, and they never pushed ME into a locker. Perhaps because the extent of my tech skills is writing a Substack which nobody reads.
Tomorrow the world? No thanks. I’m still saving up to fill my gas tank.
Jul 3, 2022·edited Jul 3, 2022Liked by Niccolo Soldo
ESG (the application of woke to economic policy) is essential for the current wave of social engineering.
The most powerful achievement of ESG to date has just been accomplished. Congress recently passed a new law that requires the Federal Reserve to take account of racial disparities in all its activities.
The implications for the US class structure should be self-evident.
The beauty of codifying identity politics into law, especially when there's grants involved, is that it will stop at the good people, and won't cause resentment and fellow feeling at all
“IQ is correlated with all positive life outcomes” - guy who has literally had no positive life outcomes.
A 115IQ Chad adds way more social value than a 160IQ braincel, debate me faggots!
When I was young I used to be hard “R” HBD, muh IQ supremacist, then at 16 I went through a growth spurt, reached 6’3, gained 12 kilos of meat slabs in 6 months and got my dick sucked for the first time. Ever since then my life was litty, and I’ve been adamant in dispelling nerd culture and it’s poisonous fruit.
Most HBD basement dwellers are lucky they barely get out of their mom’s house otherwise me and the boys would be pummelling you with with your statistics textbook.
[I won't debate you, I will agree with you and further I'm 'triggered' into rant lol]
The IQ test Binnet developed is to test for LEARNING DISABILITIES and the rest is FRAUD.
BTW saying "Stanford-Binnet" is like saying "Eichmann-Pasteur" ...
Not to mention that "High Intelligence" on the paper test seems to correlate with HARMFUL PEOPLE who damage or destroy everything they touch, sociopathic behavior, and that's if the c--nts aren't lying or cheating on the very test.
How did this happen?
My own pet theory is that in America College or High IQ led to Conscription Deferment or avoidance starting with WW2. Even when one couldn't escape the Draft one could get a safer or easier berth than Infantry or Combat. The smart cowards or rather clever cowards survived and didn't lose years of their young lives in service and so advanced themselves.
It is important to note that conscription in America ran from 1940-1973, that's a lot of shirking, cowardice and working the system and they succeeded insulating themselves from hardships and danger while shutting out over time the brave.
Their cowardice is moral as well as physical, their shirking the same.
"The Thinking is done by cowards and the fighting is done by Fools."
And over time we came to be ruled by Coward Fools.
....that's how America came to be ruled by Clever Sillies who destroyed Western Civilization.
I had to look up the terms litty and HDB. For the uninitiated or simply old people like myself, they are, or can mean, as follows:
Litty is a playful variation of lit, often initially defined as “extremely lit,” that is, exceptionally great, happening, or drunk/high. Parties, going to the club, hanging out with friends, and hooking up are all often described as litty.
It's also occasionally used to mean here be dragons, referring to unexplored or dangerous territory ahead.
Oh how far the Tories of Britain have fallen. It's so cringey to hear talk of separation of powers and presidents. I'm somewhat convinced that the left wing in this country make for a better anti-American force. They're certainly more hawkish on seeing the NHS sold in bits to US firms, for example. Although they do buy into moronic causes like #BLM.
BLM is politic du jour, it's inevitable but also transitory. One should be way more occupied with such issues as the NHS because they have actual real-life impact and are of social importance.
Good point. BLM is window dressing amongst similar American culture war exports. I do wonder sometimes what situation we'd be in if we had Corbyn in power as opposed to our current PM. He was certainly more warey of western interventionism and wasn't frightened to consider groups like Hezbollah as friends.
BLM is more than window-dressing. It helped re-set the cultural narrative and disseminates specifically American perspectives on race-relations. This makes a difference over time, especially on metropolitan opinion. You only have to contrast the push-back against woke in France to the situation in England to see the difference.
It's like saying that the bolshevik ideas changed social dynamics in the workers favour in the long run. They did not. Once the new elite is established, it's business as usual. Same thing will happen with BLM.
I have not explained myself. BLM in no way empowered people of colour or changed social dynamics in any way either in the US or the UK. BLM has been used by the powerful, as all social movements are used.
But they have definitely functioned as an instrument of Americanisation, which is exactly what the UK elite want. The receptivity of the UK to BLM relied to a great deal on its support from local elites who wish to de-nationalise the UK as far as possible as quickly as possible. BLM is useful for this in the UK because it allows the elite to stigmatise cultural and historical legacies that are now inconvenient or problematic.
Very true. I suppose it's important for Europeans to differentiate between fighting off American soft-power and avoiding obsession with US culture war developments (or emulating the same cleavages which emerge there). Easier said than done though.
Quick reply for both Feynmanovic and Phillip, I really enjoy your insights. Hopefully, I can make more of a contribution to these threads as I read more. Now university has finished I can finally crack on with some more books. Only just got round to reading Samuel P. Huntington, who I've seen mentioned a few times on this substack.
Thank you Nick for providing an excellent space to sperg about our favourite interests!
The trouble with the anti-Americanism of the UK Left is that it is now mostly a cope for the kinds of moralistic misfits who long to act as scolds and who can't function in any other political role. The anti-Amercanism of the UK Right is straightforward, naked, resentment at the loss of national power and prestige. Even at its worst, this sort of anti-Americanism has an honesty, as well as psychic vitality and credibility to it. Nationalists and tribalists have loyalty to something real or concrete. On the Left you generally only find anything comparable to this amongst activists committed to very specific constituencies, such as working class communities in Northern England.
The Atlanticists swallowed their own kool-aid. The Tories purged their ranks of those who were sceptical of the US long, long ago, thereby preventing anything like an English version of Gaullism from developing. After Suez the Tories have always insisted on leaders being in-line with Washington.
The one potential Tory leader who was explicitly unenthusiastic about the US, Enoch Powell, became obnoxious to Washington when he was shadow defense secretary. Powell rubbished the conventional thinking on the Cold War, arguing that the interventionist foreign and defense policies of the UK and US were counterproductive. He even sunk proposals for the UK to send troops to Vietnam. The US fifth column got its revenge when he made the famous 'rivers of blood speech' (which was more than just a call for immigration restrictions, but also a plea to prevent the Americanisation of British law by adopting US-style restrictions on freedoms of speech and association).
The British Labour Party retained a viable degree of scepticism towards Washington for a while. Harold Wilson was certainly keenly distrusted by Washington. He was a great believer in improving relations with Russia, firmly Zionist (at a time when the US/Israel friendship was relatively new and very fragile, attracting lots of opposition from the CIA and the State Dep't) and, worst of all, a great believer in the need to reinvigorate British manufacturing. Wilson was actively undermined by the UK intelligence services in what amounted to a silent coup. Since Wilson no British leader has been anything but a creature of the US.
Further to my comments a moment ago, I'd say that Thatcher was a turning point. She completed the Americanisation by suppressing both the unions and the pro-manufacturing set within her party (Hesseltine etc), killed off what was left of the old genteel banking culture with the so-called Big Bang, empowered Murdoch and disrupted key national institutions (above all local government, which in England went back to Viking times in some areas). Thatcher also created the quango-state, putting her on par with LBJ as one of the great modern sponsors of institutionalised corruption.
Maybe you could interview Ed Dutton, the Jolly Heretic? He’s just released a book called Spiteful Mutants, possibly the best title ever — after your own newsletter of course. Some crossover potential there, I’d guess. Dutton can explain why there is no such thing as lesbians, why high iq nerds are an invention of Hollywood, why informatics beats intuition, among other things.
Americanisation inured people to the realities of the pax Americana. Were the political culture to remain an unreconstructed and entirely British affair it would not be possible to ignore the painful realities of lost territory, power and prestige. The post-imperial or second Elizabethan age has been one of national decline, deracination, the collapse of the national religion and political subordination to an alien power. This is bearable only because the sensibilities fostered by the old culture have been replaced by new ones formed by the infotainment and culture of the imperial overlord. The old culture was imperial, self-consciously Protestant and tied to ways of life that no longer exist. If retained, this culture would have impeded the efficient absorption of the UK into the US empire. Advanced to a sufficient degree (as it is with the young) Americanisation wipes the slate clean.
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I often think of George Friedman's 90s era predictions that, by roughly our current decade, the four major powers of the world would be the USA, Japan, Turkey, and Poland. He also predicted that both Russia and China would collapse and split up by now, thus neutering them as international actors of any significance.
Pretty easy, in retrospect, to laugh at these predictions because of how far off the mark they are in hindsight. At the same time, I don't really think Friedman is a *complete* moron--in particular, the notion that Poland had the potential to become a major military and economic force in the world isn't implausible. Maybe in an alternate timeline in which NATO had fallen apart and the EU had stayed in a smaller corner, a Visegrad alliance led by the Poles could have fulfilled Friedman's prediction. Perhaps they'll come to regret missing their chance to go for gold in order to become an American client state; assuming they don't regret it already.
George Friedman's best selling 1991 book "The Coming War With Japan" - https://www.amazon.com/Coming-War-Japan-George-Friedman/dp/0312058365
One of the biggest surprises for me from Wikileaks was just how much consulting his Stratfor Group did for the USGov.
Niccolo, in the intelligence community any failed predictions, if published, can be explained away as successful psyops/disinformation. The bastards have every angle covered.
Why the obsession with becoming "a major military and economic force in the world?" That has never been Poland's role and never will be. It is a buffer between Germany and Russia. It's security lies in remaining scrupulously neutral in its relations with those two countries.
Niccolo makes the point that Poland and the Baltic states are indefensible in the short term. The collapse of the Warsaw Pact was not really resisted by the USSR and the later collapse of the Soviet Union was entirely voluntary. Russia has made NO effort to re-absorb the Baltic states into a Russian Empire, even after constant provocations and scare-mongering by NATO. Why provoke a nation that has made no attempt to control your internal affairs and committed no aggression against you? Even after the construction of nuclear capable launchers in Poland and Romania, Russia has not threatened invasion. It seems to me Poland and Romania would both become MORE secure by demanding the abandonment of those launchers, especially given the proof in Ukraine that the West is a hollowed-out shell, its industry incapable of producing the volume of ammunition that would be capable of defending against an all-out Russian assault. What guarantees the independence Eastern-Central Europe is Russia's negative experience of hegemony. Maintaining that hegemony was very expensive, and that expense was a major reason for the Warsaw Pact collapse. Russia has learned the lesson of empire and is not interested in repeating the class. The wounded animal NATO, not Russia, is the major threat to the peace and security of Europe, mainly due to its subservience to the US.
Would Lithuania have made the bone-headed decision to block internal Russian supply without consultation with its masters in Brussels and Washington? Doubtful. And now it can't blow the whistle without its leaders admitting to being a mere puppet. Europeans need to develop spines rather than allow the US to devastate their economies with Russian "sanctions" while the US continues to import laundered Russian heavy crude from 3rd parties. Washington and Brussels are destroying their own economies; there's no need for Poland to play that game.
Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic States are going through what I consider an inevitable historical process regarding separation from Russia. It's a trite cliche, but only time can heal wounds. I see no reason other than historical grievance as to why Poland can not be on friendly terms with both Berlin and Moscow,
I am not saying that all the countries listed are in the same situation, but that they are going through the same historical process.
Yes, it crossed my mind that the wounds of Soviet communism for Poland are far more recent than the wounds of WW II, and I meant to mention that but it somehow got lost. Thank you.
That said, people need to be able to put such historic wounds behind themselves much more rapidly. We've got people like Vindman and Freiland in the US & Can that never experienced any of that history themselves but still carry the chip on their shoulders.
TBH the Sun has yet to rise on the English Commonwealth and I hate to see such wasted potential, and I’m ☘️.
I don’t think its still time healing wounds (half the commonwealth misses them and would be in England tomorrow) its us, its the baggage that being our poodle brings.
Good grief me Feinian grandfather would weep to see this - and he hated them.
The non-emergence of English nationalism is a political question of enormous significance, every bit as important as the old question of 'why no socialism in America' that vexed people in the early twentieth century. The possible answers to this question may hold the key to the possible fate of America itself.
My guess is that the strength of the class system (the security of the elite and the middle classes) in England ensured that there was no need for a unifying political project along nationalist lines.
"Oikophobia" in England was one of the first manifestations of what we know as wokery. Orwell wrote about it nearly 100 years ago. Think of the way no blue American would display the stars and stripes these days. The Union Jack has been like that for decades now, Britpop a mere aberration. The rough Norfs might wave it between cracking skulls at soccer matches, but you certainly don't want Norf next door.
Great expression "oikophobia". It clearly has precedents throughout history and across the world. Probably a straightforward expression of class affiliation or status: the higher classes in many societies have been cosmopolitan or even foreign-descended (i.e. the Norman French), the masses native or indigenous. So status-seeking people develop an aversion to all things local. In the UK is is all overdone to a degree approaching madness, at least in relation to Brexit.
The first signs of a move towards realism, at least on the fringes, are now emerging.
https://www.thepostil.com/polish-dissident-anti-war-voices-on-the-rise/
Thank you. One of the greatest mysteries to me is the degree to which dissident political movements throughout the EU are co-opted. As Krupa reports Wielomski complaining, "'Most of Confederation’s members, as it turned out, entered the Sejm under anti-system slogans only to knock on the System’s door and report their readiness to serve it.' This is all attributable to what Wielomski calls a peculiar 'disease of the Polish soul.'"
Indeed, here in the US we have the excuse of a first-past-the-post, "two party" political system that makes it almost impossible to form third parties, while the iron discipline of Democrat and Republican leadership influenced by big money guarantees the "political hegemony" of the "power elite" (per C. Wright Mills) as well as its already formidable "cultural hegemony" (per Antonio Gramsci). The submissive authoritarian expediencies of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and her "squad" are as understandable as they are reprehensible and do not represent the soul of the majority of even Democratic voters let alone the majority of independent voters and non-voters. Despite the burden of this first-past-the-post system that leads to "lesser evil" voting and maintains de facto single party Repuclocrat rule, several fringe parties in the US gain a few adherents, like the Libertarian Party, the Green Party and several others, though it's almost impossible for them to maintain ballot access.
The inability of European alternative parties such as the Confederation or the German Greens to remain true to principles once elected can only be explained as a "disease of the soul" of a majority of non-elite voters. If party leaders (and members) were truly committed to the principles of their party, one would think traitors to party principles would be denied access to the party's electoral list in future elections, allowing low information voters to vote the party name and platform, thus somewhat negating the "cultural hegemony" of moneyed elites.
I think that the answer may in large part be social and economic. Politicians expect to achieve a lifestyle comparable to that of the corporate managerial class. Standing true to one's principles would mean risking the loss of opportunities needed to attain or maintain this. It is as simple as that. There have always been sellouts, but in the past politics attracted people who were prepared to sacrifice or who had modest ambitions re lifestyle. This was easier then. Times were tougher. Frugality was the norm. Today we live in a society with a near universal fixation with consumerism. The prospect of not eventually securing a seat on a board of directors or a consultancy terrifies people into conformity.
Poland is going to be partioned again. Her fate is all but sealed.
Sorry.
Poland is frankly already being devoured. That’s actually part of this , Poland is our new money/ arms/ contractors 💶 laundry service, as Ukraine was, as Russia was before Putin. Poland would need a Putin to survive, instead its going to be corrupted, looted, ruined. Poland can see its future in real time to the east.
And since Poland is a democracy which means its elites love money not nation it cannot escape. The future of Poland is the present of Ukraine, and sorry Nico the fate of Yugoslavia recently.
Now Poles are a people not a nation like Yugoslavia cobbled together by Diplomacy and force, but the Poles haven’t saved themselves for centuries.
They would need a leader on the order of Mannerheim at least (if not ah a bit worse) and an ally or at least protective power nearby- they’d also have to expel 🇺🇸.
It can be done, but that’s like the Ayatollah Khomeini level Catholic Pope instead of John Paul II, and they need a big friend and who?
Good call. Ukraine is the role model of late imperial governance as the US itself manages its way through the various stages of its own decline.
They do boast the best striker in world football. Honestly never thought I’d say that.
Regional Franchise Managers.
Mic
Drop
Fucking A
That is indeed a good one, I was about to tweet it out!
Another excellent column. With so much contained therein, I'll respond to a common theme (through so much of your writing): the Americanization of _______, (where ______ could be Canada, the UK, or most any other country in the world). And I can't help thinking of that mid-1960s movie, "The Americanization of Emily", which takes place in WWII London. Briefly, USN LtCmdr Charlie Madison (James Garner), whose job is to provide women and other things for senior-level US military officers, falls in love with Emily (Julie Andrews). In one scene, she asks, "Am I behaving like a whore?" Charlie replies, "Whoring is a peacetime activity." How would Winston Churchill have answered? de Gaulle? Other European leaders? Asian? Is it sufficient to say that today's world is forever in a state of war(whore), and leave it at that?
I have always liked Garner, so I will have to check out this flick. Thanks for the recommendation.
When it comes to Americanization of foreign peoples and their countries, my go-to line is always the classic one from Kubrick's "A Full Metal Jacket":
"We are here to help the Vietnamese, because inside every gook there is an American trying to get out."
There is a great scene in Nicolas Roeg's very esoteric EUREKA in which Joe Pesci plays a villainous mobbed-up Florida politician. The action takes place during WW2. Pesci's character explains that the Germans and Japanese just don't understand that they are really Americans.
I've lived and worked in Asia and have been all over Canada and the U.S. Unfortunately was never able to make it to Europe or other areas. That changed a few years ago: I went to Stockholm for a few days on business. The people I met were gracious, hospitable, thoughtful, witty, articulate while also having a genuine quality. I was surprised, however, how caught up they were with the detailed minutiae of American political life: the politics of the political celebrity and all the trash info that stems form that outlook. Living in Canada makes this experience inevitable; I hadn't realized that the power of the celeb culture extended so deeply into more distant regions.
One would think that the perceived decline of US hard power would co-relate with the ebbing of its soft power, but it's not the case at present. The 4.5 year long US media state of emergency due to Trump has only heightened this trend.
The spectacle itself is powerful. The narratives spun from it will dominate politics across the world for at least a generation or so. The US itself will extract every possible advantage from this attention. It will market its own dysfunctions and gain some sort of profit from every degradation.
The weakening of US soft power will become apparent amongst the elites at first. The most observant and far-sighted of these have already begun to realise that US higher education is overrated. This is very obvious in China, which no longer sends its best student to the US for undergraduate study.
Shkreli is a "Chad"??!!
Always struck me as the epitome of a Nerd. A trash-talking, conspiring, law-breaking Nerd, but a Nerd.
He's the Nerds, after college, when their nerdy computer skills have earned them millions, they live in a mansion with a pool, drive a Lamborghini, and dim-witted blonde journalists throw themselves at the rich nerds.
We do a little thing called "tongue-in-cheek posting".
Ok, man, was starting to wonder about your insights! In the early days of the internet, you'd use "/sarc."
Otherwise, spot on.
The sleazy US ambassador with the Polish opposition, standing in front of the US and rainbow flags, promising a globo-homo-ized Poland is disgusting. Thanks for sharing, had not seen that.
The ambassador, Marek Brzezinski, is the son of the infamous Zbigniew Brzezinski who came up with the idea to incite unrest in Afghanistan to draw the USSR into a trap to bleed them. The family are aristocrats who owned estates in what is now Ukraine. Zbigniew's father was a diplomat who was in Berlin when the authoritarian Polish government negotiated a treaty of friendship with Hitler. Having a Bzrezinski working as Panem's local representative to turn Poland into a Slavic parody of a Blue state utopia is weirdly appropriate. It is a fitting illustration of the transformative power of empire and the degree to which its servants will go to remain viable within the system. NATOSTAN deserves such proconsuls.
Strategic success then for 🇺🇸 as regards Europe. Europe shall be ours , not China’s. Certainly not Europe’s either. The Russians return to their classic role as the brooding Centaur in the forest * and 🇺🇸 shall SQUEEZE its Satrapies to buy our oil, our LNG, our weapons.
SQUEEZE Raban, I need revenue.
Oh where is Feyd when you need him? (Dune).
*do watch White Tiger, in particular Hitler’s reveries, - let me help-
Europe fell in 1945.
For it to even think of being Europe again, DC will have to fall.
Then again for America to be American again DC will have to fall.
https://youtu.be/Tou5pH33Q2k
control the media and you can control the narrative... it seems all those ap, reuters and api wire services are doing the trick, like they do here in canada... it is quite depressing actually how easiy duped people who read the msm are... i suspect this is what is happening in europe as well, although i can't verify being here in canada... thanks for your article..
Lots of idiots in our Global Village. A good description of many of them, but by no means all.
Being American, I can’t wrap my head around “Your Worship.” Did they really say that?
“Constable” I could get used to. Do woke Canadians now paint “Defund the Constables” on the streets of Ottawa when they riot?
My grandfather was born in Poland but the family got him out. He thought it was Russia. The Russians did too, actually. Europeans are so weird and gullible. They actually think that Joe Biden is President of the USA.
This transhumanism stuff is hype, and nothing more. Hive mind?
Hyperreality.
Disneyland.
But I’ve always been a nerd, and they never pushed ME into a locker. Perhaps because the extent of my tech skills is writing a Substack which nobody reads.
Tomorrow the world? No thanks. I’m still saving up to fill my gas tank.
ESG (the application of woke to economic policy) is essential for the current wave of social engineering.
The most powerful achievement of ESG to date has just been accomplished. Congress recently passed a new law that requires the Federal Reserve to take account of racial disparities in all its activities.
The implications for the US class structure should be self-evident.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-woke-mandate-for-the-federal-reserve-racial-equity-congress-house-joe-biden-11655659047
The beauty of codifying identity politics into law, especially when there's grants involved, is that it will stop at the good people, and won't cause resentment and fellow feeling at all
Surely that's unconstitutional? It can't last
It won't last, but the damage that it could do is practically inconceivable and will leave a legacy that America simply does not need.
“IQ is correlated with all positive life outcomes” - guy who has literally had no positive life outcomes.
A 115IQ Chad adds way more social value than a 160IQ braincel, debate me faggots!
When I was young I used to be hard “R” HBD, muh IQ supremacist, then at 16 I went through a growth spurt, reached 6’3, gained 12 kilos of meat slabs in 6 months and got my dick sucked for the first time. Ever since then my life was litty, and I’ve been adamant in dispelling nerd culture and it’s poisonous fruit.
Most HBD basement dwellers are lucky they barely get out of their mom’s house otherwise me and the boys would be pummelling you with with your statistics textbook.
[I won't debate you, I will agree with you and further I'm 'triggered' into rant lol]
The IQ test Binnet developed is to test for LEARNING DISABILITIES and the rest is FRAUD.
BTW saying "Stanford-Binnet" is like saying "Eichmann-Pasteur" ...
Not to mention that "High Intelligence" on the paper test seems to correlate with HARMFUL PEOPLE who damage or destroy everything they touch, sociopathic behavior, and that's if the c--nts aren't lying or cheating on the very test.
How did this happen?
My own pet theory is that in America College or High IQ led to Conscription Deferment or avoidance starting with WW2. Even when one couldn't escape the Draft one could get a safer or easier berth than Infantry or Combat. The smart cowards or rather clever cowards survived and didn't lose years of their young lives in service and so advanced themselves.
It is important to note that conscription in America ran from 1940-1973, that's a lot of shirking, cowardice and working the system and they succeeded insulating themselves from hardships and danger while shutting out over time the brave.
Their cowardice is moral as well as physical, their shirking the same.
"The Thinking is done by cowards and the fighting is done by Fools."
And over time we came to be ruled by Coward Fools.
....that's how America came to be ruled by Clever Sillies who destroyed Western Civilization.
I had to look up the terms litty and HDB. For the uninitiated or simply old people like myself, they are, or can mean, as follows:
Litty is a playful variation of lit, often initially defined as “extremely lit,” that is, exceptionally great, happening, or drunk/high. Parties, going to the club, hanging out with friends, and hooking up are all often described as litty.
It's also occasionally used to mean here be dragons, referring to unexplored or dangerous territory ahead.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Sorry, brother, for inconsiderately abusing my Gen Z vernacular. Yes, it does indeed mean something exceptionally great.
Oh how far the Tories of Britain have fallen. It's so cringey to hear talk of separation of powers and presidents. I'm somewhat convinced that the left wing in this country make for a better anti-American force. They're certainly more hawkish on seeing the NHS sold in bits to US firms, for example. Although they do buy into moronic causes like #BLM.
BLM is politic du jour, it's inevitable but also transitory. One should be way more occupied with such issues as the NHS because they have actual real-life impact and are of social importance.
Good point. BLM is window dressing amongst similar American culture war exports. I do wonder sometimes what situation we'd be in if we had Corbyn in power as opposed to our current PM. He was certainly more warey of western interventionism and wasn't frightened to consider groups like Hezbollah as friends.
BLM is more than window-dressing. It helped re-set the cultural narrative and disseminates specifically American perspectives on race-relations. This makes a difference over time, especially on metropolitan opinion. You only have to contrast the push-back against woke in France to the situation in England to see the difference.
It's like saying that the bolshevik ideas changed social dynamics in the workers favour in the long run. They did not. Once the new elite is established, it's business as usual. Same thing will happen with BLM.
I have not explained myself. BLM in no way empowered people of colour or changed social dynamics in any way either in the US or the UK. BLM has been used by the powerful, as all social movements are used.
But they have definitely functioned as an instrument of Americanisation, which is exactly what the UK elite want. The receptivity of the UK to BLM relied to a great deal on its support from local elites who wish to de-nationalise the UK as far as possible as quickly as possible. BLM is useful for this in the UK because it allows the elite to stigmatise cultural and historical legacies that are now inconvenient or problematic.
It can be understood more broadly as a tool elites use to brow beat people they view as threats while throwing a bone to their client constituents.
Very true. I suppose it's important for Europeans to differentiate between fighting off American soft-power and avoiding obsession with US culture war developments (or emulating the same cleavages which emerge there). Easier said than done though.
Quick reply for both Feynmanovic and Phillip, I really enjoy your insights. Hopefully, I can make more of a contribution to these threads as I read more. Now university has finished I can finally crack on with some more books. Only just got round to reading Samuel P. Huntington, who I've seen mentioned a few times on this substack.
Thank you Nick for providing an excellent space to sperg about our favourite interests!
My pleasure.
The trouble with the anti-Americanism of the UK Left is that it is now mostly a cope for the kinds of moralistic misfits who long to act as scolds and who can't function in any other political role. The anti-Amercanism of the UK Right is straightforward, naked, resentment at the loss of national power and prestige. Even at its worst, this sort of anti-Americanism has an honesty, as well as psychic vitality and credibility to it. Nationalists and tribalists have loyalty to something real or concrete. On the Left you generally only find anything comparable to this amongst activists committed to very specific constituencies, such as working class communities in Northern England.
The Atlanticists swallowed their own kool-aid. The Tories purged their ranks of those who were sceptical of the US long, long ago, thereby preventing anything like an English version of Gaullism from developing. After Suez the Tories have always insisted on leaders being in-line with Washington.
The one potential Tory leader who was explicitly unenthusiastic about the US, Enoch Powell, became obnoxious to Washington when he was shadow defense secretary. Powell rubbished the conventional thinking on the Cold War, arguing that the interventionist foreign and defense policies of the UK and US were counterproductive. He even sunk proposals for the UK to send troops to Vietnam. The US fifth column got its revenge when he made the famous 'rivers of blood speech' (which was more than just a call for immigration restrictions, but also a plea to prevent the Americanisation of British law by adopting US-style restrictions on freedoms of speech and association).
The British Labour Party retained a viable degree of scepticism towards Washington for a while. Harold Wilson was certainly keenly distrusted by Washington. He was a great believer in improving relations with Russia, firmly Zionist (at a time when the US/Israel friendship was relatively new and very fragile, attracting lots of opposition from the CIA and the State Dep't) and, worst of all, a great believer in the need to reinvigorate British manufacturing. Wilson was actively undermined by the UK intelligence services in what amounted to a silent coup. Since Wilson no British leader has been anything but a creature of the US.
Watching the current situation with the tory leadership rigmarole, I'm thinking we should bring out a clone of Enoch Powell.
Further to my comments a moment ago, I'd say that Thatcher was a turning point. She completed the Americanisation by suppressing both the unions and the pro-manufacturing set within her party (Hesseltine etc), killed off what was left of the old genteel banking culture with the so-called Big Bang, empowered Murdoch and disrupted key national institutions (above all local government, which in England went back to Viking times in some areas). Thatcher also created the quango-state, putting her on par with LBJ as one of the great modern sponsors of institutionalised corruption.
Maybe you could interview Ed Dutton, the Jolly Heretic? He’s just released a book called Spiteful Mutants, possibly the best title ever — after your own newsletter of course. Some crossover potential there, I’d guess. Dutton can explain why there is no such thing as lesbians, why high iq nerds are an invention of Hollywood, why informatics beats intuition, among other things.
Americanisation inured people to the realities of the pax Americana. Were the political culture to remain an unreconstructed and entirely British affair it would not be possible to ignore the painful realities of lost territory, power and prestige. The post-imperial or second Elizabethan age has been one of national decline, deracination, the collapse of the national religion and political subordination to an alien power. This is bearable only because the sensibilities fostered by the old culture have been replaced by new ones formed by the infotainment and culture of the imperial overlord. The old culture was imperial, self-consciously Protestant and tied to ways of life that no longer exist. If retained, this culture would have impeded the efficient absorption of the UK into the US empire. Advanced to a sufficient degree (as it is with the young) Americanisation wipes the slate clean.