September 8, 2020

The Silence of the Falling Tree ^Reply

by Keith Preston • Uncategorized • Tags: Troy Southgate

By Troy Southgate

I am not in favour of political correctness, but changing the way we use certain terminology will occasionally have a more positive effect. Take the term ‘invalid,’ for example. Whilst the word has long been used to describe people who require some form of physical care, it appears elsewhere – despite the slightly different pronunciation and extra syllable – as a synonym for ‘illegitimate’ or ‘no longer valid’. Worse still, it can be related to the word ‘null’ and of course this is tantamount to a person being reduced to ‘zero’. In short, ‘invalid’ seems like a very unpleasant way to describe someone and expressions such as ‘disabled’ or ‘handicapped’ are undoubtedly far kinder.

August 30, 2020

Americanization: The Spread of a Dangerous Plague ^Reply

by Keith Preston • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy • Tags: Troy Southgate

One thing that I have endeavored to point out to American “radicals” is that the US government is not merely the government of the 50 states but the government of most, if not all, of the world. The US directly or indirectly controls the internal politics of the majority of the world’s nations through bribery, economic hegemony, trade dominance, military occupation, military bases, manipulating elections, manipulating the press in other countries, funding political parties, candidates, or entire states, controlling science and technology on a global scale, the global pervasiveness of the US media, arming terrorists and insurgents, and providing weapons to client states and proxy armies.

Even major Eastern powers like Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea, or Middle Eastern rogue states like Iran and Syria, are largely subordinated to the USA through their submergence in the wider global capitalist empire in which the US ruling class is the senior party. That these states either have nuclear weapons or are supported by nuclear-armed nations makes them less vulnerable to outright invasion a la Iraq. But they are still subordinated to the global superclass through which the US power elite exercises hegemony.

By Troy Southgate

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The Potlatch as an Illustration of the Gift Economy ^Reply

by Keith Preston • Economics/Class Relations • Tags: Troy Southgate

It’s interesting how the potlatch or the Jewish concept of jubilee are forms of what FOX News fans would probably denounce as “socialism” that are largely cultural rather than political in nature.

By Troy Southgate

Some of you may have heard of the potlatch system, an economic practice that was discovered among the likes of the indigenous Kwakwaka’wakw folk of the Pacific Northwest Coast of Canada and America by the leading French ethnologist, Marcel Mauss (1872-1950). Although the Canadian government made attempts to suppress it in 1884, the potlatch continues to endure. The word itself is taken from the Chinook dialect and means ‘gift,’ or ‘to give away,’ and is used by indigenous communities to convey social power.

In contemporary Western societies, of course, accumulating wealth is itself a sign of prestige and domination, but for the Kwakwaka’wakw people the potlatch method is a ceremonial expression of generosity. Having amassed a sizable amount of crops, animal skins, copper and ornamental artifacts during the Summer months, the richest members of the tribe meet with their neighbours and friends in a numaym, or house-society. This is not based on family lineage, but tribal status, and during the potlatch high-ranking members distribute titles, land rights and goods amongst their fellows. Contrary to the manner in which status is acquired in the West, the fortunes of a tribal family are not dependant upon who has the most resources but the ability of its members to distribute what they have. ‘Gifting’ thus becomes a form of wealth in itself. Competitive altruism, if you will.

Potlatch also takes place among the Heiltsuk, Haida, Nuxalk, Tlingit, Makah, Tsimshian, Nuu-chah-nulth and Coast Salish tribes, too, although each has its own particular method of wealth dispersal. Needless to say, the 1884 ban was enforced to counteract what the mercantile Canadians regarded as “wasteful and unproductive” behaviour, and it was only in 1951 that the ban was repealed. In the Winter 1994 edition of Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, Neal Keating compares potlatch to contemporary rioting and looting, contending that it is necessary to “squander the surplus” and that “twelve-thousand or so people who were arrested [in Los Angeles] for rioting, and especially looting, be made into potlatch chiefs”. This is utter nonsense, of course, and ruins what is otherwise an excellent article. Indeed, whilst the ‘gifting’ tradition of the Kwakwaka’wakw is done both willingly and of one’s own accord, breaking into shops and stealing televisions, computers and playstations is clearly not in the same league.

Create Your Own Reality ^Reply

by Keith Preston • Left and Right • Tags: Troy Southgate

“Rather than view ‘Western civilisation’ as something that must be saved in its entirety, I would prefer to see those with a ‘conservative’ mentality adopt a more eclectic approach. To pick and choose, define one’s own borders, create your own realities, distinguish between authentic culture and a national or geopolitical trading bloc that one is simply born into.” -Troy Southgate

The System Is the Real Cause of Blame ¹⁰

by Keith Preston • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Police State/Civil Liberties, Race and Ethnicity • Tags: Troy Southgate

By Troy Southgate

Those of you who are genuinely opposed to injustice, regardless whether you think Blacks get a worse deal than Whites or vice versa, might like to set your emotions to one side for a moment and think about the following. The mass protests organised by Black Lives Matter are two steps removed from what should really become the focus of public outrage. Let’s take it one stage at a time:

1. The RACE issue is irrelevant because it has not been established that George Floyd was killed for racist motives and police violence is directed at people of all colours and creeds.

2. The POLICE are not the ultimate source of blame as they are mercenaries who are answerable to the State.

3. The SYSTEM is the real cause of blame and those in the banks, boardrooms and stock exchanges are using your taxes to fund the politicians, bureaucrats, soldiers and police who enforce tyranny on their behalf.

Just a Temporary Pass by the Establishment? ^Reply

by Keith Preston • Culture Wars/Current Controversies • Tags: Troy Southgate

By Troy Southgate

What we are being told is a ‘cultural revolution’ in which the Left is targetting mediums of expression that do not meet with its ruthless iconoclastic standards is almost certain to have the opposite effect. Indeed, whilst leftists themselves probably think they are on the verge of some kind of Maoist uprising it seems clear to me that this is little more than a juvenile fantasy and that the Left itself is being handed a temporary pass by the Establishment in order for the current period of social unrest to justify a new form of tyranny that will come back to haunt its protagonists. What begins with the toppling of historical statues or the destruction of Classical art galleries, therefore, will surely herald a new age of state-sanctioned production that will determine the value of culture in the way that social media now decides what constitutes fake news.

A New Kind of Totalitarianism ^Reply

by Keith Preston • Culture Wars/Current Controversies • Tags: Troy Southgate

By Troy Southgate

I see that sections of the American Right are now accusing Bogeyman Soros of helping to bring about a ‘colour revolution’ on home soil. How convenient. That’s how it works, you see. The Left gets taken in by the lies that have been generated by the System and the Right defends that very same System to the hilt, even to the point of reinforcing the credentials of its own alleged opposition. In other words, not only has racism against Black people been taken out of context as a means of hiding the very real persecution that is being faced by all races who live under the country’s police state, but those who try to separate the riots and demonstrations from the System are helping to sustain the illusion.

No Lives Matter to Capitalist Parasites ^Reply

by Keith Preston • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, History and Historiography, Left and Right, Race and Ethnicity • Tags: Troy Southgate

By Troy Southgate

How interesting that British tea giants PG Tips and Tetleys have come out in support of Black Lives Matter. Although these capitalist parasites will be hoping to sell more teabags as a result of uttering a few politically correct platitudes, I suppose they’ve forgotten how they were exposed by the BBC just five years ago for exploiting Indian workers to the extent that they are “living in broken houses with terrible sanitation. Many families have no toilets and say they have no choice but to defecate amongst the tea bushes.” As the report from September 2015 continues:

Applying Lipstick to the Bride of Frankenstein ^Reply

by Keith Preston • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right • Tags: Troy Southgate

By Troy Southgate

When are all these Americanised Europeans going to realise that removing a few statues, changing the signs on the bathroom door, jailing neo-nazi fantastists for making jokes about immigrants, dragging a few disabled people up the side of Mount Everest or giving the Mayor of London a Muslim name is like applying lipstick to the Bride of Frankenstein? Daddy is more than happy to build you a new play-pen, with as many safe spaces as you want, but you’re not having any pocket money and that’s final. In fact millions of people living in places like Yemen and Palestine have already upset Daddy so much that they’re going straight to bed without any supper. As far as Daddy is concerned, you can listen to Bob Marley or write ‘BLM’ on the crèche wall as often as you wish but no lives matter to Him.

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The Problem is the System, Not Its Mercenaries ^Reply

by Keith Preston • Economics/Class Relations, Police State/Civil Liberties • Tags: Troy Southgate

By Troy Southgate

Having mentioned in an Anarchist forum that George Floyd was apparently charged with holding a gun to the stomach of a pregnant Black woman, or so various sub-media sources claim, I was criticised on the basis that it does not justify his murder. That’s perfectly true, of course, but my intention was to provide information and I was not inferring that it is somehow acceptable for police scum to choke somebody to death. However, when an individual is being hailed as a martyr for freedom and justice it is important to put things into context. This incident is being used to manipulate public dissent and ensure that people focus on the mercenaries of capitalism rather than on the more serious issue of the System itself. More…

“In the Eyes of the System, We Are All Black” ³

by Keith Preston • Police State/Civil Liberties, Race and Ethnicity • Tags: Troy Southgate

Like I used to say during the Bush years, “We are all Iraqis now.” The race and class disparities among victims of the police state are obvious enough, and should be pointed out, but by no means should it end there. The System is the enemy of all humanity, from upper-class Americans railroaded by the legal system to peasants killed by American drones in Yemen.

By Troy Southgate

Invoking so-called ‘white privilege’ as a means of pacifying an angry Black population at the expense of those who are not in possession of dark skin, thus allowing the System to get away with murdering people of all colours and creeds, is like suggesting that the vicious dog that sometimes bites your neighbour hasn’t already bitten you, too, and that whilst the dog-owner somehow remains unimpeachable you are to blame for either staying away from the dog or not making enough fuss when you get bitten.

Black and White: Unite and Fight! ^Reply

by Keith Preston • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Police State/Civil Liberties, Race and Ethnicity, Uncategorized • Tags: Troy Southgate

By Troy Southgate

People have every right to fight back against the corrupt US system and its brutal mercenaries, but let’s not pretend that police violence is reserved for Black people. At the same time, the Right’s predictable response to Black Lives Matter is to claim that most of the people who have been murdered by the police are themselves criminals and that they had it coming. Now, if it was ever officially decreed that instantaneous execution should be the penalty for criminality then millions of people in America, Black or White, would immediately be wiped from the face of the earth. Inevitably, therefore, by reacting to the racially-centred approach of Black Lives Matter in this ridicuous manner those on the Right inevitably justify the brutality of violent police officers and, thus, the institutionalised criminality of those who allow these murderers to patrol the streets in the first place. It is debatable whether all Black lives matter, just as it is debatable whether all White lives matter, but it is a fact that the American state is killing people of all colours and creeds, both at home and abroad, and that the only solution is for people to stop fanning the flames of racial conflict by attacking each another and to unite against the global establishment. That means rejecting the crass victimology of the mainstream Black organisations and the ignorant racists of the reactionary right. Black and White: Unite and Fight!

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On Misrepresenting One’s Opponents ²

by Keith Preston • Anarchism/Anti-State • Tags: National-Anarchism, Troy Southgate

At long as I have known of national-anarchism, I have considered it be to a legitimate, interesting, and important form of anarchism. If other anarchists feel different, fine. The venerable anarchist principles of voluntary association and decentralization are our collective way around such conflicts.

“We do not consider ourselves ‘nationalists’ in the usual sense and the tribalism we espouse is a far cry from recognising existing borders and boundaries like France, Italy and Germany, or indulging ourselves in the jingoistic patriotism that merely reinforces oppressive states and regimes. As for the supremacist issue, we are completely and utterly opposed to that kind of thing and having a particular skin colour or certain other characteristics is not a mark of superiority or inferiority. Incidentally, I would argue that most people in National-Anarchist circles these days have joined us from the left. They trust us, and rightly so. As I always say to people, we have actually unmade more fascists than you can shake a stick at, but we need to remember that the things we actually DO stand for present an enormous challenge to the liberal-left (and the right, come to that), so if they can smear us at the slightest opportunity, they will. The means always justify the ends for these characters and they don’t care whether they are misrepresenting others if they consider them to be serious political rivals.” -Troy Southgate

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National-Anarchism and Zen Buddhism ^Reply

by Keith Preston • Anarchism/Anti-State, Religion and Philosophy • Tags: National-Anarchism, Troy Southgate, Zen Buddhism

By Troy Southgate

I don’t find it too far-fetched to claim that National-Anarchism is having the kind of impact – beneath the radar, in most cases – that Zen has had on Buddhism. When the purity of the latter was brought into question after its dissection into two different schools, Mahāyāna and Hīnayāna, Zen arrived on the scene to set things back on the right track.

No Return to Normal ¹

by Keith Preston • Activism, Anarchism/Anti-State, Economics/Class Relations, Education, Environment, Health and Medicine, Police State/Civil Liberties • Tags: Troy Southgate

By Troy Southgate

Tens of millions are labouring under the false impression that the current state of emergency is about to come to an end and that things will soon return to ‘normal’. If these people had paid more attention to history, rather than eagerly consuming anything which happens to be thrown in their general direction, a sizeable proportion will have realised that capitalism simply doesn’t work like that. What if I told you that the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Great Depression of the 1930s, the two devastating world wars on either side and the raping and pillaging of resources that has continued ever since, means that we have been in a state of emergency for a considerable period of time? You would think that the inherent selfishness displayed by those Europeans and Americans who were born during the last seventy-five years of ‘peacetime’ would awaken them to the stark realities of their own predicament.

A Precarious State in Our History ^Reply

by Keith Preston • Anarchism/Anti-State, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Health and Medicine, Police State/Civil Liberties • Tags: Troy Southgate

By Troy Southgate

When governments impose a state of emergency it is simply a method of regaining or increasing control. Following on from that, I would even argue that we entered this precarious stage in our history during the insurrections of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when people first began to resist the ruling class on a larger scale and make a serious attempt to reverse the effects of mercantile plunder and what we are told is the Industrial Revolution.

Among these attempts to challenge capitalism one finds Republicanism, Marxism, Liberalism and Fascism, each of which have either compromised or failed to create a tangible alternative to the rapid encroachment of usury, mechanisation and globalisation. Despite the fact that a large number of people continue to put their faith in such ideologies, often to the point of simulation, the most obvious factor of all is rarely taken into consideration. The manner in which one reacts to a crisis should never become a permanent basis for a political, social and economic infrastructure and their many imperfections cannot be overlooked.

THE DIALECTICS OF DICTATORSHIP: COMMUNISM AND ITS LEGACY ^Reply

by Keith Preston • Left and Right • Tags: Communism, Troy Southgate

I have a contribution to this compilation.

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Copies of THE DIALECTICS OF DICTATORSHIP: COMMUNISM AND ITS LEGACY are now available to pre-order. The book is 170 pages in length and costs just 20 EUROS with free postage to anywhere in the world. Our PayPal address is blackfrontpress@yahoo.co.uk and you can find more details below. We also accept bank transfers.

IT can be argued, and with sufficient reason, that the world already contains enough books on Communism to fill the Grand Canyon. What makes this text so different, however, is that it not only provides a theoretical and practical exposé of one of the world’s most destructive ideologies, but also offers a more contemporary reflection on Communism and the way in which we can approach it in light of the twenty-first century. With contributions drawn from a variety of political backgrounds – including Anarchist, New Right and Revolutionary Conservative thinkers – this book will serve as the perfect handbook to the thoughts and actions of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and various others from this authoritarian milieu. The contributors are Troy Southgate (Editor), K.R. Bolton, Keith Preston, Robert Steuckers, Tomislav Sunic and Dimitris Michalopoulos. Chapters include Karl Marx: Profile and Assessment; Rerum Novarum and After: The Catholic Response to Communism; Distinguishing Features of the Russian Bolshevik Party; The Loyal Companionship: Communism and the Orthodox Church; Red Alert: The German Left and the First World War; Dysgenics of a Communist Killing Field: The Croatian Bleiburg; The Development of Stalinism; Alexander Zinoviev as a Lucid Rebel; All Work and No Play: Who Really Benefits from the Marxist Obsession with Labour?; Marxism: Its Historic Role and Intellectual Legacy; and Marxism Repeats itself: First as Tragedy, Second as Farce.

Conformism in a Time of Crisis ^Reply

by Keith Preston • Police State/Civil Liberties • Tags: Troy Southgate

By Troy Southgate

I can’t say I’m too surprised at the high degree of naivety and conformism that we are witnessing during this period. I wonder how many people here are familiar with the old Twilight Zone episode from 1960, The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street? The story concerns a group of American townsfolk who experience a series of inexplicable power failures in the wake of a suspected meteor, but as they become increasingly more frightened and paranoid they begin to turn on one another in an orgy of mob rule. It is easy to look at the people in contemporary America who are presently resisting ‘lockdown’ and dismiss them as Right-wing lunatics, and no doubt many of them are, but at least they have not quite degenerated to the shameful levels displayed by their counterparts in the British Isles.

The Periphery and the Core: All Under Imperialist Occupation ^Reply

by Keith Preston • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Economics/Class Relations, Left and Right • Tags: Troy Southgate

By Troy Southgate

Having watched a YouTube video in which an American leftist provides a personal critique of the H.G. Wells novel, The Time Machine (1895), I feel that I should use his analysis to highlight at least one of the difficulties presented by class-based thinking. Outlining the characteristics of the Eloi and Morlock races that Wells includes in his nightmare vision of the future and who are encountered by a Victorian time-traveller, the speaker went on to explain how the former are portrayed as a surface-dwelling people who live in a kind of naive utopia. He also describes how their subterranean counterparts, the Morlocks, seem brutal and primitive by comparison and live in complete darkness. We are then informed that the role of the cannibalistic Morlocks is to serve the needs of the Eloi, feeding and clothing them in exchange for the odd Eloi sacrifice. So far so good.

Hypchondria, Neurosis and COVID-19 ^Reply

by Keith Preston • Health and Medicine • Tags: Troy Southgate

By Troy Southgate

I began wondering about hypochondria and whether the present situation has enabled the average sufferer, or imagined sufferer, to overcome his or her neurosis. If you consider how making an appointment with the doctor may now provoke a degree of guilt in the sense that people may be inclined to feel that they are depriving a Covid-19 victim of the appropriate care and attention, it is possible that a lifelong hypochondriac might learn to overcome their persistent fear of illness. Remove the doctor from the equation and the pseudo-patient learns to draw upon one’s own inner resources. On the other hand, the fact that coronavirus is being used to evoke such fear among the global population conveniently implies that the medical fantasist now has something considerably more serious to worry about and thus a greater possibility of making that final transition from hypochondria into full-blown valetudinarianism.

Happy Carnation Revolution Day ^Reply

by Keith Preston • Uncategorized • Tags: Carnation Revolution, Portugal, Troy Southgate

By Troy Southgate

Today marks the forty-sixth anniversary of the so-called Carnation Revolution (Revolução dos Cravos), but although large numbers of Portuguese continue to celebrate the events of April 25th, 1974, the entire occasion is but an annual display of collective psychosis. Not only was the possibility of authentic revolution shattered by the Communist Party (PCP) betrayal of Portuguese Anarchists – who, in a bloodless repeat of the Spanish Civil War, had made the mistake of collaborating with the forces of the authoritarian Left – but shortly after the pseudo-revolution had taken place the collapse of the Communist-Socialist alliance led to the appointment of Mário Soares as Prime Minister two years later and this cleared the way for Portugal’s wholesale capitulation to the demands of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the tough austerity measures that followed.

The White Coat Priesthood ^Reply

by Keith Preston • Health and Medicine • Tags: Anthony Fauci, Coronavirus, Luc Montagnier, Troy Southgate

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“The latest American soap opera now playing to a captive audience – in the most literal sense – involves corporate puppet, Donald Trump, and fellow New Yorker Dr. Anthony Fauci. As you can see from the photographs, the presidential performer who professed to drag his heels over the coronavirus affair is doing a fine job of pretending to listen intently to the sage advice of his scientific counterpart. In fact today’s Guardian tells us that ‘America’s future hangs on this delicate relationship’ and that Fauci’s previous efforts to find a cure for HIV makes him the perfect candidate to find a solution to the present crisis. One recent poll even assures us that ‘an adamant 78% majority of Americans approves of Fauci’s performance,’ although I doubt many of these people have heard of a Frenchman by the name of Luc Montagnier.