The Only Thing We Have To Fear Is Extinction Itself

Authored by James George Jatras

A model of this presentation was given to the Ron Paul Institute’s Scholars Seminar on Sept. 1st in Washington, DC.

Today it’s arduous for anybody below the age of fifty to understand how real and pervasive was concern of a nuclear holocaust throughout the Cold War between the US- and Soviet-led blocs.

Books, films, and TV each mirrored and stoked common anxiousness in regards to the attainable “end of civilization as we know it.” The heyday for this was within the Nineteen Fifties and Nineteen Sixties, with books like The Long Tomorrow(1955) and On the Beach (1957, with a 1959 movie adaptation), and movies like Fail Safe, Seven Days in May, Dr. Strangelove (all in 1964, whereas the real-life scare of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was contemporary in individuals’s minds).

There gave the impression to be a little bit of a lull throughout the Seventies period of US-Soviet détente below Nixon, Ford, and Carter, maybe additionally reflecting elite sympathy for socialism and an anticipated future convergence between the ideological groupings, which on a primary degree shared the identical globalist, materialist values. But nuclear terror returned with a vengeance within the Nineteen Eighties – for instance, The Day After (1983) and the animated When the Wind Blows (1986). And who can overlook (actually no male individual!) the pleasant Nena’s 1983 music video Neunundneunzig Luftballons.

The Left, each within the United States and worldwide, was unanimous that Ronald Reagan, a self-confessed anti-communist, was a reckless cowboy who wished to explode the planet. As that nice thinker, Sting, put it in his 1985 tune, “The Russians”:

There is not any historic precedent
To put the phrases within the mouth of the president?
There’s no such factor as a winnable conflict
It’s a lie we do not imagine anymore
Mister Reagan says, “We will protect you”
I do not subscribe to this viewpoint
Believe me once I say to you
I hope the Russians love their kids too

The irony is that Reagan’s personal views have been hardly totally different from those the tune sought to advertise. As he said collectively with Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev that exact same 12 months, 1985: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” a view that prevailed till the USSR imploded only a few years later.

We stay in a really totally different world now, the place the prospect of nuclear annihilation barely registers with anybody.

Just as massive earthquakes are sometimes preceded by foreshocks, main wars are ceaselessly heralded by smaller conflicts. Before World War One: the Franco-German Morocco crises (1906 and 1911), the Italo-Turkish War (1911-12), the 2 Balkan Wars (1912, 1913). Before World War Two: the Second Italo-Ethiopian War (1935-37) and, essentially the most well-known pre-conflagration rumble of all of them, the Spanish Civil War (1936-39).

Today, we’re taking a look at a attainable regional conflict in West Africa, centering on American and French calls for that “democracy” be restored in Niger. (As one Indian publication put it, “Death follows Victoria Nuland”) Then, after all, there’s China/Taiwan.

But the plain Spanish Civil War-rank battle of the second is Ukraine.

I don’t suppose we have to go into all the small print of how we obtained right here, however simply in short:

• Relentless NATO growth after 1991;
• The 2014 US- and EU-backed coup that overthrew Victor Yanukovich, adopted by the Russian annexation of Crimea and the brand new Kiev regime’s launch of a conflict to repress rebellions within the Russian-speaking east and south of the nation;
• The 2015 Minsk agreements, which offered for Ukraine’s neutrality and decentralization, and for reintegration of the rebellious areas with protections of their language and tradition – agreements that each Ukrainian and European former officers have admitted they by no means supposed to implement, seeing them solely as a delaying ruse for build up a power able to conquering the Donbas;
• A relentless program of Ukraine’s NATO-ization in all however identify below Obama, Trump, and Biden; and
• Washington’s peremptory rejection of Moscow’s 2021 ultimata to the United States and NATO to resolve the battle diplomatically, with the hope that Russia, baited into an incursion into Ukraine, can be bled white in an Afghanistan-style insurgency and by crushing sanctions that may “turn the ruble into rubble,” pancake Russia’s economic system, and result in regime change in Moscow.

Oops. Russia’s anticipated damage didn’t occur. Even the mainstream media cheerleaders of solely a fortnight in the past now admit that Ukraine is shedding, assigning the blame to not the geniuses that thought up this technique (if it may be known as that) however to Ukraine’s being too “casualty averse” – whilst that nation is popping into one huge graveyard. There’s hypothesis that some in Washington and different western capitals are searching for an “off-ramp” – if for no different cause than the necessity to give attention to the actually massive present, a looming conflict with China. Some counsel that ultimately, we’ll simply stroll away, consigning Ukraine to the Memory Hole together with Afghanistan. All that’s left then is for GOP neocons to whine that the Biden Administration was too stingy with their support and “lost Ukraine” whereas they gear up for the primary occasion within the western Pacific.

Personally, I don’t suppose that can occur. Nobody cares about Afghanistan however the Afghans, however if Washington walks away from Ukraine it’s successfully conceding that the US, by NATO, now not is the safety hegemon of Europe. That means the efficient finish of NATO, in reality if not in identify; and the place NATO goes, its concubine, the European Union, received’t be far behind.

More to the purpose, although, the notion that this can quickly finish with a whimper misses the entire level. None of that is actually about Ukraine, which is simply an expendable device to harm Russia. (Maybe the Poles or Lithuanians or Romanians are desirous to volunteer for the job as soon as we’re contemporary out of Ukrainians.) Ukraine is only a variable; the fixed is Ruthenia delenda est. Russia should be destroyed.

Gilbert Doctorow, a famous observer of Russian affairs, likens the present scenario to that of Napoleon’s 1812 Russian marketing campaign depicted by Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace. Today as then, what occurs subsequent can be much less as a result of this or that policymaker making this or that unhealthy resolution. Rather, “the precondition for war is the near universal acceptance of the logic of the coming war.”

What is that logic right this moment? It’s easy: the ruling circles within the United States (useless so as to add, with their sock puppets in western capitals) are completely, unselfconsciously satisfied that they’re the residing embodiment of all advantage, reality, and progress in what Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described because the “replication of the experience of Bolshevism and Trotskyism” – to quote Reagan, morphing ourselves into a brand new Evil Empire instead of the outdated one. As neocon kingpins William Kristol and Robert Kagan put it of their 1996 manifesto, the coverage of the United States within the coming period should be one in all “benevolent global hegemony” supposed to final – effectively, endlessly. Its ethical content material is exemplified, on the one hand, by US help for subjugation of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church and, on the opposite, the spectacle of a transgender US serviceperson performing as a PR official for the Ukrainian army declaring that “we’re human,” and the Russians “most definitely aren’t.”

As I prefer to say: there’s no Transatlanticism with out transgenderism.

Unsurprisingly, concerning their alleged lack of human-ness, the Russians disagree. But who cares what they suppose? Our leaders see not solely Putin however Russians usually as an impediment to the radiant future, the place each knee will bow earlier than the sacred rainbow flag.

Sun Tzu says “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” The Russians kind of know themselves. They type of know us, however not in addition to they suppose they do, with relatively a bent to venture normalcy onto basically irregular individuals. On the opposite hand, our rulers – harmful individuals whose ranges of conceitedness and ignorance defies description: monkeys with nuclear hand grenades – know neither themselves nor the Russians.

On prime of that, as Doctorow additional observes, the mechanisms that lent some stability and restraint to the US-Soviet standoff are actually all however gone, rendering the once-“unthinkable” of the Nineteen Fifties’ nuke horror movies all-too-thinkable right this moment:

‘… no one wants war, neither Washington nor Moscow. However, the step-by-step dismantling of the channels of communication, of the symbolic projects for cooperation across a wide array of domains, and now dismantling of all the arms limitation agreements that took decades to negotiate and ratify, plus the incoming new weapons systems that leave both sides with under 10 minutes to decide how to respond to alarms of incoming missiles—all of this prepares the way for the Accident to end all Accidents.  Such false alarms occurred in the Cold War but some slight measure of mutual trust prompted restraint. That is all gone now and if something goes awry, we are all dead ducks.’

“No one wants war.” An identical thought was expressed by Hermann Göring, when he was on trial at Nuremberg:

Of course the individuals don’t need conflict; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is known. … But in spite of everything, it is the leaders of the nation who decide the coverage, and it is at all times a easy matter to tug the individuals alongside whether or not it is a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the individuals can at all times be dropped at the bidding of the leaders. That is straightforward. All you must do is inform them they’re being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the nation to better hazard.

So I suppose Doctorow is a bit off the mark in suggesting that “no one wants war.” Clearly, any person desires conflict. Numerous essential “somebodies” wished this conflict in Ukraine. They wished conflict within the Balkans within the Nineties. They wished conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq (twice!), Libya, Yemen, Syria, and a dozen locations in Africa the place we now have virtually no concept what’s happening.

“All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked…” I can’t assist however consider the meme with two blank-face NPCs, one sporting a pink knit hat mindlessly repeating “Russia! Russia! Russia!,” the opposite with a pink MAGA hat chanting “China! China! China!” Between them is the seal of the CIA with the eagle saying, “Yes, yes, my pretties. That’s it. That’s it.”

Here we’re, 60 years after the actual fact, with the rising recognition by even essentially the most spoon-fed normies that the CIA had one thing to do with the assassination of Jack Kennedy. In reality, we now have right here right this moment maybe the foremost authority on the subject, Mr. Jacob Hornberger. Yet doubting our rulers’ truthiness nonetheless is handled as a thought crime. A short time in the past, Vivek Ramaswamy was the goal of a media hate fest for (within the phrases of The New Republic) “spout[ing] conspiracy theories about January 6 and 9/11.” Oh no! “Conspiracy theories”! (Or, as they’re identified once they transform true, “spoiler alerts.”) The heretic Ramaswamy evidently believes – stunning as this sounds – that our authorities has not been totally trustworthy about these issues. He should be a dupe for the Russians! Or for the Chinese! – which The New Republic additionally implies.

You might have heard some individuals evaluate the “lawfare” being directed in opposition to Donald Trump, with the evident goal of eliminating the doubtless opponent subsequent 12 months of the desiccated-husk-of-Hunter-Biden’s-dad (assuming ol’ Joe would be the Democratic nominee, which I don’t), to the habits of a banana republic. This is a gratuitous insult to the pleasant spider-infested nations to our south!

I just lately urged to a sober observer of public affairs that the strategic aim is protecting Trump off the poll in a number of must-win states for him, like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, to which he responded: “That’s a recipe for civil war.” (I attempted to think about what Republicans taking to the streets would seem like. A mob of decrepit Boomers rolling their motorized wheelchairs all the way down to the nook and burning down the publish workplace?) Anyway, taking him out by way of lawfare appears to be Plan A. If that fails – effectively, Plan B would get us into Mr. Hornberger’s space of experience.

The time period “cold” civil conflict, a conflict which may probably flip “hot,” has turn into a commonplace in American discourse. So has the expression “national divorce.” In 1861 Americans each North and South worshipped the identical God, learn the identical Bible, honored the identical Founding Fathers, claimed constancy to the identical Constitution. In right this moment’s America, we will’t even agree on our pronouns or on what a “woman” is, a lot much less on what it means to be an American. We are ethical aliens to 1 one other, certainly enemies. What truly holds the previous American republic collectively? “Muh Constitution”? “Muh democracy”?

Keep in thoughts, we’re not speaking a few mere political disaster that can get solved in an election or two. Not even about political and constitutional collapse, or perhaps a monetary and financial calamity – that’s coming too, partially due to the affect of the Ukraine conflict on the dollar-denominated international system – however a basic problem to the social cloth itself, and never simply within the United States.

A watershed was handed with covid and the measures – the lockdowns, the masks, social distancing and monitoring, the clot shot, censorship of dissent, all mixed with a pervasive, inescapable exterior and inner panopticon: because the troubadour of transhumanism Yuval Harari writes, “we are seeing a change in the nature of surveillance from over the skin surveillance to under the skin surveillance” – supposedly supposed to take care of a virus, carrying out inside a couple of brief months what a long time of local weather hysteria couldn’t, summed up below the moniker “the Great Reset” and its ubiquitous slogan “Build Back Better.”’

Taken collectively what we’re experiencing has all the looks of a managed demolition of all established human interactions in anticipation of their substitute by one thing we’re assured by our betters can be an enchancment. The contours of the “new normal” within the post-American America hurtling in our path have already turn into so acquainted as to want little elaboration:

• Infringement of conventional liberties based mostly on “keeping us safe”;
• “Cancel culture”;
• Blurring of the strains between Big Government, Big Finance, Big Pharma, Big Data, and so forth., amounting to company state seize; and, circuitously based mostly on supposed anti-virus measures however carefully monitoring with them,
• Joint authorities and company promulgation of socially harmful, traditionally counterfeit ideologies (“intersectionality,” LGBTQI+++, feminism, multiculturalism, “critical race theory,”), with principal concentrating on of kids topic to sexualization and predation by these expressing what have been as soon as quaintly generally known as irregular appetites and identities.

These so-called “values” – which, keep in mind, are successfully the official ideology of the West, which we search “benevolently” to impose on the remainder of the world, by power if crucial – in flip speed up longstanding tendencies in the direction of infertility and demographic collapse pointing to thinning the human herd and substitute by way of post-human society, transhumanism, and bio-engineering. This isn’t just “political” however a strike on the coronary heart of human existence: the non secular, ethical, and even organic foundation for marriage, household formation, and manufacturing of the subsequent technology. In a phrase: depopulation.

Just a few years in the past, His Royal Highness, the late Prince Philip of the United Kingdom, maybe half in jest delivered this thigh-slapper: “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, to contribute something to solving overpopulation.” Some of you could have heard of teams like Extinction Rebellion and BirthStrike: “Are you terrified about the future that lies ahead for contemporary and future youth? Do you want to maximize your positive impact on the Climate Change Crisis? You can protect children while fighting climate change and systematic corruption by refusing to procreate!” Makes excellent sense: protect a greater planet for future generations by eliminating future generations. It jogs my memory of Otto von Bismarck’s evaluating the concept of preventive conflict to committing suicide out of concern of loss of life. (That’s not as summary as it would sound. Recently a younger girl in Canada searching for assist for melancholy and suicidal ideation was suggested by hospital workers that she may be fascinated about their tried and Trudeau-ed “Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID)” euthanasia program. Tempted to kill your self? Let us enable you to!) 

But why cease at half measures? The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, VHEMT (pronounced “vehement,” in line with their web site): “We’re the only species evolved enough to consciously go extinct for the good of all life, or which needs to. Success would be humanity’s crowning achievement. May we live long and die out.”

Maybe they’re on to one thing! In his landmark work The Socialist Phenomenon, the late Russian mathematician and scholar of historical past Igor Shafarevich took be aware of what he believed is a collective human loss of life impulse:

The concept of the loss of life of mankind—not the loss of life of particular individuals however actually the tip of the human race—evokes a response within the human psyche. It arouses and attracts individuals, albeit with differing depth in numerous epochs and in numerous people. The scope of affect of this concept causes us to suppose that each particular person is affected by it to a better or lesser diploma and that it’s a common trait of the human psyche.

This concept isn’t solely manifested within the particular person expertise of a large number of particular individuals, however can also be able to uniting individuals (in distinction to delirium, for instance) i.e., it’s a social power. The impulse towards self-destruction could also be thought to be a component within the psyche of mankind as a complete. [ … ]

In the Freudian view (first expressed within the article “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”), the human psyche might be diminished to a manifestation of two principal instincts: the life intuition or Eros and the loss of life intuition or Thanatos (or the Nirvana precept). Both are basic organic classes, basic properties of residing issues usually. The loss of life intuition is a manifestation of basic “inertia” or a bent of natural life to return to a extra elementary state from which it had been aroused by an exterior disturbing power. [“Dust thou art, unto dust shalt thou return.”] The function of the life intuition is actually to stop a residing organism from returning to the inorganic state by any path aside from that which is immanent in it.

Marcuse [Shafarevich refers here to Herbert Marcuse, theorist of the Frankfurt School, known for his adaptation of the theory of class conflict in classical Marxism to other social divides, notably in the area of sex, setting the stage for “intersectionality”] introduces a better social issue into this scheme, asserting that the loss of life intuition expresses itself within the need to be liberated from pressure, as an try to rid oneself of the struggling and discontent that are particularly engendered by social elements.

With the failure of the Ukrainian offensive, Moscow now faces a dilemma. Do they transfer decisively to impose a army answer that ends the conflict, or do they proceed to indicate restraint within the hopes that any person, someplace – Kiev, Washington, London, Brussels – decides it’s time to sue for peace? Keen to not take a precipitous step which may deliver a few direct conflict of NATO and Russian forces, thus far they’ve opted for the latter – I repeat: thus far.

The West faces its personal dilemma. Do our rulers concede defeat, which successfully means the tip of the Global American Empire (the GAE)? Or do they drag issues out so long as attainable, hoping Moscow will fall for an additional Minsk-type ceasefire, with the Kremlin enjoying the a part of Charlie Brown taking one other run at kicking the soccer, having been promised that this time we’ll hold our phrase? Or, mistaking Russian restraint for weak spot, do they push the envelope by inserting a “coalition of the willing” into western Ukraine, difficult Russian naval forces within the Black Sea, encouraging and equipping the Ukrainians to step up assaults on Moscow and different Russian cities, staging some form of false flag of the sort that has proved so efficient in different conflicts? In different phrases, can we double down? That’s along with opening up different asymmetrical theaters within the Balkans, Syria, Iran, the Taiwan Strait, and elsewhere.

In mistakenly projecting a rational actor mentality onto their opponents, the Russians appear to be conscious about the professional concern that decisive army motion on the bottom might panic NATO and set off an uncontrolled escalation. They appear oblivious on the contrary concern, that, by holding again and ready for an affordable dialogue that can by no means happen, they’re in impact encouraging their adversary to stage one reckless provocation after one other – within the sustained perception that some deus ex machina can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat – ensuing within the very uncontrolled escalation that Moscow seeks to keep away from.

Even these speculations assume that the depressing specimens of humanity calling the photographs in Western capitals would solely threat a direct battle however wouldn’t intentionally select it. But is that assumption appropriate? As Doctorow notes, the outdated Cold War restraints have damaged down. Maybe demonstration of a teeny-tiny, low-yield nuke is simply the factor to indicate that non-human Vladof Putler that the GAE is critical!

What might probably go unsuitable?

Recently on his podcast Judge Andrew Napolitano confirmed a part of a pc simulation of a US-Russia nuclear trade through which the preliminary toll on the US inhabitants was solely (“only”!) about 9 %, whereas on Russia it was round 62 %. (Given that Russia has extra warheads than we do, I don’t understand how they got here up with that, however I didn’t conduct the simulation.)  Is it so unattainable that someplace, any person would possibly have a look at these knowledge and determine it’s a tolerable tradeoff? (Later on, the simulation has just about everybody on earth ravenous to loss of life from nuclear winter, with agriculture within the northern hemisphere unviable for a number of years. Now there’s a option to resolve each international warming and supposed overpopulation with one stroke! Hey, VHEMT, have we obtained an idea for you!)

Whether or not these dolts handle to kill us all, both by deliberate motion or by sheer incompetence, it’s arduous to flee the notion that we’re approaching the sting of some profound historic second that can have far-reaching, actually life and loss of life penalties, each domestically and internationally. In the interval previous World War I what number of Europeans suspected that their lives would quickly be endlessly modified—and, for tens of millions of them, ended? Who within the years, say, 1910 to 1913, might have imagined that the a long time of peace, progress, and civilization through which that they had grown up, and which seemingly would proceed indefinitely, as a substitute would quickly descend right into a horror of industrial-scale slaughter, revolution, and brutal ideologies?

Which brings us to my parting admonitions to your predecessors on this seminar, which I see no want to vary:

My younger associates, the affect any one in all us can anticipate to have within the face of world-historic tendencies earlier than which the fates of countries and empires fly like leaves within the autumn winds is vanishingly small. Already baked into the cake can be, I imagine, hardships for you that we’ve turn into accustomed to suppose solely occur to “other people” in “other countries” distant, not seen right here for the reason that Revolution and the Civil War, or possibly in remoted situations throughout the Great Depression: monetary and financial disruption and, in some locations, particularly in city areas, collapse; provide chains, utilities, and different facets of primary infrastructure ceasing to perform (what occurs in main cities when meals deliveries cease for every week?), even widespread starvation; rising ranges of violence, each criminality and civil strife. These can be mixed, paradoxically, with the remaining organs of authority, nonetheless discredited, desperately cracking down on the enemy inside – no, not on murderers, robbers, and rapists, however on “science deniers,” “religious fanatics,” “haters,” “conspiracy theorists,” “insurrectionists,” “gun nuts,” “purveyors of “medical misinformation,” Russian or Chinese “stooges,” and, after all, “racists,” “sexists,” “homophobes,” and so forth. It’s the late Samuel Francis’ “anarcho-tyranny” nightmare come to life with a vengeance.

Nevertheless, for what it’s value, I put earlier than you three sensible duties on your consideration.

Firstly, be vigilant in opposition to deception, in a day when assuredly evil males and impostors will develop worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived. Admittedly, this can be a robust one, given the ever-present mendacity that surrounds us and the suppression of dissent. Try to sift reality from falsehood however don’t turn into obsessed as a result of, in lots of instances, you received’t have the ability to ensure anyway. Focus most on what’s proximate to you and on the individuals most essential to you. … Be skeptical – about everybody. … There could also be a price. As Solzhenitsyn stated, “He who chooses the lie as his principle inevitably chooses violence as his method.”

Secondly, as stewards of each worldly cost positioned on us by God and by different individuals—as fathers and moms, as husbands and wives, as little kids, as neighbors, as college students, as staff, as residents, as patriots—we should prudently look after these to whom we now have an obligation inside the restricted energy and knowledge allotted to us. Start with yourselves. Be as self-sufficient as attainable. Get concerned in your neighborhood; that leftist slogan is definitely a very good one: suppose globally, act domestically. Befriend your neighbors. Learn an actual talent – electrical energy, plumbing, carpentry. Farm! Don’t go to legislation college, for goodness’ sake. Get in form. Eat and sleep proper. Have loads of the necessities: meals, gasoline, gold, ammunition. Learn to shoot. Limit pc and cellphone time. Experience nature. Cultivate wholesome private relationships – actual ones, not digital ones. Marry younger, have youngsters, plenty of them – particularly ladies, don’t get seduced by all that “career” nonsense. Nobody on his or her deathbed ever stated, “Gosh, I wish I’d spent more time at the office.” Read outdated books. Cultivate advantage. Go to church.

Simply being what was once thought of regular and main a productive life is changing into essentially the most revolutionary act one can carry out. With that in thoughts, discover the energy to be revolutionaries certainly! In the face of the tradition of loss of life and extinction, select to affirm life.

You’ve seen the meme: Hard occasions create sturdy males; Strong males create good occasions; Good occasions create weak males; Weak males create arduous occasions. Well, take it from the weakling Boomer technology that introduced them to you: the arduous occasions, they is a-coming. But they received’t final endlessly. If you reside by them – and a few of you’ll not – we’ll see what prospects, as of now actually unimaginable, would possibly then exist. But you have to to be personally match to reap the benefits of them. You can even should be a part of some type of sustainable neighborhood of likeminded individuals.

Thirdly, for these of you who’re believers, significantly Christians, we should pray with out ceasing, agency in religion that, by no matter hardships might lie forward, even the very hairs of our head are all numbered, and the ultimate triumph of Truth isn’t unsure.

Thank you, and good luck. You’re going to want it.