The future costs of politically correct cultism

From HERE:

I rarely touch on the subject of political correctness as a focus in my writings, partially because the entire issue is so awash in pundits on either side that the scrambling clatter of voices tends to drown out the liberty movement perspective. Also, I don’t really see PC cultism as separate from the problems I am always battling against: collectivism and the erasure of the individual in the name of pleasing society. Political correctness is nothing more than a tool that collectivists and statists exploit in order to better achieve their endgame, which is conning the masses into believing that the group mind is real and that the individual mind is fiction.

Last year, I covered the PC issue in my article “The twisted motives behind political correctness.” I believe I analyzed the bulk of the issue extensively. However, the times are changing at a pace that boggles the mind; and this is by design. So, it may be necessary to square off against this monstrosity once again.

In order to better examine the true insanity of what many people now term “social justice warriors,” I must study a few aspects separately. First, let’s take a brief look at the mindset of your average social justice circus clown so that we might better understand what makes him/her/it tick.

Rebel without a legitimate cause

I spent several years (up until 2004, when I woke up from the false paradigm madness) as a Democrat. And before anyone judges that particular decision, I would suggest they keep in mind the outright fascist brothel for the military-industrial complex the Republican Party had become at that point and remains to this day. Almost every stepping stone that Barack Obama is using today to eradicate the Constitution was set in place by the Bush dynasty, including the Authorization Of Military Force, which was the foundation for the National Defence Authorization Act and the legal precedence for indefinite detention without trial of any person (including an American citizen) accused of terrorism by the president of the U.S., as well as the use of assassination by executive order.

But, hell, these are real issues — issues that many of my fellow Democrats at the time claimed they actually cared about. Today, though, liberal concerns about unconstitutional actions by the federal government have all but vanished. Today, the left fights the good fight against flags on the hoods of cars from long-canceled television shows and battles tooth and nail for the “right” of boys wearing wigs and skirts to use the girl’s bathroom. Today, the left even fights to remove the words “boy” and “girl” from our vocabulary. Yes, such noble pursuits as these will surely be remembered as a pinnacle in the annals of societal reform.

Maybe I realize the ideological goals of the social justice machine are meaningless on a surface level; and maybe you realize this, too. But these people live in their own little universe, which doesn’t extend far beyond the borders of their college campuses, the various Web forums they have hijacked and a trendy Marxist wine-and-swinger party here and there in New York or Hollywood. They actually think that they are on some great social crusade on par with the civil rights movements of the mid-1900s. They think they are the next Martin Luther King Jr. or the next Gandhi. The underlying banality and pointlessness of their cause completely escapes them. The PC cult is, in many respects, the antithesis of the liberty movement. We fight legitimate threats against legitimate freedoms; they fight mostly imaginary threats and seek to eradicate freedoms.

Don’t get me wrong; sometimes our concerns do align. For instance, liberty proponents fight back against the militarization of police just as avidly as leftists do, if not more so. But our movements handle the problem in very different ways. Look at Ferguson, Missouri, where anyone with any sense should be able to admit that the government response to protests was absolutely a step toward tyranny, ignoring violent looters while attacking peaceful activists. Leftists and PC cultists decided to follow the Saul Alinsky/communist playbook, busing in provocateurs from Chicago to further loot and burn down businesses even if they belonged to ethnic minorities. In the meantime, the liberty movement and Oath Keepers sent armed and trained men to defend those businesses regardless of who owned them and defied police and federal agents who tried to stop them.

The left gave the police and government a rationale for being draconian, while we removed the need for police and government entirely by providing security for the neighborhood (killing two birds with one stone). Either their methods are purely ignorant and do not work, or their methods are meant to achieve the opposite of their claims. In the end, the PC movement only serves establishment goals toward a fully collectivist and centralized society.

Your average PC drone does not understand the grander plan at work, nor does he want to. All he cares about is that he has found a “purpose” — a fabricated purpose as a useful idiot for power brokers, but a purpose nonetheless.

People must be forced to bake gay cakes

I personally do not care if two people of the same gender want to be in a relationship, but I do find the issue of gay marriage (and marriage in general) a rather odd conflict that misses the whole point. Marriage has been and always will be a religious institution, not federal; and I find government involvement in this institution to be rather despicable. When the Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage came down, I felt a little sorry for all the joyfully hopping homosexuals on the marbled steps of the hallowed building, primarily because they essentially were fighting for the state to provide recognition and legitimacy for their relationships. Frankly, who gives a rip what the state has to say in terms of your relationships or mine? The state is an arbitrary edifice, a facade wielding illusory power. If a relationship is based on true and enduring connection, then that is a marriage of sorts, whether the Supreme Court says so or not.

The only advantage to solidifying gay marriage in the eyes of the state is the advantage of being able to then use the state as an attack dog in order to force religious institutions to accept the status of gays in the same way the government does. And unfortunately, this is exactly what the PC cult is doing.
Should an individual, organization or business be allowed to refuse service to anyone for any reason? Should the state be allowed to force people into servitude to one group or another even if it is against their core values?

PC champions desperately try to make these questions a matter of “discrimination” alone. But they are more about personal rights and property and less about “hate speech.” Under natural law, as well as under the constitution, an individual has every right to refuse association with any other person for any reason. If I do not like you, the government does not have the authority to force me to be around you or to work for you. But this line has been consistently blurred over the years. As I’m sure most readers are familiar, the issue of gay cakes seems to arise over and over, as in cases in Colorado and Oregon in which religiously oriented business owners were punished for refusing to provide service for gay customers.

Punishments have included crippling fines designed to put store owners out of business and have even included gag orders restricting the freedom of businesses to continue speaking out against the orientation of customers they have refused.

In order to validate such actions, leftists will invariably bring up segregation as a backdrop for the gay cake debate. “What if the customers were black,” they ask. “Is it OK for a business to be whites only?”

My response? First, to be clear, I am talking specifically about private individuals and businesses, not public institutions as in the argument explored during Brown v. Board of Education. Private and public spaces are different issues with different nuances. I personally believe it is ignorant to judge someone solely on the color of his skin, and sexual orientation is not necessarily an issue to me. But it is equally ignorant for someone to think that the state exists to protect his feelings from being hurt. I’m sorry, but discrimination is a fact of life and always will be as long as individualism exists. The PC cultists don’t just want government recognition of their status; they want to homogenize individualism, erase it and force the rest of us to vehemently approve of that status without question. This is unacceptable.

Your feelings do not matter. They are not superior in importance to the fundamental freedom of each individual to choose his associations.

If a business refuses to serve blacks, or gays, or Tibetans, then, hey, it probably just lost a lot of potential profit. But that should absolutely be the business’s choice and not up to government to dictate. And in the case of “gay discrimination,” I think it is clear that the PC crowd is using the newfound legal victim group status of gays as a weapon to attack religiously based organizations. Make no mistake, this will not end with gay cakes. It is only a matter of time before pressure is brought to bear against churches as well for “discrimination.” And at the very least, I foresee many churches abandoning their 501(c)(3) tax exempt status.

If a group wants fair treatment in this world, that is one thing. I believe a gay person has every right to open his own bakery and bake gay marriage cakes to his little heart’s content. I believe a black person has every right to dislike white people, as some do, and refuse to associate with them or serve them if that’s what he/she wants. I also believe that under natural and constitutional law, a religious business owner is an independent and free individual with the right to choose who he will work for or accept money from. If he finds a customer’s behavior to be against his principles, he should not be forced to serve that person, their feelings be damned.

This is fair.

What is not fair is the use of government by some to gain an advantage over others based on the legal illusion of victim group status. PC cultists want us to think that choice of association is immoral and damaging to the group. I have to say I find them to be far more intolerant and dangerous than the people they claim to be fighting against, and this attitude is quickly devolving into full bore tyranny under the guise of “humanitarianism.”

Gender bending does not make you special

A man shaves his head and eyebrows, straps a plastic bottle to his face, and has his feet surgically modified to resemble flippers: Does this make him a dolphin, and should he be given victim group status as trans-species? I’m going to be brief here because I covered this issue in a previous article, but let’s lay everything on the table, as it were.

PC cultists are clamoring to redefine the fact of gender as an “undefinable” and even discriminatory social perception. No one, no matter how dedicated, will ever be able to redefine gender, unless they have the ability to change their very chromosomes. Nature defines gender, not man; and a man who undergoes numerous surgeries and body-changing steroid treatments will always have the genetics of a man even if he gives the appearance of a woman. Take away the drugs, and no amount of make-up will hide the chest hair growth and deepening voice.

This might be deemed a “narrow” view of gender, and I don’t care. Nature’s view of gender is the only one that counts. Psychological orientations are irrelevant to biological definitions. Are you a man trapped in a woman’s body? Irrelevant. A woman trapped in a man’s body? Doesn’t matter. If we are talking about legal bearings, then biological definitions are the only scale that makes sense. I realize that gender bending is very trendy right now, and Hollywood sure seems to want everyone to jump on that freaky disco bandwagon, but there is no such thing as gender-neutral people. They are not a group, let alone a victim group. There are men, and there are women; these are the only gender groups that count. Whether they would like to be the opposite does not change the inherent genetic definition. Period. To make such foolishness into an ideology is to attempt to bewilder man’s relationship to nature, and this will only lead to disaster.

There is no such thing as ‘white privilege’

A person determines his success in life by his character and his choices. Color does not define success, as there are many people of every color who are indeed successful. Do you have to work harder to gain success because you are brown, or black, or neon green? I’ve seen no concrete evidence that this is the case. I know that people who identify as “white” are still around 70 of the American population, thus there are more white people in successful positions due to sheer numbers.
I know that I personally grew up in a low-wage household and had little to no financial help as I entered the working world. Everything I have accomplished in my life to this point was done alongside people of color, some of whom had far more advantages than I did. I cannot speak for other people’s experiences, but I can say that being white was never more important in my life than being stubborn and dedicated.

I also find it a little absurd that most PC cultists who harp about so-called white privilege are often white themselves and haven’t the slightest experience or insight on what it is to be a person of color anyway. White privilege seems to be the PC cult’s answer to the argument that racism is a universal construct. Only whites can be racist, they claim, because only whites benefit from racism. I defy these jokers to show any tangible proof that an individual white person has more of a chance at success than a person of color due to predominant racism. Or are we just supposed to have blind faith in the high priests of PC academia and their morally relative roots?

The cost of social Marxism

Marxism (collectivism) uses many vehicles or Trojan horses to gain access to political and cultural spaces. Once present, it gestates like cancer. Younger generations are highly susceptible to social trends and are often easily manipulated by popular culture and academic authority, which is why we are seeing PC cultism explode with the millennials and post-millennials. In my brief participation on the left side of the false paradigm, political correctness was only beginning to take hold. A decade later, we have a bewildering manure storm on our hands. The result is a vast division within American society that cannot be mended. Those of us on the side of liberty are so different in our philosophies and solutions to social Marxists that the whole carnival can end only one way: a fight. And perhaps this is exactly what the elites want: left against right, black against white, gay against religious and straight, etc. As long as the PC movement continues to do the bidding of power brokers in their efforts toward the destruction of individual liberty, I see no other alternative but utter conflict.

–Brandon Smith 

=======

Re: "their endgame ... is conning the masses into believing that the group mind is real and that the individual mind is fiction."

Yes, endorsing group rights is all about avoiding individual responsibility.

BUT THERE WON'T BE A FIGHT - BECAUSE PC GANGSTER TAKERS ARE BUSY FIGHTING TRYING TO PROVE "I'M BETTER THAN YOU!!!" BUT MAKERS ARE TOO BUSY MINDING THEIR OWN BUSINESSES!

I doubt there will be a fight, because the Makers, by our very natures, CAN NOT RESIST EVIL MEN, simply because we're trying to hope to collaborate to objectively solve universal problems, while the Takers - the PC (Psychopathic Criminal) negligent, delinquent libertine "liberals" are all focused on their fears, and obsessively "PMS"ing about it all the time - since they don't believe in winning, they spend all their time trying to not-lose, to prove "I'm better than you!" all the time, by attacking innocent others first.

They are Paranoids ("They're all out to get me!") Masochists ("I'd better focus on my fears AS pain, lest I forget to defend myself, since hope is a trick!") and Slanderers ("Since they're all out to get me, I'd better get all of them, first!").

Political correctness (i.e: factual incorrectness) is extortion - fraud and slander - in that it pretends a civil 'probable' test applies, based on group-might-made-rights scenarios, to all aspects of life: white males are always to be 'legally' and 'defensively' pre-judged as "guilty until never proven innocent," for instance. It's extortion, and extortion is always a crime!

What sane people call "the slippery slope," liberals call "progress!"

Political correctness (slanderous victim-blaming factual incorrectness) is both fraud (crime) and extortion - pretending that, either you lie along with the majority, or you'll be replaced with a better liar by that same majority; group might makes right! Exact same as communazism.

It extorts people to "Go Along" (with criminal lies) "To Get Along" (with criminal liars).

PC pretends one is responsible to other people for their (possibly mistaken) reactions to one's new ideas, or to ideas which *might* offend them.

And the offense taken, is always subjective.

Since the deliberate use of PC implicitly slanders people AS being offensive, it attacks first, and therefore also inherently defends first-attackers (criminals).

PC implies one can and so should manage or avoid others' inevitable reactions of denial (automatic 'offense') to one's exchange of ideas, as if one somehow 'should,' even if one could, always try to defuse all of their normal psychologically procedural reaction stages (i.e: basic thinking) as summed up by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross.

Normal people WILL REACT to new ideas BY a well-established process of denial to acceptance, so it's literally outrageous to posit that any one person is responsible for monitoring, or has a duty to actively prevent this common thought process occurring in others.

This thought, or "thesis" (previously "Theosis," of "knowledge of God") process, prioritizing focus on the 'BAD' (the anti-thesis) in order to avoid it and ultimately test a hypo-thesis, to prove it good (as the final "syn-thesis") has been historically referred to as "Greek Logic" and called "Hegelian Dialectics," before Kubler-Ross added her modern speculations to it, but it's obviously nothing more than basic
"thinking."

So obviously, "Political Correctness" is only an extortion attempt at THOUGHT CONTROL, designed to shield criminals' crimes, and to prevent everyone from thinking at all, beyond the most shallow and banal trivialities. It defines the willfully ignorant and irresponsible, criminally negligent "victimology" process.

It is to insist (as all authoritarian extortions do) that one must ALWAYS Submit one's self to the greater (gang's "might-makes-right") good.

What is currently misconceived as 'altruism' and 'Hegelian dialectics' is really only a lie: a slanderous fraud designed to induce perpetual guilt in the victim, by way of the same, ages-old "carrot-and-stick," fear-and-greed behavioural conditioning binary.

It's proponents sadistically advocate for perpetual, self-sacrificing masochism in others, demanding they pacifistically agree with the predatory criminal aggressor's militaristic notion that they have no right to self-defense, nor even to think about planning for it.

To them, if their victims even THINK about planning to defend them selves, it's "slandering" the criminals AS the aggressors, (which they in fact already ARE, just by dint of their PC extortion-attempts).

Bottom line: criminals hate other people (potential victims and/or potential opponents) thinking about their crimes, just as they hate the admitting to them selves of being criminals.
And hating thinking has always had a perfectly valid label: “Psycho-Path” (literal translation: “Thought-Killer”).
;-(

Like I said:

"PC" (Psychotic Criminal) "Liberals" are all about the "PMS" (Paranoid Masochistic Slander).

;-)

More European Integration: The Exact Opposite of a Solution

From HERE:

While debtors, creditors, and economists focused on the Greek debt crisis, a report by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker with the heads of four other EU institutions went almost entirely unnoticed. Juncker proposes a predictably awful strategy for solving economic problems, greater centralization of power over the currency union’s economies. It recommended “quick fix” steps that could be introduced in the next two years, such as setting up a common bank deposit insurance system and promoting competitiveness, as well as longer term ideas, such as a common eurozone treasury.

You can see how one might reach such a conclusion. If one entity is going to control the money supply, an economic manipulation tactic often used by governments to smooth over economic problems, then one can see the reason in having that entity exercising greater economic controls over the economic policies that lead to such problems. It doesn’t make a great deal of sense for example, to have Greece spend without regard for consequences, while French and German taxpayers end up on the hook for their irresponsibility.

More European Integration: The Exact Opposite of a Solution

The flaw in this line of thinking however is that it begins with the assumption that the centralization which has already occurred is a good thing. It ignores the fact that said centralization is the only reason French and German taxpayers are on the hook for Greek debt to begin with. If other European countries are unhappy with their being bound to a nation irresponsible enough to address a debt crisis by electing communists, then ceding more control over their economies to a central authority hardly seems like a sound solution.

The proposal is entirely predictable however. “Never let a good crisis go to waste” as they say in Washington. Governments have this terrible habit of rewarding failure. “Oh, you completely failed to accomplish the purpose for which your bureaucracy was created? You must need more money and power”.

Forget the fact that Greek GDP growth was cut roughly in half since entering the Euro. That little piece of evidence would dissuade people from favoring greater centralization. Definitely pay no attention to the fact that the same can be said for Italy, Spain, and Portugal, that would not favor Juncker’s proposal. By the EU’s reasoning, an institution which fails to centrally plan the economies of a single political unit, will somehow be able to centrally plan the economies for an entire continent and beyond.

The search continues for a one-handed economist. Some know-it-all guru who can figure out how a policy change from a single city will impact the economic behaviors of hundreds of millions of people with diverse interests over millions of miles of territory. The problem with such a strategy should seem obvious. There are just too many variables for any man or group of men to even attempt to contemplate.

We all have to make economic decisions every day. Everything from investment strategies to what we eat for dinner. Contemplating the variables for all of these things in each of our own individual lives is very complex, to the point that many of us will hire experts to handle them, and even then there are failures. How one comes to the conclusion that multiplying that complexity by hundreds of millions of times over will somehow simplify the equation, or lead to greater prosperity, simply escapes reason.

In the United States, we often see the deleterious effects of such flawed thinking. It is bad enough when your local government creates some economic policy that might negatively impact your business or favor some competitor. Luckily, you have the option to leave that place. This becomes more difficult when that policy is implemented at the state level, and damn near impossible when it is tackled by the federal government. Let the federal government go and enter into economic treaties with foreign nations, and the problem becomes even more difficult to escape.

This trend toward centralization is fueled at best by ignorance, and at worst by malice. Far from creating greater prosperity, centralization only makes bad policy more difficult to escape. One of two things is true. Either that is the goal of such policies, or the people who claim to be uniquely qualified to dictate the economic behaviors of hundreds of millions of people over millions of miles of territory, are so incompetent that they can’t even see the obviousness of that fact.

Tom Woods gave a great talk about secession earlier this year in Houston. The talk was not specific to economics, but the overall results of large centralized States, versus that of smaller autonomous ones. Unsurprisingly, large centralized states have a terrible habit of bringing immeasurable misery, poverty, and death, while smaller autonomous ones tend to thrive.


The further removed from the individual responsibility becomes, the greater the tragedy that follows. If smaller autonomous nations fare better than large centralized States, how much better off would we all be, if States went away altogether, and individuals were free to make their own choices?

https://youtu.be/IXOEdvfMeIY

Economic HIT Put Out On Greece

From HERE:

            An Economic Hit Man Speaks Out: John Perkins on How Greece Has Fallen Victim to "Economic Hit Men"

Thursday, 11 September 2014 00:00 By Michael Nevradakis, Truthout | Interview

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"My sin was ripping off people around the world," said John Perkins, author of "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man," at Transitions Bookplace in Chicago, on February 3, 2006. (Photo: Peter Thompson / The New York Times)John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, discusses how Greece and other eurozone countries have become the new victims of "economic hit men."
John Perkins is no stranger to making confessions. His well-known book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, revealed how international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, while publicly professing to "save" suffering countries and economies, instead pull a bait-and-switch on their governments: promising startling growth, gleaming new infrastructure projects and a future of economic prosperity - all of which would occur if those countries borrow huge loans from those organizations. Far from achieving runaway economic growth and success, however, these countries instead fall victim to a crippling and unsustainable debt burden.
That's where the "economic hit men" come in: seemingly ordinary men, with ordinary backgrounds, who travel to these countries and impose the harsh austerity policies prescribed by the IMF and World Bank as "solutions" to the economic hardship they are now experiencing. Men like Perkins were trained to squeeze every last drop of wealth and resources from these sputtering economies, and continue to do so to this day. In this interview, which aired on Dialogos Radio, Perkins talks about how Greece and the eurozone have become the new victims of such "economic hit men."
Michael Nevradakis: In your book, you write about how you were, for many years, a so-called "economic hit man." Who are these economic hit men, and what do they do?
John Perkins: Essentially, my job was to identify countries that had resources that our corporations want, and that could be things like oil - or it could be markets - it could be transportation systems. There're so many different things. Once we identified these countries, we arranged huge loans to them, but the money would never actually go to the countries; instead it would go to our own corporations to build infrastructure projects in those countries, things like power plants and highways that benefitted a few wealthy people as well as our own corporations, but not the majority of people who couldn't afford to buy into these things, and yet they were left holding a huge debt, very much like what Greece has today, a phenomenal debt.

"[Indebted countries] become servants to what I call the corporatocracy ... today we have a global empire, and it's not an American empire. It's not a national empire ... It's a corporate empire, and the big corporations rule."

And once [they were] bound by that debt, we would go back, usually in the form of the IMF - and in the case of Greece today, it's the IMF and the EU [European Union] - and make tremendous demands on the country: increase taxes, cut back on spending, sell public sector utilities to private companies, things like power companies and water systems, transportation systems, privatize those, and basically become a slave to us, to the corporations, to the IMF, in your case to the EU, and basically, organizations like the World Bank, the IMF, the EU, are tools of the big corporations, what I call the "corporatocracy."
And before turning specifically to the case of Greece, let's talk a little bit more about the manner in which these economic hit men and these organizations like the IMF operate. You mentioned, of course, how they go in and they work to get these countries into massive debt, that money goes in and then goes straight back out. You also mentioned in your book these overly optimistic growth forecasts that are sold to the politicians of these countries but which really have no resemblance to reality.
Exactly, we'd show that if these investments were made in things like electric energy systems that the economy would grow at phenomenally high rates. The fact of the matter is, when you invest in these big infrastructure projects, you do see economic growth, however, most of that growth reflects the wealthy getting wealthier and wealthier; it doesn't reflect the majority of the people, and we're seeing that in the United States today.

"In the case of Greece, my reaction was that 'Greece is being hit.' There's no question about it."

For example, where we can show economic growth, growth in the GDP, but at the same time unemployment may be going up or staying level, and foreclosures on houses may be going up or staying stable. These numbers tend to reflect the very wealthy, since they have a huge percentage of the economy, statistically speaking. Nevertheless, we would show that when you invest in these infrastructure projects, your economy does grow, and yet, we would even show it growing much faster than it ever conceivably would, and that was only used to justify these horrendous, incredibly debilitating loans.
Is there a common theme with respect to the countries typically targeted? Are they, for instance, rich in resources or do they typically possess some other strategic importance to the powers that be?
Yes, all of those. Resources can take many different forms: One is the material resources like minerals or oil; another resource is strategic location; another resource is a big marketplace or cheap labor. So, different countries make different requirements. I think what we're seeing in Europe today isn't any different, and that includes Greece.
What happens once these countries that are targeted are indebted? How do these major powers, these economic hit men, these international organizations come back and get their "pound of flesh," if you will, from the countries that are heavily in debt?
By insisting that the countries adopt policies that will sell their publicly owned utility companies, water and sewage systems, maybe schools, transportation systems, even jails, to the big corporations. Privatize, privatize. Allow us to build military bases on their soil. Many things can be done, but basically, they become servants to what I call the corporatocracy. You have to remember that today we have a global empire, and it's not an American empire. It's not a national empire. It doesn't help the American people very much. It's a corporate empire, and the big corporations rule. They control the politics of the United States, and to a large degree they control a great deal of the policies of countries like China, around the world.
John, looking specifically now at the case of Greece, of course you mentioned your belief that the country has become the victim of economic hit men and these international organizations . . . what was your reaction when you first heard about the crisis in Greece and the measures that were to be implemented in the country?
I've been following Greece for a long time. I was on Greek television. A Greek film company did a documentary called "Apology of an Economic Hit Man," and I also spent a lot of time in Iceland and in Ireland. I was invited to Iceland to help encourage the people there to vote on a referendum not to repay their debts, and I did that and encouraged them not to, and they did vote no, and as a result, Iceland is doing quite well now economically compared to the rest of Europe. Ireland, on the other hand: I tried to do the same thing there, but the Irish people apparently voted against the referendum, though there's been many reports that there was a lot of corruption.

"That's part of the game: convince people that they're wrong, that they're inferior. The corporatocracy is incredibly good at that."

In the case of Greece, my reaction was that "Greece is being hit." There's no question about it. Sure, Greece made mistakes, your leaders made some mistakes, but the people didn't really make the mistakes, and now the people are being asked to pay for the mistakes made by their leaders, often in cahoots with the big banks. So, people make tremendous amounts of money off of these so-called "mistakes," and now, the people who didn't make the mistakes are being asked to pay the price. That's consistent around the world: We've seen it in Latin America. We've seen it in Asia. We've seen it in so many places around the world.
This leads directly to the next question I had: From my observation, at least in Greece, the crisis has been accompanied by an increase in self-blame or self-loathing; there's this sentiment in Greece that many people have that the country failed, that the people failed . . . there's hardly even protest in Greece anymore, and of course there's a huge "brain drain" - there's a lot of people that are leaving the country. Does this all seem familiar to you when comparing to other countries in which you've had personal experience?
Sure, that's part of the game: convince people that they're wrong, that they're inferior. The corporatocracy is incredibly good at that, whether it is back during the Vietnam War, convincing the world that the North Vietnamese were evil; today it's the Muslims. It's a policy of them versus us: We are good. We are right. We do everything right. You're wrong. And in this case, all of this energy has been directed at the Greek people to say "you're lazy; you didn't do the right thing; you didn't follow the right policies," when in actuality, an awful lot of the blame needs to be laid on the financial community that encouraged Greece to go down this route. And I would say that we have something very similar going on in the United States, where people here are being led to believe that because their house is being foreclosed that they were stupid, that they bought the wrong houses; they overspent themselves.

"We know that austerity does not work in these situations."

The fact of the matter is their bankers told them to do this, and around the world, we've come to trust bankers - or we used to. In the United States, we never believed that a banker would tell us to buy a $500,000 house if in fact we could really only afford a $300,000 house. We thought it was in the bank's interest not to foreclose. But that changed a few years ago, and bankers told people who they knew could only afford a $300,000 house to buy a $500,000 house.
"Tighten your belt, in a few years that house will be worth a million dollars; you'll make a lot of money" . . . in fact, the value of the house went down; the market dropped out; the banks foreclosed on these houses, repackaged them, and sold them again. Double whammy. The people were told, "you were stupid; you were greedy; why did you buy such an expensive house?" But in actuality, the bankers told them to do this, and we've grown up to believe that we can trust our bankers. Something very similar on a larger scale happened in so many countries around the world, including Greece.
In Greece, the traditional major political parties are, of course, overwhelmingly in favor of the harsh austerity measures that have been imposed, but also we see that the major business and media interests are also overwhelmingly in support. Does this surprise you in the slightest?
No, it doesn't surprise me and yet it's ridiculous because austerity does not work. We've proven that time and time again, and perhaps the greatest proof was the opposite, in the United States during the Great Depression, when President Roosevelt initiated all these policies to put people back to work, to pump money into the economy. That's what works. We know that austerity does not work in these situations.

"What I didn't realize during any of this period was how much corporatocracy does not want a united Europe."

We also have to understand that, in the United States for example, over the past 40 years, the middle class has been on the decline on a real dollar basis, while the economy has been increasing. In fact, that's pretty much happened around the world. Globally, the middle class has been in decline. Big business needs to recognize - it hasn't yet, but it needs to recognize - that that serves nobody's long-term interest, that the middle class is the market. And if the middle class continues to be in decline, whether it's in Greece or the United States or globally, ultimately businesses will pay the price; they won't have customers. Henry Ford once said: "I want to pay all my workers enough money so they can go out and buy Ford cars." That's a very good policy. That's wise. This austerity program moves in the opposite direction and it's a foolish policy.
In your book, which was written in 2004, you expressed hope that the euro would serve as a counterweight to American global hegemony, to the hegemony of the US dollar. Did you ever expect that we would see in the European Union what we are seeing today, with austerity that is not just in Greece but also in Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, and also several other countries as well?
What I didn't realize during any of this period was how much corporatocracy does not want a united Europe. We need to understand this. They may be happy enough with the euro, with one currency - they are happy to a certain degree by having it united enough that markets are open - but they do not want standardized rules and regulations. Let's face it, big corporations, the corporatocracy, take advantage of the fact that some countries in Europe have much more lenient tax laws, some have much more lenient environmental and social laws, and they can pit them against each other.

"[Rafael Correa] ... has to be aware that if you stand up too strongly against the system, if the economic hit men are not happy, if they don't get their way, then the jackals will come in and assassinate you or overthrow you in a coup."

What would it be like for big corporations if they didn't have their tax havens in places like Malta or other places? I think we need to recognize that what the corporatocracy saw at first, the solid euro, a European union seemed like a very good thing, but as it moved forward, they could see that what was going to happen was that social and environmental laws and regulations were going to be standardized. They didn't want that, so to a certain degree what's been going on in Europe has been because the corporatocracy wants Europe to fail, at least on a certain level.
You wrote about the examples of Ecuador and other countries, which after the collapse of oil prices in the late '80s found themselves with huge debts and this, of course, led to massive austerity measures . . . sounds all very similar to what we are now seeing in Greece. How did the people of Ecuador and other countries that found themselves in similar situations eventually resist?
Ecuador elected a pretty remarkable president, Rafael Correa, who has a PhD in economics from a United States university. He understands the system, and he understood that Ecuador took on these debts back when I was an economic hit man and the country was ruled by a military junta that was under the control of the CIA and the US. That junta took on these huge debts, put Ecuador in deep debt; the people didn't agree to that. When Rafael Correa was democratically elected, he immediately said, "We're not paying these debts; the people did not take on these debts; maybe the IMF should pay the debts and maybe the junta, which of course was long gone - moved to Miami or someplace - should pay the debts, maybe John Perkins and the other economic hit men should pay the debts, but the people shouldn't."
And since then, he's been renegotiating and bringing the debts way down and saying, "We might be willing to pay some of them." That was a very smart move; it reflected similar things that had been done at different times in places like Brazil and Argentina, and more recently, following that model, Iceland, with great success. I have to say that Correa has had some real setbacks since then . . . he, like so many presidents, has to be aware that if you stand up too strongly against the system, if the economic hit men are not happy, if they don't get their way, then the jackals will come in and assassinate you or overthrow you in a coup. There was an attempted coup against him; there was a successful coup in a country not too far away from him, Honduras, because these presidents stood up.
We have to realize that these presidents are in very, very vulnerable positions, and ultimately we the people have to stand up, because leaders can only do a certain amount. Today, in many places, leaders are not just vulnerable; it doesn't take a bullet to bring down a leader anymore. A scandal - a sex scandal, a drug scandal - can bring down a leader. We saw that happen to Bill Clinton, to Strauss-Kahn of the IMF; we've seen it happen a number of times. These leaders are very aware that they are in very vulnerable positions: If they stand up or go against the status quo too strongly, they're going to be taken out, one way or another. They're aware of that, and it behooves we the people to really stand up for our own rights.
You mentioned the recent example of Iceland . . . other than the referendum that was held, what other measures did the country adopt to get out of this spiral of austerity and to return to growth and to a much more positive outlook for the country?
It's been investing money in programs that put people back to work and it's also been putting on trial some of the bankers that caused the problems, which has been a big uplift in terms of morale for the people. So Iceland has launched some programs that say "No, we're not going to go into austerity; we're not going to pay back these loans; we're going to put the money into putting people back to work," and ultimately that's what drives an economy, people working. If you've got high unemployment, like you do in Greece today, extremely high unemployment, the country's always going to be in trouble. You've got to bring down that unemployment, you've got to hire people. It's so important to put people back to work. Your unemployment is about 28 percent; it's staggering, and disposable income has dropped 40 percent and it's going to continue to drop if you have high unemployment. So, the important thing for an economy is to get the employment up and get disposable income back up, so that people will invest in their country and in goods and services.
In closing, what message would you like to share with the people of Greece, as they continue to experience and to live through the very harsh results of the austerity policies that have been implemented in the country for the past three years?
I want to draw upon Greece's history. You're a proud, strong country, a country of warriors. The mythology of the warrior to some degree comes out of Greece, and so does democracy! And to realize that the marketplace is a democracy today, and how we spend our money is casting our ballot. Most political democracies are corrupt, including that of the United States. Democracy is not really working on a governmental basis because the corporations are in charge. But it is working on a market basis. I would encourage the people of Greece to stand up: Don't pay off those debts; have your own referendums; refuse to pay them off; go to the streets and strike.
And so, I would encourage the Greek people to continue to do this. Don't accept this criticism that it's your fault, you're to blame, you've got to suffer austerity, austerity, austerity. That only works for the rich people; it does not work for the average person or the middle class. Build up that middle class; bring employment back; bring disposable income back to the average citizen of Greece. Fight for that; make it happen; stand up for your rights; respect your history as fighters and leaders in democracy, and show the world!
The podcast of the original interview as it aired on Dialogos Radio is available at dialogosradio.org.

Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

Michael Nevradakis

Michael Nevradakis is a Ph.D. student in media studies at the University of Texas at Austin and a US Fulbright Scholar presently based in Athens, Greece. Michael is also the host of Dialogos Radio, a weekly radio program featuring interviews and coverage of current events in Greece.

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From HERE and HERE:

The Myth of Islamic Science

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In this provocative essay, Waseem Altaf, the author argues that the notion of a golden age of Islamic learning is a myth created to counter the current sorry state of intellectual life in the Islamic world.  

Introduced by Dr. N.S. Rajaram

Editor’s introduction

It is widely believed and taught, including in India, that there was a Golden Age of Islamic learning that made a major contribution to science and the arts. In India we are told that this ‘synthesis’ between Hindu and Muslim thought gave rise to a great ‘syncretic’ civilization that was suppressed and eventually destroyed by the British. However, this flies in the face of the fact that not a single name of a major scientist from the five-plus centuries of Islamic rule of India has come down to us. We have to go to pre-Islamic India to invoke names from the past— names like Aryabhata, Varahamihira and the like.

Al Biruni, eyewitness to the destruction of Indian learning

It is a similar story when we look at universities or centers of learning. Pre-Islamic India was renowned for its universities: Takshashila, Vikramashila, Nalanda, Ujjain and other places attracted students and scholars alike from far and wide, much like the United States of today.

After the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate, not a single center of learning (other than Islamic seminaries) was established for over seven centuries. The first modern universities came to be established only during the British rule.

Also worth noting is the fact that the so-called ‘synthesis’ of learning took place before Islamic invasions engulfed both India and Persia in a Dark Age. The Sassanid emperor Kosrau I deserves much of the credit for work that is wrongly credited to Islamic rulers and scholars.

Khosrau I (reigned 531–79) known as Anushirvan or ‘the immortal soul’ was a great patron of philosophy and knowledge. He gave refuge to scholars from the Eastern Roman Empire when the bigoted Christian Emperor Justinian closed down the neo-Platonist schools in Athens in 529 AD. Earlier, in 415 AD, Christian goons led by ‘Saint’ Cyril burnt down the great library in Alexandria and murdered the neo-Platonic scholar Hypatia who taught there, because another ‘saint’ Paul had decreed that women must keep their silence.

Khosrau was greatly interested in Indian philosophy, science, mathematics, and medicine. He sent multiple embassies and gifts to the Indian court and requested them to send back philosophers to teach in his court in return. Khosrau made many translations of texts from Greek,Sanskrit, and Syriac into Middle Persian. He was lauded as “Plato’s Philosopher King” by the Greek refugees that he allowed into his empire because of his great interest in Platonic philosophy.

A synthesis of Greek, Persian, Indian, and Armenian learning traditions took place within the Sassanian Empire. One outcome of this synthesis created what is known as bimari-stan (‘home for the ailing’), the first hospital that introduced a concept of segregating wards according to pathology. Greek pharmacology fused with Iranian and Indian traditions resulted in significant advances in medicine.

Regrettably this pre-Islamic era  of learning came to an abrupt end following the Arab (Muslim) invasions and the defeat of Sassanid Persia The reality is that most of this ‘synthesis’ took place in the pre-Islamic period until Islamic invasions sank both Persia and India into a Dark Age lasting centuries.

IndiaFacts is grateful to the author Waseem Altaf and the publication Viewpointsonline.net for the article. No photograph of the author is published out of concern for the author’s safety. Here is his essay.

Science in the Islamic world

Rational thought in the Muslim world developed during the reign of liberal Muslim rulers of the Abbasid dynasty. However it was after the rise of scholars like Al-Ghazali that all scientific reasoning came to an end in the 13th century. As we remain enamored by our past achievements in the sciences, we forget that there is very little “original” we as Muslims can celebrate and be proud of.

It was during the reign of the early Abbasid caliphs, particularly Mamun-ur-Rashid (around 813 CE) that in his Dar-ul-Hikmah (the house of wisdom) in Baghdad, Muslim scholars would begin translating the classic Greek works, primarily toeing the Aristotelian tradition. In addition, they were heavily relying on Persian and Indian sources.  They also penned huge commentaries on works by Greek philosophers. However, the Muslim translators were small in number and were primarily driven by curiosity. More than ninety nine percent Arabic translations of works of Greek philosophers were done by either Christian or Jewish scholars. It is interesting to note that Islamic astronomy, based on Ptolemy’s system was geocentric. Algebra was originally a Greek discipline and ‘Arabic’ numbers were actually Indian.

Al-Ghazali put an end to free thinking

[N.S Rajaram: Indians invented algebra, calling it bija-ganita.Greeks considered some special cases in number theory like Diophantine Equations, also known to the Indians. The cumbersome letter-based notation (like the later Roman numerals) did not lend itself to problems in algebra. The major Greek contributions were the concept of proof (known also to Indians) and above all the axiomatic method at which they excelled. The Arabs themselves never denied their indebtedness to the Hindus in astronomy, medicine and mathematics. They called their numbers ‘Hindu numerals’. As noted in the Editor’s Introduction, much of this took place in pre-Islamic Iran, especially under Khusro I.]

Most of these works were available to the West during 12th century when the first renaissance was taking place. Although Western scholars did travel to Spain to study Arabic versions of classical Greek thought, they soon found out that better versions of original texts in Greek were also available in the libraries of the ancient Greek city of Byzantium.

Notable Muslim scholars

However, it would be unfair not to mention some of those great Muslim scholars, though very few in number, who genuinely contributed in the development of philosophy and science.

1. Al-Razi  (865 – 925 CE) from Persia, the greatest of all Muslim physicians, philosophers and alchemists wrote 184 articles and books, dismissed revelation and considered religion a dangerous thing. Al-Razi was condemned for blasphemy and almost all his books were destroyed later.
2. Ibn-e-Sina or Avicinna (980-1037CE), another great physician, philosopher and scientist was an Uzbek. Avicenna held philosophy superior to theology. His views were in sharp contrast to central Islamic doctrines and he rejected the resurrection of the dead in flesh and blood. As a consequence of his views, he became main target of Al-Ghazali and was labeled an apostate.
3. Ibn-e-Rushd (1126-1198 CE) or Averroes from Spain was a philosopher and scientist who expounded the Quran in Aristotelian terms. He was found guilty of heresy, his books burnt, he was interrogated and banished from Lucena.
4. Al-Bairuni (973-1048 CE), the father of Indology and a versatile genius, was of the strong view that Quran has its own domain and it does not interfere with the realm of science.[NS Rajaram: Al-Bairuni, or Al-Biruni as he is better known in India, makes it clear that the Islamic invasions made Hindu (and Buddhistic) centers of learning their special targets. In his words: “…Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in all directions. …This is the reason too why Hindu sciences have retired far away from those parts of the country conquered by us, and have fled to places which our (Muslim) hands cannot reach.” The last great center of mathematics was in Kerala, from their reach.]
5. Al-Khawarazmi (780-850 CE) was another Persian mathematician, astronomer and geographer. The historian Al-Tabari considered him a Zoroastrian while others thought that he was a Muslim. However nowhere in his works has he acknowledged Islam or linked any of his findings to the holy text.
6. Omar Khayyam (1048-1131 CE), one of the greatest mathematicians, astronomers and poets was highly critical of religion, particularly Islam. He severely criticized the idea that every event and phenomena was the result of divine intervention. [NS Rajaram: Omar Kyayyam is known to the world mainly as the author of the Rubayiyat (in its English translation by Fitzgerald), but native Persians see him as a minor poet but a great scientist. Like all free thinkers he was denounced as a heretic.]
7. Al-Farabi (872-950 CE), another great Muslim philosopher, highly inspired by Aristotle, considered reason superior to revelation and advocated for the relegation of prophecy to philosophy.
8. Abu Musa Jabir- bin- Hayan or Geber (721-815 CE) was an accomplished Muslim alchemist cum pharmacist. Although he was inclined towards mysticism, he fully acknowledged the role of experimentation in scientific endeavors.
9. Ibn-ul-haitham or Hazen (965-1040 CE) was an outstanding physicist, mathematician, astronomer and an expert on optics. He was ordered by Fatimid King Al-Hakim to regulate the floods of the Nile, which he knew was not scientifically possible. He feigned madness and was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life.

Contribution of unorthodox thinkers

As we go through the life histories of these great men we find that they were influenced by Greek, Babylonian or Indian contributions to philosophy and science, had a critical and reasoning mind and were ‘not good’ Muslims or even atheists. A significant number of them were reluctant to even reveal the status of their beliefs for fear of reprisal from the fanatics. They never ascribed their achievements to Islam or divinity. And they were scholars and scientists because of a critical mind which would think and derive inspiration from observation and not scriptures which set restrictions on free thinking and unhindered pursuit of knowledge.

Avicenna author of the famous Canon of Medicine

Hence bringing in Islam to highlight achievements of Muslim scientists is nothing but sheer rhetoric as these men did not derive their achievements out of Islam or flourished due to Islam. And we find that whatever little contribution to science was made can be owed to ‘imperfect Muslims’.

[NS Rajaram: Muslims are not alone in this. Many Hindu scholars also make extravagant claims in the name of ‘Vedic science’ and the like that have no basis. Considering their numbers, the Hindus don’t have a particularly good record, compared to say, the Jews. India and Israel became independent countries around the same time but in science there is no comparison. Retreat into religion in the name of ‘spirituality’ must take its share of the blame. Hindu moneybags spend lavishly on religious endowments and dubious holy men, but are measly when it comes to supporting temples of learning. And the few they do (like the Hindu University of America) are an embarrassment and get bogged down in obscurantism and mismanagement.]

 Putting ‘God’s hands in chains’

However it was the ‘perfect Muslim’, the Islamist, from the 12th century who was to give the biggest blow to scientific thought in the Muslim world.

Imam Ghazali (1058-1111 CE) who still occupies a centrestage among Muslim philosophers openly denounced the laws of nature and scientific reasoning. Ghazali argued that any such laws would put God’s hands in chains. He would assert that a piece of cotton burns when put to fire, not because of physical reasons but because God wants it to burn. Ghazali was also a strong supporter of the Ash’arites, the philosophers who would uphold the precedence of divine intervention over physical phenomena and bitterly opposed the Mu’tazillites— or the rationalists who were the true upholders of scientific thought.

More in Islamic History

The sinister side of Sufism

Dispelling the myth of Akbar the Great

Book Review—Tipu Sultan : The Tyrant of Mysore

Rending the veil of historical negationism in India

William Dalrymple’s skewed perspective on the Caliphate

In other words Ghazali championed the cause of orthodoxy and dogmatism at the cost of rationality and scientific reasoning. Today we find that all four major schools of Sunni Islam reject the concept of ‘Ijtehad’ which can loosely be translated as ‘freedom of thought’. Hence there is absolutely no room for any innovation or modification in traditional thought patterns.

We also find that as Europe was making use of technology while transforming into a culture of machines, the acceptance of these machines was extremely slow in the Islamic world. One prime example is that of the printing press which reached Muslim lands in 1492. However, printing was banned by Islamic authorities because they believed the Koran would be dishonored by appearing out of a machine. As a result, Arabs did not acquire printing press until the 18th century.

Khusro Anivarshan known as the ‘Just’

It also stands established that science is born out of secularism and democracy and not religious dogmatism. And science only flourished in places where religion had no role to play in matters of state. Hence there is an inverse relationship between religious orthodoxy and progress in science. Rational thought in the Muslim world developed during the reign of liberal Muslim rulers of the Abbasid dynasty who patronized the Mu’tazillites or rational thinkers.

However it was after the religious zealots’ compilation of the ahadis and the rise of scholars like Al-Ghazali that all scientific reasoning came to an end in the 13th century. As a consequence, Muslims contributed almost nothing to scientific progress and human civilization since the dawn of the 13th century. And while science and technology flourish in the modern world, a vast majority of Muslims, engulfed by obscurantism, still find solace in fantasies of a bygone era——the so called ‘golden age’ of Islam.

Concluding comments by Dr. N.S. Rajaram

Whether one agrees with the author’s radical conclusions or not, it is undeniable that the contributions to science under the great Islamic empires was disproportionately small considering their wealth and power. We already saw that their record in India even during the supposedly ‘great’ Mogul empire was dismal. Part of the problem was that Islamic rulers, instead of encouraging learning, hired foreigners and mercenaries— like Hindus in India and Jews and Christians in the Ottoman Empire.

Indian Muslim historians like Irfan Habib have tried to explain this intellectual vacuum of the Islamic period in India claiming that its rulers were mainly nomadic tribes from Central Asia (like Turks) who were more interested in military exploits than learning or scholarship. But why only under Islam in a belt from India to Turkey and beyond, and that too only after the coming of Islam?

One has to agree with the author Waseem Altaf that Islam (like Medieval Christianity) was mainly responsible for this continuing backwardness. Others, notably Hindus should learn from this and avoid getting trapped in the past.

Preparedness critics are history’s cannon fodder

From HERE:

The world is entering a kind of no man’s land, in between the realms of insane denial and utterly obvious crisis. Europe is now destabilizing amid the Greek soap opera (an event that I predicted in January would occur in 2015); China’s stock market bubble is bursting; and the U.S. dollar’s world reserve status is about to be decimated by the global shift toward the International Monetary Fund’s basket currency reserve system. I’m afraid I’m going to have to say this because I don’t know if anyone else will: Alternative economic analysts were right, and the mainstream choir was either terribly wrong or disgustingly dishonest. However, as most of us in the liberty movement are well aware, being right is not necessarily a solution to disaster.

At the forefront of alternative economics and constitutional vigilance are the people doing the real work in the movement: the preppers. These are the activists taking concrete action in the tangible world (as opposed to the ethereal laziness of the intellectual world) first to make themselves as independent as possible from the mainstream grid, thereby removing themselves as a potential refugee or looter in the event of national crisis. Second, they are the people mastering valuable and necessary skills that will allow them to rebuild any collapsed social and financial system. Third, they are the people most capable of defending our inherent freedoms and the principles of our founding culture, and they are the only people organizing locally for mutual aid and security. The fact of the matter is preppers are free, and almost everyone else is a slave — a slave to dependency, a slave to doubt, a slave to ignorance, a slave to fear and, thus, a slave to petty establishment authority.

During the Great Depression, the vast majority of American citizens were rural, farm-oriented people with survival skills far beyond the modern American. “Prepping” in those days was ingrained in our society, rather than marginalized and labeled “fringe.”

Today, the numbers are reversed, with a dwindling number of farm-experienced Americans and a vast wasteland of urban and suburban citizens — many with few, if any, legitimate skill sets.

During the Great Depression, millions of people died of starvation and general poverty, despite the incredible number of people with rural survival knowledge. What do you think would happen to our effeminate; metrosexual; iPhone-addicted; lisping; limp-wristed; self-obsessed; Twitter-, texting-, video game-addled; La-Z-Boy-riding; overgrown-child culture in the event that another economic crisis even remotely similar were to occur? Yes, most of them would die, probably in a horrible fashion.

Think about it for a moment. An incredible subsection of Americans do not know how to feed themselves; they do not know how to hunt; they do not know how to grow crops; they do not know how to repair any necessary items used for subsistence; they do not know how to build anything useful; they do not know how to shoot; they do not know how to defend themselves; they don’t even know how to cook a pot of rice properly. Their only skills involve parroting snarky remarks from their favorite lowest-common-denominator television and Web shows, building ample karma points on Reddit, and avoiding any stance contrary to what they perceive to be the majority opinion (which they also derive from mainstream media and websites).

It is decidedly ironic given the uselessness of such people that it is often the worst subsections of the blind, deaf and dumb that choose to “critique” the prepper lifestyle as “disturbed” or “dangerous.”

In my view, they are absolutely damned pathetic and should be looked down upon with utter contempt as the most concentrated example of slithering human misery ever to smear across the pages of history.

But, hey, that doesn’t mean I wish them harm.

People who are unaware and unprepared are not necessarily our enemies. At one time or another, we all were unaware of the underlying truths to our system and our future, until we woke up one day. On the other hand, there are some people who have truly evolved from the sickly and bitter bile scraped from the lower intestine of the grotesquely ignorant. These people are the anti-preppers.

Anti-preppers are well aware of the philosophies and fact-based arguments of prepper activism; but rather than ignoring or dismissing us outright and moving on with their vapid lives, they instead seek to destroy preppers and the prepping ideal. Why? To understand that, you have to understand the nature of statists and collectivists because that it where these people root themselves and their twisted worldview.

I recently read an article by Joshua Krause over at The Daily Sheeple in which he countered a mainstream hit piece article against preppers titled “Be prepared For preppers.” The article is itself an immensely disturbed display, first using typical and unimaginative ad hominem arguments to marginalize preppers, then mutating into a treatise on why preppers should all be exterminated.
Krause did a fine job of dismantling the substandard and journalistically challenged propaganda essay, but I would like to go beyond the typical arguments of anti-preppers and into the mindset that drives them. I recommend you read “Be prepared for preppers” for good measure, being that it is a perfect example of the psychopathic nature of the common statist. Then, I would like to perform a little brain surgery here and peel away some layers of psyche so that you can understand why these people hate us so much.

The prepper stereotype

The sad reality is most anti-preppers I’ve dealt with in person have never even talked to a prepper face to face until they had met me. They tend to enter into an immediate debate posture with multiple assumptions in terms of what a prepper believes and how a prepper lives. This posture begins with an incredulous and sarcastic demeanor. And as they begin to realize that the prepper they are dealing with is smarter than they are, their attitude devolves into conditioned talking points and generally indignant frothing.

Anti-preppers do not know or associate with real preppers. Rather, they derive their opinions of us
from popular media, which is in most cases openly biased; episodes of “Doomsday Preppers” and other shows designed to make us look ridiculous; and Southern Poverty Law Center-influenced news articles loaded with carefully crafted slander. They rarely, if ever, confront a prepper or preppers on neutral ground and address facts or figures honestly.

The bulk of what makes up the prepper stereotype is utter nonsense. But it reinforces the anti-prepper’s hateful inclinations, so they eat it up without question.

They hate us because of our freedom

Are anti-preppers “terrorists?” Yes, they are. It might sound harsh, but consider the attitude of the anti-prepper for a moment. He hates you because you have chosen a lifestyle that is independent from the system and ideology of which he chooses to remain a part. He hates you because you have a measure of freedom he does not have, but could have if only he had the guts to do something about it. He hates you because you do not want to participate in the meaningless game of collectivism he has spent his whole life attempting to master. He hates you because you are walking away from his system and doing your own thing. How dare you do your own thing!

Many of us who appreciate libertarian-oriented ideals are proponents of the “non-aggression principle,” which, to summarize, states that respect for individual freedom is the paramount value of any society that seeks to sustain itself peacefully and indefinitely. Human society is not a nexus; it is not a hive. Society, if it is anything at all, is a collection of individual minds and souls acting voluntarily for the advancement the community, but never at the cost of personal liberty. Contrary to popular mainstream belief, the individual does not owe society a thing.

Non-aggression requires that society will not violate personal liberty for arbitrary collective gain and that individuals will not use violence or coercion to forcefully mandate the participation of others. That is to say, you leave me to my dream and I leave you to yours. But if you try to deliberately trample my dream in order to enrich your own, I am then within my rights to bring a mighty hammer down on your skull until you leave me alone. Anti-preppers have no capacity to grasp this concept. To them, each human being is property of the larger group and defiance of the state is blasphemy.

Anti-preppers are often the kinds of social justice circus clowns that preach unerring acceptance and claim disdain for any form of discrimination, yet they are at the same time violently discriminatory against anyone who will not preach their particular collectivist gospel. The social collectivist model is by every definition a form of cultism, and in most cases the god of this cult is the state. It treats the state as an infallible omnipotent presence: mother and father, caretaker and disciplinarian.

To refuse participation is to deny their god, and the kinds of horrors we read about of the religious zealotry of medieval Christian inquisitions pale in comparison to the death and destruction dealt by modern collectivists.

The psychotic zealotry of anti-preppers

Many anti-preppers are not content only to attack the character of the prepper movement — at least, not anymore. You see, despite the rabid attempts to undermine the validity of prepping and dissuade the growth of the movement, preppers are now legion, with millions of active participants and effective alternative media experts who are dominating Web traffic and crushing traditional media into archaic bone meal. We have made the mainstream media a mainstream joke, and this does not sit well in the minds of statist adherents who once had the power to bottleneck all discussion. If we are so desperately fringe, there would be no need to write unprovoked hit pieces against us to begin with.

Who are they trying to convince?

Since they now know they cannot win the war of information, they increasingly foster fantasies of genocide. This quote (in reference to methods for solving the “prepper problem”) from the hit piece article linked above truly says it all:

Furthermore, consumed with the heady lust of their own unexpected survival (see any episode of The Walking Dead), and with only expired condoms at their disposal (not even Doom and Bloom stocks birth-control pills) these mouth-breathers will doubtless multiply rapidly, and, ergo, must be stopped before such an advent. That can mean only one thing: key preparation in any disaster for the rest of us (other than a map to all of Wal-Mart’s distribution warehouses) is this: be prepared to neuter preppers by any means available.

… Not only will such noblesse oblige ensure a stronger gene pool going forward, but hey — those bastards have all the gear and food and fish antibiotics you’ll ever need.

And there you have it: the comic book delusion of the anti-prepper, so desperate to stop us from stockpiling food and essentials, so disturbed by our local organization and ability to defend ourselves, that they would prefer to see us all “neutered,” i.e., killed. Note also the obsession with the sterilization of the gene pool as socialists in their psychotic fury often harken back to their fascist and communist forefathers.

The problem for anti-preppers is that most of them are weaklings and cowards who are incapable of carrying out their vision of a final program. They have always needed a warrior class mandated by the state to implement the killing they desire. Hilariously, this particular anti-prepper spends 80 percent of his article shoveling poorly written character assassinations like so much manure as if our concerns of crisis are inconsequential, then goes on to describe his idea of wiping out all preppers and stealing our supplies in the event that the system does collapse. If we are all such “kooks” and paranoid hillbillies, then why even entertain the notion of having us snuffed out so that our stores can be redistributed? Surely, such a collapse will never occur in the midst of our invincible American economy; and, thus, preppers are nothing more than harmless eccentrics wasting our money on boxes of food we won’t touch for another 20 years. Right?

History does not support the assumptions of anti-preppers. And throughout history, anti-preparedness people tend to be the first to meet an early demise in the wake of fiscal and social collapse because they have no utility and because, frankly, no one really likes them. They also aren’t the brightest bulbs around (the guy actually thinks he’s going to find food at a Wal-Mart distribution center after a breakdown in civil order).

Anti-preppers today are promoting violent action against preparedness culture because in the far reaches of their subconscious, they know we are right and that we will not be controlled when the system breaks. These people accuse us of lusting after collapse, when it is in fact they who salivate over mass die-off scenarios in which they fantasize that they will somehow be the survivors despite the fact that they are born victims. They imagine a time when, after the “gene pool has been cleansed,” they will rebuild society as a perfect socialist utopia in which every ideology contrary to their own has been erased from all memory, leaving their ultimate prize: a blank slate to do with as they wish.

The goal behind the prepper movement is simple, not sinister; we seek to defuse crisis before it occurs by providing our own necessities without the need for a grid that could easily malfunction and a government that is corrupt beyond repair. If your neighbor is a prepper, be thankful, for you have one less person on your street to worry about as a potential looter during an emergency. If your neighbor is an anti-prepper, beware, for this person sees you as a potential source of supply and thinks you owe him merely because you have something he does not. The bottom line is if the world were full of preppers, there would be no such thing as crises because there would be no lack of necessity or individual ingenuity. In the land of preppers, disaster vanishes. When was the last time an anti-prepper did anything to improve anything for anyone other than himself? Ask yourself which you would rather be in the end: ready for anything or ready for nothing?
–Brandon Smith