Category: Uncategorized

Stalin’s strike: the historian’s view

I asked Nigel Askey, the author of the massive Operation Barbarossa: The Complete Organisational and Statistical Analysis, and Military Simulation, about his opinion of Viktor Suvorov’s thesis we’ve been discussing this week. He graciously gave permission for me to quote his reply on the blog.

Your email has prompted me, and I have now ordered a copy of Suvorov’s Chief Culprit. I haven’t read this one by Suvorov; I probably should. However it looks very similar to, and an extension of, his original Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War? This one was also an entertaining read. I might as well express my opinion about the overall Suvorov hypothesis as it has gained such a lot of attention.

I agree with Suvorov on some points, but definitely not on others.  I believe Stalin did have plans to invade Western Europe at some point, and it completely fits with the overall Soviet – and Stalin – policy of communist expansion as well as Stalin’s character. He definitely gambled on the fact that Germany would be embroiled in  prolonged war with France and Britain, which would buy him time to prepare. He gambled on it lasting at least until 1942, which was backed up by his own Stavka assessments. In addition, it was around this time he attenuated, and mostly stopped, the massively damaging officer purging that were going on. He realised that any Red Army that was going to conquer Western Europe would need decent officers, and that Germany was now a bigger external threat to him than any ‘internal’ threat from his officer corps. I believe Stalin was hoping his Army, especially the mass of newly formed Mechanised Corps with its new tank types; all belatedly formed after the Germans had demonstrated their panzer corps in France, would be ready by the summer of 1942, one year after Barbarossa started. Similarly, his air force was desperately reequipping with more modern fighters and bombers (Yak-1, LaGG-3, Mig-3, Pe-2, etc), and a massive air crew training program was underway.

France and Britain, of course,  had handed all this to him on a plate, so to speak, by declaring war on Germany when Germany invaded Poland, but then only a few days later did not declare war on the USSR when it did exactly the same thing from the East! From a moral perspective, this has always left a ‘bad taste in my mouth’: especially when Britain and France historically claim the moral high ground about why they declared war on Germany in 1939. It turns out that so called treaty with Poland by France and Britain was worded so that it only applied to German aggression; apparently anyone else could do what they liked to any of the three countries. How’s that for selective moralising  and post-war hypocrisy? Anyway I digress.

Where I really disagree completely with Suvorov is timing. 1941, definitely not. The summer of 1942 was very likely Stalin’s plan, and even then, there was a struggle to be ready. I can guarantee that there was absolutely no way the Soviet armed forces were in any shape to conduct a major offensive into Poland and then into Western Europe in June or July 1941. They were just so totally unready at so many levels, they would have been very easily stopped. Their logistical and C&C set up was so bad they would have almost stopped themselves, as they almost did in Poland in 1939. One just has to look at their absolutely dismal performance when they did invade Poland from the East – it degenerated onto a ludicrous fiasco against a  very token Polish force – and the almost equally poor performance against Finland in the Winter War to see just a few of the problems.

I have examined in extreme  detail the Soviet forces right across the USSR on 22nd June 1941, and not just apparent raw number in the Western Military Districts  as Suvorov does. This analysis has been done for the Red Army (the RKKA) and the air force (the VMF). Special attention has been reserved for the forces deployed in the Western Military Districts and the Mechanised Forces. These include a massive and complete Soviet Tank Deployment Matrix and Aircraft Deployment Matrix, which in a great many cases go down to individual tanks and aircraft. In addition, readiness, training, and HQ assignments are included, as well as positions ‘on the map’. In addition, the Soviet truck park is analysed, and it was in a terrible state, along with the Red Army supply and logistics state. All this will be fully published in Volume IIIB. The published Volume IIIA has the Western Military District land forces already.

In comparison to this and some research done by others, I find Suvorov’s figures to be high-level, superficial, token, and worst of all, very selective. I am sorry to say he takes the statistics that suit his agenda, and then simply throws them at the reader with a convincing argument. For the reader, presented with these ‘facts’, the conclusions are  convincing. However, no amount of convincing rhetoric can, in the end, replace weak argument foundations. For example, deeper analysis shows that the Soviets were employing what is termed an echelon defence strategy as laid out by various (now dead from the purges) Red Army theorists in the ‘Deep Battle’ and Deep Operations’ manner. These are not just offensive methodologies, they also lay out the mechanism to defend against  these types of attack as well. The fact that the Wehrmacht had surpassed this in real practical terms and totally ripped through both the 1st and 2nd level of these defences and then encircled them all was surprising, especially  to the Soviets. This, of course, has led to the “why were so many Soviet forces forwards and vulnerable?” questions. The Germans then had to work a bit to penetrate the 3rd echelon defences which were also being deployed and still formed on 22nd June 1941, largely the Stavka Reserves.

Well, its only with post-war hindsight, and the realisation of just how fast the Wehrmacht could operate and had perfected mobile warfare, that we realise how vulnerable the Soviet echelon defence was. To the Soviets at the time, and to the Western observers, it looked like a very reasonable set up. We are talking hundreds of kilometres of depth here, with multiple lines of defence, and not just a single concentration  of forward deployed troops apparently massing for an attack as proposed by Suvorov. Unfortunately, the Wehrmacht, as it was in 1941, could penetrate even hundreds of kilometres of such a defence in days, making all this look extremely vulnerable. Thus, with post-war hindsight, this looks like an extremely incompetent deployment, even for a defensive posture. Note, the Deep Battle and Deep Operations theories stressed the ability to go from a defensive posture to an offensive posture relatively quickly. Thus, when ready, the Red Army could transit from one to the other in a matter of weeks. Eg, in this case the  1st defensive line, mostly rifle divisions, would perform the breakthrough assault, while the 2nd echelon defensive lime, usually mobile mechanised forces, would exploit the breach. I am only stressing this because I do not want to portray the Red Army, or Stalin’s regime, as inherently a defensive force backed by a defensive ideology: the echelon defence used suited both. But it does not mean the Soviets were about to attack in June 1941, and it does explain why they were deployed as they were historically.

Another example is the relatively forward deployment of many VVS units, another fact used by Suvorov. Yes it was stupid to deploy so many VVS air units within a few hundred km of the border and these were hit by the initial surprise airfield attacks. However, the VVS was a huge force, the biggest air force in the world at that time, and was deployed in a great many locations across the USSR. The very large majority of these units were undergoing replacement and training operations and exercises, including those in the Western military Districts, the vast majority of the VVS including most of their new fighter and bomber units were actually deployed well inside the USSR in the Internal Military districts, and the vital Long Range DBA forces, the largest strategic bomber force in the World at that time, was deployed very deep in the USSR and completely unreachable by the Luftwaffe. Suvorov only talks about the VVS forces in the Western Military Districts and how they were therefore obviously “deployed for an attack?”. He doesn’t mention that over 70{329aa4aef5613a80085c3dd6bd84f5d0e8f5581fdc29e0868f0c3a40e8b25a32} of the VVS and VMF (naval air-forces), and especially the bomber forces, were in no position to attack anything in the West, and that the DBA, a very large and totally offensive force was so far back it could barely reach Western Europe.

He also doesn’t focus on the overall readiness of the VVS forces in the Western Military Districts just as he doesn’t focus on the readiness or state of the mechanised force (see below). Only raw numbers are used, which are close to useless if there is no context and other factors are not included.  No doubt these VVS forces in the depths of the USSR would have been redeployed forward by the summer of 1942. As it was they survived the initial Luftwaffe onslaught. The fact that the Luftwaffe the systematically destroyed these forces from July to October 1941, is a separate discourse. It does, however, again, highlight how unready the VVS was overall (again, supposed to be fully ready by 1942, if lucky), and how most of the VVS units were entrenched in the depths of USSR that it took that length of time for the Luftwaffe to reach them. None of this suits with Suvorov’s hypothesis.

A final example is the state of the Soviet Mechanised Corps. This is arguably the biggest single massive hole in Suvorov’s whole hypothesis. Over two-thirds of this entire Red Army force had only started forming in February-March  1941, only months earlier. This was the most critical force for any invasion of Europe. The divisions in this force had plenty of tanks, especially those in the Western Military Districts. But this was simply because the USSR had the biggest tank park in the world due to its pre-war production going back to the early 1930s. I have no doubt that Suvorov sticks to these raw tank numbers, most of these were T-26s and BT types only because this is what was mostly produced. However, over 80 percent of these divisions were barely mobile in June 1941! Most were still actually forming and, incredibly, only one mechanised corps in the entire Red Army had actually done any pre-war divisional sized manoeuvres by June 1941! All this is detailed in extreme detail in Volume IIIA for each division for anyone who really wants to know the facts. These divisions had barely mobile artillery, most had no trucks for their infantry, most had almost no mobile  workshop and repair facilities for their tanks, many had almost none at all yet, etc. The list goes on and on.

Many of these so called tank and mechanised divisions were far less mobile than the standard German infantry divisions they faced in June 1941. In fact we find that the average German infantry division that invaded the USSR in June 1941 had considerably more trucks and other types of vehicles than the average Soviet tank and mechanised division. Yet the German infantry divisions were apparently horse-drawn according to most western literature.  What people don’t realise is that the vast majority of Soviet tanks and mechanised  forces in 1941 were destroyed by German infantry divisions. In many cases the German infantry divisions, which almost all had a  motorised anti-tank and reconnaissance battalion, moved faster than the floundering and barely formed tank and mechanised divisions (in the 2nd defensive echelon),  and encircled them! These Soviet divisions never even got to see a German tank, as the German panzer divisions had already moved far eastwards. The biggest actual killer of Soviet tanks in 1941 was the much misaligned little 36mm PaK 36, called the ‘door knocker’ in post-war literature in the West, in German infantry divisions, and the result of breakdowns and abandonment by  the Red Army tankers because there was never any infrastructure(in the barely formed divisions to keep them going.

And yet, despite all this, Suvorov maintains that this force was going to attack and run over Western Europe in June 1941. It is really a joke!  I believe Suvorov is banking on people’s general ignorance and sensational revisionism to sell books! In reality, the Red Army in June 1941 would barely have reached the others side of Poland against the Wehrmacht in 1941 before it ran out of steam at the operational level. It would have then been promptly encircled by the many-times-more combat ready Wehrmacht and annihilated. The Soviets and Stalin were many things in the summer of 1941, but they were not that stupid.

I am all for revisionist history, but only if it is carefully researched and thought out. For example, despite the apparent crazy numbers that apparently make Hitler look nuts to attack the USSR, you have to take into account all the factors. Hitler always planned to “destroy the Bolshevik menace to Western Civilisation” from the very earliest days: he made this very clear. The German OKH new the Soviets were preparing to attack at some point, but would not be anywhere near ready by June 1941. This was also why Stalin was so diplomatically passive at this time: he did not want to prematurely trigger a military conflict until at least 1942. Even the Germans were surprised how fast France had fallen. They also knew the state of the Red Army as they had studied their recent operation.

Thus, despite their underestimating the Soviet raw numbers of tanks and aircraft, they actually accurately estimated the Red Army’s readiness, training, logistics and C&C. With these factors and many others I have not included, they laid their plans, and ultimately came much closer to defeating the USSR than most people realise. With a few different strategic-level and operational-level decisions, I believe the Axis forces might very well have defeated the USSR by mid-1942, or at least enforced some type of Vichy French type treaty. Stalin, of course, would have likely met his end.  In that sense, Hitler waiting until 1942 to attack a much stronger Red Army and VVS was definitely not a good idea.

Also, yes, I believe in the longer term that Stalin was definitely planning to conquer Western Europe. As I said, I do not have a problem with revisionist history as such, as long as it stands up to some close scrutiny.

Darkstream: you can’t escape the stupid

From the transcript:

There’s a comment talking about Steven Pinker. Steven Pinker is pretty much wrong about everything, so if he is asserting that intelligence has not declined, you can pretty much count on the fact that it has. I would not trust Steven Pinker to be able to correctly identify the color of the sky.

So what’s important is the average intelligence, right, that’s what dictates how well society functions and let me show you something before I get to the article that I mentioned. A couple years ago I wrote a book called Cuckservative: How ‘Conservatives’ Betrayed America. I wrote it with John Red Eagle, Cerno wrote the foreword, and let me read you a little selection here of what we wrote:

By multiplying the average measured IQs for the four major ethnic groups in the United States with their changing demographic ratios, we can calculate how the demographic changes have affected the national intelligence over time. In 1960, we calculate the national IQ average to have been 100.3. By 2010, the average national IQ had fallen four points, to 96. By 2030, if the current population estimates are correct, it will fall another point, to 95. Lest you think that average national intelligence is irrelevant, note that just that four-point difference is essentially equal to the difference between countries such as Austria, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, and countries such as Uruguay and Portugal. There is a strong correlation between societal wealth and average national intelligence as measured in IQ.

So you know, we were saying that since the modification in the US immigration policy the average IQ has dropped over five points.  Now I always strongly suspected that we were being conservative there because there are possibly other factors involved. When you look at the fact that highly-educated women, who tend to be the most intelligent women, are far and away the least likely to have children, and there are other factors that are involved as well… so now keep in mind that was something that we wrote two-and-a-half years ago.

Now that was interesting because there’s an article in The Daily Mail today where the headline is “young people really are getting more stupid. IQs have started to fall by seven points per generation in worrying trend.” IQs have in risen in every decade since World War II, but have now begun to fall again. I have to say the trends started by those born after 1975 is worrying, and of course, they come up with all kinds of reasons and yet the word immigration is never mentioned, but here’s what is kind of shocking. The level, the extent to which they calculate is this fall in IQ equates to about seven points per generation!

Okay this is bordering on the catastrophic. If US IQs have fallen seven points per generation since 1975, we’ve got nearly two generations there so instead of a five-point decline we are talking about a decline of as much as fourteen points! And you know, this is a catastrophe! This is why you’re seeing a decline in the basic functionality of United States society and of a number of the European societies,  because people simply are not fundamentally as able to to function in a modern society. They simply can’t do the basic tasks that their fathers and their great-grandfathers did, and so you know, this is what you are going to experience and you can’t get away from it. You cannot escape it.

Fraud AND racist

Not only did Albert Einstein rip off and take credit for the work of Newton, Poincare, Lorentz, and De Pretto, but he was a Chinese-hating racist as well:

The publication of Albert Einstein’s private diaries detailing his tour of Asia in the 1920s reveals the theoretical physicist and humanitarian icon’s racist attitudes to the people he met on his travels, particularly the Chinese.

Written between October 1922 and March 1923, the diaries see the scientist musing on his travels, science, philosophy and art. In China, the man who famously once described racism as “a disease of white people” describes the “industrious, filthy, obtuse people” he observes. He notes how the “Chinese don’t sit on benches while eating but squat like Europeans do when they relieve themselves out in the leafy woods. All this occurs quietly and demurely. Even the children are spiritless and look obtuse.”

After earlier writing of the “abundance of offspring” and the “fecundity” of the Chinese, he goes on to say: “It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races. For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary. A peculiar herd-like nation, often more like automatons than people. I noticed how little difference there is between men and women; I don’t understand what kind of fatal attraction Chinese women possess which enthrals the corresponding men to such an extent that they are incapable of defending themselves against the formidable blessing of offspring”.

At least we know the drill. Tear down the statues, remove his name from everything, and retroactively strip his Nobel prize. And, of course, bring up the fact that he was a horrible racist every single time anyone mentions his name.

When the cat is away

Ed Driscoll will post links to Ben Shapiro on an hourly basis. Sorry, make that BEN SHAPIRO. From Instapundit:

As Ben Shapiro noted, during the Tony Awards on Sunday, “alleged comedian Michael Ian Black tweeted out a bumper sticker that could easily be taken as the slogan for the modern Left: ‘Theater is political. Sports is political. Life is political. Be political.’”
Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll 

BEN SHAPIRO: No, Star Wars Isn’t Failing Because Of Hateful Trolls. It’s Failing Because Kathleen Kennedy Has Done A Garbage Job.
Posted at 12:32 pm by Ed Driscoll

BEN SHAPIRO INTERVIEWS JONAH GOLDBERG (Video): “When does nationalism go too far? Is the ‘Never Trump’ movement still alive? Jonah Goldberg joins Ben Shapiro this week to discuss the first 18 months of Trump’s presidency, and how he’s shifted the culture since the election.” Plus plenty of discussion on Jonah’s new book, The Suicide of the West, a great read.
Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 

The Littlest Chickenhawk’s masters must be paying Driscoll by the link.

And you thought the movies were safe

Now that Brian Bendis has achieved his goal of converging their comics, Marvel is determined to converge the movies as well. Marvel Comics Universe film guru Kevin Feige addresses diversity and Marvel’s future plans:

Kevin Feige on diversity: ‘It’s something that is necessary to continue to tell stories. You don’t want to look around the room and see everybody looks like you. It is detrimental to the project’

He adds: There are more women on the track to leadership at Marvel #ProducedBy2018

Audience question: Marvel has had men directors for its past 20 some movies. Can the next 20 feature women to balance?

Kevin Feige: I can’t promise you that all 20 future Marvel movies will have women directors, but a lot of them will

On Miss Marvel after Capitan Marvel: We wanted to get Captain Marvel out there first so that there is something for a young Muslim girl to get inspired by

 What next after Avengers IW2?  Kevin Feige says he is working on:
– Continuing stories of characters you’re familiar with
– Different incarnations of characters you know
– Introducing completely new characters you never heard of before (unless ur a comics fan)

Smells like… opportunity! And yes, we are rapidly moving towards Alt-Movies. Treatments and scripts are already being prepared, budgets are being debated, possible directors are being consulted, and we’ll have a Brainstorm to discuss these developments later this week.

Darkstream: wrong about Hitler

My opinion had always been pretty orthodox in thinking that Hitler turned to the east and engaged in the Drang nach Osten because he couldn’t get across the English Channel. You know, here he had this war machine and they didn’t have the navy to get across to Great Britain; he’d already taken the entire continent of Europe, Western Europe, and it made sense with the whole Lebensraum and all that sort of thing so I’d never really questioned it. I’d never really thought much about it other than the fact that I always felt the idea that Hitler might have won, that Nazi Germany might have won if they had managed to take Moscow, was a really historically ignorant perspective.

When you consider that Napoleon did take Moscow, sat around waiting for the Russians to surrender, and then finally was forced to to retreat and left quite a bit of his army behind dead in the snow, you know, somebody made a comment “Hitler did nothing wrong.” Well, I always thought that was a remarkably dumb thing to say. I mean I understand the rhetoric, but invading Russia was an insanely dumb thing to do, insanely dumb….

It’s very clear when you look at what Suvorov was talking about, and what’s interesting is he got interested in this when he was the equivalent of a high school senior, when he was at the special high school for for future intelligence officers and he actually did the equivalent of his senior thesis on it and he got access to some materials that had not been shown before, that people hadn’t had access to before. And what’s really remarkable is the reaction that people have had to his thesis and the way in which the critics have attempted to attack the evidence that that he’s presented, but in my opinion it’s almost irrefutable that not only was Stalin intending to attack, but I think that it is pretty persuasive that Stalin played Hitler badly, that all of World War II was a set up by Stalin in order to conquer Western Europe.

And you know, the evidence for this, like I said, is pretty overwhelming. Almost everything that you have heard about the situation with Operation Barbarossa and the situation leading up to it is completely false. I’ve heard all the stories about the outdated tanks, and the the officer purges, and all these other excuses for the poor performance of the Russian troops, and so the thing that was really interesting when you look at it was how significantly the Russian forces outnumbered the attacking German forces. The only reason that the Germans were able to be successful was because the Russians had their air bases set up right on the borders, they had all of these light tanks – they had about 6,000 light tanks which were either able to drive on highways which did not exist across the plains of the Ukraine and Russia, and not only that but they also had about 2,000 amphibious tanks -now you know, these tanks are obviously designed for a fast-moving offensive.

Not only that but they also had a tremendous amount, an incredible, incredible amount of ammunition that was stored going forward and also the aircraft that they had were predominantly air-to-ground light bombers. Now this is all stuff that you need for an attack, and this is all stuff that is relatively useless in defense, and so I thought that was really striking but the thing that convinced me more than anything else was something that I had known about, but I never really thought about before, and what that was was that only two years before, in 1939, Field Marshal Zhukov, who at the time was only a general, had used precisely these tactics and precisely the same sort of approach to destroy the Japanese Sixth Army on the other side of Russia at the Battle of Khalkin-Gol.

What’s fascinating about it, and what a lot of people don’t realize is that at the time of the German invasion in 1941, Russia had 5.3 million soldiers deployed, so they had been undergoing a full mobilization for two years.  Now, you may not realize but mobilizations are predominantly offensive, you don’t mobilize just in case somebody might attack you, Now, I’m not saying that Hitler didn’t want any war but he absolutely did not want war with Russia, with the Soviet Union, and the reason that he didn’t want it is because he didn’t think he could win. So the question is, why did he attack?

Because, absolutely, he did attack, and what I realized, and what is it is pretty clear – I haven’t finished the book yet and Suvorov doesn’t come right out and say it – but it’s very clear that it was an act of desperation by Hitler and the Germans when they realized how badly that they’d been played. They realized that, and here’s the important thing to understand, Stalin was not playing for Germany, Stalin was playing for all of Western Europe!

You see, Stalin was a master of playing “lets you and him fight” and what he did what he did was set up a situation where the Brits and the French thought that in 1939 that the Soviets were going to sign some sort of alliance with them -a lot of people forget, but France and Russia were historically allies  – but what Stalin did was he suckered Hitler and got him to agree to attack Poland, he basically bribed Hitler to attack Poland and the whole point of getting Hitler to attack Poland was to force Britain and France to declare war on Hitler, which they did. Now what was very clever was that Stalin was supposed to attack Poland at the same time that’s what he committed to do in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact that was signed in Moscow and the fascinating thing was that the Russians didn’t do it.

The Russians did not attack when they were supposed to, when the Germans did, but what a lot of people don’t realize is that German invasion of Poland was going to fail after two weeks. They had actually run out of artillery because Hitler didn’t mobilize Germany properly until well into 1942 and so again the Soviets had to prop up the Germans by invading Poland at that point. They didn’t want to even invade Poland at all because all they really wanted to do with Poland was to trigger war between France and Britain; they were successful in doing so and they were very pleased when Hitler managed to overrun all of France and Belgium and so forth. The original plan which was really  interesting was that Stalin had originally attempted to trigger a war between Germany on the one hand and France and Britain on the other in Spain but they couldn’t do it so they managed to use Poland to do so.

Stalin managed to use Poland to trigger that war and the whole reason he wanted that war dates all the way back to Lenin, and Lenin realizing that the Treaty of Versailles was so unfair and so crushing to Germany that it was likely to spawn a seriously negative reaction. So that’s why the Soviets were basically waiting from 1918 on for the opportunity to take over all of Western Europe and they finally got that chance 23 years later. One thing that you really come away with is a tremendous respect for the evil intelligence of Stalin, he was much, much brighter than Hitler.

You can buy the book to which I’m referring in the Darkstream, THE CHIEF CULPRIT by Viktor Suvorov, from Castalia Books Direct. If you have any interest in WWII or military history, I strongly recommend it. I’ll also post a response to Suvorov’s thesis from the expert on Operation Barbarossa whose books I referenced in the video later today.

A brief flicker of optimism

Of potentially great significance. The four points of agreement:

President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un state the following:

1. The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new US-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.

2. The United States and DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.

3. Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula

4. The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.

Having acknowledged that the US-DPRK summit – the first in history – was an epochal event of great significance in overcoming decades of tensions and hostilities between the two countries and for the opening up of a new future, President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un commit to implement the stipulations in the joint statement fully and expeditiously. The United States and the DPRK commit to hold follow-on negotiations, led by the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and a relevant high-level DPRK official, at the earliest possible date, to implement the outcomes of the US-DPRK summit.

Donald Trump is clearly the greatest President the USA has had since Andrew Jackson. There is no longer any question. He merits all of the praise he will receive as a result of this diplomatic breakthrough and then some; the press will not give him the credit he is due. (Yes, I know, we still need him to Build the Wall and Drain the Swamp. But rest assured he’s working on both. No one saw this coming either.)

And Kim Jong Un appears to be on the verge of becoming that historically remarkable figure worthy of lionization; the king who voluntarily lays down his crown for the good of his people. This is real George Washington “Father of His Country”, Cincinnatus-style stuff. When you consider how hard it is for petty politicians to give up the little power and influence they hold, it’s almost astonishing that a young dictator, born into unlimited power, is willing to voluntarily lay it aside. That is the act of a true statesman, even if he had the benefit of a little outside encouragement.

It’s interesting to see how the God-Emperor treats Kim with both respect and warmth, almost like an uncle with a favored nephew, especially in light of his Twitter-taunting earlier this year. The man is a master of the psychological stick-and-carrot.

We haven’t seen anything like this since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Even a cynical Gen Xer like me can’t help but feel a brief flicker of optimism about the human condition. If the North Koreans can free themselves from the horrors of Juche, then surely Christendom can free itself from the evil chains of Neo-Babelism.

Errors and misinformation

A PhD writing for the Daily Caller is vastly underwhelmed by Jordan Peterson:

Jordan Peterson’s recent book — 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos — is filled with errors and misinformation.

Consider, for example:

1. The yinyang, claims Peterson, is a male-female duality. However, most Chinese philosophy denies such a claim, where only Dong Zhongshu (ca. 179–104 BC), a cranky oddball, says anything vaguely similar. Rather, the swirling pattern describes aesthetic order (the true concern of Chinese thought).

2. Peterson’s Jungian explanations of myths are fabrications, complete with mistranslations from languages he doesn’t know (Akkadian, Sanskrit, Biblical Hebrew, Greek). He calls such misinformation, “ancient wisdom.”

3. Lacking theology and history, Peterson proceeds to “explain” the Bible, by relativizing God and absolutizing opinion. Thus, he misconstrues the Logos, and blasphemes his way through the Old Testament and the Gospels. As for history, just one example suffices: No, Jesus is not a version of the Egyptian god, Osiris. This nonsense comes from Gerald Massey, a 19th-century crackpot who faked evidence to make such claims). Unbeknownst to Peterson, he has one ancient ally, the Pneumatomachi, who said the Bible was all tropes and happily fashioned harebrained interpretations.

4. “Marxism” (Peterson’s catchphrase for postmodernism, Marx, the Frankfurt School and feminism) is the great enemy, supposedly “destroying” the West. Some of Peterson’s talking points come from the fallacious book by Stephen Hicks (Explaining Postmodernism). But the West isn’t being destroyed by Marxism, The West is trying to become rootless via apostasy and acedia, which Peterson promotes. Should the West return to its root (Christianity), it will thrive. That real Marxists hate postmodernists is unknown to Peterson. He also knows nothing about Maximilien Robespierre’s Jacobin progeny (the democides Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot and the Kims).

5. Peterson cannot differentiate philosophy from critical theory and thus can only name-drop (Rousseau, Heidegger, Dostoevsky, Derrida, etc.).

I told you Peterson was an intellectual charlatan. He’s a fraud, plain and simple. The more you know, the more you can see that the man simply does not know what he’s talking about.

Warning: Alt-Hero backers

Amanda Robb of Rolling Stone and Al Letson of NPR’s Reveal are doing an “investigative report” on Alt★Hero. I have learned that they are now contacting the top backers who are listed on the Freestartr page. I am not talking to them – I previously spoke with Ms Robb concerning a story that was originally supposed to be about Castalia House before NPR got involved – and I would not recommend that anyone else talk to them or even respond to them when they inquire.

Based on their interview with Chuck Dixon, it’s apparent that both the article and the radio piece are going to be generic SJW hit pieces about bad people who think bad thoughts creating bad things that all politically righteous people are morally obliged to ritually condemn and disavow. Which is fine, that has been the standard mainstream narrative about me for the last five years, but I have learned from experience that it’s best not to give them anything they can fold, spindle, and mutilate into a kill quote.

In happier news, Alt★Hero #1 got an excellent review from an industry professional and it is going to be reviewed by a comic media site as well. And I can state with some confidence that the digital edition of Alt★Hero #2 will be out before the end of the month.

Running and hiding is not the only option

Even nice, fastidious cucks like Rod Dreher are beginning to grasp that the remorseless Alt-Right is fast becoming the only real option for the sane and civilized:

Now, normalizing drag queens for children is the big woke thing. We’ve had Drag Queen Story Hours in libraries nationwide. Now Netflix is turning drag queens into animated superheroes, and RuPaul’s streaming service is turning drag queens into child superheroes.

Note well that Lactatia was photographed above at beloved drag queen RuPaul’s recent drag convention.

Can’t you see what’s happening?

You might think — I certainly hope you think — that your child will not be exposed to this filth. The thing is, your child, and all of us, have to live in a world in which this is normal, and in which the popular culture thinks that dressing little boys up like sexually provocative women is not only permissible, but a sign of cultural progress….

This is what I’m trying to convey in The Benedict Option.  Withdraw from this decadent culture, build ourselves up, teach those who are willing to be taught, and then build our versions of abbeys, to which Christians struggling in the world can rely on to form their own children.

If not now, you conservative Christian readers, then when? What’s it going to take for you to get serious?

God never told us to be tolerant of wickedness in our midst, or to run away, hide, and hope it leaves us alone. He told us to eliminate it. Moderates like Rod are barely able to denounce it, or to do so without trying to distance themselves from those who will not tolerate this. That’s why fewer and fewer people are listening to the moderates anymore.

Toleration of evil means eventual submission to it. And the only limits that evil ever recognizes are those that are imposed on it. Tolerance has failed. Conservatism has failed. Moderation has failed. And no amount of harrumphing, posturing, bowtie-twiddling, and bafflegabbling can conceal those failures any longer.