Tag: neoclowns

The Saker interviews economist Michael Hudson, whose answers underline the increasingly obvious fact that as bad as communism is for a nation, grabblerism is even worse for it:

The Saker: The US propaganda often claims that the three Baltic states are a true success, just like Poland is also supposed to be. Does this notion have a factual basis? Initially it did appear that these states were experiencing growth, but was that not mostly/entirely due to EU/IMF/US subsidies? Looking specifically at the three Baltic states, and especially Latvia, these were the “showcase” Soviet republics, with a high standard of living (at least compared to the other Soviet republics) and a lot of high-tech industries (including defense contracts). Could you please outline for us what truly happened to these economies following independence? How did they “reform” their economies going from an ex-Soviet one to the modern “liberal” one?

Michael Hudson: This is a trick question, because it all depends on what you mean by “success.”

The post-Soviet neoliberalism has been a great success for kleptocrats at the top. They gave themselves the public domain, from key industries to prime real estate. But the Balts largely let their Soviet industries collapse, making no effort to salvage or reorganize them.

Much of the problem, of course, was that all the linkages to Soviet-era industry were torn apart as the Soviet Union was disbanded. With their supplier and final markets closed down from Russia to Central Asia, the Baltic economies had to start afresh – with a very right-wing tax policy and no government help whatsoever, as the government itself had become privatized in the hands of former officials and grabitizers.

Lithuania was marginally better in having some industrial policy. EU and NATO accession in 2004, along with easy credit, kicked off property bubbles in the Baltics, largely inflated by Swedish banks that made a bonanza off these countries that lacked their own banks or public credit creation. The resulting 2008 crashes were the largest in the world as a percent of GDP, with Latvia suffering the world’s biggest contraction.

The neoliberal western advisors who took control of these economies – as if this was the only alternative to Soviet bureaucracy – imposed crushing austerity programs to restore macroeconomic “stability” meaning security of their land and infrastructure grabs. This was applauded by Europe’s bankers, who thought the Balts had discovered a workable recipe allowing austerity governments to retain power in a seeming democracy. These policies would have collapsed governments anywhere else, but the ability to emigrate, plus ethnic divisions against Russian speakers, allowed these governments to survive.

It’s a historically specific situation, but Europe’s bankers promote it as a generalized model. George Soros’s INET and his associated front institutions have been leaders in subsidizing this financialization-cum-grabitization. The result has been a massive exodus of prime working age people from Lithuania and Latvia. (Estonians simply commute to Finland.) Meanwhile, their economies are buoyed by foreign bank lending, which sends profits back to home countries and can be reversed at any time.

Politically, the neoliberal revolution also has been a success for U.S. Cold Warriors, who sent over native Balts from Georgetown and other universities to impose “free market” doctrine – that is, a market “free” of domestic regulation against theft of the public domain, against monopolies, against land taxes and other income taxes. The Baltic states, like most of the rest of the former Soviet Union, became the Wild East.

What was left to the Baltic countries was land and real estate. Their forests are being cut down to sell wood abroad. I describe all this in my book Killing the Host.

The Saker: After independence, the Baltic states had tried to cut as many ties with Russia as possible. This included building (rather silly looking) fences, to forcing the Russians to develop their ports on the Baltic, to shutting down large (or selling to foreign interests which then shut them down) and profitable factories (including a large nuclear plant I believe), etc. What has been the impact of this policy of “economic de-Sovietization” on the local economies?

Michael Hudson: Dissolution of the Soviet Union meant that Baltic countries lost their traditional markets, and had to shift their focus to Western Europe and, to some extent, Asia…. The Baltic states, especially Latvia, have lost about 30 percent of their population since the 1990s, especially those of working age. In Latvia, about 10 percent of the loss were Russians who exited shortly after independence. The other 20 percent have subsequently emigrated.

It’s informative to see that no matter where they nominally come from, and no matter what organization they’ve happened to infiltrate, the neoclowns are irretrievably and unabashedly opposed to President Trump and the interests of the American people.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council staffer set to deliver dramatic testimony confirming that President Donald Trump sought dirt from Ukraine on a political rival, is a Jewish refugee from that country when it was part of the Soviet Union.

“I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the U.S. government’s support of Ukraine,” Vindman, an Army officer and the top NSC official handling Ukraine, says in testimony posted Monday evening by The New York Times, which he is set to deliver to congressional investigators on Tuesday.

Precisely what does this Fake American know about what is proper or improper for the U.S. government? He’s observably less loyal to the United States than Benedict Arnold ever was. The God-Emperor should not hesistate to order him to be dishonorably discharged.

Every. Single. Time. This is why you always sink the damn ships.

The Intellectual Dark Web is working as designed! Young white men are being deradicalized! The world is safe for degeneracy and Empire!

The third segment of the AIN are Conservatives who, in another media era, may have started conservative talk radio shows or hosted a show on Fox News.  These include Steven Crowder, famous for setting up booths at college campuses challenging people to “change his mind” about a conservative/pro-Trump belief;  Ben Shapiro,  a former Breitbart reporter known for criticizing the left for their use of “feelings over facts”;and Dennis Prager, host of “PragerU,” a channel that expresses conservative viewpoints with an educational motif.  Like the Skeptics, they often lampoon the use of identity politics  and  de-platforming  by  mainstream  progressive  social  movements,  but  unlike skeptics, they also disagree with mainstream liberals in principle.  They tend to have more traditional pro-market and socially conservative beliefs.  They are different from further-right segments of the AIN, however, in that they explicitly oppose anti-semitism and open appeals to race.

The fourth and fifth groups are the Alt-Lite and Alt-Right, which are often conflatedwith  one  another.   However,  there  are  key  distinctions  in  how  they  appeal  to  their audiences.  The Alt-Lite is a mixed bag ideologically.  Some, like Paul Joseph Watson,an InfoWars affiliate, argue for mainstream conservatism. Others, like Stefan Molyneux and  Lauren  Southern,  espouse  more  explicitly  white  nationalist  messages.   However,they all enjoy antagonizing and upsetting (“triggering”) liberals and leftists, and use racist and otherwise offensive humor as a means to transgress what they describe as authoritarian  boundaries  set  by  the  left-of-center.   The  Alt-Lite  is  also  strongly  pro-Trump.

In  contrast,  the  Alt-Right  is  wa rmly  committed  to  a  far-right  ideology.   Common features include strong anti-semitism and the belief that white people are are genetically superior (race realism”).  They advocate for an all-white ethnostate and an end to all(or at the very least, all non-white) immigration.  Well-known YouTubers in the Alt-Right include Richard Spencer, coiner of the term;  Red Ice TV, an alien conspiracy-turned-Alt-Right  talk  show;  and  Jean-Francois  Gariepy,  a  former  neuroscientist  who is virulently anti-feminist and uses his scienti c background to increase the perceived credibility  of  race  realism.   Unlike  the  Alt-Lite,  these  YouTubers  are  not  concerned with transgressing perceived social boundaries set by mainstream progressives, and do not disagree in principle with identity politics or deplatforming.  They argue instead that mainstream progressives are bolstering the wrong identities and deplatforming the wrong people. They also tend not to support Trump, believing he has been compromised by an international Jewish conspiracy due to Trump’s pro-Israel sentiment and closeness to his Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

It’s certainly a fascinating methodology. The idea appears to be that because of the false alternative offered by a few neoclowns on YouTube, the viewership of other Fake Right YouTube channels, half of which have been disappeared, has declined.

Then again, proving that the Intellectual Dark Web is not “a gateway drug” to the Nationalist American Right, but instead act in a gatekeeping capacity against it, is akin to proving that water is wet. It doesn’t really matter how you try to “prove” it because the conclusion is always going to be correct.

Saint Efan demolishes Ben Shapiru.

Ben Shapiru@benshapiru
If we don’t share common values, we shouldn’t be surprised that politics becomes warfare by other means.

Stefan Molyneux@StefanMolyneux
You said that you were totally FINE with the Third World pouring into America Benny.

Now you say you’re not surprised at ALL that lack of shared values leads to massive social conflict.

Which means you KNEW it would happen.

And you were fine with it.

Notice that no intellectual with any integrity has even the smallest regard for the Littlest Chickenhawk. The little guy takes a merciless beating no matter where he goes or which way he turns.

And for those foolish would-be Shapiru defenders who try to hide behind his claim that he was only talking about ideology when he said he was fine with “the browning of America”, well, you should have known better than to place your confidence in the consistency of a neoclown.

“The ideology of the Palestinian population is indistinguishable from that of the terrorist leadership.”
– Ben Shapiru, 2003

Contra what many people would very much like to believe, Andrew Klavan is not, and has never been, one of the good guys. He is still a dedicated servant of the lie, as his own words testify:

It’s really interesting, they had this thing in in Portland over the weekend where antifa, the fascists who call themselves anti-fascist, and the Proud Boys, who seem to have overlooked the democracy problem themselves. We’re fighting each other, right, they’re out there, they were gonna have demonstrations and counter-demonstrations, and fight. Antifa is an absolutely miserable violent leftist organization and the Proud Boys seem to be instigating violence – in the name of white supremacy.

So Sean Hannity goes on TV, right, and Sean Hannity says a pox on both your houses, a plague on both your houses, this is not the way this,  goes we’re one country, even though Sean is a deep, deep, partisan pro-Trump partisan. He is saying the people I argue with, I’m arguing with, right, we’re not we’re not enemies, we’re opponents in this fight. We’re not hitting each other over the head with clubs. Here’s just a taste of what Sean said, but what matters here is we can have a thorough, complete,  passionate,  open discussion of ideas and ideals. We don’t need fists and baseball bats and maces, you know. This show will always condemn hatred on any side, white supremacy, bigotry, you have no place in this society, none whatsoever.

What society is that, exactly? What do you mean by “we”, kemosabe. There is no “us”. Andrew Klavan’s show not only fails to condemn racial supremacy, he openly associates with known racial supremacists like Ben Shapiru and Dennis Prager. And let’s face it, we all know he’s intelligent enough to know better, which is how we observe that he is himself a liar, a subverter, and among those who seek to destroy both America and the West by transforming them into things they are not and have never been.

Anyone who claims to oppose “identity politics” at this point is either a clueless loser or a liar. I’m willing to cut some slack for the average idiot Boomer who was steeped in civic nationalism for his entire life, but the fact is that it is, and has always, been known to be, a polite fiction, as Belloc observes.

It was the attitude familiar to the nineteenth century, and agreeable to that one of its political moods in which it found itself best satisfied: … of creating a fiction of single citizenship to replace the reality of dual allegiance; of calling a [foreigner] a full member of whatever society he happened to inhabit during whatever space of time he happened to sojourn there in his wanderings across the earth. That was the attitude agreeable on the political side to everything which called itself “modern thought.” Such was the doctrine proposed by the great men of the French Revolution. Such was the attitude accepted almost enthusiastically by Liberal England, that is, by all the dominant public life of England during the Victorian period. Such was the policy which once obtained universal favour throughout the whole of our Western civilization. That was the attitude which the West actually attempted to impose upon Eastern States, and the last effect of its rapidly-declining credit is to be found in certain clauses of the Treaty of Versailles: for that attitude is still the official attitude of all our governments.

It’s not  just “the Democrats” who are flying the Devil’s flag, Mr. Klavan. And you obviously know damn well who else is flying the flag of their father.

UPDATE: A Klavan fan, who may soon be a former Klavan fan, copied me on an email to him:

You said in episode 752 that the “Proud Boys seem to be instigating violence in the name of white supremacy..”. I call you to retract this statement. It is not true. The Proud Boys have members of all colours and do not support white supremacy. I give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you just don’t know. If you do not retract this statement, you are a liar. I will not longer be able to trust that you are speaking truth and I will no longer be listening to you.

The littlest chickenhawk sells sheets to his fellow neoclowns. I’m not kidding, that’s literally what he’s doing. Promo code: CLEANSE PALESTINE. Hilarious.

“I can’t speak highly enough of these sheets. They’re really fantastic!”
– Grand Wizard Ben Shapiru

Any time you put a modifier in front of a term that is inherently good, you turn it into a perversion of itself. Judeo-Christian religion.
– Ben Shapiru

The Z-man infiltrates the neoclowns’ attempt to rebrand themselves as “National Conservatives”:

The final speaker of the morning session was Yoram Hazony. It was an interesting performance to behold. He started out criticizing neoconservatives, making the absurd claim that the current crop of neocons are not the real neocons. They have strayed from the original into imperialism. Then he let it be known that one of the sponsors for this show was The public Interest, a neocon quarterly founded by Irving Kristol. The fact that he said this without laughing was quite remarkable.

He then moved onto libertarianism. It’s interesting to hear these guys criticize libertarianism, because they don’t really know why they oppose it. They just associate it with the cultural decline, so they assume it is the cause. There’s also a reactionary vibe to their fight with the libertarians. These new nationalists don’t like the libertarians, because libertarians oppose nationalism. For their purposes, maybe that’s enough to dismiss the economic arguments against their brand of nationalism.

The third part of his speech was a trade about white nationalism. He fumbled around trying to say something about biological reality, but that made him sound like a nut from the flat earth society. Then he warned about the threat of white nationalism, especially among young people. Then he made the claim that there is no such thing as tribal loyalty, which is an odd thing, given that he claims a nation is a collection of tribes. As in his book, it’s clear he terrifies himself when he follows his logic to its conclusion….

The funny thing about this event is not a single person has bothered to mention that conservatism, whether neocon or Buckley, managed to conserve nothing.

They managed to derail the Tea Party, but I very much doubt they’ll be successful in jumping in front of the nationalist parade. I addressed this very topic in last night’s Darkstream.

It’s a totally new and hip movement! Never mind the neoclowns behind the curtain:

Politics in America, Britain, and other Western nations have taken a sharp turn toward nationalism—a commitment to a world of independent nations. This has been disorienting to many, not least the American conservative movement, which has, since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, grown increasingly attached to a vision of a global “rules-based liberal order” that would bring peace and prosperity to the entire world while attenuating the independence of nations. 

The return of nationalism has created a much-discussed “crisis of conservatism” that may be unprecedented since modern Anglo-American conservatism was formulated by Russell Kirk, William Buckley, and their colleagues in the 1950s. At the heart of this crisis is a question: Is the new American and British nationalism a hostile usurper that has arrived on the scene to displace political conservatism? Or is nationalism an essential, if neglected, part of the Anglo-American conservative tradition at its best?

The conference on “National Conservatism” will bring together public figures, journalists, scholars, and students who understand that the past and future of conservatism are inextricably tied to the idea of the nation, to the principle of national independence, and to the revival of the unique national traditions that alone have the power to bind a people together and bring about their flourishing.

We see this public conference as the kick off for a protracted effort to recover and reconsolidate the rich tradition of national conservative thought as an intellectually serious alternative to the excesses of purist libertarianism, and in stark opposition to political theories grounded in race. Our aim is to solidify and energize national conservatives, offering them a much-needed institutional base, substantial ideas in the areas of public policy, political theory, and economics, and an extensive support network across the country.

Conservatives couldn’t conserve the ladies room. Don’t count on them to save the American nation. They’re not nationalists, they’re Neoclowns 2.0.

Epstein’s connection to intelligence, whether foreign or domestic, almost certainly explains the special “deal of a lifetime” that Epstein related to his 2006 plea bargain.

I also noted that it appeared his real job was to run a blackmail operation to ensnare some of the most wealthy and powerful people on earth. I alluded to the possibility that he was collecting this priceless information on behalf of a third party, and then just today we learn the following via the Daily Beast:

“Is the Epstein case going to cause a problem [for confirmation hearings]?” Acosta had been asked. Acosta had explained, breezily, apparently, that back in the day he’d had just one meeting on the Epstein case. He’d cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein’s attorneys because he had “been told” to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade. “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,” he told his interviewers in the Trump transition, who evidently thought that was a sufficient answer and went ahead and hired Acosta. (The Labor Department had no comment when asked about this.)…

For almost two decades, for some nebulous reason, whether to do with ties to foreign intelligence, his billions of dollars, or his social connections, Epstein, whose alleged sexual sickness and horrific assaults on women without means or ability to protect themselves is well-known in his circle, remained untouchable.

It should be noted the reason I attach credibility to the above is based on who wrote it, Vicky Ward. She has an extensive history of digging into Epstein, and wrote one of the earliest profiles on him back in 2003. As she notes in today’s article:

I spent many months on his trail in 2002 for Vanity Fair and discovered not only that he was not who he claimed to be professionally, but also that he had allegedly assaulted two young sisters, one of whom had been underage at the time. Very bravely, they were prepared to go on the record. They were afraid he’d use all his influence to discredit them—and their fear turned out to be legitimate.

As the article was being readied for publication, Epstein made a visit to the office of Vanity Fair’s then-editor, Graydon Carter, and suddenly the women and their allegations were removed from the article. “He’s sensitive about the young women,” Carter told me at the time. (Editor’s Note: Carter has previously denied this allegation.) He also mentioned he’d finagled a photograph of Epstein in a swimsuit out of the encounter. And there was also some feeble excuse about the article “being stronger as a business story.” (Epstein had also leaned heavily on my ex-husband’s uncle, Conrad Black, to try to exert his influence on me, which was particularly unwelcome, given that Black happened to be my ex-husband’s boss at the time.)

Many people had assumed Epstein was untouchable merely because he had so much dirt on so many powerful people, but it increasingly looks far bigger than that. It appears he may have been untouchable because he was systematically collecting this information on behalf of an intelligence agency. If so, we need to find out precisely who he was working for.

There isn’t too much doubt concerning the most likely intelligence agency, given the way in which Epstein’s background and connections are being scrubbed as we speak. But the effort is pointless, given the way in which more and more people are noticing the obvious patterns.