The following is from my pick for the best thriller ever written in English:
When we landed we went directly to the office where Randall Wolfe was waiting for us. He was a very large, tall man with dark hair and a beard and wore old-fashioned thick black-rimmed glasses. He seemed pleased to have the opportunity to talk about his work, but didn’t ask us who we were. He had probably been told enough already.
Ryan got immediately to it. “Can you tell me anything, Professor,” he asked, “about rogue KGB factions surviving the Soviet collapse?”
“I can tell you two things,” Wolfe said. “First, the KGB was for a long time in business for itself, before the collapse. Second, the KGB knew for twenty years that the collapse was coming and had long prepared for the transition to, what should I call it, the private sector.”
“Where do they operate out of?” Ryan asked.
“Everywhere,” Wolfe said. “They were everywhere and they stayed everywhere. Finding work is easy for them. When they can’t find work; they make work. The cells are now autonomous, but they of course know each other. It’s a brotherhood, a network. Dying out in some places, getting stronger in others, especially in the homeland.”
“Russia?” Ryan asked.
“Yes, indeed. Look who’s in charge there.”
“Is the network controlled from Moscow?”
“‘Control’ is too strong a word. It’s certainly nothing like the old days. These men are self-interested capitalists now, in a manner of speaking. They might long for the power of the old Soviet Union, but they are, most of them, uninterested in the ideology.”
“Do you consult with CIA about this?” Ryan asked.
“I can’t answer that question,” Wolfe said.
“I know you can’t,” Ryan said. “In your opinion, as a scholar, how does CIA approach the KGB now?”
“Strictly as an historical matter,” Wolfe answered.
“The KGB no longer exists,” Ryan said.
“That about sums it up,” Wolfe said.
“We could go wild from there, couldn’t we?”
“There are some who think that of CIA’s many blind spots that this one is the most consequential.”
Wolfe was pointing into the intellectual woods.
“Have you pressed your case or published anything about this?” Ryan asked.
“If I did that,” Wolfe said, “I would be pigeonholed as a Cold War obsessive.”
“But it’s your area of expertise,” Ryan said.
“Ironies abound,” Wolfe said. “I am the expert until I offer my conclusions. Then I’m still fighting the Cold War.”[Martin McPhillips, Corpse In Armor]
The evil that dare not speak its name is Communism. The KGB was the “big gun” in Soviet-era repression of dissent. There isn’t much talk about it today, except for the occasional mention that Vladimir Putin was once an officer thereof. Yet it was arguably the most powerful force in history for the maintenance of unchallenged Soviet Communist control of the largest empire in human history.
Martin’s brilliant thriller explores many trails, forward and to all sides, from the Soviet era to the present day. The disturbing plausibility of his imaginings is a large part of what makes his book one of my all-time favorites. But another aspect of contemporary thought and discourse is front and center in my thoughts today: specifically why, in our public discourse, allegations of “fascism” are many, but there’s no one who speaks of Communism as a potent political force.
It definitely is one, you know.
Today, courtesy of Eeyore at Vlad’s place, we have this:
One of the most important forces shaping the current US presidential election is not being sufficiently discussed: COMMUNISM.
Because the Democratic Party does not view itself in any way as communist, you can’t have a discussion about the role that communism is playing in support for Donald Trump. How can a Wall-Street friendly party favored by large institutions be communist!?!
Okay. Begin by just stipulating that this is true for the sake of argument whether or not you agree with it.
For the moment, imagine that you see all DEI as Marxist and Maoist. Imagine that you see AOC and the squad as communists. Imagine that what you see in terms of ‘social justice’ or ‘wokeness’ or ‘Postmodernism’ or ‘Gender affirming healthcare’ or ‘Palestinian Genocide’ or ‘Soros open society initiatives’ or ‘progressive DAs’ or ‘Anti-Whiteness’ or ‘defund the police’ is straight up precursor to *violent* revolutionary Marxism.
The people crossing over to the cause of Trump with enormous checkbooks see this EXACTLY the way I have described in the above paragraph. You can pretend that this isn’t so. Maybe they won’t admit it to you or do so in public. But the stark truth of it is that what is driving a lot of surprising support for Trump and the Republicans has nothing to do with either. It’s not all about Trump. Or the GOP.
It’s about Marx, Mao, Stalin, and Lennin. It is the idea that Revolutionary Marxism is a dangerous brain cancer that is always trying to get a foothold among the weak.
The idea that is everywhere is this: “The Democratic party of the United States thought they could play with rebranded revolutionary Marxists as if the new Communism were merely a form of socially conscious pro-market, pro-democracy liberalism, when it is instead a communist Trojan horse philosophy. It has as its aim, destabilizing and destroying our culture, the United States and then the world. This isn’t a culture war. It is the takeover of the United States by hardcore revolutionary neo-marxists who have come for your newspapers, universities, public schools and your children. The leaders who think they can reach out to ‘progressive’ voters do not realize that they are dancing with a devil who will outplay them.”
Does that sound silly to you? Great. Glad to hear it.
And, if so, you have absolutley no idea what is being discussed by many of the world’s smartest, most powerful and most influential people. Constantly.
Why is this confusing? Well, no one I know sees Joe Biden as communist. They don’t even see the Democratic party leadership as communist. They view the party as opportunistic and naive in thinking that Democrats can allow violent pathological revolutionaries into the big blue tent with a simple coat of blue paint and a bargain basement rebrand to ‘Deconstruct the patriarchy’ and ‘Decolonize’, ‘Defund’, and otherwise ‘Reform’ our society while quietly waiting for their real moment.
I’m sorry if this sounds funny to some of you who can’t imagine opposing Biden for these reasons. If so, it just means you have no clue…as in ZERO…as to what is going on in a pivotal part of the shift towards Trump.
I just wanted to bring this up because it is barely being discussed in mainstream media:
“It’s the Communism stupid.”
I hope Eric Weinstein will pardon me for lifting the entirety of his tweet. His observations are about as pivotal as the recognition that the universe has unbreakable natural laws. They deserve the widest exposure they can get.
The most common counterposition with Communism is capitalism, all too frequently phrased as “the capitalist system.” In point of fact, capitalism is not a “system” of any kind, despite the “ism” suffix.” It’s merely what happens when governments refrain from making laws about who may produce, who may buy, who may sell, and under what conditions. The more accurate term for “capitalism” – was the term really coined by Karl Marx? – is freedom.
There was once a terrific movie that starred that most atypical of first-echelon actors, Danny DeVito, as investor and financier Laurence Garfield. Here’s what he has to say to his lawyers after a legal setback that impedes a takeover bid:
TRO? Temporary Restraining Order? Thank you very much. Some crew I’ve got. Seventeen lawyers on retainer, and you’ve managed to work it out so that, in a free market, in a so-called free country, I can’t buy some shit-ass stock every other asshole can buy. Congratulations, you’re destroying the capitalist system! While everybody else in the world is embracing it, my boys and girls are fucking it up. You know what happens when capitalism gets fucked up? The communists come back! They come out of the bushes, don’t kid yourselves, they’re waiting in there. But maybe that’s not so bad, ’cause you know what happens when the commies take over? The first thing they do is shoot all the lawyers!
Economic activity is at the heart of temporal life. We must work and produce if we want to live. When a third party claims the “authority” to make rules about our work, our production, and the gains we accumulate by trading the products with others, we are no longer free. Since the most overt difference between Communist states and Western-style “free” ones is the Communist regime’s control of all production and trade, we’ve tended to view Communism as an economic scheme.
But the point of rigid economic control isn’t economics. It’s control.
Today, when some Leftist wants to denounce your opposition to his preferred variety of madness, he’s most likely to call you a “fascist.” (Yes, yes, now and then he’ll call you a “racist” or some kind of “phobe,” but “fascist” is currently top-of-the-pops. Trust me, I’m on the receiving end frequently enough to know.) “Fascist” comes with a lot of polemically useful associations, plus images of swastikas and jackboots. The Left has been using it as a slur since Hitler broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop Agreement and invaded the Soviet Union. But a peek deeper into history tells us that the fascism of Mussolini and Hitler is merely Communism with a few decorative trimmings. Both ideas proceed from Mussolini’s Maxim:
“Everything within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”
The Left’s determination to cleave Communism from fascism is founded on both their need for a useful slur, and for their desire to hide the overwhelming conformity between the two. Both schemes closely control economic activity. Both schemes ruthlessly suppress dissent. Both are implacably hostile to Christianity and Judaism. Both promote the notion of a “class enemy” that must be fought to extermination. How, then, shall we distinguish between the two? By the designs of their flags? And how is it logical to call someone who argues for less government and greater freedom a “fascist?”
The questions answer themselves… at least, for those with the courage to face them squarely.
The Left fears that we normal Americans might actually come to understand what it’s all about. (A girl I knew briefly long ago once looked at me with disdain and said “I know what you’re all about.” And I hadn’t even made a move on her. Go figure.) In all things, it’s about control. It has no philosophical argument against fascism. Jonah Goldberg once stunned a crowd of college students by asking them, “Other than the racism and genocide, what was so bad about fascism?”
There aren’t any Leftists openly calling for fascism… but there are some who openly advocate Communism. The Left has promoted several open Communists as heroes: Ernesto “Che” Guevara is only the best known example. Too few normal Americans have caught on yet. Perhaps that’s attributable to the demise of education these past few decades. But that doesn’t make it something we can’t fight.
And it’s about BLEEP!ing time we started to do so.
