Leading History

The phenomenon has begun to manifest itself for many years now: the ruling classes of the West seem less and less capable of leading their peoples and more and more to pursue contradictory goals, so much so that it is beginning to be very difficult to bring all the various initiatives together within a comprehensible and rational overall design.

Examples of this tendency toward irrationality are countless, but some are absolutely macroscopic. In the field of ideology, we can cite the rise of ideology that can be summarized under the acronym “politically correct”, more recently “woke”, which at first appeared so silly and hypocritical that its hold on people was not credible, but in the long run proved to be effective and pervasive instead. How could this happen? One can certainly speculate about an underlying conspiracy of wily promoters and disseminators, but frankly it seems more likely that they themselves believe in it at least in part and, in any case, it remains astonishing that such a silly ideology can eventually persuade people not to utter certain commonly used words or to assume in mammals a sexual interchangeability before which biology cringes.

Or the rise of the new environmental catastrophism that has frankly psychopathic ideological tips and in fact a person of impaired mental faculties has been placed as its emblem, a very important symbol, I would say. This ideology tends to regard man as something alien to nature and harmful to it, something that must therefore be limited as much as possible and, if necessary, even eliminated. If this thesis were held by a different species, it might also appear rational, but a species that finds itself not only superfluous but even harmful causes one to reflect.

Another example may be the depressive and punitive policies (see the case of Greece), which the European Union has been conducting for decades to the detriment of its own citizens by inducing a worsening of their material condition in order, allegedly, to comply with certain neoliberal dogmas on currency and the market: again, one can certainly speculate about underlying designs, especially the planned transfer of wealth from Europe to the U.S., but the ideological fanaticism, the brutal and uncovered execution, suggest at least some sincerity in its utopian mercantilist creed.

One more suicidal quirk: for decades the European Union has been pursuing a policy of mass immigration of populations that seem to be chosen on purpose from among the most diverse cultural patterns hostile to European ones to such an extent that it has resulted in the creation of significant internal minorities firmly supportive of, but not integrated with, the rest of the population. Anyone who is not blinded by ideological blinders (or simple stupidity) cannot fail to realize that this situation inevitably produces, and will increasingly produce in the future, very serious problems within European countries. Problems that did not exist before, completely created by the irresponsibility and superficiality of a policy. What is actually being pursued? Why this urge for ethnic suicide within a generation?

The promotion of the American matrix idea of an innate guilt of the population is similar to Christian original sin and seems to undergo this desire for atonement and self-destruction mixed with an underlying stupidity, a lack of cultural means to be able to explain a complex world.

It also jumps to mind the nearly two decades-long U.S. invasion of Afghanistan (with the listless cooperation of European subordinates), which was laughably motivated and then ended by leaving the very Taliban they claimed to want to oust in charge of the country, all of course at the cost of trillions and hundreds of thousands of lives. Such a blatant failure, conceived, conducted and carried out with incredible approximation, inexperience and ease, undoubtedly gives one pause to think about the quality of the American politicians and generals who commanded the expedition and the European ones who slavishly accompanied them like lapdogs on a leash. And if the gradual degradation in the institutional mechanisms of Western societies that has occurred over the past few decades has brought to power characters of such poor intellectual, cultural, moral and political standards, what can be thought of the level of the people who expressed them?

It is tempting to explain this bleak political landscape by plots hatched by cunning covert actors who have an overall design to carry out and remotely pilot events to achieve their ends. And, of course, such organizations and characters really exist and act: certainly the U.S. arms manufacturers had every interest in keeping a low-intensity war in Afghanistan going regardless of any properly political ends to showcase and sell their products, undoubtedly Big Pharma had every interest in magnifying (and perhaps creating) the “pandemic” along with the world health organization funded by Big Pharma, but is that enough to explain the results? Putting all this into an overall, coherent pattern is difficult, however. One gets the impression that these are valid but partial explanations that fail to understand the phenomena to the fullest without bringing up some sort of general cultural decline of Western civilization. I am sure that if my grandfather, a man of other times, had seen on television the alleged raid of the “Navy Seals” (glorifying background music), on Bin Laden's “compound” (!?) resulting in the assassination, mangling of the corpse, phony photo and burial at sea, he would not have believed it for a second, in fact he would not have taken the depiction seriously at all.

The new political course then took on grotesque tones starting with the “pandemic” cold of 2020. From this point on, the feeling that we are also dealing with phenomena of mental pathology and cognitive degeneration has enormously intensified (there are also overt symbols to confirm this, just look at the state of the current president of the U.S.). And it continues apace with the fantastic reconstruction, almost the exact opposite of reality, of the West's war on Russia called Russia's war on Ukraine. For what else could possibly drive Europe to cut itself off from cheap and virtually irreplaceable Russian gas and oil supplies? The European ruling classes still base their fortunes on the prosperity of the countries they lead and albeit indirectly rely on popular consensus, what in the end prompts them to allow the self-destruction of their own societies for the sole purpose of destroying Russia, which, admittedly, was sitting quietly and submissively in its corner?

What prompts the German foreign minister to declare that it does not matter what happens to Germany, nor does the will of the voters matter, as long as Russia is defeated? And even if he thinks so, why declare it on television? Andreotti would have reiterated (in those days politicians “reiterated” very often), that “the government will continue to support every effort for peace in compliance with the international commitments made and the sovereign will of the electorate”. The difference in the quality of the characters is even mocking. What about those who voted for that minister and to such a statement do not even react? Are they content? Will they still vote for him?

What makes me wonder at this point is whether really outside the West things are going much better. To see many episodes chasing each other, it doesn't seem that there is much to be particularly optimistic about. Take Russia for example.

President Putin passes for one of the best statesmen in the world, yet his handling of the Ukraine issue seems to be anything but straightforward and error-free. After the U.S.-led color revolution of 2013/14, he spent eight years letting himself be fooled by sham negotiations while the West consolidated its grip on Ukraine and reconverted an already substantially defeated army into the best armed force NATO has ever had. Only when this army was ready to attack did the Russians decide to move, but with limited forces. As far as we can reconstruct today, it seems to be understood that the intentions were to come to an agreement after an essentially demonstrative action; in fact, the troops deployed were patently insufficient for a victory. I do not know what made the Kremlin believe that success could be arrived at in that way, but certainly eight years of negotiations with the Ukrainian puppet regime and 20 years of negotiations with the West to limit NATO expansionism in the east did not seem to provide a credible basis for that belief.

The fact remains that more than seven months after the start of the operation, which has had ups and downs and certainly was not decisive given the initial flaw, Donetsk remains besieged and much of the territories liberated at first are back or will be back under the control of the Kiev regime with grave danger to the resident Russians (who had gone to the rescue). The mythical “phase two”, always predicted, continues not to come.

Rather, it seems that the Kremlin has not yet abandoned its willingness to deal with a West that has shown in every way that it wants only and only the destruction of Russia. To me a negotiation seems possible only from a position of strength, otherwise it will be a surrender. I recall just one last episode: the Ukrainian attack on Sevastopol carried out at least in part by taking advantage of the “grain corridor” granted to Ukraine to export its agricultural products.

Now it is clear that Russia has no interest in facilitating the sale of Ukrainian agricultural products to the West perhaps in payment for the weapons they supplied to kill Russian soldiers, so already the July agreement seemed like a counterproductive concession, but the Russians even went so far as to officially declare immediately after the attack that the agreement was over only to ... take it all back the next day.  Why? Because Erdogan demanded it? The fact is that this is a politically disastrous move not so much to Western public opinion as to their own public opinion and their own soldiers at the front. It seems like something thoroughly designed to hurt itself. But there is no fear: the Kiev regime has promised that it will do no more mischief: I swear Zelensky said! And with Erdogan guaranteeing it, one can be sure. Can one imagine a more ridiculous mess? What can a Russian think of Kherson: maybe these tomorrow will settle who knows how and leave, maybe rather than hope for Russia it was better to learn Ukrainian. The overall impression is that the Russians are taking one step forward and one step back, so it's not like they are moving much.

This is just one example, but in fact the whole operation is riddled with similar executive and communicative blunders. Frankly, it seems strange that they still think they can come to a preemptive agreement with a West that has gone so far as to organize a Russian government in exile and have its puppet Zelensky say he will never deal with the legitimate president of Russia (who came to power in elections surely less dubious than the American ones), without really keeping them by the balls. Did Western reassurances to the pitiful character that was Gorbachev or the Minsk agreements, really teach them nothing?

Frankly, the further we go, the more my past articles on the war in Ukraine (the first one back in March), seem, rather than critical, overly optimistic.

During the Cold War, the United States respected the USSR because it recognized its status as a competing superpower and feared it. Those who still remember those years will know that even in the movies the ultimate villain was not the Russians, James Bond was fighting the Spectre, the Russians most often collaborated in the fight with this farcical representative of evil. From the 1990s onward this radically changed, the United States had won, the world was in their hands, they had even declared the end of history: in other words, history from that point forward was theirs. The status of an enemy superpower no longer existed, those who opposed it were just a “rogue State”, basically a state that did not obey the master's orders and had to be brought back on track through a police operation, not a real war, like a gangster gang.

The current U.S. administration does not respect Russia (Russia is a gas station disguised as a nation), for it to respect it again it needs to regain the rank of a competing superpower, and that cannot happen without the Americans getting a resounding slap in the face, less will not suffice. And that is why the situation is actually more dangerous now than it was then, because there is no such mutual respect.

All in all, even hinting only in passing at the seemingly insane Covidian policies of the Chinese, it seems that even outside the West the quality of the ruling elites is not all that extraordinary. Looking at the whole, it seems to me that I can come to the conclusion that much of the world's events, rather than by a precise political plan whether overt or covert, are determined by chance, by mistakes, by the confluence of more or less shaky designs, by contingencies, by long waves in the mentality of peoples emerging from time to time from the very substratum of society, and that these are the main reasons why it is very difficult to be able to identify a coherent line in the actions of the protagonists.

History has probably always been like this: a mixture of intentions, plans, mistakes and general trends that characterize a certain period and that to some extent decide and implement themselves, regardless of the intentions of the various actors and the extraordinary personalities that may emerge. On the other hand, psychohistory, that fictional science capable of predicting History that Isaac Asimov had laid at the foundation of his Foundation trilogy, where precisely the Foundation itself, a kind of secret organization perpetuating itself through the centuries, controlled the history of the galactic empire with small targeted interventions over time, was never invented.

But this does not detract from the fact that the quality of the ruling elites in the world at the present moment in history appears to be incredibly poor (hinting that the average quality of the people below is as well), despite the fact that we are in an era of maximum technological and scientific expansion and maximum dissemination of culture. The combination of the two circumstances is not very reassuring for the future.

Who will finally win the current war, I cannot say for sure although my preferences all go to Putin's Russia. Perhaps who will make one mistake less among the many or perhaps who has been chosen by the irresistible currents of history.

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Translation by Costantino Ceoldo