Progressives, don’t be upset about Twitter

"Lenin's cause is alive and winning"

Musk’s purchase of Twitter is an Atlas-Shrugged-level event, afforded by his fantastic wealth. What, however, would happen if nobody had the kind of money it took? How long and in what direction the Party-media complex would guide the public opinion and the outcome of societal game-changers like elections?

The answer is obvious. As I’ve written some time ago, without knowing the details that have recently surfaced from Twitter but knowing enough to make an educated guess, the progressives have finally decided to get serious about seizing total power. For that, Lenin’s dictum about the need to capture communication means is always valid. That’s what Bolsheviks did in Russia for their power grab to succeed, then quashing freedom of speech, the condition to do away with all the other freedoms. That’s what progressives are doing in the US. Never mind that in Russia it was done with the help of bayonets and the all-powerful state whereas in the civilized US it’s been private media platforms happily merging with the secret police apparatus. The result is the same.

Yes, the same free enterprise system in the US allows for both that merger and for an occasional reversal of the trend, as happened with Twitter. I would thus suggest the progressives, the US version of totalitarians, not to despair, and the conservatives not to jump with joy. Musks are few and far between, but the organized prol… progressives, in lockstep that tolerates no dissent, will ensure that the state-thoughtpolice-media cartel will eventually crash what remains of the American utopia. Their individualist and freedom-loving ideological enemies, having no comparable rigid ideological spine, simply can’t amass an adequate response, relying on Reardens and Galts who largely remain a fiction. The utopia has already lasted far beyond utopias’ usual lifespan. We are now getting into a Randian dystopia.

The United States has not yet quite tried its own variety of totalitarianism. Apparently, the invariably nasty experience of others won’t be enough to keep us from that. Obama’s October 2008 promise to fundamentally transform the country will be kept.

Biden’s 1937 speech

No, Biden did not give any speech in 1937. He had not even been born then, ancient as he is. The actual date of  the speech I have finally read and talk about here was given by him on September 1, 2022, in Philadelphia, in the Independence Hall, no less. I had to read it myself, not relying on its retelling by the media of both partisan kinds—not only because that is what I usually do, having no trust in retellings. This time, an additional reason was what I had heard while listening to its pieces in the news. And the bleak feeling of fulfillment of my morose predictions of years ago about where this country was going. 

What I read was, to my knowledge, comparable only with one kind of speeches—and that is where the title originates. Those speeches are given at show trials, as the result of which the political opposition—real or imaginary—is to be physically eliminated. Not any show trials, in some of which the defendants may survive, but the ones where the lethal outcome is predestined—because the alleged crimes are too monstrous: “monstrous treachery, monstrous treason.” Where the defendants “have fallen so low” that they have become “fascists,” the enemies of democracy.

What I just quoted is not from any speech of Biden’s, even though he has said as much about those who support his political rival, complete with ("semi-")fascists just a week before, with a clever prefix to avoid being accused of trivializing the Holocaust. Those are quotes from the speech by Andrey Yanuaryevich Vyshinskiy, the Prosecutor General of the Soviet Union, on January 28, 1937. As those targeted in Biden’s speech, the accused were in fact loyal citizens of the country. As in Biden’s speech, their monstrous crimes were invented, to present a mortal threat to the country's political system and existence. As in his speech, no compromise or leniency to the accused could be contemplated—particularly to a small group of devilish enemies. As did Vyshinskiy, Biden contrasted the two paths, backward and forward, the latter, of course, represented by his Party and himself, the usually semi-lethargic but now suddenly hyped-up long-lifelong politician harking back to the times when he was afraid that his "children would grow in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle". Like Vyshinskiy, Biden talked about "the will of the people," a common refrain of totalitarian executioners. 

Like Vyshinskiy was talking about defending socialism, which was under no threat from the fanatical communists on trial whom Stalin considered a threat to his absolute power, Biden was talking about defense of democracy, under no threat from his political opposition, in contrast to the violent pogromists, antisemites, and would-be political assassins among his own supporters. The difference was that Vyshinskiy was then really accusing only that small group, the established leaders, the Old Guard of the October Revolution—even though thousands if not millions would be shot, tortured to death, or put in the Gulag as followers of those accused after they had been annihilated. Biden, hypocritically saying that the number of the “MAGA Republicans” was small, not even mentioning the many independent supporters of Trump in addition to the huge majority of the Republicans, accused half a country of being its enemies. 

Like Vyshinskiy with those hapless victims of the Stalinist regime, Biden falsely accused half a country, his political opponents, of "willingness to engage in political violence." That phrase should scare not only "ultra-MAGA" "deplorable" "extremists" like myself, but anybody who can listen if not read. Because the only way to prevent violence is, to be sure, violence. 

No, Biden says, "we do not encourage violence": it's not "an acceptable political tool." Except, of course, when using the FBI to invade the home of your political rival, or using a black-booted SWAT team armed with automatic guns to drag out of his home a former Trump official. No, violence is not necessary for the party that comes to power after instigating mass riots, destruction, and calls and plentiful excuses for political Black Shirt violence by its leading members of Congress. No, they still only dream of taking Trump to the courtroom in shackles for a show trial. 

If you ask me, they really do not need the kind of violence that led Bolsheviks to power and the Red Terror. That was simply the specifics of the Russian situation at the time. Nazis came to power peacefully. In this country, the political means and events are too framed by its own history and system. Let’s see. The intellectuals, who, on occasion, in other countries have been in opposition to authoritarians, are fully domesticated Democrat pets here, justifying any pogrom if it is committed by "their" side. The mainstream media are already fully the Party "organs," as they were called and had to be made into via violence in the Soviet Union and in Putin's Russia. The law enforcement, the military, the intelligence and diplomatic corps are fully "woke"—or, more precisely, totalitarian—in a true Orwellian sense of "1984." Complete with the Bolshevik-dream changes in the very biological nature of people, turning one sex into the other (or many others) and forcing people to say that this 2 + 2 = 5. No need for violence when all the stars are already aligned as they should be for complete one-Party control. 

They don't need violence, but they will still use it.

1937 is the year that is symbolic in the history of Russia as the time when the communist revolution consumed its own to establish the full monopoly of Stalin's power.  The year of 2022 may yet be the one when the power monopoly of the Democrat Party, under its totalitarian eliminationist leadership, is going to be finally enacted. 

Like Soviet communists, this party sees its opponents—those not fully in goose step with it—as terrorists, extremists, and enemies worse than Osama bin Laden. You know what happened to him. Don't think they won't come for you.

Equating Judaism with Fascism

 On March 21, 2022, the online Tablet Magazine sent an email with a link to its item entitled “Putin’s fascism.” To me, despite my agreeing with what Putin’s ideology is, the piece sounded like political hackery. I wrote a letter to the editor, which has not been published—and I don't hold my breath it will be. Here it is.

Equating Judaism with Fascism

Dear Editor:

I  received today the Tablet email and could not believe my eyes reading its very first words: “Putin’s Favored Brand of Judaism.” From the standpoint of the article’s authors, Putin, the Kremlin ghoul, is associated with a particular brand of Judaism. And this is because he is a “traditionalist,” and his supposed “brain,” Dugin, an ideologue of  Russian nationalism, allegedly quotes the Vilna Gaon as prophesying that in the end of days the main enemies will be Jews who “underwent modernization”—whatever that may mean, considering that the Gaon lived in the 18th century. Not only do we have to rely on Dugin’s quote and perception of what Judaism is (even though that is what he just “imagines”), but we must also agree that “traditionalism” has one meaning only: it is a synonym for fascism.  That’s the article’s title, “Putin’s fascism.” That is because, you see, Putin, just like those “traditionalist” Orthodox Jews, disapproves of LGBT, and “enjoyed the support of Russia’s  chief rabbi.” Moreover, Dugin’s “comrades” are “right-wing Israel Zionists.” How much wider can a dirty smearing brush be? Similarly, in judging who is a Jew (because that is what we are always focused on), we are supposed to rely on Hitler, cited on the same breath as “the rabbis” and “the State of Israel” that apparently agree with Hitler.

Unsurprisingly, this kind of twisted logic inevitably leads to Trump, another threat to democracy and “modernized Jews”— like Soros. Once we get to that point, the goal of the article becomes clear. It is not to denounce Putin’s fascism and the ongoing slaughter of Ukrainians by the Russian murderous army, nor is it to call for Jewish unity, which the Gaon actually called for. No, it is to associate Orthodox Judaism with fascism—and, most importantly, associate Trump with Putin the fascist.

The method employed in the article is the one that was used by the Soviet Union in its ideological war, called “rotten herring.” An adversary is accused of a dirty disgusting thing, no matter how implausible. Then, irrespective of whether the person is further accused or defended, the name gets associated with the rot, and every time the association mentioned, a little bit of it gets rubbed into the name. That’s what Putin uses accusing Ukrainians of Nazism and developing biological weapons, that’s what was done to Trump with the obscene “Russian dossier.” I am no rabbi, but I am pretty sure that there is no brand of Judaism that encourages this Soviet-kind deceptive anti-religious partisan propaganda. 

The black hole of Russia

 My op-ed in The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle , "The Black Hole of Russia."

Солдату России

Разуй глаза, —скажу, любя,—

солдат России.

Тебе солгали, что тебя

сюда просили.

Тебе солгали, что «хохлы»

тебя приветят.

Но почему поверил ты

мерзавцам этим—

убийцам за стеной Кремля—

и стал убийцей?

Не видел ты, какая тля

там век ютится—

с повадкой ката и ворья

упырь всевластный?

Или тебя учили зря,

и все не ясно,

что не спаситель ты, а враг

и гадок людям,

и в голове твоей дыра—

коль нет, то будет—

от пули брата твоего,

в кого ты метил?

Ведь это ты открыл огонь,

и ты—в ответе.

Putin

      Fragment of the fresco of Vitale de Bologna of the Benedictine Monastery of Pomposa (Italy), 1350

That’s, I’m sure, a vampire
Gnaws on bones, bloody-lipped.
—A. S. Pushkin. “Vurdalak,” Songs of Western Slavs
(Это, верно, кости гложет
Красногубый вурдалак.
—А. С.  Пушкин. “Вурдалак”, Песни западных славян)

What’s in the mirror that you see?

No bloody fangs, which would be fitting:

you feed on corpses of your victims.

You make them as you drink your tea.

You are no ghoul from fairy tales:

there’s been no one that’s been as horrid.

This is your time. But see, before it,

there were some others, and they failed.

One placed a bullet in his brain.

The other choked on his vomit.

The end is near. You postpone it:

you'll murder more - but that’s in vain.

You should have grown fangs, a horn,

a snout that you've almost grown,

while sitting on your trashy throne.

When you are dead, no one will mourn.