A light
in the Darkness
By Paul
Craig Roberts
April
01, 2020 "Information
Clearing House"
- Diana
Johnstone’s just published book, Circle in
the Darkness: Memoir of a World Watcher, is
the best book I have ever read, the most
revealing, the most accurate, the most truthful,
the most moral and humane, the most sincere and
heartfelt, and the best written.
Her book is far more than a memoir.
It is a history that has not previously
been written.
If you want the truth of the last 60
years in place of the contrived reality
constructed for us by controlled explanations,
it is in this book.
This
book is so extraordinary in its truthfulness and
conciseness that it is difficult for a less
gifted writer to do it justice.
It is a book without a superfluous
sentence.
Herein I will provide some of the books message.
In future columns I hope to present some
of the history in the book.
In the Western World the legitimate national
interest of people has become identified with
racism and fascism.
Corporate globalism requires open
borders, and the left has aligned with globalism
and has become the most zealous enforcer of open
borders, which has come to mean the right of
refugees with victim status to other peoples’
countries.
The left has abandoned the working class
and anti-war activity.
Today the left is pro-war in order to
enforce “human rights” on alleged dictators by
bombing their peoples into oblivion, thus
producing refugees and tag along opportunistic
immigrants that flock to the Western aggressor
nations.
Self-styled moral censors, such as Antifa,
denounce hate while violently hating those they
denounce. Everything is settled by controlled
explanations that cannot be questioned or
examined in debate.
Those who engage in critical free
thinking are censored, shouted down, beaten up,
fired, and cancelled.
The cancel culture permits no debate,
only enthusiastic acquiesce to explanations that
have been settled in advance.
Antifa
by shutting down open debate actually serves to
protect the authoritarian center consisting of
“the Clintonian Democratic Party, mainstream
media, the military industrial complex and
globalized neoliberal finance capital.”
Antifa turns the left into a support
group for the authoritarian center.
In the European Union’s so-called constitution,
private corporate interests take precedence
over—indeed do not permit—the socialized
elements of European mixed economies that made
the societies livable communities. Today people
are sacrificed to the greed of the global elite
as social services are curtailed and privatized.
In the
“Western democracies,” democracy–that is, rule
by the people and a rule of law– has been
extinguished. European peoples were forced into
the European Union at the expense of their
national sovereignty despite having voted down
EU membership.
The French people voted 54.7% against EU
membership and 45.3% for.
The Dutch people voted 61% against the EU
and 39% for.
Faced with an unacceptable democratic
outcome, the ruling elites removed the question
from the people by turning EU membership into a
“treaty” that could be signed by governments
without input from the peoples.
When the French Constitutional Court
ruled that the “treaty” was contrary to the
French Constitution, the French Constitution was
changed to accommodate the “treaty.”
Only the Irish government gave the people
a choice by putting the “treaty” to a
referendum, and the people rejected it.
Chastised for allowing the people to decide
their own fate, the Irish government collapsed
under elite pressure and after a period of
intense propaganda in favor of the “treaty”
forced it through on a second referendum.
The Western “democratic” media were
principal agents of the elite in stripping
European peoples of any control over how they
are governed.
In the West lies and orchestrated deceit have
replaced truth in government and media. Instead
of spreading facts and mutual understanding,
media have deceived the public in order to gain
support for unjustifiable wars.
Deceit “reached an extravagant new peak
of danger with the campaign of calumny against
Russia” culminating in the preposterous charge
investigated by a “special prosecutor” that
Hillary Clinton’s defeat was caused by a
Putin/Trump plot involving Russian interference
in the US presidential election.
“Western values” are constantly invoked, but
what are these values?
They are not the values that made the
West what it is, or rather was.
These values are rejected.
Free speech is out if it challenges
official explanations whether the government’s
or the left’s or uses any words that can be
misrepresented as “hate speech.”
Democracy is out as demonstrated by the
anti-democratic formation of the European Union.
Truth is out as it is “offensive.”
Rational inquiry is regarded as denial of
emotion-based proclamations.
It goes on and on.
Diana Johnstone notes that government
repression is most significant not against
violent acts of rebellion but against Julian
Assange for exercising press freedom to convey
information to the public.
Where
does this leave us?
We have the West against the world, the
West against itself, and the people against
themselves.
Washington is unable “to view the world
other than as a field for exercising US
‘leadership,’ and all who balk are considered
deadly enemies.”
The diplomacy of the US and its NATO
vassals consists of dropping sanctions and bombs
on those who refuse to submit to Washington’s
will, while the West itself dissolves into
“diversity” and the mutual hatred of Identity
Politics, which has progressed to the point that
the transgendered are busy at work hating
feminists. Diana Johnstone puts it best:
“When
individuals are bunched into groups assigned
intrinsic qualities—from victimhood to
racism—normal human ties of mutual concern,
shared purpose, comprehension and compassion are
severed. In a grotesque development, new gender
identities are invented, whose ‘cause’
overshadows the real problems of genuinely
disadvantaged people. Economic issues are
forgotten as groups mobilize solely to police
attitudes.
Billionaires prosper more than ever
before, while down below people bicker over safe
spaces and toilet use.”
Hubris
has destroyed humanity:
“The countries of the Western world are in a
state of schizophrenic overconfidence and
self-doubt. Their leaders persist in proclaiming
‘our values’ as the model for the rest of
humanity, while their own people are
increasingly divided and disillusioned.
“The
18th century was the century of the liberated
mind. The 19th century was the century of Great
Men. The 20th century was the century of the
common man. And the 21st century’s looks like it
may become a negation of all of them. The
century of nobody at all.
“Irrationality and censorship restore chains to
thought. Great Men are only statues to be
demolished. The common man, once hailed as the
hero of a radiant future, has been degraded to a
superfluous nuisance, probably racist and
homophobic. Ordinary folks have been reassigned
from the glorious concept of ‘the people’ to
their derogatory redefinition under the rubric
of populism’ [and Trump deplorables].
People
are reduced to ‘consumers,’ while being told
that by consuming, they are destroying the
planet. Identity Politics has not only turned
people against each other by group, but its late
manifestation, Vegan speciesism, even turns
people against people altogether, for being an
overprivileged life form.”
What will our future be? Currently we live in a
dystopia of deceit.
But the failure of our leaders to deal
adequately with a health crisis and their
hostility to an economic system that serves
people rather than the wealth of elites are
marking the Western world as a massive failure.
Will realization of this failure cause the
people to revolt as the Yellow Vests have, or
will it break the people and further diminish
them?
As we
are confined at home in an effort to avoid
infection and to limit the spread of infection,
now is a good time to read a clear explanation
of what has happened to us in our time, assess
the failures that have undermined our existence
as a united and free people, and prepare for
reconstructing a livable and humane society.
Diana Johnstone’s book is available from Clarity
Press
https://www.claritypress.com/book-author/diana-johnstone/
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of
the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate
editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was
columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News
Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many
university appointments. His internet columns
have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts'
latest books are
The Failure of Laissez Faire
Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West,
How America Was Lost,
and
The Neoconservative Threat to
World Order.
Donate
and support Dr, Roberts Work.
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.