Just as important, to my mind, as what is being proven is who is proving it. It is the left-wing liberals, the people who call themselves “Antifa” or anti-fascist who are doing this. Doing it, in fact, so perfectly that one would be forgiven for thinking they wake up every morning and ask themselves how they can prove Mussolini right today. The liberals, not Mussolini, are the subject at issue here. You can take Fascism or leave it but Mussolini made no secret of the fact that he was a totalitarian, that he despised democracy and egalitarianism while the liberals constantly claimed to champion things like democracy, civil liberties, equality and so on while actually, according to Mussolini, being just as authoritarian as he was, they simply were not so honest about it and wished to use their power to go in a very different direction from where he wanted to go. This was the mentality behind his adamant belief that there could never be any compromise or working together between liberalism and Fascism because each were just as committed to suppressing the other. As Mussolini said, “…either we or they, either their ideas or ours, either our State or theirs!”
Today we see all of this being proven correct, by the liberal left, on a daily basis. In the very liberal country of Canada, a man in Montreal was recently arrested for saying unflattering things about Muslims on the internet. That very same evening, in the very liberal American state of California, violent riots broke out to shut down a speech by a Trump supporter. The following evening there was also violence in New York for the exact same reason. In Europe you have people who claim to be liberals supporting laws against Holocaust denial, people who claim to be liberals actively thwarting democracy when the results go against the European Union project and you have people who claim to be liberals screaming about misogyny and homophobia when done (or allegedly done) by one type of people but either ignoring it or even making excuses for it when done by another type of people. What happened to equality? The slightest talk of having laws which support Christian morality are swiftly condemned by liberal countries but many of these same countries openly allow for segments of their populations to be governed according to Islamic law with no worries or warnings about theocracy. What happened to freedom of religion?
None of this, however, should come as any great surprise to those of us who are adherents of traditional authority. This is the primary point I wish to make. We have seen this from the very beginning. We saw it when the supposedly liberty-loving French revolutionaries made it their business to massacre anyone who opposed the revolution. The same people who condemned anyone being privileged because of who their parents were had no hesitation to torture and starve to death the innocent, little Dauphin simply because of who his parents were. These people have been rank hypocrites from the very start and it should come as no surprise that they have never truly changed their ways. They can talk a good game when they are untroubled, but let the slightest hint of danger appear and they immediately become as tyrannical as they always accuse their opponents of being.
At the very core of their ideology is supposed to be the “power of the people”. They pride themselves on how democratic they are. They love democracy so much they will fight for it, die for it and kill other people to force them to accept it! The underpinning of this is that the people, or the majority of the people anyway, are always or at least almost always right. Yet, in the United States, for example, it was not enough to let the people in each state decide whether they would allow abortion or recognize gay “marriage” since, after all, some states chose not to. So, the liberal left had to turn to nine un-elected judges on the Supreme Court to force the entire country to do what the liberal left thought was right. One could, of course, argue that this is not so important as deciding how and by whom you are ruled which, we are told, is the ultimate goal and ultimate good of liberalism, of the concept of democratic republics. Yet, here too, we ourselves have seen liberal hypocrisy on display from ‘day one’. If the whole point of having a democratic republic is to allow the people to choose how they are governed, why is it that democratic republics such as France or Germany or Italy all forbid the people from choosing to be governed by a monarchy?
Surely anyone must be able to see how fraudulent the liberals are on this point. They crow about how in their system it is “the people” who choose how they are governed and who it is who governs them and yet, in numerous republics, one choice was taken off the table and forbidden at the outset. Does this not reveal a glaring betrayal of their own professed principles? Imagine if you went to a restaurant that boasted of having an unlimited menu, you can order anything that you like and it will be made to your satisfaction only to then be told that there are certain dishes you are forbidden to order. The menu isn’t really unlimited then, is it? Liberals say they trust the people to choose their own leaders but start by telling them that are not trusted enough to be allowed to choose their former monarch. In some republics, monarchists are refused to campaign as a political party. Communists who think Joseph Stalin was a great guy are free to participate but not those horrible people who want their king back. Today, of course, people are not so concerned as they used to be as they have resurrected fascism, national socialism or, in an extremely ironic twist, populism as the terrifying bogeymen threatening to destroy the liberal world order as we know it. However, if counterrevolutionaries were making similar gains, they would fall back to their old paranoia soon enough and some countries still have laws on the books banning such efforts.
It says something about the true feelings of the liberals, about their doubts concerning their own utopian world view. “The people can choose any government they like! You know, except for that one…” which was monarchy. It was once practically standard procedure to not only make it illegal to restore the monarchy, illegal to campaign for it but they would usually go even further and expel their former royals from their own countries (and that when they didn’t simply murder them). As late in the game as World War I the Bourbon-Parma brothers Prince Sixtus and Prince Xavier, devoted to the cause of France and the Allies, tried to join the French army but were forbidden because they were members of the Bourbon dynasty, even though it was a fairly remote junior branch that had been farmed out to rule a patch of conquered Italy and not France itself. No, the French Republic considered these two young men too great a threat to allow them to defend the soil of their ancestors, at least while wearing a French uniform and so they instead joined the Belgian army whose King was rather more accepting of any help he could get.
Until 2002 the family of the last King of Italy was not allowed to set foot on Italian soil. They had been exiled and had all their property confiscated after the clearly fraudulent referendum that made Italy a republic in 1946. When, in 2002, the Savoy royals were finally allowed back in to their homeland, it was only after Victor Emmanuel, Prince of Naples, renounced his claim to the Italian throne. The Italian Republic has always justified this by effectively blaming the House of Savoy for Mussolini coming to power. However, oddly enough, they never exiled or barred from politics anyone of the Mussolini family and, in fact, a granddaughter, Alessandra Mussolini, is still a prominent politician and MEP today. Of course, if the Italian government were to ban Alessandra Mussolini from holding office, that too would be a violation of their own stated principles and should not happen but the fact that it was never an issue shows how unjust and false the justification for banning the Savoy royals was.
The son of the last Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, Archduke Otto, got involved in politics after World War II but was banned from his native Austria because of his royal ancestry. After World War II the Austrian republic repealed all the laws of the hated Nazis, except for those which banned the Habsburgs and confiscated all of their property. They thought the Nazis were right on when it came to that family. In order to gain Austrian citizenship, in 1961 Archduke Otto was obliged to pledge his allegiance to the republic and later to go even further and renounce all his titles and claims to the Austrian throne, something he later described as an “infamy”. Even then, socialist opposition was so strong it was several more years before he was actually able to obtain a passport and visit Austria in 1966. Think just for a moment about the fact that the Austrian republic today is adamant that any pitiful, wandering stranger from any far flung corner of Africa, Arabia or Asia has a right to come to Austria and live but for decades refused to allow into the country a man who was born in Austria simply because, for a brief few years, his father had been Kaiser. He could only return to his native country if he renounced his birthright and agreed to refrain from campaigning for the restoration of the monarchy. In other words, he could play the game of politics but only so long as he played for any team but his own.
Again, this is not all that uncommon, even though most do not think about it. Several years ago the German High Court ruled that changing the constitution to make Germany a monarchy rather than a republic would be illegal, no matter if every single voting adult in Germany wished for this to be so. Even democrats believe democracy has its limits it seems. The Germans, of course, are a rather unique case and could be a major contender for having the most hypocritical political establishment in the world. While prattling on about freedom they ban political parties, ban certain speech, ban certain public assemblies all depending on what is politically fashionable, politically incorrect or which might threaten the ruling political establishment. So far, they have yet to ban any monarchist organizations because, frankly, they have posed no serious threat. However, they are perfectly capable of doing so should that ever change. They seem to have very little trust in the German people and very little confidence in their own ideology given that they regard it as too fragile to withstand competition from fundamentally opposing viewpoints.
So, yes, the liberals are showing themselves to be colossal hypocrites. They suppress speech they don’t like, the overrule the public when a vote does not go their way, they riot and vandalize when they lose, demanding the rules be changed to let them win. The world is seeing it now on full display, practically on a daily basis. For those of us who believe in traditional authority, those of us who never bought into their utopia in the first place, those of us who believe that blood is thicker than ballot paper, this is no surprise. After all, they came for us first.
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"Yes, the children can choose any dessert they like. They can choose apple pie or cherry pie."
"What if they don't want pie? What if they want cake?"
"Oh, God no! We would never let them eat cake...
So true, so true. I would add one thing, however, these people are not liberals but leftists, communists, Bolsheviks, anything but real liberals.
ReplyDeleteAs always I enjoy your column.
Ah, but the liberals (the true liberals) give them a chance. The more right-of-center liberals have so far been easily defeated because they more often play by the rules of the game whereas this other sort never does and never will.
Deletethese people are not liberals but leftists, communists, Bolsheviks, anything but real liberals.
DeleteNo, they're liberals. Actual out-and-out communists don't display that kind of hypocrisy.
The fault is inherent in liberalism. Liberalism exalts (or claims to exalt) freedom and the individual and destroys family, community and society. But liberals still want power, hence the hypocrisy.
Do you think that, in our lifetimes, any monarchies will be restored in Europe? This is assuming the current trend away from liberalism continues and liberalism's true nature continues to be slowly revealed.
ReplyDeleteThere is a chance I would say, but it will depend somewhat on what the non-reigning royals (and to some extent the reigning ones as well) do about the situation. As part of a reawakening of national identity, I could easily see monarchies being revived but I think they would have to be more energetic about it than most currently are.
DeleteSpeaking of Europe, thanks to Penelopegate, Fillon is toast. It seems as if some leftist investigative journalists handed the election to Le Pen on a silver platter. Do you think a victory from her would send a shockwave strong enough through Europe for real change to occur?
DeleteIt seems as if some leftist investigative journalists handed the election to Le Pen on a silver platter.
DeleteI think it's very unlikely that Le Pen will win. If the Republicans really crash it's more likely the Socialists will win.
I'd love to be proved wrong, but at this stage support for the nationalist parties in Europe is nowhere near the levels needed to have a chance of power. Europeans are determined on suicide and nobody is going to stop them.
Well, don't you remember Trump's poll numbers? Hillary had 98% chance to win according to some. Marine Le Pen's numbers aren't THAT bad. I did like Fillon a lot though, shame his career is practically over. Can he recover from Penelopegate?
DeleteWell, don't you remember Trump's poll numbers? Hillary had 98% chance to win according to some. Marine Le Pen's numbers aren't THAT bad.
DeleteEven the most unfavourable polls were giving Trump at least 40 percent of the vote. Le Pen is polling around 26 percent. Given that every other party will combine against her in the second round that gives her no chance at all. The French voting system is very different from the American system. In the US a candidate can win with 47 percent of the vote (in fact a candidate can win with a lot less than 47 percent if the vote gets splintered by third-party candidates). In France you have to get 50 percent plus in the second round. The fact that Le Pen might win the first round is essentially meaningless.
Le Pen's numbers are much much worse than Trump's ever were.
I'd love to see her win, but realistically it's not going to happen.
And now, a brief history of the War in Afghanistan:
DeleteAmerica: We will create a government for The People!
Afghanistan: "The People" want our king back.
America: Sorry, I don't speak Spanish.