The Democratic Farce, A Personal Account

Yesterday was the nation's first primary, right here in the state of Texas. This is not usually the sort of thing I bother with but many have argued that local elections are the most important of all and, regardless of that, I had a cousin on the ballot who would be very cross if I didn't drag my bones to town and vote for him (he's bigger than me). So, I went to town, marched into the parish hall and voted in the Democrat primary. They "warn" you on the ballot that you must be a registered Democrat to do this and are not allowed to vote in any other primaries (meaning the Republican one). You may have already noticed the first absurdity in this farce we call the democratic process. Why on earth would someone as radical-far-right-wing reactionary as yours truly be voting for the most leftist of the "two" American political parties? The short answer is; because they are the only game in town. The longer answer is; because demographics have consequences, even more than elections as it turns out. If you want democracy, these are the facts you are going to have to deal with.

Even in the supposedly "deep red" state of Texas, which everyone regards as a bastion of conservatism, pretty much all the urban areas are solidly Democrat and pretty much anywhere up to and including 100 miles of the Mexican border is also solidly Democrat and I would fall deep within that particular area. Because of the demographics of where I live, the vast majority of the population votes Democrat in every election, no matter what the circumstances are, no matter who is on the ballot. This has been the case for so long that the Republicans do not even bother to run candidates anywhere near where I live as it would simply be a waste of resources. This area is lost to them, they know it and they know it is not coming back. Because of this, you also have to be a Democrat in order to run for local office and appear on the ballot. This applies to my cousin who had to run as a Democrat despite being to the right of Rush Limbaugh. If you're not a Democrat, don't even bother trying. So, where I live, thanks to demographics, you have the "freedom" to vote for the Democrat...or the Democrat when it comes to local elections.

For anyone in an area such as this, who is a typical American conservative, it means you will be allowed no part in choosing who the candidate should be for the party you are certain to be voting for in the general election. This actually annoyed me somewhat this time as I would've liked to vote against George P. Bush just to be on the record about that, however, I could only vote for who is Democrat opponent will be and because of the demographics where I live that vote will count for absolutely nothing as it will be a proverbial drop in the bucket, a single grain of sand on the shore. I should probably also point out that the vast majority of Democrats on the ballot, again, because of the demographics of the area, had no opposition. They were not running against anyone, so it was really a waste of paper at the very least. For those keeping score, that means that you have a "choice" of only one party and a "choice" of only one candidate. I suppose those leftist protesters who are always chanting, "This is what democracy looks like!" might have a point, because what goes on at the polls in my area certainly doesn't look like democracy. The damning thing about the entire liberal model is that none of this is out of order, it is all perfectly legal.

Being well acquainted with this farce, I long ago stopped taking any of this seriously. The liberal model is supposed to be well-informed voters making sober decisions based on the merits of the candidates and their own rational self-interest. Human nature, however, doesn't work that way and so you get what we have in south Texas which is tribal voting. And who can say it shouldn't be? With a "choice" between candidates that each belong to a party I despise, neither of whom, in most cases, I know anything about and do not care to, why not simply vote for the name that sounds most similar to my own? You cannot realistically say you expect otherwise. Deep down, everyone knows this I think. Imagine, for example, a voter in southern California who is a Vietnamese-American. The candidates on the ballot are:

   - Alfredo Gutierrez

   - Pedro Ramirez

   - Juan Gonzales

   - Nguyen Van Sam

   - Alberto Garcia

Do you really think there is much doubt about which one he is most likely to vote for? It is a farce, a farce designed to fool people into thinking they have greater control over the government than they would with, oh, say, a king for example. After all, where I live, as you can see, demographics make all the difference and that demographic change was one which neither myself nor any previous generation here was ever asked to vote on. That, I think, says it all.

In Defense of Modern Monarchs

Monarchs today, specifically those in the western world, are increasingly taking criticism from the more right-leaning sections of society which have traditionally defended them. This is bad, in my view both for them and for society and I fear could be the beginning of something disastrous for the cause of traditional authority (just add it to the list). They are not, you will notice, being defended by the left-leaning sections of society as you might expect for anyone or anything being attacked from the right. You might have even thought you heard the left defending them but, sorry, you did not. The left will say they agree with a royal who agrees with them on global warming or open borders, tolerance and diversity and all that, they will applaud Prince Harry for marrying a mixed-race, divorced actress from America but they *never* defend the monarchy itself because they know, even if many on the right have forgotten, that monarchy by definition goes against their fundamental worldview and can never be reconciled with it. When modern royals parrot the leftist narrative, the leftists simply applaud them cutting their own throats.

What tends to upset people on the right today about modern royals is just a little contradictory. On the one hand, they do not like what many royals say and do but there are also those who do not like them because, as they say, they don’t actually “do” anything and are purely ceremonial. Personally, I have a problem with all of these things as well and wish that it were not so and these criticisms are not coming out of thin air. Most of, if not all, of the things that upset the right-wing critics of modern monarchs upset me as well, the difference is that none of it turns me against monarchy in general or any particular monarchy either. Modern royals have been placed in an extremely difficult position. They were told from birth that they must be above politics, can say or do nothing political only to then have the ever-expanding left-liberal state make absolutely everything political. They have also been taught in the same schools and by the same professors as the liberal elites who are making such a mess of things. Similarly, when they attend church, be it Protestant or Catholic, they hear the same narrative about diversity, inclusion, environmentalism and so on which their pastors, whether appointed by the Pope or politicians, are told to preach.

They do live in a bubble and these days it is a poison-filled bubble. Keeping all of this in mind, they are also told that they must “do” something to justify their position as the idea of a hereditary birthright is unthinkable in this day and age combined with the natural human desire to pursue some activity to avoid leading totally empty lives. Because the liberal elites who rule us do not, of course, actually mean the things that they say, modern royals have found that championing traditional or right-wing causes leads to condemnation for being “political”, this leaves only fashionable left-wing causes which they are allowed to pursue as the left certainly doesn’t object to this nor, these days, does the mainstream right or the so-called “conservatives” which pass for this in Europe today. All of this means that while I find many of the things that modern monarchs do or say unpalatable, it also means that I can find little room to blame them personally for it. It does not make me despise them but pity them and desire to rescue them from this left-liberal prison they have been born into.

The enemies of monarchy are happy to applaud royals when they do something detrimental to traditional authority or the survival of western civilization but they do so not because they believe in monarchy but because this is all part of their plan to undermine the most fundamental elements and institutions of western civilization in order to turn people against it. In other words, they want the defenders of traditional authority to believe that their cause is not worth defending at all and so they might as well give up. It reminds me, as I mentioned in a recent film review, of the scene in “1898 Los ultimos de Filipinas” which shows the Filipino rebels trying to persuade the Spanish garrison to surrender by telling them that their own government never showed much concern for them, forgot about them and sold the whole place to the Americans or, in other words, that they were fighting for leaders unworthy of their sacrifice. If it means ending opposition to them, these people will say or do anything and just as they have infiltrated and twisted the entertainment industry, education, government and the churches it is foolish to think they would stop short of their takeover of all culture and society at the foot of the monarchy.

As such, when the royals of today say something that infuriates me, I do not blame them but rather those who actually rule us as modern royals are in their power, unfortunately. When it comes to moral issues, if the King of Spain, the King of the Belgians, the Grand Duke of Luxembourg or the Princes of Monaco or Liechtenstein say something I find objectionable, I do not blame them but rather the Pope who is set above them and who, in the past when popes were crowned and acted like popes, was called, “the master of kings and princes, the ruler of the rulers of the world”. Similarly, when something like this comes from the Queens of Britain or Denmark or the Kings of The Netherlands, Norway or Sweden, I blame the politicians who pay and appoint the leaders of the churches who are supposed to pass on proper moral teaching to royals and commoners alike. One could also then cast an accusing eye toward the voting public who put these people in office and submit to their rule but that leads us to the other point, that royals today are simply ceremonial figureheads unworthy of serious consideration. Perish the thought!

No monarch in Europe today, save arguably the Pope as Sovereign of Vatican City, has much if any actual power. Some may have a slight degree of influence but that varies with governments and issues. Even the monarchs in Europe with the most power, the aforementioned Princes of Monaco and Liechtenstein, are not quite so powerful as they may appear. They are sovereign states but not really independent states given that they are micro-states which frankly couldn’t survive a grape embargo. They can exist only because their powerful neighbors allow them to. The huge population of Monaco would not be able to survive for a week without the food and other vital resources France allows to be passed through her borders to the tiny principality. Lest anyone think that one of these monarchs could stand up and defy the prevailing world order, consider the fate that befell countries like Rhodesia or South Africa which did the same, countries with things like farmland, room for livestock, mineral resources and fresh water. If Rhodesia could not survive the hostility of the international community, I fail to see how anyone could argue that Liechtenstein could.

It is clear then that modern European monarchs reign but absolutely do not rule. Why then should we care about them? We should care about them for the same reason that the republicans care about them; because of what they represent. For hardcore traditionalists, I would point to the many child monarchs of history who I have admitted before to having a fondness for. Obviously, it is not ideal to have a child monarch, the ideal being to have a mature, wise, moral and courageous monarch but, as I have related in the past, child monarchs have something to teach us. When Frenchman dropped to one knee before the 5-year-old King Louis XIV or when wrinkled Vietnamese mandarins kowtowed to the 8-year-old Emperor Duy Tan they knew perfectly well that such children had no power and would not actually be ruling the country but that, then as now, others would be ruling in their name. It was, rather, what they represented that was important, all of the culture, religion, traditions and the history of the nation that was bound up in the bloodline represented by the tiny child draped in regal robes before them.

One could view modern monarchs in much the same way as you might view an historic building such as an historic cathedral, once held sacred but which is today no more than a tourist attraction. The Palace of Versailles is another example, once the magnificent residence of a sacred regal line but which is today pimped out by the French republican government like a prostitute. The fact that trashy American celebrities can rent it out or that it can be used to host obscene and grotesque “art” exhibits should repulse us all but it should not make us wish to burn it down or allow it to crumble through neglect because it has been tainted by the wickedness of our time.

When I was a child, and it seems I may have been the last generation to experience this, even living in a very old republic far distant from any actual monarchies, my imagination was filled with castles, knights and kings (especially castles, I really had a thing for them in my earliest years -which hasn’t entirely gone away). I could not say specifically where this comes from but in my earliest memories I had the image firmly implanted in my mind, presumably from story books and cartoons of the good king being deceived by his wicked and manipulative prime minister. I can distinctly remember, though it was ages ago, before I had any knowledge at all of how modern monarchies worked or even if actual ones still existed, of the prime minister always being the villain of the story who had to be thwarted so that the good king, who naturally loved his people as a parent naturally loves their children, would see the true state of affairs and set things right. Later on I found out what a prime minister actually is and how the system actually works but I also do not think that trope to be entirely unfounded and I would urge monarchists, traditionalists, the rightfully disgruntled on the political right-wing, to view modern monarchs in the same way; as prisoners of a corrupt and wicked political elite who are manipulating them and who the truly loyal must rescue them from.

The Empire of Lies

One of America's most important "Founding Fathers" once referred to his vision of the United States of America as an "Empire of Liberty". A better description of modern republicanism in general could be the "Empire of Lies". Jefferson, of course, knew that his phrase in the Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created equal" was a lie when he said it. The struggle which prompted that phrase was based on a number of 'whoppers' such as the colonies being over-taxed (in fact, they were hardly taxed at all) to the claim that they could not be taxed since they had no representation in the British government when, in fact, they wanted no such representation because they could have been easily outvoted by the much larger population of Britain which was also much more heavily taxed and likely none too sympathetic with their receiving all of the benefits of British rule while shouldering hardly any of the cost.

We have lately been “treated” to two sides of the political spectrum in America arguing over “free speech” when neither of them actually believe in such a thing. The left shouts people down or resorts to violence to silence speech they disapprove of and, while the right has not done the same (such as in regards to the protests of the national anthem), that may well only be because they are unable to. As with all people of all times, they refuse to tolerate anyone disparaging that which they hold most dear. In the old days, it was speaking disrespectfully of the king or of Christianity that would land you in hot water, today it is more often speaking against the “narrative” of the ruling elite.

Also, recently, after the horrific mass-shooting in Las Vegas, we have the left telling another big lie which is that they are all about “gun control” and if only we could take guns away from people, all would be well. They don’t mean a word of it. If they did, they would not have put a stop to Mayor Giuliani’s program of “stop and frisk” in New York City which was aimed at getting illegal firearms off the streets. However, it seemed that the people with illegal firearms were too consistently of one color and so this was deemed “racist” and had to be stopped. So, by their actions, we know that any effort at “gun control” is really only an effort to suppress gun ownership by one segment of the population and not the population as a whole. After all, that “equality under the law” jargon has been shown to be nothing but a lie as well. The law only applies to certain people and some people are ‘more equal than others’.

Lies are the foundation of our modern society. Everyone knows this, it is only that few wish to seriously address it. Everyone in probably every society knows some version of the joke about politicians, how they pretend to tell us the truth and we pretend to believe them. The lies are positively essential when you have a society based on vague, ephemeral, unrealistic and unobtainable “ideals” rather than actual reality. Equality is not a reality and no amount of legal paperwork, five-year plans or social engineering can ever make it so. Popular sovereignty is a lie, there are those who rule and those who are ruled and that is just as true today as it was in the age of absolutism, the Middle Ages or ancient Rome. The separation of church and state is a lie and an increasingly obvious one. The official religion of every modern state is not always a traditional religion but it is at least a pseudo-religion. Often, this too is simply a “narrative” and that narrative will be defended with all of the zeal of the Dominicans of the Inquisition.

Modern Germany offers a plethora of examples. Freedom of assembly? Only for those approved of by the elite. Democracy? The Germans never voted to make themselves an endangered species. They never voted to get rid of the Kaiser and in this Germany of government ‘by the people’, the choice of going back to the Kaiser is legally forbidden to them. Freedom of speech is an obvious lie everyone knows about and it has been mentioned here before. Tell someone you think the Armenian genocide did not happen and you may be thought a crank but tell someone you think the Holocaust did not happen and you will be put in prison. Fly a communist flag, you may offend a few but will be in no trouble. Fly a Nazi flag and, again, you will go to prison. In Nazi Germany, all parties but one were banned. Modern Germany gives you a wide selection of parties to choose from but only those the ruling elite approves of. We are told, of course, that this is because some ideas are simply too dangerous to be allowed a hearing. That is fair enough, however, it also means that the people who lie and say they believe in self-rule by "the people" do not believe the people are intelligent enough to refrain from supporting the Nazis if they were able to hear them and consider their ideas. Obviously, once again, the whole basis of their system is a lie.

The French Republic, likewise, rests on a bed of lies. The lie that the Revolution was in any way glorious rather than an orgy of self-destruction, the lie that the revolutionaries ever actually delivered on any of their high-sounding promises, the lie that the republic prevailed because of its superiority rather than the inability of the royalists to present a better alternative, all the way up to more recent lies such as what the French were doing in World War II. Some things, such as the storming of the Bastille being a heroic enterprise, are simply lies but the French Revolutionaries are more likely to lie by omission. This is quite common nowadays. There is simply no way to put a positive spin on something like the crushing of the Vendee uprising, the September Massacres or how the little Dauphin was abused, tormented and finally starved to death so such things are simply not talked about at all.

Practically all of our modern lives are based on lies. The education system is full of lies designed to feed the narrative of our rulers, as is the news media and much of pop culture. Our economic system is based on lies. Napoleon Bonaparte once said that, "History is a set of lies agreed upon". Substitute the word "currency" for "history" and this statement is just as true. Our money has value because our government lies to us and tells that it does, simply because they say so, and we believe them because not to would be disastrous. So much of our economies today depend on people making bets on the profits to be made on products that have not even been manufactured yet. We buy, sell and trade success or loss on items no one has produced. Not all of course, but a great deal of it is all based on nothing concrete, nothing substantive. In other words, lies, selling a product you do not have for imaginary money from someone else. And, it all goes on because to admit the lie would cause the entire facade to come crashing down and leave everyone in ruins. One of the "benefits" of globalism is that all the nations of the world are now members of a suicide pact.

Once upon a time, all of this was not so. In the pre-revolutionary days things were quite different. Not that lies did not exist in those days, they certainly did, but because before the revolutionary era there was no mass-politics, no politicians and thus no need to resort to wide-scale deceit in order to win and hold on to power. In the days of traditional monarchy, the system was not based on lies but on straightforward loyalties and obligations. Monarchs were monarchs of peoples, their peoples and their only concern was what was in the best interests of their peoples. The King of the English, the King of the Franks, the Emperor of the Romans etc did not have ideologies, political parties and pressure groups tearing at them. They did not have welfare states to fund (the Church and the guilds took care of such things), they did not have an entire system of government based on false and absurd ideals that required an army of propagandists working 24/7 to maintain and adjust the flow of lies. You knew who was in charge, you knew who had power over you, you knew what your obligations were and you knew who was responsible if things went badly.

I doubt many today could even imagine how much more simple, direct and honest things used to be in the days before every man, woman and child was expected to be involved in politics. I doubt many can imagine what it was like before everyone in society was locked in constant ideological warfare with their fellow citizens. It was the way life was once. There were no Tories, Labourites and Liberal Democrats, there were just Englishmen. There were no Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, Greens and so on, just Germans, Frenchmen and so on all wanting to make the best of their lives, to live in peace and not be plundered by the neighbors. Your king was your king, your lord or other local authority was well known as were his obligations. A society without politics, without political parties, seems endlessly attractive to me. I wonder if we are becoming so inundated with lies these days that others might start to feel the same?

The Reactionary Dilemma

It is a sadly all too common problem for monarchists to be their own worst enemy. Part of this is that, unlike the revolutionaries with their rigid ideologies and the simple fact that it is easier to burn down a house than to build one, monarchists are not united on what their ultimate goal is. I have also noticed lately a rather negative effect which comes, in part, from the rise of the Alt-Right which is to condemn anyone who does not agree with you as a sell-out or, as they like to say, a "cuck". Usually this involves condemning anyone who wants to take things one step at a time toward what both probably agree on being the ideal ultimate goal. These rigid types never want to actually engage as they view any sort of activity as cooperating with "the system" or making compromises. Often, in my experience, this is not the case at all but rather a recognition that one has to start from where we are now to get to where we want to be and that simply waiting around for the "miracle" to suddenly make everything the way it was in the pre-Revolutionary era.

Some monarchists do not wish to go there, true enough. Some would be happy to simply return to the more classically liberal constitutional monarchies of Nineteenth Century. The more reactionary, which I mean to address here, wish to go back even farther to the pre-Revolutionary era. The problem is one which many of the 'internet-reactionaries' embody even if they do not realize it. They do not see how much "Enlightenment" thinking has permeated every part of western society and influenced how people think. It has even influenced how they think, even if they do not realize it. It has caused many to view monarchs the same way they view politicians; basing their loyalty on whether or not they agree with them and reserving the right to choose a different monarch if the current one does not share their views. Personally, I would love to see all of this change as it is hard for me to think of a problem, which today is a crisis, that does not have its roots in the "Enlightenment" (though there were monarchs who went along with that and they were not all bad, some were even great).

The reactionary dilemma, however, is that you cannot undo the work of centuries in a day or a year or even a decade. It took the west a long time to reach the depths it has currently sunk to and it is going to take a long time to dig our way out. That also means we are going to have to work toward getting up to a level that is not our ideal but which will be a step toward reaching the broad, sunlit uplands. This was something the French monarchists, at least some of them, recognized but did not deal with terribly well. Any reactionary will have likely heard the phrase, "You cannot turn back the clock". That is true but, as Bonnie Prince Charlie said to his highland chiefs in a very bad British movie, "I have not come to turn back the clock. I have come to wind the clock." The destination can, in itself, be problematic. If you are to go back to exactly what was lost, it only stands to reason that it shall be lost again in exactly the same way. The French restoration ultimately came to ruin because they could not come to an agreement on how many of the changes made by the revolutionary and Napoleonic regimes they were willing to retain. The famous refusal of the Comte de Chambord to take the throne because he would not accept the tricolor flag is indicative of this. Rather than try to change France back to a more traditional mindset, he refused to accept being king if that mindset was not abandoned at the very beginning.

That mindset, did not change, as we know, and over time France became more and more republican rather than monarchist. The revolutionaries have had this problem as well though they seem to have better mastered how to deal with it. I have, in the past, pointed to the example of Spain under Generalissimo Franco and I think it is educational to look and compare that case with another. Franco, a man I regard as a hero and someone who may well have saved western civilization itself, was in power in Spain from 1936 to his death in 1975. The Kingdom of Spain would not exist today if he had not been. However, what he failed to do was get his ideas and his values to truly take root in the culture and the population. Were it otherwise, when elections were held after his death, the National Movement would not have fared so poorly (it also did not help that they divided their support by splitting into two feuding camps, something monarchists should be all too familiar with). Today, adherents to his politics are still a very small minority with no immediate prospects of ever gaining power again. Now, compare that to the situation in Russia. The Soviet Union was one of the most murderous and incompetent regimes in human history, it was forced on the Russians by a relatively small faction (many of whom were not even Russians) and yet, in spite of all the horror, the Communist Party is today the second-largest party in Russia. Obviously, the Communists were much more effective at getting their values and ideas to take root than Franco was able to.

There plenty of other examples one could cite. Perhaps an even better one would be Mongolia, the first Soviet satellite state. Very few in the west are familiar with Mongolian history but be aware that the Communist regime there was easily one of *the* most brutal and oppressive in the entire world. Their goal to totally eradicate traditional Mongolian culture and remake the country along the lines of Soviet Russia, particularly under the leader Choibalsan who saw himself as the Mongolian Stalin, was more intense, more vicious and more thorough than I suspect you could even imagine. They stamped out religion in a country which had been one of the most devoutly religious on earth, a Buddhist theocratic-monarchy for their few years of independence before the communist takeover, they wiped out traditions to the point that no one was left who remembered how certain ceremonies were performed, some families even forgot their names by the time it all ended. However, during all that time, the ruling communist party was the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party. In 1990, with the fall of the Soviet Union, they allowed multi-party democracy. Can you guess what happened? The Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party simply adjusted its name to the Mongolian People's Party and won the vote to remain in power from 1990 to 1996, was back again from 2000 to 2012 and was voted back into power again only last year. They were so successful in influencing the thinking of the people that even when the people were given a choice, they chose to stick with the communists, no matter how horrible and detrimental they had been to the country.

Some reactionaries, I have come to accept, never want to actually accomplish anything, being far too happy to be nostalgic and pour scorn on everything around them. Myself, I would like to actually win and live in a world without politics, protests, race wars, pressure-groups and globalists. I would like a world where every people has their monarch and every monarch works to make his people as powerful and prosperous as they can be. However, if that is going to happen, we have to learn what works and what does not. We cannot simply go back to exactly the way things used to be because, the way things used to be ended in disaster (if they had not, we would be conservatives rather than reactionaries). There must be some adjustment. Don't be just like what used to be, strive to be better. In order to do that, I can see no alternative but working to change the culture, change the ideas and values of people. Tearing down the last vestiges of the monarchical order because they are not up to your standards will not accomplish that. Counter the "Enlightenment" thinking from the ground up. We do have, as I have said before, at least some room to be optimistic about such a campaign because the current state of affairs does not really seem to be pleasing anyone. The revolutionaries and the liberals alike both promised a utopia and they have obviously failed to deliver it. That is to our advantage but we must do the hard work of steadily changing the values and ideas of our friends, families, neighbors and then going on to education, entertainment and the wider culture. What we have now is not working, use that to your advantage and go forth and change some hearts & minds.

What Countries Are Made Of

Many people in the west today seem to be in total ignorance of what makes a country. No one else in the world, be it South Africa, Israel, India or China is as ignorant on this subject as the west. For some, no doubt, it is not ignorance but for others I can find no other rational explanation. Certainly, on the part of the far-left, I do not believe ignorance is the issue as they despise western civilization and have convinced themselves that the world will be a better place once it disappears entirely. However, those who are dragged along by them are no doubt simply ignorant and the other group which I must believe is ignorant on this subject are the libertarians. It certainly makes no sense for the people who claim to be the most suspect of government and the ones who most glorify the individual to also believe that countries are made by governments rather than by their population. If they truly believe the things they claim to, ignorance is the only possible explanation for this bizarre belief.

In demonstrating how peoples make countries, one will also see quite clearly how, even in our very republican-dominant age, monarchies loom very large given the fact that throughout most of human history, in every part of the world, monarchy has been the dominant form of government, growing naturally from the expansion of families into clans, clans into tribes and tribes into nations. I shall use, for example, the United States and Mexico to demonstrate this and the underlying fact is that, as my old university history professor said, history is the most important subject there is. People make countries and people are the product of their histories. Everything that has happened in the past accumulates to create the people of the present and everything about them, some of it good, some of it bad but all essential to the finished product. This relates to something else I pointed out recently with the controversy over Christopher Columbus. Whether you like Columbus or not, it was his discovery which prompted the colonization of the Americas by the European powers and whether you like European imperialism or not, none of the countries in the Americas today would exist without it.

The United States of America and the United Mexican States, though neighboring countries, are extremely different. One is a global superpower, the other is a country most of its people would like nothing better than to flee from and regard being sent back to as a most cruel and inhumane punishment. Why are they so different? They are different because of their peoples and the vastly different histories of their peoples. The American and Mexican populations have been formed by vastly different historical experiences which have all come together to make for very different peoples with very different attitudes, customs, values and overall worldviews. These two peoples are not the same and they are not interchangeable. If the United States, for example, came to have a majority Mexican population, it would not be like the USA of the present but would be more like Mexico. Similarly, if the last Mexican Emperor and Empress had had their way, at least according to the letters of Empress Carlota, Mexico would have invited in large numbers of Europeans, changing the population and making Mexico a country more like central Europe than it is today.

The United States as it exists today is the product of a long succession of accumulated history. To pick out a few examples, modern America has been formed most of all by the history of the Kingdom of England. Things such as the Magna Carta, the English Reformation, the English Civil Wars, the Westminster Parliament, Common Law, the “Glorious” Revolution of 1688 all had an impact. The men of the English colonies who formed the United States were themselves formed by these historical events, and others. Modern America is further the product of the War for Independence (obviously), the “frontier mentality” of the westward settlements, the War Between the States, Reconstruction, the world wars and so on, all merging together to create the people and thus the country as it exists today. The United States is the way that it is because of the American people, what decisions they make and what decisions their ancestors have made all the way back through history. Were you to take an American and plant him or her in Thailand, he or she is not going to be interchangeable with the native population, even if they master the language and take up Buddhism. It simply is not possible and if Thailand was suddenly inundated with American immigrants, it would quickly cease to resemble Thailand and resemble the United States.

Mexico, likewise, is the product of a totally different people with a totally different history from any other. In the first place, the vast majority of the Mexican population has not only European roots but American Indian roots. The history, habits and thinking of the Aztec, Zapotec, Mayan and others are all part of what makes the majority of the Mexican population what it is today. On the side of their European ancestry, events which have formed Mexico today include things such as the ‘Reconquista’, the “fueros de los Españoles” and the Inquisition. America had the Pilgrims, Mexico had the Conquistadors, America came from a constitutional monarchy, Mexico from an absolute monarchy. The Bourbon centralization of power, the uprising of Father Hidalgo, the way Mexican independence was achieved, the long hold on power of General Santa Anna, the civil wars, Benito Juarez, the dictatorship of Diaz, the Mexican Revolution and the decades long rule of the PRI and so on, are all part of what has shaped modern Mexico by shaping the Mexican population and, taken altogether, make Mexico what it is today. As with the United States, some of these events were good, some were bad but the opinion of anyone about them is irrelevant, all that matters is that, right or wrong, they happened and they have shaped the Mexican public of the present time.

This explains why people are different and why certain people can adapt to or “assimilate” into certain countries better than others. The more similar the background which has formed a people, the more easily they can assimilate. It is easy to see this at work if one imagines alternate histories. If, for example, the Spanish had never liberated their homeland from the Moors and it was, instead, these Arab-Moorish people who crossed the ocean and conquered Mexico, obviously, the modern Mexican people would be totally different than what they are now. On the other hand, the United States would perhaps not be as different from what it is now if the Norman conquest of England had never taken place since the differences between the Normans (essentially Vikings who had adopted French culture) and the Saxons were not so great, both being north European, Germanic peoples of the same religion and basic values. Things would certainly be different, but not as different because a Saxon descendant of Vikings and a Norman descendant of Vikings are obviously not as dissimilar as a Spaniard and an Arab or a Moor.

People make countries just as people make cultures and when people move from one country to another they take their culture and all that has formed them to their new home. When the English moved to America, they established New England, built English homes, operated according to English law and so on. They did not start living as the Mohawk or Iroquois or Huron lived simply because they were in North America. Similarly, when the Spanish came to Mexico, they did not start wearing Quetzal-feather headdresses, building pyramids and taking up human sacrifice. They brought Spanish culture with them, though there was a greater blending of people in Mexico because the Spanish did not bring any women with them, only soldiers and priests. Hence why the majority of the population in Mexico is mixed-race and the population of the United States has been predominately European. All the actions and inactions of all who have gone before them have made each population what it is today. Even when people try to imitate others, they are still bound by their own accumulative history. The first German Reich, for example, called itself the “Holy Roman Empire” but it was still quite different in a number of ways from the original Roman Empire because the German and Italian people were different and had vastly different histories.

Another pair of examples, which might prove illustrative is South Africa and Liberia. One country, South Africa, was established by European colonists while the other, Liberia, was established by African-American colonists. Each established societies very different from those of the natives who surrounded them and each were also extremely dissimilar from each other and have had very different histories. This should be obvious considering that the life experiences and accumulated history of emancipated slaves from America and Dutch and later British colonists were radically different and would invariably cause each to build very different societies. Likewise, if people are interchangeable, regardless of their origins, South Africa would still be functioning the same today, under Black African rule, as it previously functioned under British or Afrikaner rule which it clearly is not.

That is the bottom line; that peoples are not interchangeable. Mexico, The Philippines, the Republic of China and numerous Latin American and African countries have, to varying degrees and at various times in their past, for example, emulated the U.S. Constitution. None of them, however, have functioned in the same way that the United States has functioned because what has formed them is nothing like what has formed the United States and certainly not those “Founding Fathers” who established the United States. Peoples make countries, governments do not and if the population of Japan were to become predominately Indonesian, it would no longer resemble Japan as it is now or has ever been, even if all of the government framework remained in place. The character, experiences and accumulated history of a nation matters, no two are exactly alike and no two are interchangeable nor can that accumulated history ever be totally wiped away.

China and Japan, Should the West Care?

In recent years, the People’s Republic of Chinese Sweatshops has been growing at a rapid rate in terms of the size of its economy and massively building up its military forces, particularly its oddly named People’s Liberation Army Navy. They are currently finishing up their first domestically produced aircraft carrier, having one already in service they purchased from Ukraine, an old Soviet vessel basically used as a starting point for Chinese naval engineers. Similarly, China is expanding its submarine fleet faster than any other power and gone are the days of the noisy death traps known as the Han-class boats and the Romeo-class Soviet relics, the Shang-class nuclear attack subs are no laughing matter and after purchasing and studying a number of very effective Russian Kilo-class diesel boats, the recent Chinese made Song and Yuan-class boats are of comparative quality. China has also been building artificial islands, complete with aircraft platforms and weapons systems in the South China Sea and establishing naval bases in places such as Ceylon, Pakistan and Djibouti. Obviously, this is an effort to secure control of the main trade route between East Asia and Europe.

Should the western world care about this? Before addressing that, it must be noted that one country which cares very much is Japan. Ignoring the leftist, mainstream, “fake news” media like NHK, I will point to a more rational news source, the conservative Sankei Shimbun and the new online outlet Japan Forward. I think this is particularly appropriate since Japan Forward is the effort to spread a conservative Japanese news source to a wider, international, audience, particularly the Anglosphere. For example, Japan Forward frequently carries articles warning about the threat posed by China, offering advice on what the United States, Japan and other countries can or should do about it and criticizing any hint of the U.S. or Japanese governments taking their ‘eyes off the ball’ that is Pseudo-Communist China. Japan Forward recently ran a special, three part series on countering the building of militarized, artificial islands by China in the South China Sea (read it here). Any of these articles, taken on their own, put forward a compelling case. However, it is when World War II enters the conversation, which is absolutely inevitable when dealing with Japan as *everything* revolves around World War II, that we start to have problems at least so far as the U.S. and the West are concerned.

To illustrate this, I point to an interview, also in Japan Forward, by YouTube personality Yoko Mada with Hidetoshi Ishii, “a Japanese expert on the politics and history of Asia” who has very definite ideas on what needs to happen in the region (see it or read it here). First of all, for those on the left or even moderate right anywhere in the western world, any Japanese talk of a “Greater Asia” is inevitably going to cause blowback over memories of Imperial Japan’s “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” and the “Greater East Asian War” (which is what Japan calls World War II, look for Hitler and Mussolini far under the bus). They bring up something I have written about before (here, a plug for me this time) which is the claim that Imperial Japan was really the “good guys” in World War II, in fact the *only* “good guys” (Adolf & Benito still under that bus) as Japan was fighting a righteous war for ‘Freedom’ to liberate Asia from the wicked, western, colonial powers, because colonialism is a western thing, it is racist, it is wrong, it is evil and before you even ask, no, Korea doesn’t count, because it’s not colonialism if Japan does it. Silly. It is also noteworthy that, in the interview, a great emphasis is placed on Hong Kong (the former British Crown Colony now languishing under mainland rule) and that everyone in Japan, and America and the western world should back the cause of Hong Kong independence from China.

Now is the time to pose the question, in light of the Japanese argument, as to why the USA, the wider Anglosphere or Europe should really care about this. Should they? Do any really have a vital interest in seeing China stopped? To be clear, I think the current bandit regime that sits in Peking is illegitimate and monstrous, I have been unhappy with every Chinese regime since 1912 but, from a purely pragmatic perspective, what business is it of anyone in North America or Western Europe? The Chinese government, based on their military buildup, their establishment of naval bases and the ongoing construction of a new “Silk Road” are clearly, in my view, trying to gain control of the trade route which is vital to their overwhelmingly export-dependent economy. This is certainly a threat to those in competition with China but, as things currently stand, that list would not include North America or Europe which rely almost as heavily on Chinese imports as the Chinese economy depends on exports to these parts of the world. In short, the only cause for concern for the west would be China shutting off this trade route which is the last thing the Chinese would want to do as they would suffer the most from it as North America and Western Europe in particular buy more from them than anyone else. As things stand now, the west does not produce, it consumes and China depends more on that consumption than the west does on Chinese production.

In the old days, prior to World War II, things were very different. Countries such as Great Britain, France, The Netherlands, Portugal and the United States had an interest in Asia because they had colonies there which were important parts of their economies. If you go back prior to World War I, Germany did as well (and to a much lesser extent, a few others too). This is not the case anymore obviously. The British started giving up their Asian colonies almost as soon as the war was over. The Dutch had to give up the East Indies in 1949, the French were forced out of Indochina in 1955, Portugal lost Goa to India in 1961 and handed over Macau in 1999, the United States had agreed to Filipino independence before World War II, delivered it in 1946 and was evicted from Subic Bay in 1992. All of this, according to the “Japan fought World War II to end western colonialism” narrative, is ultimately thanks to Japan and, as such, runs contrary to the Japanese argument that the western powers today have any real, vital, national interest in what happens in the region. Why should, for example, the British ultimately care if Hong Kong remains a part of China or becomes independent when Hong Kong stopped being a British concern in 1997? And, again, based on the point that the same country arguing that Britain should be concerned is also arguing that they ultimately deserve the “credit” for Britain losing her Asian colonies in the first place.

“Asia for the Asians” was the Japanese slogan in World War II, and now, that is truly the case. It is why some on the right in Japan have argued that they didn’t really lose the war at all, because the goal was to get the westerners out of Asia and now they are all gone. Why then should the USA or any western power continue to take an active interest in Asian affairs? I do not doubt that some might notice that, when Japan said “Asia for the Asians” in the 1930’s and 40’s, the Empire of Japan was the strongest power in East Asia whereas today, economically and militarily, China is once again the dominant force in the region. Could that have anything to do with the Japanese attitude of, ’give up your colonies and get out of here but then come back and do something about China’? For Japan, the effort to justify their last war is running contrary to their current desire for support against a powerful and zealously anti-Japanese neighbor.

This is not unique to Japan, it is only that Japan, because of the war, casts itself more broadly, taking “credit” for the end of the other empires touching East Asia. However, since the Chinese military buildup, The Philippines has now said some U.S. troops can come back to Subic Bay after all and even Vietnam, which bases so much of its current identity on anti-Americanism, has decided that the United States isn’t really all *that* bad and now allows American warships to visit Vietnamese ports. If they were in a position to help them at all, I don’t doubt they would take the same attitude toward the French. From the point of view of western civilization, how is any of this not seen as a case of trying to have your cake and eat it too? In other words, why should western powers protect eastern powers for nothing in return? The strength and potential threat of China is supposed to justify everything and yet, the west, thanks mostly to allowing China into the World Trade Organization and other similar acts, is economically invested in maintaining good relations with China. Whether a good decision or not (and I think it was not), this is nonetheless a fact.

I also must repeat something I have said before which is, when making an argument, it is important to remember who exactly you are trying to persuade. In the case of Japanese conservative outlets trying to make the case against China, their target audience would be western conservatives. Western leftists certainly have no desire to confront China, being largely in sympathy with them, however, by tying so much back to their justification of World War II as a righteous, anti-western, “holy war” against colonialism, I fail to see how the Japanese could convince those on the right in the west who either stand by their former empires, defend their memory and deplore that they were lost, or agree that Asia should be “for the Asians” and of no concern to the west at all, these being more concerned with issues such as terrorism, immigration and demography in western countries than with anything China is doing on the other side of the world. In my experience, these same westerners often see much to admire about Japan but nonetheless view Japan as “them” and nothing to do with “us” which the Japanese narrative actually encourages by casting themselves as the ‘anti-imperialist’ empire.

Personally, I would have preferred Japan and the Allies never went to war at all or would have preferred the Japanese to have attacked the Soviet Union rather than the British and Dutch in Southeast Asia. I prefer the days when the Empire of Japan was still around and one of the club. I would have also liked to see a revived Qing Empire in China as part of that club as well. In any confrontation between Communist China and the State of Japan, my own sympathies are certainly going to be with the Japanese and, in the event of such a calamity, my friends know I would do anything to help them. When taken up to the level of countries, however, national interest is the determining factor and since the end of the colonial period, commerce is the only way the west is involved with the East Asia. The Chinese army is not threatening to invade Europe or North America and if the Australians considered such a thing remotely possible, they would probably have taken care to maintain a navy that would actually pose a challenge.

Since the European colonies in Asia were lost, no European power is frankly able to intervene in the region as they have no bases there any longer. So, as some in Britain have admitted, when anyone in the west says “we” should do something, it actually means that the United States should do something. As it concerns China, the mainstream right is concerned about China, the left is not but it is the right which most runs counter to the Japanese narrative as they are the only ones in America willing to take America’s side in its wars and interventions. The only sizeable group which actually agrees with much of the Japanese narrative are the libertarians, however, they illustrate perfectly the problem with Japan’s argument since they point to the same things Japan points to, such as western colonialism, as precisely the evidence for America not being involved in Asia at all. Just as they condemn the sanctions placed on Imperial Japan in the past, so too do they oppose any disruption of trade between America and China today.

Given the current state of affairs, it could well be argued that China poses an existential threat to Japan, not only because of their military strength but because of the degree to which anti-Japanese hatred is used as a unifying force in China. What is more difficult to argue is that China poses an existential threat to America or western civilization in general. Most of the west is frankly unable to do anything even if it should and, as for the United States, the most potent threat posed by China is the possibility of China’s new currency system replacing the dollar as the international reserve currency. That, however, is something that will not and cannot be stopped by American bases in Japan, American troops in South Korea or by the elimination of artificial islands in the South China Sea. Western civilization is under threat, of that I am in no doubt. However, that China is such a threat seems dubious, though I am open to arguments on the subject. With no real stake in the region, since the end of western colonialism, it seems more like the west is being called upon to, once again, take the side of others in a fight that is not theirs.

The Fascist Debate and Christianity

It has become painfully obvious to all by now that our political discourse in the United States has degenerated into an argument over who the “fascist” is. The Nazis have also recently replaced Russia as the looming bogey man of American political discourse with accusations and counter-accusations of the left and right being the “real” Nazis. The term “Nazi” is used by both sides interchangeably with the term “Fascist” as if these two things were one and the same. Rather than debate ideas or principles, we seem to spend our time arguing over who is or is not a “fascist”. The Democrats say that the Republicans are “fascists”, that President Trump is a “fascist” and the more extreme members of the progressive left have even formed a group called “Antifa”, which is short for “Anti-Fascist”, to combat any Republican, conservative, or whomever they consider at all ‘right-wing’ who are all, to their mind, “fascists”. Prior to World War II, there were many such groups, usually organized by the local Communists of a given country and the members of “Antifa” today are modeling themselves after those people.

At the same time, the Republicans have responded to this by arguing that they are not “fascists” but that, rather, it is the Democrats who are the “fascists”. They point to the behavior of “Antifa” and say that the “Anti-Fascists” are the *real* “fascists”, that they are the ones behaving like “fascists” and so on. There is a similar back and forth over who is most similar to the Nazis. Trump is called a Nazi or a Neo-Nazi or a Nazi sympathizer by the Democrats while the Republicans continue to argue that the Nazis were leftists and that no one on the right could possibly be a Nazi because of that. Rather, they implicitly argue, it is the left in this country which is most like the Nazis with each side refusing to even consider the possibility that the Nazis were a different sort of thing, taking ideas from both sides and thus neither entirely on the right or the left. It can, and has, become extremely tiresome as both sides accuse the other of being Fascists and both sides accuse the other of being most like the Nazis, the Nazis being the secular replacement for the Devil, who no one believes in anymore, as the representation of pure evil in the world.

Thus, our political debate has been reduced to shouting at each other, “you’re a fascist!” and, “no, you’re a fascist!” ad nauseam. The left will have an easier time of this since the right, by responding the way that they do, implicitly accept the leftist standard of judgment. They have, effectively, decided to play the left’s game according to the left’s own rules and it is hard to imagine how that could ever work out well for them. They could, and with more justification, accuse the left of being Communists and/or Stalinists but they do not because, again, they have accepted that the Nazis and/or Fascists were the worst people in the history of the world, the representation of absolute evil and thus calling them Communists would not pack the same punch. The difference is that the right recoils from the accusation of being Nazis or Fascists while the left does not recoil at being called Communists or Socialists. The Republicans spent eight years calling Obama a socialist and when his term ended the Democrats very nearly nominated an open and avowed socialist to replace him. The term obviously does not repel them in the least.

No, the mainstream right, and not just in America, has a problem because, according to their own ideals of classical liberalism, what the left wants does not seem that out of order. They have already conceded the ground on too many key points. If, after all, we are all “created equal”, then it does not make sense that some do better than others and seems perfectly reasonable for a powerful state to intervene in order to restore that mythical inherent equality. If America, or any other western state, is a “nation of immigrants” then it does seem rather arbitrary and capricious to say you are only arguing over matters of procedure and paperwork. If you concede complete freedom of religion, and equality and the “brotherhood of man”, anyone can become a citizen of any country so long as their paperwork is in order, it does seem like only blind bigotry which would motivate you to say the Muslims should be given a bit more scrutiny. No, do that, and you just might be called a Fascist and, apparently, the worst possible thing to be in our current liberal, democratic, republic is a “fascist” and we are locked in a cycle of accusing the other side of being that most terrible of things.

Now, for the left, the revolutionary, republican, secularist types, this makes sense. They have also long embraced “identity politics” and are very definite about whose side they are on. If your identity is that of a non-Caucasian race, a non-Christian religion or a non-traditional sexual orientation, they are for you but if you are any of those things, not so much. The right, on the other hand, tries to argue against all identity politics while at the same time inherently running into the problem of what it “means” to be an American. From what I have seen, the fall-back position seems to be Christianity or, as they often prefer, “Judeo-Christian values”. While still trying to argue that you can be any religion or of no religion at all, they say that these Christian values are the core of who we are and we must get back to them as the basis for the only proper sort of identity. Frankly, that sounds rather impossible to me and rather at odds with their agreement with the left that the manifestation of absolute evil in political terms can be lumped together under the label of “fascist”.

Remember, after all, that National Socialism and Fascism are actually not the same thing nor did they behave in exactly the same way nor were either of those identical to any of the other regimes currently given the blanket classification of “fascist”. They certainly did not have the same sort of attitude when it came to religion, the dominant religion in all such countries being Christianity. In “fascist” Spain, General Franco was the savior of Christianity, delivering it from the atrocities of the Second Republic which killed more people in a matter of months than the supposedly notorious Spanish Inquisition killed in as many centuries. The “fascist” Legion of the Archangel Michael in Romania had Orthodox Christianity as one of its foundations and required all members to be willing to die for Christ. The leaders of both of those movements were also monarchists. The very pro-Christian “Austrofascist” leader Kurt von Schuschnigg had agreed to a restoration of the monarchy, which we have discussed before, and the “fascist” regime of Salazar in Portugal was very pro-Christian and at least friendlier to the idea of monarchy than any government in the Republic of Portugal has been before or since. Given all of that, I can only believe that if anyone understood Fascism, I do not see how actual Christians could consider that the worst thing in the world to be, certainly worse than our own regime.

From a Christian point of view, one could go back to the Roman Empire which the faith was born in and converted for the image of an ideal state or the medieval specifically Christian monarchies which rose up after it but neither of those are on offer today and, indeed, are intentionally ignored. They are certainly not attacked the way that the Nazis or the Fascists are, though they have and would be, but more than that the ruling elite seems to not want them to even be considered. So, for a sincere Christian living in the modern, liberal, democratic west, it seems hard to understand how the term “Fascist” could be regarded as the ultimate evil. I say this because, in any way in which I would measure a society by the standards of traditional Christianity, the one actual, honest to goodness state which was truly Fascist, the state in which the dictator of the country was the man who actually invented Fascism, Benito Mussolini, seems inarguably more Christian than our own celebrated and beloved liberal, democratic, union of republican states. Fascist Italy was, of course, none of those things. It was certainly not liberal, Mussolini emphatically despised liberalism, nor was it democratic as several years into his tenure Mussolini banned all parties but the National Fascist Party and it was not a republic as Mussolini, though dictator, was only the head of government and not the head of state, which was the King of Italy.

That must sound shocking but, I can only ask you to consider a few facts about this terrible, nightmarish dictatorship known as Fascist Italy which was so bad that it has become our primary political epithet. Consider it, particularly, from a traditional Christian perspective. In Fascist Italy, divorce was illegal. Abortion was illegal, gay “marriage” was certainly illegal and homosexuals or trans-genders and everything of that sort was nowhere to be seen. Men were encouraged to be masculine, women were encouraged to be feminine and the tax code encouraged people to get married and have large families, to, ‘replenish the earth’ if you like. Christianity (specifically of the Roman Catholic variety) was the official and sole religion of the state, Christian religious classes were mandatory in all Italian schools, the local form of Christian worship (the mass) was even declared, “central” to national life in Fascist Italy. There were also, by the way, no mosques in Rome (though there were Christian churches going up in Libya, Eritrea and Somalia) just as there were no gay bars or trans-gender bathrooms. Oh, and there were no Satanists giving the opening prayer at city council meetings either.

All of that was in Fascist Italy under the dictator Mussolini and in every one of the examples cited above, the modern United States of America is exactly the opposite. We do have democracy and we also have “no fault” divorce, we have abortion and call it a fundamental right known as “women’s reproductive health”. We have gay “marriage”, homosexuals parading through the streets, in every walk of life and on practically every television show. We have trans-gendered people, gender-fluid people, men who want to be women and women who want to be men. We have a welfare system that discourages marriage and in which only the relatively wealthy can afford large families and these people are told not to bother anyway because large families are bad for the environment. We have a “wall of separation” between church and state, we have banned religion from the schools to an extent that the Bolsheviks would find quite familiar. Whereas in Fascist Italy a crucifix had to be displayed in every classroom, in modern America even a silent prayer is strictly forbidden. Far from being central to national life, Christian worship is discouraged and, indeed, fewer and fewer people bother doing it. Yes, there was also recently a city council meeting in Grand Junction, Colorado at which the opening prayer was given by a Satanist, praising reason and light and ending with a heartfelt, “Hail Satan!”

These are the facts of the matter and so, I would say again, to consider who had the more Christian society; Fascist Italy or the modern United States? Then, ask yourself, if you are a Christian certainly; why is it that we consider the Fascists to be the epitome of evil and ourselves as the “shining city on the hill”? It may not be pleasant to think about but I think it would be worth it. After all, notice that the Satanist in Colorado was able to say “Hail Satan” and not a single finger was laid on him by any Christian. Try addressing any city council in the western world and ending your remarks with “Hail Hitler” and see how far you get. To me, this reaffirms my theory that no one really believes in Satan anymore, even the so-called “Christians” of the Republican Party. Everyone, however, believes in Adolf Hitler, we take that guy very seriously indeed. Obviously, Christianity can be a powerful basis for a country, because it has been for centuries of western history. However, what these milquetoast conservatives are peddling is not Christianity. We know that because, if we judge our republic as we judge a tree by its fruits, we can see that it could not have been founded on Christianity in the first place. If it had been, well, it would not have been founded at all as the New England rabble rousers would simply have, ‘rendered unto King George the things that are King George’s and to God the things that are God’s’.

Rexisme and Leon Degrelle

I have wanted to talk about Rexisme for a long time but always hesitated to do so because it is a thorny issue and brings up so many other thorny issues and has so many controversial associations that I always drew back. However, as to being controversial, at this point, why not? And, I do think the history of Rexisme and its charismatic and very controversial leader Leon Degrelle, has much to teach us that is pertinent to this day and age. Rexisme or the Rexist Party was founded on November 2, 1935 by Leon Degrelle in the Kingdom of Belgium. The term “Rexisme” is my preference rather than “Rexist Party” as Degrelle did intend for Rexisme to be a national movement rather than only a political party, which is fine by me as I generally detest political parties. It remains even now a rather ‘rare bird’ in the world of Belgian politics in that it was a Belgian nationalist party. As most know, Walloon nationalist parties and certainly Flemish nationalist parties in Belgium are extremely common but a broader *Belgian* nationalist party is hard to come by. However, it was never very pan-Belgian in terms of its support, attracting very few members or voters from the Flanders region.

Rexisme was the brainchild of Leon Degrelle, a native of Bouillon, Belgium born in 1906. His life reads like a boys adventure novel, at least up until the ‘hardcore Nazi’ part. Nonetheless, though he ended his life an ardent and unrepentant Nazi, anyone who says he was not at extremely exceptional individual is being dishonest. Degrelle was Jesuit educated (back when that meant something), studied law but ultimately turned to journalism, writing for a Catholic periodical. During that period of his life, he was sent to cover the “Cristero” rebellion in Mexico, something which would have a profound impact on his life. The Cristeros were Mexican Catholics who rose up against the anti-Catholic persecution of the Marxist PRI government (which is back in power today) and which proved surprisingly successful. However, the Mexican bishops never really supported it and finally came to an agreement with the Mexican government and told the Cristeros to lay down their arms and disperse. They did so, being loyal Catholics, at which point the government massacred most of them.

The example of the Cristeros caused Degrelle to become more militant in his Catholicism and he also became very much influenced by the writings of the French royalist Charles Maurras and the Belgian Jean Denis. From these sources, and others, he began publishing his own periodical for the Catholic Party in Belgium called “Editions de Rex”, taking his inspiration for the name from the Cristero battlecry of “Viva Cristo Rey” (Long live Christ the King). Soon, however, his views came to be at odds with the mainstream Catholic Party and in 1935 he split from them to form his own movement, which he called “Rexisme”. His goal was to lead not only a political movement but a social movement across Belgium, a revival of Catholic morality, Catholic social teachings and greater national unity. Rexisme opposed liberal democracy and promoted corporatism, envisioning a new type of government for Belgium that would do away with the usual democratic process in favor of a more robust monarchy and political representation based on occupation.

It was also very much a Belgian nationalist party in that Degrelle pressed for the unity of all Belgians, regardless of class differences or language differences and putting greater emphasis on the position of the King was part of that, as was Catholicism in a way since the monarchy and the Catholic Church were two things that traditionally united all Belgians.

There have been, of course, obvious parallels drawn between Rexisme and other parties or movements which are today all classified as “far-right”. Jean Denis, himself soon elected to office for Rexisme, had influenced the corporatist regime of Antonio Salazar in Portugal. The year after forming his party, Degrelle met with Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, leader of the Falange in Spain, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu of the Iron Guard of Romania, the leader of Fascist Italy Benito Mussolini and, yes, Adolf Hitler of Germany. However, the influence of Hitler and the National Socialists was not great in the beginning. Both Hitler and Mussolini donated money to Degrelle and his movement, but Mussolini donated more and Rexisme had more in common with Italian Fascism as it was then than it had with the Nazi Party in Germany. Race was not really an issue for Rexisme as there were no appreciable racial minorities in Belgium nor did they have much to say about the Jews. Their movement was all about Catholics and the Jews did not really come into it.

To the surprise of many, and the horror of some, Rexisme shot to considerable popularity from the very start. In the May 1936 general elections, after only one year in existence, Rexisme won a stunning string of electoral victories, winning 21 seats in the lower chamber and 8 seats in the Senate. The Belgian King Leopold III offered Degrelle a seat in the cabinet as a result of this success but, buoyed by his victories, Degrelle turned down the offer, thinking that rather than settle for a small part in government, he could build on his success and soon win it all. However, the success of Rexisme also alerted others to the threat he posed to the established order. His call for national unity largely seems to have fallen on deaf ears as almost all of his political support came from Wallonia and Brussels with only a tiny fraction from Flanders. The Catholic hierarchy in Belgium also came out strongly against his movement and would ultimately even find themselves willing to make common cause with the Communist Party in order to oppose him. One cannot help but wonder if Degrelle was reminded of the actions of the Catholic bishops in Mexico to a militant Catholic movement in their country.

Degrelle and Rexisme were shunned by the political mainstream as well as the Catholic bishops as being too extreme, too radical, too militant, too nationalistic and so on. The result, however, of this attitude was to push Degrelle and the members of Rexisme even further away. As time went on, rather than Portugal or Italy, Rexisme became ever more heavily influenced by National Socialist Germany. The periodical of the movement became noticeably more anti-Semitic, a rather inevitable result of their noticing how disproportionately represented the Jews were among their enemies. This is a lesson many today in North America and western Europe would do well to take notice of. By shunning and vilifying Rexisme as simply the Belgian version of the Nazi Party, the result was to push the two closer together. The political fortunes of Rexisme played out like a rocket going off. It shot to great heights very quickly but then plummeted just as quickly in the face of the united opposition of the political and even religious establishment. In the general election of April 1939 Rexisme lost all but 4 of their seats with Leon Degrelle himself losing the Brussels election to Prime Minister Paul Van Zeeland.

The Belgian members of Rexisme thus became even more extreme out of bitterness to the whole political system. They had played the game fairly, played by the rules, had not been threatening or violent, yet they had been vilified, castigated and saw the political establishment unite to block them from electoral success. Why play the game if the other side is not going to play fairly? How things would have gone from there, we cannot know as a little thing called World War II intervened. Despite what some might think given his life subsequently, Leon Degrelle was not a cheerleader for Nazi Germany. He supported the position of King Leopold III that neutrality was the best policy. As in the last war, however, that neutrality was soon violated and after eighteen days of gallant resistance, King Leopold III surrendered to the Germans and was taken prisoner. The members of Rexisme were, to a degree, split by these events. As proud Belgian nationalists, some joined the underground to oppose the German occupation. Others, however, asked why they should support a regime that had opposed them to fight against men like Hitler and Mussolini who had consistently supported them? Many chose to join with the Axis.

Leon Degrelle was one of these, though he did first spend some time in a concentration camp in France, which, again, some may be surprised to know. Degrelle decided to join the Axis war effort, first as a member of a volunteer legion with the German army. As a prominent political personality from an occupied country, Hitler offered Degrelle an officer’s commission, however, Degrelle refused it. Instead, he began as a simple enlisted man and worked his way up through the ranks, very quickly. Degrelle proved to be an amazing soldier, skillful and fearless, which is something no one can take away from him regardless of political opinions. He and his men of the Walloon legion proved so outstanding that they were deemed worthy of transfer to the elite armed formation of the National Socialist Party, the Waffen-SS. In time, Degrelle would rise to the rank of Colonel of reserves in the SS-Sturmbrigade “Wallonie” as part of the “Wiking” division. His exploits on the Russian front were incredible and by the end of his career Degrelle had earned the Iron Cross first and second class, the Knight’s Iron Cross with oak leaves, the Close Combat Clasp in gold and the Infantry Assault Badge in Silver. Hitler famously said that if he had a son, he would wish him to be like Degrelle.

It may also surprise some, given how the local hierarchy had opposed him, that Degrelle always remained a practicing Catholic. A famous photo shows him receiving communion on the eastern front which is not at all unusual given that, as can be seen by his uniform, this was during his service with the regular German military. What is unusual is that, when he and his men were transferred to the Germanic-SS by Heinrich Himmler, they retained their Catholic chaplain. Other than the Imams for Muslim units, the SS did not “do” chaplains at all. Himmler preferred SS men not to have any strong religious ties so that the National Socialist Party and Adolf Hitler would become the sole focus of their devotion. However, Degrelle evidently insisted enough and his unit was impressive enough that Himmler made an exception for him and a Catholic priest was provided to attend to them for the rest of the war.

In the end, of course, Nazi Germany was defeated and the “Wallonie” brigade was effectively wiped out on the west bank of the Oder. Survivors were evacuated to Denmark where Degrelle was able to escape to Norway and fly to Spain where he was given sanctuary. Condemned and sentenced to death by the Belgian government after the war for his collaboration, Generalissimo Franco refused to hand him over and Degrelle lived on until 1994, to the very end defending and praising Adolf Hitler and National Socialism. His hero-worship of Hitler and National Socialism had, it must be pointed out, eclipsed even his own movement, Rexisme, for Degrelle in the end. By that time, he had devoted himself to writing defenses of himself and more so Adolf Hitler, National Socialism and the German vision of a pan-European super-state in which there would be no place for individual countries. He did lose one court battle and was fined for what amounted to Holocaust denial, after the fall of the Franco regime, but was always unapologetic. He famously said that the only thing he regretted about World War II was that Germany had lost.

Considering all of that though, it is important to remember where Degrelle had started and what Rexisme had been all about. Rexisme had been about the social kingship of Christ, a corporatist state, a more revered monarchy and far from erasing Belgium from the map, wanted to strengthen it. The Flemish nationalists who collaborated with the Nazis, dreamed of uniting with their Dutch Protestant neighbors to form a “Greater Netherlands” but Degrelle wanted Belgians to be the core of a revived Burgundy, even adopting the Burgundian cross, today most associated with Spain, as the second symbol of the Rexisme movement. Degrelle referred to this as the “Great Burgundian Renaissance” and it is frankly amazing that he remained adamant about being a Catholic even when the local bishops were so zealously opposed to him. Archbishop Jozef Van Roey of Mechelen and Brussels tried to have him excommunicated though, thanks to Mussolini speaking up for him at the Vatican, this did not happen though Rexisme adherents claimed that Roey was responsible for the threats of excommunication for anyone who voted for them coming from the pulpits prior to their 1939 electoral downfall. Given all of that, it would be hard to explain Degrelle’s continued insistence to be a devout Catholic other than that he firmly believed it to be true. In 1943 he was excommunicated by the Bishop of Namur after coming to mass in his SS uniform but this was lifted by the German Catholic bishop who oversaw the chaplaincy as Degrelle was within his jurisdiction. Whether he was or was not in full communion with the Church remained a controversial subject up to the time of his death, many in the Church saying he was not but Degrelle insisting that he was.

There is a lesson here for those who choose to take it. Necessarily, any view of Rexisme will depend on your view of Catholicism as the Rexists saw everything through a Catholic lens. What is important to keep in mind is that, while increasingly unfashionable, Rexisme did not advocate anything that was really out of line with traditional Catholic teachings, be it their disdain for democracy, their corporatist model (a more sophisticated version of the guild system), their support for the monarchy and opposition to things like freedom of religion or separation of Church and state. All of these were positions which the Church, at the time, was still supposed to hold. In other words, nothing the Rexists were calling for should have been considered extreme or radical.

Nonetheless, they were and the liberals, proving the founder of Fascism right about them, swiftly set aside all of their high-minded ideals about freedom and fair play to stop Rexisme from gaining power through the political process. The result was that many saw no reason not to align themselves with the Germans when they arrived. This is happening in many countries today. The liberals know of no greater evil than the Nazis and since just about the whole world agreed that Nazis are bad, the Nazis became their favorite bogey man. However, they eventually found Nazis to be thin on the ground and so have started to create Nazis by expanding the definition of the term. This behavior was reinforced by the fact that whenever they shouted “Nazi!” their opponent would shut up and back away. Naturally, finding how well that works, every enemy of the liberals became a Nazi. Then, after broadening the term to absurd proportions, they also began pushing people toward the Nazi camp by suppressing all opposition to their viewpoint.

I talked about this before in the article about liberals proving Mussolini was right about them by their own actions. The only people not offended by being called Nazis are, of course, actual Nazis. So, after using the term to silence all other opposition, they leave the Nazis as the last man standing, which they probably think is fine because almost the entire world already thinks Nazis are the worst thing ever. However, just as happened with Rexisme, they are pushing people into the Nazi camp who otherwise would never have been with them. Thus, as we are seeing in the western world right now, when people are told that everyone else has a right to their own country for their own people, except for *your* people, when everyone else has a right to the most vitriolic speech, except for *your* people, when everyone else has the right to hold demonstrations and identity-group advocacy except for *your* people, you are probably going to catch on that this is unfair, will find no refuge in the law or the constitution and will either shrink away or drop all reason and moderation and go totally extremist. And, when that happens, the stage has been set for you to find no other open arms but those of Hitler. Such was the case with Rexisme and that is the way the enemies of our civilization want it because, again, they figure the battle against Hitler has already been won.

To close, I will say then that my hope is the defenders of traditional authority, faith, family and folk, will stand up for their people and provide an alternative with deep historical and spiritual roots in western civilization. You will of course be called a Nazi if you do, but don’t help out the enemy by proving them right. Prove them wrong, don’t make it easy for them. It’s not about what they call you, it is about what you believe and what you know is right. I think Rexisme got more right than it did wrong, and I know that saying Rexisme sounds pretty good to me, given what many members later did, will cause some to call me a Nazi. I'm not, I know that, so I don't care. They would call me that anyway so, if they want to categorize things that way, I cannot stop them. Wanting to preserve your people, your faith and your heritage in your own countries is not wrong, letting all the blood, toil and tears of your ancestors be in vain is what is wrong, and to my mind unforgivable. Take your stand and do what is right, that is your only duty. As General Robert E. Lee once said, “You can never do more, you should never wish to do less.”