Wednesday, August 4, 2021

As go South Africa and Zimbabwe, so goes the world???

 

Robert Duigan reflects on recent events in South Africa, and how they may be a harbinger for the future of Europe and North America too.  He calls it "Civilizational Brinkmanship", and he's not optimistic.

I want to disagree with Mr. Duigan, but in all honesty he argues his position very well indeed.  He sees many parallels between what's happening in South Africa today, and what happened in Zimbabwe recently, and what's happening in the West - Europe and North America - today.  I have to admit, he makes a cogent case.  I hope he's wrong . . . but I don't know that he is.  There are enough warning signs flashing all around us to make me fear he isn't wrong.

Here are a few points from his very long discussion, which I highly recommend you read in full.  It requires serious reading, with attention, but I guarantee it'll make you think.


We [in South Africa] live on the brink of barbarism, and the West is following us every step of the way.

A nation may have a lot of ruin in it, but a poor nation has less ruin in it than a wealthy one. When a state collapses or undergoes revolution in the distant reaches of Africa or Asia, there is a certain social distance which prevents Westerners directly apprehending the significance of the social dynamics, the closeness of the dangers, the universality of the lessons, the pain and the tragedy of the loss.

But South Africa is different. South Africa is at once Western and alien to Westerners. Our constitution is Western. Our revolutionaries and our reactionaries and our racial cosmology is Western. Our highest aspiration is that of the West at large – a universal state which recognises no difference of class, race, or creed. And that is why when we observe South Africa, we stare into the abyss of Western civilisation and its global future. Each Westerner sees himself reflected in that void, from the national-socialist, to the anarcho-communist, to the black-nationalist and the bleeding-heart liberal.

And they are right to.

. . .

Why is it so hard to get real criticism of South Africa’s political system? Why don’t we ever hear about any of this? Our state is a crumbling torture chamber, but what we keep hearing instead is that everything is just fine, we just need to fix the inequality. This stuck record strikes a chord with international audiences, who like the good feel-good story our rainbow nation promised, and adore the knowledge that, no matter who you are, you are better than those horrid white South Africans. But at home, the climate of mandatory optimism is beginning to invoke an allergic reaction. And yet so many struggle to locate the cause of the itch.

South Africa is a Socialist country. Perhaps not in its current economic arrangement, which is a complex mixture of socialism, welfare-liberalism, idiocracy-style technocracy, neo-patrimonialism, feudalism and organised crime. But in the culture of the elites, and in the spirit of the constitution, we are indeed socialist. The preamble of our 1996 constitution itself dedicates the purpose of the document to the achievement of social justice, that strange and pernicious incantation that transforms the universal yearning for the transcendent value of justice into a scythe to sweep the tall poppies from the field.

. . .

But now the power plays are not for economic sectors, and they are not for local admin blocks. They are for the heart of the state. And that means shutting down everything, starting with the Johannesburg-Durban economic corridor, which forms the core of our economy, and the central artery to the mining industry at its heart. The state provided no defence, and the Minister of Defence has spent the past week contradicting the president in public. The army, corroded by decades of mismanagement and poorly implemented integration with the revolutionary guerrilla forces, are not capable of much, and are considered a joke by the whole nation.

The police had to be rescued by the impromptu civilian defence forces. In the current storm, everyone is finally feeling it – there is no shelter from the winds of change.

. . .

Just as the ANC funds the influx of black voters into urban minority areas to build shacks on squatted land, the West welcomes mass migration from the third world, total open-borders, to transform the electoral system against the interests of the native population who might have their own desires, against the grain of global empire. Every corporation and state in the Western world discriminated against whites in hiring. The CIA peddles Critical Race Theory and actively recruits sexual minorities. Colour revolutions can be spotted whenever the rainbow flag or black fist makes an appearance.

Today, the Democratic Party in the US openly looks to South Africa for inspiration in dealing with what Yarvin called the “outer party” – all conservatives are being purged from every institution, in a vast cadre deployment program to ensure the core of the establishment becomes forever untouchable. On the streets they have even begun to use the same tactics for control – deploying huge mobs to destabilise cities when election season is approaching.

Minimum wage rises funnel employment into companies in public-private partnerships with the state, like Amazon, who is part of the Enduring Security Framework partnership of the CIA (which includes Facebook and Google). The analogies between their experimental management strategies and collectivised central-planning are no accident – any company that aims for a total retail monopoly through state-subsidised negative-profit growth is merely another route to total control.

And as the nation and the state are decoupled, the liberal-democratic institutions are being geared toward the concentration of power and wealth, and a strategy of divide-and-rule, to create a cannibal economy.

. . .

Reliance on the state for services means they can’t be sacrificed – in the UK, the [National Health Service] has become essentially a religious cult, feeding the civil service, medical contractors, immigrants and the poor alike, in a financially unsustainable way, for decreasing returns. As Philip Bagus observed, the democratic pressures to maintain institutional support via this sort of patronage forces modern western states to take on ever more debt and expand taxation to the limits. This then must be offset by QE, which must be guaranteed by the central state at a rate that benefits the most fragile provinces of any empire so that the whole system does not collapse.

Finance and corporations benefit through the Cantillion effect, and corporate profits become easier through asset acquisition and mergers-and-acquisitions than productive development. Consequently, capital formation declines. A tiny ruling class who shares no real values with the ordinary people forms, forced to leverage sectional grievances to wield and consolidate power. This creates an entirely new class system. A client class of dependent poor, a state-employed class, a managerial class, and the vampire elites. And as the vertical loyalties erode and disappear, the need to concentrate power ever more in the hands of the elite accelerates, and the economy is plundered, liquidated to keep a grip on the bailey as the motte catches fire.

. . .

The same economic dynamics are present in the world at large – the share of GDP spent on welfare keep increasing, as does the debt-GDP ratio. Capital formation has been falling for decades, and chronic inflation is treated as a static phenomenon, which nobody dares reign in, because the entire system is dependent on low interest rates to keep the constant corrosive consolidation of the global market going full steam ahead. This arrangement results in the inflation of property prices as along term hedge against inflation which, when the plebs followed suit resulted in the 2008 bubble, when they tried to play the elites’ asset accumulation game with borrowed money.

Aside from asset accumulation, another way to seek profit and a hedge against inflation is through mergers and acquisitions and liquidations – an easy option since many tax codes incentivise this by encouraging investment. Most sought investment in emerging markets. But in these countries, the same factors are present, only more advanced. They experienced their own crises of sovereign debt, and the same printing sprees and capital flight to into hard assets followed. The ceiling on global growth in 2008, a result of the final stage of globalisation, has finally forced the elites to pursue investment in the lowest rung of Mazlow’s hierarchy – primary resources.

For years now, China and the Atlantic elite have been pouring money into commodities markets and land. This is no new trend. It was spotted by the infamous Michael Burry back in 2010 – the future is no longer in the construction of anything new, but in the hoarding of static resources. The elites are assembling their life rafts from the hull of a sinking ship.

. . .

But what many forsee in dreams of revolution and revolt, the breakups of massive crumbling empires, is not going to happen as they hope.

Instead, the state will protect the stability of the ruling class and its control over the levers of power at the core, bleeding everyone dry and terrorising them into submission ... The West is losing control of its ability to provide the kind of total state security required for this however, and has been reaching for a far more sinister method of control – the financial system.

And this is where all analogies break down, because what is about to happen here is unprecedented. The international Bank of Settlements has recently announced that they intend to use Central Bank Digital Currency to control the spending of all global citizens, and have the tech and the power to control each and every expenditure, and to shut anybody out of the ability to feed themselves if they so choose. But this movement to kick away the ladder and consolidate total control follows the same logic as Zimbabwe’s – the poor can only be fed for so long, but the ruling elite must be fed forever, or else the whole house comes down.


There's much more at the link.

I suggest it'll be well worth your time to read Mr. Duigan's essay in full.  It's thought-provoking, to say the least.

Peter


12 comments:

5stonegames said...

I can see what Duigan was talking about being "the plan" saving their own skin is always the plan of a parasitic elite. Best laid plans and all that.

The ultimate truth though is modernity is utterly doomed by demography.

No people regardless of ethnic origin anywhere on planet earth has replacement or above fertility in any group that is participatory in the post modern system.

That was a bit wordy but basically fertility has been down for just under 50 years in the US and while our elite have demographically altered the US , even immigrants groups who assimilate have low fertility. Latinos our main other group have under 2 children now.

Mexico is at or below replacement.

Thus far there is no action or effort that can increase fertility and its painfully easy for it to go down and stay down. For example the decline from the pandemic put fertility at an all time low and it won't go up much if at all and never near replacement.

Large amounts of South American migrants designed to prop up the Democratic party elite aren't going to help. Its grasping at straws.

Of the groups that do have high fertility they are multi-generational hyper religious people, in essence breeding for religion, for example Israel's full timer Torah scholars numerous enough to make Israel the only growing developed nation , US Amish a few other Christian groups, a smattering of super fertile types (none High IQ) and essentially barbarians.

None of these people are supportive of the post modern societies,its ethos and in most cases even its infrastructure.

The inexorable logic is decline over decades or longer. China for example is on course to halve its fertility in fifty years.

All this slow decline of course doesn't take into the possibility of civil war in the US killing 1/2 to 2/3 the population or war with another power or just a sudden collapse.

Unless some method can be found to engage people into society in a life affirming way, a proper muscular Christian revival, its game over.

The Lab Manager said...

If we could be more honest that race, IQ, and culture matter. We need accept the fact that some 'humans' and cultures are simply not up to par with Western values or virtues, and need to in their own place. Funny that White run countries are the only ones that ever need diversity, but somehow black countries and Asian countries and Muslim countries or Israel does not diversity.

Mike Austin said...

Really, what does the USA have in common with South Africa? I've read so many essays recently that claim South Africa is a harbinger of America's fate. And the evidence is...where? Economy, culture, infrastructure, education, literacy---and on and on and on---are not at all similar. And as Lab Manager wrote, race and IQ matter. Absolutely they matter. More than anything else they matter.

South Africa is dissolving as a coherent political entity. So what? Name me one nation or state that did not dissolve in 6000 years of History. Take your time.

Every nation and state dies in their own way. If you think otherwise, that there is some cosmic rule of national disintegration that all nations follow, well that just makes you a Marxist. A popular writer says the USA's meltdown will be "Bosnia X Rwanda". Have Americans somehow morphed into Bosnians and Rwandans without me knowing it?

Will the USA dissolve one day. Yes. Next question? Well then, here's a question for you: What sort of political entity will arise from the ashes of the late great American Republic? America as a place and inhabited by people will still be here. What then?

Winterborn said...

Lab Manager makes some strong and interesting points. If I remember right Mormons are at something around 3.4. Some Christian groups are higher as well. Dr. Steve Turley of Turley Talks who is at least interesting at times, had the 2050 demographics at something like 300 million in the US alone.

May be helpful or just stop a "long night."

Can't research much right now as on mobile and with my 5 yr old

Winterborn said...

Pardon, meant 5stonegames

5stonegames said...

Lab Manager.

Certainly Western Civilization isn't suitable for everyone but the real problem is that the post modern period being unfit for human needs , Japan is highly civilized, not diverse. No babies. The US went to low fertility when it was 85% European. Europe is diverse in places but the fertility rate is the same in most cases.

Winterborn.

Mormon fertility has bricked and even Utah is now below replacement. LDS seem to be highly susceptible to going secular and are at like 2 now. The high fertility group here is the Amish along with a few other religious groups. These folks are bred in the bone for religiosity and as such won't be affected as much by the general social trend.

The Amish especially are enviable in that they have boiled off most of the people liable to leave and have high retention too

Will said...

No mention of the developing problem of the vaxx shutting down fertility? No data as to percentages yet, should be noticeable in 6-12 months. Any guesses as to how the population here in the US will respond if/when it becomes known?

5stonegames said...

Will, re fertility and the COVOD vaccines


Even ignoring the obfuscation of data for political purposes, this isn't easy data to come buy. Simply because reproduction in the developed world is uniformly below replacement with the singular exception of Israel.

People generally aren't having babies at this time and with the economy on the verge of collapse to a lower state , the already record low numbers will go even lower and likely health will decrease as well impairing fertility further,

As such it would require a huge reduction that cannot be accounted for by trends to be visible in the all noise.

Winterborn said...

5stone, yeah see what you were talking about. Hadn't heard that one at all. The words "well shit" don't do it justice.

Jonathan H said...

Are we heading to a new dark ages as elites try to rule over ashes and fail?

Orvan Taurus said...

When a state collapses or undergoes revolution in the distant reaches of Africa or Asia, there is a certain social distance which prevents Westerners directly apprehending the significance of the social dynamics, the closeness of the dangers, the universality of the lessons, the pain and the tragedy of the loss.

Alas, I am reminded of the line about "a few mud huts" in Why We Fight: Prelude to War. If that doesn't scare people, it damn well should.

Mike Austin said...

Dear Jonathan: A "new Dark Ages"---of course modified for reasons of race, IQ, culture, geography and so on---could only ensue if there is a world-wide and apocalyptic war, a war of "omnium contra omnes". Even the so-called "dark Ages" were only dark for a portion of Western Europe. Byzantium, for only one example, was doing just fine.

More likely is a US civil war---our third---where foreign powers will certainly try to insert themselves. Foreign intervention has occurred in every civil war known to History. Those who believe that China will somehow send hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the America mainland never deal with the fact that China has no capacity to do so. She cannot even invade Taiwan, a mere 68 miles away. The only nation who has such is the US, and has had such since 1846.

The "elites" you mention really have control over a small part of the nation: DC, New York, Los Angeles and and the "mainstream" culture. Huge swaths of America---the part where oil, natural gas, cattle, pigs, wheat, barley, corn, minerals and steel are produced---are beyond their control or understanding. There areas are also chock full of guns. Never forget that 50 men with guns can bring any major metropolitan center to its knees in a matter of days. Imagine Chicago, for example, if the semi-trucks stopped going there.

Rather than rule over ashes, our degenerate elites envision something like the Hunger Games. Elites still have to eat, run their vehicles and their heating and air conditioning. How can they accomplish that?

Short answer: They cannot.