The meaning of the refugee crisis

Dear fellow forum members,

There is a great and entertaining article I could call your attention to, written by one of my favorite philosophy teachers Miklos Tamas Gaspar, translated into English by the author though the original is more grasping in Hungarian. The author was actually hosted by me and my first wife teaching a counterculture philosophy class in 1984... the good old days.
In 1984 he was a teacher of philosophy who escaped from Kolozsvar (Cluj), the cultural capital of multiethnic Transylvania (where the 3-million strong Hungarian minority was not exactly welcome). Tamas Gaspar started to teach philosophy in Budapest, but a few years later he was deemed way too radical and critical and he was suspended from his teaching post for actively cooperating with anti-Soviet samisdat culture. That did not stop him from giving classes - at private homes where even the phone were unplugged. At the time he taught classical philosophy, Greeks mainly, and he was fluent in several languages. In the 90's, after spending extended time in Western countries, he gradually gave up his former classical Liberal positions and embraced a New Left philosophy. I regularly read his articles - more and more bitter and anti-establishment as the years went by, and always extremely well-researched in Sociology and the history of ideas.

Here is his brilliant analysis in English, probably translated by himself - though I think some of the ideas are more provocative in Hungarian. Naturally, it is an owlish article, I wonder what you think about it.
Thoughtful article
My next post is the article itself copied from the source, and needless to say, I agree with the main trains of thought.

THE MEANING OF THE REFUGEE CRISIS
G. M. TAMÁS 21 September 2015

"One is reminded of the beautiful summer days of 1944, when tens of thousands of Jews were forcibly marched to their deaths through the streets of Budapest." Hungarian, Romanian, Serbian and Czech.

I am not qualified to write about the crisis which sends Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis, Eritreans and others to Europe. I know only what I read in the newspapers and in a few specialist books. But I have something to say about the crisis in which central and eastern Europe is plunged all of a sudden.
This is not going to be especially entertaining. The situation is too serious for that. I am not in a mood to be wittily sardonic or particularly original about it.
Brutal openness is called for.

‘Real socialism’

The story begins, of course, in 1989. ‘Real socialism’ – of which I was an opponent – imploded. What seemed a triumph for my generation of dissidents, was something else for the majority of the population.
With the benefit of hindsight, it seems that not many people bothered to understand – except in constitutional terms: civil liberties and such – the system which we were so happy to see collapsing.
Eastern Europe needed a revolution and a revolutionary tyranny in order to create – at an exorbitant price – an urban and industrial civilization in order to end a millennium or so of agrarian backwardness and personal servitude. Regarded from a Tocquevillean vantage point, ‘real socialism’ has merely finished the job of Habsburg and Romanov absolutism that started a modernist – that is, capitalist – development based on two sources: state investment and foreign (western) loans. Vienna, Hamburg and Paris banks had been behind the spread of manufacturing and the state supplied the infrastructure (railways, harbours, postal services, a modicum of elementary education, policing, a semblance of public order). This has not changed since the eighteenth century. After a prolonged period of autarky under Stalin, this formula has reasserted itself. The East European countries, under the cloak of the ‘cold war’ had been, from the 1960s, deeply indebted to the west. The régime had become profoundly conservative and increasingly nationalistic. You might believe that the main enemy was – at least ideologically – western capitalism, but no. The main enemy was (and remained) 1968 and the New Left which might have reminded people of socialism, buried by then under a second-rate consumerism. The official press ridiculed the civil rights movement in the United States. In the popular comedy programme of the state radio the phrase ‘…and over there, they beat the Negroes’, was greeted by loud audience guffaws.
The idol of the state intelligentsia was not Marx, but Max Weber.
Any objection to scepticism and relativism – such as asserting the value of revolt – was considered (not only by officialdom, but by middle-class opinion) ‘Bolshevik fanaticism’. Modern conservatism is not dogmatic, but sceptical. Prejudice was (and is) celebrated as tradition and spontaneity, theory was rejected as the weapon of dictatorship, hostile to a plurality of views and of genuine expressions of the national soul. A conservatism that was not different from fin-de-siècle Vienna’s individualistic pessimism, was (and still is) dominant.
Until the 1970s, the supremacy of the state, propped up by foreign capital, resulted in profound changes, made possible by the obliteration of a very small capitalist sector between 1920 and 1925 in the Soviet Union and between 1945 and 1948 in the newly acquired territories and mostly by a newly built, huge modern economy.

Urban societies

The main social reality of old Eastern Europe – the large landed estates still owned by the aristocracy and by the Church, together with the abject misery of peasants – has disappeared without trace. These are urban societies, where most people, former peasants, later industrial workers, now ‘just people’, live in the enormous high-rise settlements constructed from the same blueprint everywhere from Shanghai to Ljubljana and Prague. They live there still, only the factories are closed down, and people are mostly unemployed or pensioners. The whiff of defeat is unmistakable.
The remaining lucrative chunks of the state economy have been ‘privatised’, that is, simply handed over to politically well-connected oligarchs. The present prime minister of Hungary, a penniless student in 1989, is now the head of a vast mining, constructions and agrarian conglomerate, run by family members and political flunkeys. His predecessor and arch-rival, a poor young man at the time, too, is also a billionaire many times over. They have no business experience or business acumen, their fortune is a donation from a grateful nation.
But most of the erstwhile state economy is a ruin, a rusting hulk of vast nothingness. Apart from the oligarchs, indistinguishable from the state, whatever activity can be noticed in these countries at all, is funded by foreign capital, foreign loans and foreign aid. Like a hundred years ago, the fierce nationalistic desire for independence is used by forces that would not dream of realising it, as they would not survive a single week without being totally dependent. A combination of resentment and hypocrisy motivates the policies the results of which you can see on your screens.

Bangladesh with snow

How can such a society be held together?
There are here, too, large cities where urban sophisticates have the same concerns as people in London, New York, Boston, Paris or Oslo. And rural pockets where 4 of our 9 million inhabitants live in utter dejection.
A Bangladesh with snowstorms.
Once upon a time it was illiteracy, nationalism, anti-Semitism, militarism and repressive pseudo-Christian religion. Later, under ‘real socialism’, a mixture of the welfare state and of the police state. (In spite of that, there was also a sense of equality and of a certain dignity of the working man – the gendered expression is no accident – and also a sense of gradual improvement, of progress.)
Now it is, naturally, racism.
How could you otherwise make people vote for the dismantling of the few remaining elements of social services and social assistance? How could cross-class solidarity (if you wish: ‘national unity’) be fostered? How would it be possible to convince the poor that an unprecedented inequality is in their own interest? Obviously, by presenting unemployment and social assistance as something pertaining to ethnic minorities – in eastern Europe the Roma, in central and western Europe the Turkish, Kurdish, Arab and African immigrants, in North America blacks and Hispanics – so, in the popular imagination, wealth redistribution appears as a favour to ‘foreign’ people. Liberals, unwittingly, contribute to this major political fraud by conceiving of the social question as a problem of ethnic or racial discrimination (which, of course, exists) and a problem of rights. Human rights groups and NGOs are the most hated ‘institutions’ in eastern Europe, according to opinion polls, especially among workers, because they are believed to have a bias against ‘us’ (and are financed by who else but ‘world Jewry’, called in the conservative Hungarian press, politely, ‘the global shadow power’).

Class

Hiding the reality and the importance of class in capitalism has always been the central element of all establishment ideology. (I wonder how many of the readers of Klassekampen take the class struggle in its title seriously.) In the recent past, the primary political community supposed to transcend and supersede class was the civic nation bound in loyalty to the King and to the legitimate institutions of the state, with a peculiar stress on the Army and on the State Church. Now it is not the nation of all loyal subjects or citizens which is the focus, but the ethnic, racial and cultural or language majority in a given state (this is what I call ‘ethnicism’ – in contrast to the nationalism of the past – in my theoretical writings). The main political identity is white, ‘Aryan’, male and heterosexual. In spite of what liberals and socialists might think or say. The only great historical competitor of both nationalism and racism has been class, as defined by the international workers’ movement – in this respect (and no other) the world historical heir to Christianity.
In the absence of international socialism as the decisive political challenger to the present order and with the hollowing out of any effective idea of a civic nation and of a ‘constitutional patriotism’ propped up by the welfare state in the first two thirds of the twentieth century, the strongest political feeling is that of ethnicity and its defense. Both the threat from below (the ‘coloured’ of one kind or another) and from above (international finance, the American Empire or what have you), both from outside (migrants) and from inside (disloyal minorities bent on destroying ‘us’ or on destroying our ‘normal’ sexuality like the LGBTQ people) are felt to endanger identities that were once thought to be sub-political if that.
In Hungary, the right-wing régime is meant to protect ‘us’ from the twin perils of Muslim jihadism and of the ‘New York-Tel Aviv axis’ (it is widely believed here that the latter is ‘sending’ the former into Europe in order to weaken and subjugate it), not to mention ‘Gipsy criminality’, a favourite term of the Right. (‘The Roma are the biological weapon of global Jewry’ and so on. But now quite a number of Jewish intellectuals are sharing the panic caused by the ‘Islamic danger’…)
Nothing could be farther from the east European mind than the words of Jeremy Corbyn, the new Labour leader on Parliament Square in London calling the refugees ‘people like us’ and applying the basic principles of social justice on dark-skinned aliens also. Non-white and non-Aryan and gay citizens are not parts of the nation here, and maybe anywhere. A Hungarian conservative friend and colleague of mine asserted in a recent article on a popular website that the enemy is Immanuel Kant. (By Kant he probably means Marx, but no matter. You understand.)
The massive influx of refugees from the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa to Central and Western Europe has thrown the continent into disarray. Both the incompetent, ignorant and badly paid repressive state apparatuses in Greece, Macedonia, Serbia and Hungary and the well-organised, shipshape, rich bureaucracies of Austria and Germany proved unequal to the task. With the exception of Hungary, they are hesitating between ‘Kantian’ egalitarianism and universalism and downright ethnicism, between humanity and cruelty.

Orbán Triumphans

As always, purposefulness and determination wins. The only European statesman to know his own mind is the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, whose ascendancy is one of the greatest disasters of Hungarian history. Mr Orbán is triumphant. His policy of zero immigration and of barbed-wire border fences wins. Border controls are now being imposed by Austria and Germany, where the governments are changing their stance by the hour. You can say that he is hypocritical – the Hungarian government has authorised a mysterious offshore company to officially sell Hungarian citizenship to wealthy foreigners for twenty thousand euros; most flats in my building in central Budapest are owned by foreigners; you are greeted in shops and cafés in my neibourhood in English as ethnic Hungarians are a tiny minority in the streets surrounding the Hungarian Parliament; American, Indian, Scandinavian, Japanese and Italian yuppies are the rule rather than the exception around here; Budapest, Prague and Zagreb are groaning under the weight of unbearable crowds of western tourists – but then nationalism has always been ambiguous and insincere and the new ethnicism is no different.

Competitive immigration

What needs to be understood is that there is such a thing as competitive immigration. East European countries could not survive without the emigration of their superfluous workforce to western Europe. A few years ago, the population of Romania was 23 million, now it is 18 million. In the last two years, 600 thousand Hungarians (of a population of 9 million) have left the country for Britain and Germany, mostly young skilled workers and university graduates. (There is an alarming dearth of doctors and nurses.) If they would be replaced by Muslim (and eastern Christian) refugees, that would mean an economic disaster as the aging east European populations – with a collapsing pensions and health system – cannot hope to make ends meet without remittance money from their grandchildren in the west.
It is the vital interest of countries such as Hungary to stop the refugees while we are competing with them for western resources, for the domestic economy of Eastern Europe is a sad joke. Not only are people like Mr Orbán or the Slovak and Czech prime minister, Messrs Robert Fico and Bohuslav Sobotka unwilling to accept refugees – who are fed and clothed only by admirable and exhausted volunteers from their own depleted pockets – but they want to make sure that ‘our’ emigrants win the contest, easing thereby the burden on our barely existing social budget wherein unemployment benefit is available only to those who would enrol in obligatory public work (the wage is around €150 per month) organised and supervised by the Hungarian national police.
That this is explained by wanting to preserve our so-called Western Christian heritage and to save Europe from committing a cultural suicide – and that this is, alas, believed by many people and it helps to mobilise support for the Right even by people whose elementary self-interest runs counter its policies – may sound ridiculous, but it isn’t.

End of Enlightenment

Ever since 1989, interpreted as the definitive end of the Enlightenment project, it is deemed impossible to deploy a moral criticism of politics, such criticism held in our anti-philosophical, romantic-reactionary cultures to be horribly Kantian and Marxist. The assertion of crude self-interest is sufficient to justify the evil legislation (making immigration a crime) and the state of exception(Notstand, état d’urgence) declared by the Hungarian government. (This is ably described by Kim Lane Scheppele in Politico.) Denying the human rights of refugees – this contravenes Hungarian and international law, but no matter – , fencing off the Serbian and Romanian (and possibly the Croatian) border, corrupting the court system by forcing it to issue automatic rejection writs of asylum requests on a conveyor belt, denying explicitly the right of the petitioners to have these decisions translated in any language from the Hungarian has elicited some protests, chiefly from liberal lawyers and a handful of social scientists, but the bulk of public opinion is silent. There is some commiseration for the poor refugees and their small children, but almost nobody is prepared to welcome any of them amongst us.
The justified and reasonable indignation of the Serbian and Romanian governments – far more tolerant and democratic than the richer Central Europeans, the so-called Visegrád countries – is ridiculed or, at best, ignored. World-famous luminaries such as Imre Kertész and György Konrád are more or less cautiously supporting the fake anti-Islamic hysteria whipped up by the Right. So do other respected pillars of society. The anti-Semitic and the philo-Semitic Right will finally be able to announce solemnly a merger.The moral atmosphere is irremediably polluted.
One is reminded of the beautiful summer days of 1944, when tens of thousands of Jews were forcibly marched to their deaths through the streets of Budapest – and the cinemas were playing musical comedies, theatres staged merry operettas, good, clean fun was had in cabarets and night clubs and people turned to the sports pages, bored with war news. Music wafted from the open-air restaurants and cafés on the bords of the Danube, just like now. Men are admiring pretty young women in their scanty summer dresses and short shorts, there are poetry readings in fashionably run-down beer gardens.
The end of the world would be scarcely noticed or it would be shrugged off as of no consequence whatsoever.

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This article was originally published by the Norwegian journal, Klassekampen, on September 19, 2015.
You can also read this article in Hungarian, Romanian, Serbian and Czech. [see link above - scroll down for these languages]

A side note and an emphasis:

Note: the term "real socialism" is used as a funny reference to an expression of several decades.
The author considers himself a Socialist and rightly so. Whereas, when I grew up and he came over to Budapest from Transylvania, the term "real socialism" was used by the regime to justify its mild dictatorship. In fact, the Hungarian original (létező szocializmus) also means "existing socialism."
I am not sure this exists in Russian, Romanian, Czech or Polish but maybe TGM (the author is known for his acronym) knows more.

An emphasis: one thought that was missing from the puzzle so far for me was that the people living in the West plus the few multinationals that remain actually sustain the economy of the majority of the country of Hungary now. Plus as TGM considers international perspectives, it is not interesting to Hungarologists (this is a small nation) but some of it refers or applies to the entire region, Europe, Russia etc.

Reg#full 1&2 :

I've just done my best to read most of your 2 posts.

I haven't posted much recently because of some spiritual going on, defensive devellopments and healings
concerning 4 most massive and dangerous demons ( groups of evil spirits ) on this planet :

I feel Baal and Yaweh-Jeohvah in the middle East are successfully healing althought specialised spiritual work still needs to be pursued but it mostly to handle and clear the effects of the old theocratic mechanics they used to use on Hum beings.

Now i and RR are also aware of the healing of the previously very pernicious Comparison Lord. I couldn't tell for sure and i'm awaiting actions of confirmation.

The most powerfull demon in my humble feeling seems to be Lucifer, operating in and around central EU.

I sense weird and very negative vibrations from one person you mentions in your 2 post above :

this guy have done extensive english studies and it's difficult to put into words why i feel his soul seems to displays vibrations similar to those of one of the oldest dominant predators of the animal kingdom, the megalodon shark.

It's highly possible that this guy is, or i truly hope "was", involved in working Lucifer in Hungary and EU.

Considering the negative parts of central EU history during the previous century and a long time ago, such as the gory Hun moment, i invite you and all Hum man and woman to simply protect and develop yourself by putting a really high emphasis on your extra Terrestrial or Terran Hum and ET spirits such as myself and RR are doing their very best to help U doing so : so U can count on US as well, just be good.

And here's a present from me for ALL Hungarian who deeply dislike one of the worst pain in the world : that of hunger. I embeded various healing meanings in it and i hope it will provide you with an increased sense of understanding and comfort.

I'm trying to translate some things or connect to your thoughts between the rational analysis and the irrational feelings and mediumistic realm.

The problem as I heard it on radio shows where TGM was interviewed was that Western European neo-liberal capitalism is quite comfortable with Orbán and even Putin and Erdogan whom he models and phenomena like that. Now many writers use Lucifer for that capitalist spirit as a symbol. Perhaps it is one way to translate...
Two examples or three from home: although Orbán is outrageous, Hungary is getting the EU monies. Orbán made a secret deal with Putin to accept a bad Russian loan for developing another block of the atomic power plant, which will end up producing nuclear waste we don't know where to store, plus it will result in electricity prices three times as what we pay now, plus excess electricity is already hard to sell in the EU - there are a dearth of windmills and solar panels in Western countries where the government promotes and finances them while here since the Russian deal everything is stopped.
As done frequently these days, the highest problem is incompetence at all levels of the government. IMHO Orbán is small, but he is really evil and disturbed - he is practically wrecking the country, chases business away by his rampant corruption and some secrets could be behind this whole Russian turncoat thing. Namely, his regime would be swept away if all the agents of the former system (Kadar, the late Soviet dictator) were revealed, and that is what we suspect the Russians are blackmailing him with. They literaly took some of the compromising documents with them at the "system change" originally to protect the new bourgeoisie formed out of their former allies. For all his nationalism and anti-European stances, Orbán is serving the interests of the EU, but not really those of capitalists. However, he brings out memories of the worst past of the continent with Fascism. It is OK now to have sculptures erected to minor writers of the 30's who happened to be members of the local Nazi party.
At the same time, capitalists do not behave nicely over here either. There are good exceptions, American and German firms actually pay you better but not all of them. Some ban trade unions. One example is that the same firm that is offering Western pay to its Western employees will offer about one fourth of the salary here. With virtually no struggle for equality and a nil of labor movements and a new set of laws practically banning strikes, people either leave the country in droves and some of the country lives on money sent from Western relatives now. Another example is that they offer far worse contracts for the same service here than in their home countries. This has really become like a small Mexico - along with s string of other countries between Russia and the EU.
Orban is anti-Muslim and somewhat racist and anti-Arab and anti-Roma. Now this "white Christian power" he claims to serve comes back at the worst time in history. I believe the borderlands are suffering a collapse of the state and violence to come. Using ethnic identity is one of the deepest evils a 21st century politician can do. Maybe that is what you felt.

I don't know if RB's Guides are giving him warnings about Orban or some other specific person, but mine are sending similar signal without identifying individuals. Reg's general comment make sense to me and I hope will bring me closer to actually understanding the situation in Hungary. However, I strongly suspect that events on a global scale will determine the fate of Hungary over the next few years...

Slovenia, Croatia, Slovakia and some politicians in the Czech Republic already look at Orban as an example to follow. Poland - no matter how they fear and detest the neo-Soviet empire, elected a right-wing populist, Beata Szydlo. (I don't know why but all over the world right-wing extremists look to me physically distasteful too, I can't help that). Austria first condemned Orban for his weird rhetoric and barbed razor fence, but now the are contemplating doing the same while they detain refugees in large masses.
Orban managed to divide Germany in this question - the South (Bayern) which is richer and more conservative is openly attacking Merkel's coalition. The prime minister of the Southern German Republic is making open statements.
It remains unexplained why the refugees want  so desperately cross from France to Britain. At least the official media does not explain, they just have feeble explanations like "France does not integrate as successfully" and "there are more jobs in London". Why do people risk their lives by tens of thousands to cross the Chunnel remains a mystery.

Orban is small, but he actually managed to divide the European Union. While some cite him as a horror example, the Pol Pot of European politics, others point at him as hey, what this guy does really works.

As I pointed out in another thread, the only attitude that was winning when facing Muslim extremism was Merkel's attitude: "Let them come from Syria". This the fanatics could not handle according to their OWN narrative.
They love Orban, because he plays into their hands. Orban says - in the EU Parliament - that liberalism and multiculturalism is a failure, everyone should go back to their "culture" - Muslims to the ME and North Africa. Daesh fanatics see it the same way: they cannot live with European or North American liberalism.

Proceedings started against Hungary for secretly signing the agreement with Russia for the nuclear power plant with state support but excluding open competition on the European market. But this will not officially kick into effect until 2017-18 because the country has the right to refuse arguments twice.

Orban already sees himself as the savior of Europe and he is deeply in the pockets of Vladimir Putin. And he has way too much sway - from Belgium to Estonia, plus he's a good chum of David Cameron. The way I see it this man is an acid test. Every single inch he is allotted in influence, rhetoric and reactions in the EU signals a deadly disease from which the EU may not recover at all.
Of course, his point openly stated is that George Soros (and, half-implied, the Americans and the Jews in general) start and finance all this "artificial crisis" to weaken Christian and white Europe. Plus that there is a conspiracy on the part of Western Liberals to destroy everything that has any value at all in the countries that still hold "values" (read: where mafioso governments are still allowed to rule, while exploitation of women, all sorts of inequality and oppression is freely flowing from the magic hands of bald men pumping iron with tattoos of Hitler and so on).

I mean this man is saying these things openly in the European forums. And sadly, about half of Europe is thinking down this line.

IMHO the Orban phenomenon should be reacted much more harshly and directly.

As for RB's drawing, yes, there are hundreds of thousands living in hunger in Hungary now.
Among them tens of thousands of children who have no food on the weekend, summer holidays and so on.
While Orban's family is personally becoming one of the richest of the entire Eastern half of Europe.

Reg, #7: "Thanks for all the additional detail on the the rise of right-wing populism all over Europe. What I'm wondering now is how deep it runs among ordinary citizens, both in severely affected places like Hungary and in Bavaria, etc. Here in the USA, the vast majority of white people who support Donald Trump and others of that ilk in polls and the like are calmly working and doing business with members of minority groups the same as they always do, and I suspect most of them will vote for Democrats or moderate Republicans when the elections come. Do you think the same is true in Europe, or is the situation more complicated?

Can yu imagine what it would be like if all those who feel they are suppressed in those countries and the ones leaving...if they would turn around and learn defensive measures and go right back to their country and get rid of their oppressors??????  Is that not why we were over in Iraq and also Aghanastan????  Aren't we supposed to be teaching them how to control their own nations?  Geesh!

Both adventures failed in many respects. There are at least two skeletons in the closet that the informed reader can easily spot, and a third one harder to evaluate: one is the dependence of advanced Western societies upon Middle Eastern oil. The other one is geopolitics: Afghanistan was an area in contention already at the time of the British Empire and the Russian Tzars. One thing is sure: no one power was able to control Afghanistan for any extended period of time, due to its location. It remains a mystery to me why the present administration did not completely withdraw all troops from Afghanistan and let them work out the post-Taliban world. The Soviets had failed there too - it certainly contributed to the demise of their empire just as much as the Vietnam war questioned the legitimacy of alliance called "anti-Communist".

The third skeleton is the world-wide trade in weapons and technology needed to wage wars. E.g. the worst terror groups including Daesh use Toyota pickup trucks only, because they are extremely reliable in desert conditions and easy to repair with hacked methods. When Toyota was recently questioned about this - without Toyota, they could not operate - all the company spokesperson could say was that they did not know how the trucks got there. Probably through intermediaries. All the horror regimes of Africa use weapons made in more advanced countries, the EU included, while AK-47 mainly comes from Russia and other Eastern locations. But naturally it is very hard to read credible facts about that part in real time - all the interested parties keep quiet. If there was ever an advanced civilization on Earth, weapons trade would be banned and controlled much more seriously than the trade in deadly drugs.

IMHO it was a serious mistake to let Halliburton and al. reap the profits in Iraq and not start building a multiethnic, multi-religion state. Many Iraqis (not Kurds) say today that life was better under Saddam. Instead, a practically Shi'ite government was put in charge of the country and its army, with the leaders having questionable ties to groups sympathizing with certain terrorist groups. Sunnite - or at least, non-Shi'ite - army commanders did not submit to the orders of the Shi'a government - that is how so many weapons got in the possession of Daesh. FYI most Arabs are Sunni Moslem, but the Shi'ites are in majority in Iraq.

As far as these two wars go, they seriously undermined the credibility and the moral superiority of the Western alliance. Libya is the third one, I read much about it life in Libya and personally knew a few Hungarians and an Americans who used to live and work there. Plus I studued the main writing of Gaddafi - the Green Book. For decades, Gaddhafi was putting a stop to African immigration to Europe based upon his oil and military power plus his weird mix of partly Socialist, partly Arab nationalist, partly pan-African ideology. (I would not be surprised if he was regarded a hero by some later popular movements in the area). Many black Africans were allowed to work there but only Arab citizens enjoyed the privileges - free housing and education among other things. (Odd double standards on the part of a supposedly pan-African leader but let that rest for a while...)

Migration is partly due to climate reasons - the Sahel belt (between the Sahara and the jungle) was already drying out forty years ago and people could no longer pursue the low-tech occupations they had for thousands of years. I am reading an account by a Hungarian writer from 1974 - the same problems were already there in Africa.
Gaddhafi was not a tyrant like Hussein who gassed the Kurds, the Taliban or Assad today. He was practically a benevolent tyrant and it makes no sense why the West helped to topple him, either from the POV of morality or self-interest of European plus North American countries.

Both wars were started by Bush Jr. whose father did the first Iraq war, so that rings a bell to me. Maybe it isn't such a good idea to entrust the leadership to folks like that. However, now we have to live with the consequences.

I just read that some of the weapons of the terror attacks in Paris were from the former Yugoslavia - before the war.
Reuters
The Hungarian article in nol.hu Hungarian link adds that there are about three unregistered weapons for every legally registered weapon in Serbia. After the breakup of Yugoslavia, all parties were legally enabled to sell any weapons anywhere. A lot of them ended up in the Middle East.

regmelocco wrote:

Both adventures failed in many respects. There are at least two skeletons in the closet that the informed reader can easily spot, and a third one harder to evaluate: one is the dependence of advanced Western societies upon Middle Eastern oil. The other one is geopolitics: Afghanistan was an area in contention already at the time of the British Empire and the Russian Tzars. One thing is sure: no one power was able to control Afghanistan for any extended period of time, due to its location. It remains a mystery to me why the present administration did not completely withdraw all troops from Afghanistan and let them work out the post-Taliban world. The Soviets had failed there too - it certainly contributed to the demise of their empire just as much as the Vietnam war questioned the legitimacy of alliance called "anti-Communist".

The third skeleton is the world-wide trade in weapons and technology needed to wage wars. E.g. the worst terror groups including Daesh use Toyota pickup trucks only, because they are extremely reliable in desert conditions and easy to repair with hacked methods. When Toyota was recently questioned about this - without Toyota, they could not operate - all the company spokesperson could say was that they did not know how the trucks got there. Probably through intermediaries. All the horror regimes of Africa use weapons made in more advanced countries, the EU included, while AK-47 mainly comes from Russia and other Eastern locations. But naturally it is very hard to read credible facts about that part in real time - all the interested parties keep quiet. If there was ever an advanced civilization on Earth, weapons trade would be banned and controlled much more seriously than the trade in deadly drugs.

IMHO it was a serious mistake to let Halliburton and al. reap the profits in Iraq and not start building a multiethnic, multi-religion state. Many Iraqis (not Kurds) say today that life was better under Saddam. Instead, a practically Shi'ite government was put in charge of the country and its army, with the leaders having questionable ties to groups sympathizing with certain terrorist groups. Sunnite - or at least, non-Shi'ite - army commanders did not submit to the orders of the Shi'a government - that is how so many weapons got in the possession of Daesh. FYI most Arabs are Sunni Moslem, but the Shi'ites are in majority in Iraq.

As far as these two wars go, they seriously undermined the credibility and the moral superiority of the Western alliance. Libya is the third one, I read much about it life in Libya and personally knew a few Hungarians and an Americans who used to live and work there. Plus I studued the main writing of Gaddafi - the Green Book. For decades, Gaddhafi was putting a stop to African immigration to Europe based upon his oil and military power plus his weird mix of partly Socialist, partly Arab nationalist, partly pan-African ideology. (I would not be surprised if he was regarded a hero by some later popular movements in the area). Many black Africans were allowed to work there but only Arab citizens enjoyed the privileges - free housing and education among other things. (Odd double standards on the part of a supposedly pan-African leader but let that rest for a while...)

Migration is partly due to climate reasons - the Sahel belt (between the Sahara and the jungle) was already drying out forty years ago and people could no longer pursue the low-tech occupations they had for thousands of years. I am reading an account by a Hungarian writer from 1974 - the same problems were already there in Africa.
Gaddhafi was not a tyrant like Hussein who gassed the Kurds, the Taliban or Assad today. He was practically a benevolent tyrant and it makes no sense why the West helped to topple him, either from the POV of morality or self-interest of European plus North American countries.

Both wars were started by Bush Jr. whose father did the first Iraq war, so that rings a bell to me. Maybe it isn't such a good idea to entrust the leadership to folks like that. However, now we have to live with the consequences.

Yes! This is as good a summation as I've ever seen of the non-political, non-religious reasons why all of the recent Western efforts to achieve "peace with honor" relating to the Islamic world have generated the same kind of fiascos as the earlier efforts to do the same in Southeast Asia. And IMO, the third reason you described is actually easier to identify than the first two, and the reason it hasn't received nearly as much media publicity is because practically every government and commercial-industrial establishment in the Western world is directly involved in one facet or another of the "weapons problem". Even the Scandinavian countries and Switzerland make money from it. So who is going to blow the whistle when the foul is on them as well as everybody else?

RR#13 : "Yes! This is as good a summation as I've ever seen of the non-political, non-religious reasons why all of the recent Western efforts to achieve "peace with honor" relating to the Islamic world have generated the same kind of fiascos as the earlier efforts to do the same in Southeast Asia. And IMO, the third reason you described is actually easier to identify than the first two, and the reason it hasn't received nearly as much media publicity is because practically every government and commercial-industrial establishment in the Western world is directly involved in one facet or another of the "weapons problem". Even the Scandinavian countries and Switzerland make money from it. So who is going to blow the whistle when the foul is on them as well as everybody else?"

I guess you're comparing the Hungarian tyranic regime to a asian one : but my best feeling is that there's at least some sense of honor in the Asian one that we could call something like "determined patriotic resistance to liberalism".

But there's no sense of honor i can perceive in the Hungarian tyranny : the only best way to spiritually sum up what i perceive there is a slow, difficult and progressive evolution from 2nd or 3rd stage of theocracy ( based on mass Hum sacrifices) to the lesser evil of the 4th & 5th stage of theocracy (based on Lutherianism and mind control).

And there's no need for anyone on Earth to feel responsible for this natural evolutionary situation

yet the old powerfull Lucifer may have got through time unnoticed and very comfortably

so actually we can all indirectly do something to help Hungarians ( first by helping ourselves in our

own Nations for exemple ) and if he has a very minimal sense of personal responsability in these

difficulties, he is allready and will be increasingly accelerating Hungarians' comfort.

Wow!
Very good summary, RB!
It's 4th and 5th now... e.g. nominally it is Christian but the church took pains to not help the poor refugees despite the Pope openly exhorting every Catholic diocese to take in a family. At heart it is a 5th style already - mechanical, ruthless, people on workfare in wide areas of the countryside... Ideology wildly changes and it is closer to the Nazi one but a homegrown variety - like Putin's neo-nationalism. Erdogan in Turkey is a wild card. He is an Islamist but of course does not support folk movements. He bombed the anti-Daesh Kurds. Could be that he wants a Caliphate but a different one. Rumors say he helps the Daesh - speculation. As a small country, we would not want to be involved but we already are. That is why I believe in two years there will be a widespread war in the Middle East and in the Eastern part of Europe...
whoever was aligned with Hungary in the past 500 years lost their war so we should quietly caution Mr. Putin.

Realityrebel wrote:

Reg, #7: "Thanks for all the additional detail on the the rise of right-wing populism all over Europe. What I'm wondering now is how deep it runs among ordinary citizens, both in severely affected places like Hungary and in Bavaria, etc. Here in the USA, the vast majority of white people who support Donald Trump and others of that ilk in polls and the like are calmly working and doing business with members of minority groups the same as they always do, and I suspect most of them will vote for Democrats or moderate Republicans when the elections come. Do you think the same is true in Europe, or is the situation more complicated?

It's the economy.
It may be the same in Bavaria as in the US - but certainly not "east from the Leuthe river (Austria). I think what is dangerous here is two things: suddenly being cast down to a level of widespread poverty (even wage earners make less than one fifth of the Western pay for the same work, and schools and hospitals are literally crumbling and closing). Rich folks take their kids out to Church schools. We are becoming like some countries in South America.

A sense a deep, deep rift in the world now. Almost like the Spirits of the Earth wanted to conquer this part totally in one way. Theocratic, vengeful and petty control. Mad spirits. I have never seen so many certified psychotic cases in the street...

RB, #14, re: "I guess you're comparing the Hungarian tyranic regime to a asian one : but my best feeling is that there's at least some sense of honor in the Asian one that we could call something like "determined patriotic resistance to liberalism" But there's no sense of honor i can perceive in the Hungarian tyranny : the only best way to spiritually sum up what i perceive there is a slow, difficult and progressive evolution from 2nd or 3rd stage of theocracy ( based on mass Hum sacrifices) to the lesser evil of the 4th & 5th stage of theocracy (based on Lutherianism and mind control)."

Yes! I always saw the ghost of Confucius standing behind Chairman Mao, and the same paleo-fascist root-ideology has continued in China down to today. The Japanese fascism prior to WW2 had a similar origin, but it had replaced the modern Western model, which returned under the post-war occupation. And I definitely see a mixture of 4th and 5th stage theocracy competing with that same modern Western model in Hungary today."

reg, #15, re: "Wow! Very good summary, RB! It's 4th and 5th now... e.g. nominally it is Christian but the church took pains to not help the poor refugees despite the Pope openly exhorting every Catholic diocese to take in a family. At heart it is a 5th style already - mechanical, ruthless, people on workfare in wide areas of the countryside... Ideology wildly changes and it is closer to the Nazi one but a homegrown variety - like Putin's neo-nationalism."

Wow, again! I wrote my comments above before I read this, and it turns out that we're almost completely on the same page here.

re: "Erdogan in Turkey is a wild card. He is an Islamist but of course does not support folk movements. He bombed the anti-Daesh Kurds. Could be that he wants a Caliphate but a different one. Rumors say he helps the Daesh - speculation. As a small country, we would not want to be involved but we already are. That is why I believe in two years there will be a widespread war in the Middle East and in the Eastern part of Europe... whoever was aligned with Hungary in the past 500 years lost their war so we should quietly caution Mr. Putin."

Yes! I've been saying that this mess in Eastern Europe is going to be resolved from outside by external wars and internal revolutions involving many different countries over the next few years. And since your last sentence is true, maybe we should be glad if Hungary ends up aligning with Russia, not the West, in the big war that seems to be coming.

Regmelocco maybe you should also try to remember that the vast majority of the pessimistic mid and long term EU and Terran speculations you made on revolutionaryspiritualism.yuku.com happened to be incorrect.

I personally feel that it's not easy ( if possible at all ) to make mid and long term detailed speculations considering the complexity and the qualitative density of what's going on in the Universe and on Earth.

Yet the general and optimistic ones i and RR made concerning the rise of a Terran advanced civilization seems to at least have some truth and positiveness to them if we consider all facts globally.

reality builder wrote:

Regmelocco maybe you should also try to remember that the vast majority of the pessimistic mid and long term EU and Terran speculations you made on revolutionaryspiritualism.yuku.com happened to be incorrect.

I personally feel that it's not easy ( if possible at all ) to make mid and long term speculations considering the complexity and the qualitative density of what's going on in the Universe and on Earth.

Yet the general and optimistic ones i and RR made concerning the rise of a Terran advanced civilization seems to at least have some truth and positiveness to them if we consider all facts globally.

All I can say is that you and I made just as many incorrect guesses about future events on the RS Community as Reg did ... and it's also important to remember that it was assumed from the beginning that these conversations were speculations intended to help us grasp the world-wide cultural revolution that's now taking place.

SR#20 : "All I can say is that you and I made just as many incorrect guesses about future events on the RS Community as Reg did ... and it's also important to remember that it was assumed from the beginning that these conversations were speculations intended to help us grasp the world-wide cultural revolution that's now taking place."

My memory may be incorrect but i remember the only short term, mid term and long term speculation i made from RS and since has always been something like " i don't know but i feel that an advanced Terran civilization is progressively taking shape and rising".

Yes, RB, you are helping me as many times you did in the past. I am not infallible (surprise), and I have speculated wrongly a few times in the past. Plus I probably will again... however I am trying to learn. That is what RR - formerly SR - meant by trial and error. You may remember a few of these occasions, and you could point them out.

I remember for example, how in the elections of 2002, along with most of my friends, I was convinced that our present leader, who was already beginning to look like a Latin American dictator then, would win the elections. (I was not yet on these forums at the time and I was not yet familiar with the worlds War in Heaven opened before me.) He lost, and he sank into a dangerous level of paranoia along with the main leaders and supporters of his organization (including my dad) that we are still paying the price.

With the article posted also, it contains something that explains part of the equation relating to this place and the so-called refugee crisis of Europe. I would love to be more specific but I have not distilled it yet... Something clicked in me when I read that not only the EU maintains all the payments of the State of Hungary, but already everyday life would be impossible without the gifts expats send home. I read today that after a little research that almost 3% of the GDP of Hungary is from the money sendings of expat workers... Now Orban is "protecting" us from the halfway named Jewish-American elite (he calls them "the background power structure" and from the Arab and Afghani immigrants... Brilliant.

Are you familiar with the novel by American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick "The Man in the High Castle"?
There is an excellent TV series artistically made on the basis of that book.
Book by PHD

I highly recommend the TV series - it is positively artistic with good music - you can watch the first parts online. It is particularly suited to turning a mind tuned to the fearful side of the collective.
As a person of a Jungian bent, I do not regard bad visions as simply bad. He was plagued by visions before the Great War of blood flowing everywhere, except in Switzerland, which he thought was protected by the mountains. He dismissed the interpretation for a long time as a psychoanalyist, or rather, an analytical psychologist as he termed himself; he thought he was battling his own battle against visionary space and had a tough time not going simply crazy. However, his visions (he was an introverted intuitive in his own classification) proved literal and outside events. He also proceeded later to analyze the giant collective shadow projection called Nazism as he belonged to the German-speaking world and noticed the gradual degradation of narratives, the growth of violence and suppression and that the collective shadow archetype of Germans was projected on the local Jews.
Now a similar projection mechanism is at work in respect of Moslem and Arab groups in the Western world. There are about a billion people from Moslem background but only a few hundred thousand engage in militant activities - but the projection is strong and it is harder and harder to escape in private conversation.

I have a forming visionary thing about Hungary - part of it is that we have some very dark business including re-militarizing Russia, as a 5th stage theocracy, we are a Trojan Horse in the European Union. And that will relate to the sacrifice of masses of people in the near future.
Still, I do believe what you said that for the remainders after this conflict and possible epidemics and environmental problems, there is still a very strong hope for a civilized future. And that we were discussing that as well in the RS forums - from music till the Internet and environmental projects that would be important in the coming decades. And you are right, that should come back in our forums despite the near future showing great problems - or we could not rightfully claim survival. As we established in the RS threads, a lower force high technology should couple with ecology, more organic food and respect for the environment. All sort of tricks from windmills to energy-efficient cars plus using a more natural arrangement habitat style - I think in sunny countries people should build partly underground partly growing vegetables on the top, as some New Mexico hippies do, using breathing adobe walls more, instead of having block concrete buildings which have to be air-conditioned or the people would suffer all summer long and unable to do decent work. More and more greens and water should be in our cities.
I am still waiting for the discovery of storing solar energy by splitting water discovered at MIT to make headlines from 2008, but the article disappeared. Using very common elements, solar panels could provide an excess of energy over the summer and split water using a medium of cadmium and something else to hydrogen and oxygen, then gradually burning it cleanly back over the wintertime from the tanks... Obviously you need a disciplined or crime-free society to handle it though because the tanks could be blown up. Well, maybe the Japs will catch on this...

reg, #22, re:"Yes, RB, you are helping me as many times you did in the past. I am not infallible (surprise), and I have speculated wrongly a few times in the past. Plus I probably will again... however I am trying to learn. That is what RR - formerly SR - meant by trial and error. You may remember a few of these occasions, and you could point them out."

And for that matter, RB was posting material on the old Reality Checkpoint MSN Group for several years, under a different user name. I appreciated his insights then as still do now, even though I don't agree with or understand everything he says. IMO, we are all here to learn from one another, by a process of trial and error.

re: "I remember for example, how in the elections of 2002, along with most of my friends, I was convinced that our present leader, who was already beginning to look like a Latin American dictator then, would win the elections. (I was not yet on these forums at the time and I was not yet familiar with the worlds War in Heaven opened before me.) He lost, and he sank into a dangerous level of paranoia along with the main leaders and supporters of his organization (including my dad) that we are still paying the price."

Do you think Hungary would be better governed today if he'd won in 2002?

re: "With the article posted also, it contains something that explains part of the equation relating to this place and the so-called refugee crisis of Europe. I would love to be more specific but I have not distilled it yet... Something clicked in me when I read that not only the EU maintains all the payments of the State of Hungary, but already everyday life would be impossible without the gifts expats send home. I read today that after a little research that almost 3% of the GDP of Hungary is from the money sendings of expat workers... Now Orban is "protecting" us from the halfway named Jewish-American elite (he calls them "the background power structure" and from the Arab and Afghani immigrants... Brilliant."

My take on this is that Orban has been punching holes in the bottom of his ship for quite a number of years and the water is definitely coming in faster than it can be pumped out. A lot of the passangers and crew have already off, but there's no way everyone can do this, nor is there any sign that anyone is trying to stop the leaks, so the situation looks very dire to me at this point.

re: "Are you familiar with the novel by American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick 'The Man in the High Castle'?"

Yeah, I read a lot of scifi in my younger years, and suspect I've read almost everything he ever wrote.

re: "There is an excellent TV series artistically made on the basis of that book.
Book by PHD"

#23, re: "I highly recommend the TV series - it is positively artistic with good music - you can watch the first parts online. It is particularly suited to turning a mind tuned to the fearful side of the collective."

I haven't watched whole episodes of any TV series for many years, but I was seriously making an exception and watching this. However, my Guides have advised me not to.

re: "As a person of a Jungian bent, I do not regard bad visions as simply bad. He [Jung] was plagued by visions before the Great War of blood flowing everywhere, except in Switzerland, which he thought was protected by the mountains. He dismissed the interpretation for a long time as a psychoanalyist, or rather, an analytical psychologist as he termed himself; he thought he was battling his own battle against visionary space and had a tough time not going simply crazy. However, his visions (he was an introverted intuitive in his own classification) proved literal and outside events. He also proceeded later to analyze the giant collective shadow projection called Nazism as he belonged to the German-speaking world and noticed the gradual degradation of narratives, the growth of violence and suppression and that the collective shadow archetype of Germans was projected on the local Jews.
Now a similar projection mechanism is at work in respect of Moslem and Arab groups in the Western world. There are about a billion people from Moslem background but only a few hundred thousand engage in militant activities - but the projection is strong and it is harder and harder to escape in private conversation."

Have you read any of Robert Anton Wilson's speculations about this? I don't remember which of his books they were in, but he said pretty much what you just said about Yung and the Nazis and everything else you mentioned above.

re: "I have a forming visionary thing about Hungary - part of it is that we have some very dark business including re-militarizing Russia, as a 5th stage theocracy, we are a Trojan Horse in the European Union. And that will relate to the sacrifice of masses of people in the near future.
Still, I do believe what you said that for the remainders after this conflict and possible epidemics and environmental problems, there is still a very strong hope for a civilized future. And that we were discussing that as well in the RS forums - from music till the Internet and environmental projects that would be important in the coming decades. And you are right, that should come back in our forums despite the near future showing great problems - or we could not rightfully claim survival. As we established in the RS threads, a lower force high technology should couple with ecology, more organic food and respect for the environment. All sort of tricks from windmills to energy-efficient cars plus using a more natural arrangement habitat style - I think in sunny countries people should build partly underground partly growing vegetables on the top, as some New Mexico hippies do, using breathing adobe walls more, instead of having block concrete buildings which have to be air-conditioned or the people would suffer all summer long and unable to do decent work. More and more greens and water should be in our cities. I am still waiting for the discovery of storing solar energy by splitting water discovered at MIT to make headlines from 2008, but the article disappeared. Using very common elements, solar panels could provide an excess of energy over the summer and split water using a medium of cadmium and something else to hydrogen and oxygen, then gradually burning it cleanly back over the wintertime from the tanks... Obviously you need a disciplined or crime-free society to handle it though because the tanks could be blown up. Well, maybe the Japs will catch on this..."

I am in strong agreement with everything you just said, and it looks to me like both you and RB have always understood the European situation on all level better than I have ... which is understandable considering that you are there and I'm not.

re: "Do you think Hungary would be better governed today if he'd won in 2002?"
This is like a Zen koan. The surface is not the same in my response as the depths. At the surface level, I do not support the right-wing agenda that was already formed at the time in 2002. Yet if they stayed in power, some level of polarization, isolation of collective shadow elements would have been spared. Obviously, part of Hungarian society wanted his kind to succeed and sooner or later they would have expressed their point. Everyone was surprised in 2002 that the other guys won the election by a narrow margin, almost without exception most of the right became somewhat
paranoid and they started to nourish weird conspiracy theories - the international liberal conspiracy or the Jews or the feminists or whatever did them in. They just could not grant that they simply lost an election - which was a natural risk on the other side.

As things are, I think Hungary serves a valuable example to the EU and to many types of people who are found on borders or peripheries. Otherwise, though be my homeland of origin and my present place, I would not bring it up so many times though I grant you I can be biased towards perceiving things from here.

There is now a lesson to be drawn from this turn of history for many other kinds of people, including South American immigrant to the US. Polarization and isolating the traditionalist male-female roles, going back to the old power structure does not work and it is not the way towards the future. If you get feedback and you are willing to play by the rules, you can point to the future even if you lose on the surface. I think under the tyranny and hopelessness here, many souls are drawing lessons of being absolutely non-tyrannical and having a flexible but strong view of the future.

It might happen though that these lessons are not put in place at the spot they were formed at. I cannot but think of all the Hungarians who became celebrated in other parts of the world in the twentieth century though they had spent part of their youth or childhood in a weird and backwards society - mathematics would not be the same without them for one thing. However, the difference between that past and the present is that education, books and the arts remained very strong all through these regimes (with the exception of a few years at the height of terror - such as 1944 or 1948-50), while the recent regime does not bode well for another wave of geniuses twenty or thirty years from now... Hungary without intellectuals is like Tibet without Buddhism.