By Gwydion M. Williams
The Western Betrayal of Real Equality
Anarchism: a Guarantor of Failure
Iran: a Martyr-Nation for Islam?
Reagan’s Encouragement of Market Parasites
The Western Betrayal of Real Equality
From 1945, with the common people who’d been victors of World War Two insisting on more equality, the leaders of the West appeared to repent their errors and believe this.
It turns out they never really changed. The old elites kept a lot of their privileges. They were more open to talented outsiders, and after the cultural upheavals of the 1960s there was less a demand for the newly rich to ape the culture of the generationally rich. But they still resented being less privileged than they had been before 1914. Still thought they’d been right to be imperialists.
You find that in the works of Orwell. He never blames the British Empire for ripping the world apart with a demand that World War One continue till Germany had been crushed and humiliated. He is soft on the degree to which the British elite helped Hitler until suddenly switching to protect right-wing authoritarian Poland. Did this after betraying left-wing and democratic Czechoslovakia.
Nor did he deviate much from his father’s mission in British India’s China-exploiting Opium Department. He classes it as the least bad option:
“I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it.”[1]
He said that in 1936, and stuck to it in the late 1940s for his dystopian Nineteen Eighty Four. My reading is that for him it was not a negative example, but an inevitable future once his elite class had lost power. The ‘natives’ could not rule themselves without making a terrible mess of things.
He believed this till his death in 1950, even though the core of India had moved smoothly to a parliamentary democracy. A liberation marred only by the Muslim-Hindu split that Britain’s elite had done a huge amount to encourage.
Imperial possessions mostly did much better once free. And there have been no new empires, though some newly sovereign states had trouble with ethnic minorities. Not helped by the fact that the United Nations has never tried defining whether Democratic Secession was legal. The Western consensus, not honestly reported in media dominated by the rich, is that it was entirely legal for Kosovo. Illegal and intolerable for Crimea. Let’s keep on evading the issue for Northern Cyprus: you obviously don’t fight Turks unless you have a cause you are ready to suffer for, and think you can actually win.
It is seldom admitted, but military force remains the decider of what functions as ‘International Law’. And who can be punished for allegedly breaking it.
The USA made efforts to prevent the former East Pakistan becoming Bangladesh, but that’s another ‘don’t talk about it’ issue. Likewise Kashmir, most of which would choose to be independent or part of Pakistan if given a regional democratic choice.
This botch exists because when the United Nations was created, the British Empire and French Empire were core members, and several other European empires were members. And Latin America was dominated by elites seeing themselves very much as self-governing extensions of Spanish or Portuguese traditions, ruling over inferior natives and African imports. There was much more tolerance of intermarriage regarded as ‘race mixing’ than in the USA, but still well short of modern standards.
The elite, old and new, still want Western culture supreme. They hate the idea of admitting the West’s historic elite did many terrible things that could have been avoided.
When opposing this false history, it is important to remind everyone that ordinary Westerners were not guilty of most of it. Thoughtlessly guilty of settling on land that had been brutally taken from tribal peoples if it was suitable for European agriculture. But most of Europe’s wealth was home-grown: better industry and agriculture. A breakthrough in human civilisation, based on a consolidated body of scientific knowledge that previous cultures had never been able to keep organised on a regular basis.
Wealth taken from what the Empires viewed as Inferior Races flowed almost entirely to the elite. Middling Europeans might consume some tropical products, but they still do so now that those come from sovereign states.
Key to the great shift was the Soviet Union, and the work of Global Leninism in teaching the Global South how to apply the useful parts of European knowledge to their own societies. Whatever its faults, it always upheld equality as an ideal. And insisted that political authorities had a right and a duty to encourage this.
It is tragic that the Soviet Union increasingly reverted to Russian Nationalism, but also used pretended internationalism as an excuse to dominate states that mostly wanted to be friendly equal partners. Khrushchev invading Hungary in 1956 and Brezhnev invading Czechoslovakia in 1968 were fatal errors.[2] But Peoples’ China shows that Moscow Communism was not doomed to fail.
Doomed only if it refused to accept the complete continuity between what Lenin began and what Stalin brought to superpower status. Trotskyists and other deniers of this simple truth have been notable for achieving noting useful for socialism. Wasters of the real gifts and talents that many of them have or had.[3]
China refuses to apologise for Mao. Holds to the common-sense position that a leader who leads a state to success was the actual cause of that success.[4]
Anarchism: a Guarantor of Failure
In the first half of the 20th century, the two strongest centres of modern anarchism were Spain and Russia. And if you find it surprising that both ended up with highly authoritarian governments, then you don’t understand real politics.
Most Western radicals go round miserably asking ‘what’s wrong with the world?’. The question should be ‘what’s wrong with my understanding of the world?’. A failure to do this leads to depression and malice.
And it’s not a modern problem. Generations of Christians wrestled with the problem of how we can have an imperfect world and an all-powerful perfect and interventionist God. But not doing this and being a ‘slave of God’, the standard Islamic solution, turned out to be a paralysing solution for what was at one time a very dynamic and open culture.
Likewise the alternative Chinese solution – Heaven seeks order, but is not all-powerful and mere humans have a duty to help. That repeatedly made China the richest and safest of all pre-industrial societies, but the culture also kept a rigid separation between thinkers and skilled craftsmen who were often illiterate. Occasional attempts to bridge the gap remained marginal.
My answer to such questions is that there never has been an all-powerful and interventionist God. Survival and judgement after death is possible and untestable, and does not worry me. I don’t practice any religion, though I used to observe the less demanding externals of Anglicanism – a tree at Christmas and eggs at Easter. Since Christ was definitely not born to give us decorated trees and definitely did not die to give us chocolate eggs, in time I stopped bothering. Funerals they manage nicely without quizzing anyone alive or dead on their beliefs. But if there is a real supernatural, and if some Divine Hand could line me up with a typical collection of average church-going Anglicans, I’m sure I’d find myself in the midst of the congregation.
There is an old joke about atheists who don’t so much deny God as personally resent Him. Not me. Fine if a collection of godlike beings might think it best we work out our own destiny, though with the occasional tweak to avoid the worst errors. Though tragic, the way atomic weapons emerged was probably the least dangerous way a long-expected weapon could have been realised. You can imagine a different sort of World War in which two or more powers each thought they had a secret war-winning weapon. Used hundreds, rather than two on Japan after their popular and unforced aggression against independent China.
If powerful aliens prevent disasters like that, but do not prevent things like the tragic deaths of children, I’d say this might be wise judgment. And does not make me a believer, though the possibility of these same aliens giving some sort of Afterlife is not absurd. What would be absurd is supposing that they should have the same sort of rules about sex found in most religions – rules that not-so-coincidentally tended to boost the numbers of believers born in each generation. Do so even when the faith includes Holy Celibates. So for me, willfully harming fellow humans would be the only plausible reason for punishment, if there even was punishment.
But why do we still have believers?
Humans emerging from among other now-extinct types of Walking Apes seem to have elaborated existing superstitions. Clever animals have some idea of death and of missing the dead. Chimps seem to have special places we might call sacred. The curious prehistoric lion-man and a long tradition of enormously fat ‘Venus’ figures suggest widespread superstition among early humans. And the first confirmed regular buildings made by humans was the strange collection of upright carving-decorated stones at Göbekli Tepe.
I also reject the anarchist view of religion as a trick played by the elite. Societies that get beyond the primitive hunter-gatherer stage will reliably generate both a priesthood and a warrior elite.[5] If Çatalhöyük [pictured] and the Indus Valley Civilisation probably lacked these hierarchies, they had many indicators of strong religious feelings. And they also failed to flourish in the long run.
Only with an industrial society do technology and equality become possible. But obviously not guaranteed.
Anarchism seems to me essentially religious, though sometimes aggressively atheist. Rather more commonly hostile to existing religion, but sometimes replacing it with something worse. A worship of money, as with Ayn Rand and with the wider libertarian movement. Merging with an admiration for unregulated violence, which in the real world reliably loses out to violence constrained within a social order. And more often than not behaves worse than the regulated violence of police and military.
And it is heavily linked to drug abuse. The wicked state prevents Free Individuals from living as they wish. Except that’s not the reality of most drug use: people don’t say hooked without reason. One critic of the culture spoke as follows:
“Cocaine ‘is so normalised now that if you’re going out without it, then you’re doing something wrong’.”[6]
One could adapt Nietzsche: That Which Does Not Kill You Might Make You Callous. And suffering can either make you or break you: it is unpredictable.
The brilliant wave of 1960s pop musicians grew up in a teenage culture where drugs were not normal at all. The generations to which it was normal have not been as successful in producing songs that each new generation finds value in.
The asocial hippy ideology that flourished in the West in the 1960s has now become Conventional Wisdom. It began with the Yuppies, who often were former hippies. It made the New Right possible, and has also assured it fails. But people on the left resist social answers: in particular that immigration has to be limited.[7]
I remember an advert from ages ago: you are not stuck in traffic: you are traffic. And likewise a crowd can have a lethal panic, even though no individual wants this or is doing anything specifically bad.
Iran: a Martyr-Nation for Islam?
At the time of writing, the morning of 24th June, we have the cease-fire I’d expected all along.[8] Trump used Bunker Busters, as demanded. Iran did minimal retaliation, hoping for a safe wind-down of the sort that happened after they fired missiles to show solidarity with Gaza.
A wider deal may follow, since Iran has always said it can live without atomic weapons. Dangerously enriched uranium can be diluted with ordinary uranium. Trump will get few or none of the extras he demanded when breaking a functioning deal in 2017. Then say he merits a Nobel Peace Prize.
He might even get the prize, given the sycophancy of most Western leaders.
Till the final exchange, Iran was able to get through Israel’s famous Iron Dome and other air defences. Meaning that Trump’s promise of a Golden Dome for the USA should be flushed down a solid gold toilet by whoever possesses such an empty vanity
Israel’s defences were useful, but not decisive. Some missiles always got through.
I don’t know if Iran would be ready to use nerve gas, officially rejected as a legitimate weapon. But Israel doesn’t know either. Saddam hitting Israel with conventional missiles in 1991 may have saved him at the time. Maybe contributed to the US ‘mistake’ over air power that let him crush his most dangerous internal foes.
Before the cease fire, the USA had asked China to help stop Iran from closing the Strait of Hormuz, blocking most of the world’s oil.[9] But China, ever thinking about the future, may have vast hidden reserves. Also vast savings in US dollars and bonds, which it is already running down. Why help the USA with a crisis that both the USA’s ruling parties willfully created?
Both, not Trump alone. In his first term be scrapped a deal that Obama made, and that most people had seen as ending any chance that Iran might make nuclear weapons. But if you knew that, did you wonder why Biden as President did not restore it?
It turns out that the USA asked for a lot of extras. A limit on missiles, and ending support for Israel’s enemies. Maybe the supposed fear of an Iranian bomb was always propaganda.
During the Islamic Revolution, the Shah’s atomic projects were looked at. The religious authorities felt that an atom-bomb was un-Islamic, because its main effect was to kill non-combatants. They act in a sincere belief that the visible world is not the main point of life. God could at any time end or recreate it by an Act of Divine Will.
That sort of confident belief has vanished from Western Europe, and the loud-mouthed faith found in the USA is shallow.
Anyone who thinks that God’s Rules are only for other people is not a sincere believer. And that’s most of them in the USA. Known elsewhere, but Iran seems still dominated by Sincere Believers.
A Vision of God should not be adjustable by what the supposed devotee finds comfortable. Historically, Christianity made women subordinate and demanded that you treat gays and lesbians as evil. That’s why I have no interest in churches that fudge the issue. I am from a Christian background, but speculate we might have been a better civilisation had our pagan ancestors become Buddhists. I despise right-wing politicians in the USA who make a big show of traditional belief, but won’t apply it to themselves or their friends.
I also read Netanyahu as a Sincere Believer. Unless there really is a Zionist God determined that all of ancient Canaan should become solidly Jewish, his policies are suicidal.[10]
Netanyahu has for 40 years had two significant dreams: crippling Iran and clearing most of the Palestinians from the British-defined territory that was supposed to be shared with the existing inhabitants. And in this context, if anyone asks me about Israel’s right to exist, I’d say it really only applies to the smaller territories the UN originally awarded them. Accepting the wider borders that existed till 1967 would be a necessary compromise with power politics. The continuing drive to take more is foolish, as well as wicked.
Netanyahu’s dreams have now bumped into reality. Iran is no superpower: 17th in the world by population, 25th by GDP purchase parity, and 37th in dollar terms. What they’ve done can be copied.
Pakistan may have threatened to use its own nuclear weapons against Israel if Israel had used its undeclared bombs against Iran.[11] Or maybe did not, but a nation humiliated by the continuing greater strength of the Republic of India might catch the jihadi spirit. And Turkiye has the option of moving its powerful army into Syria and demanding that Palestinian rights be respected. Something that might happen in 2027, after the USA’s midterm elections deliver a Congress hostile to President Trump.
A more moderate Israel might also find it has unexpected friends. Chinese admire Jewish cleverness and respect for learning. And Putin recently said:
“Almost two million people from the former Soviet Union and the Russian Federation reside in Israel. It is almost a Russian-speaking country today. And, undoubtedly, we always take this into account in Russia’s contemporary history.”[12]
His core beliefs are Russian Nationalism, which extends to Eastern Ukraine after West Ukraine grabbed power and became a hater of everything Russian.[13] [14] He may see the Jewish emigrants from the former Soviet Union as still part of the nation. Many were highly assimilated, and went to Israel only because Israel persuaded the USA to stop most emigres becoming part of the USA.
Some might even decide that Russia is now a safer place to be. Or China might welcome them, as a nice addition to gifted Chinese now returning from the USA.
Reagan’s Encouragement of Market Parasites
Capitalism is a much more complex thing than either its friends or its enemies think.
It is not a system that humans have ever lived by without blending it with some entirely different set of values.
I’ve actually read all books, essays and letters by Adam Smith, which most of the New Right have not. His confidence was based on False Belief: he assumed that a rising class of business people would continue to respect the class of land-owning and skeptically Christian aristocrats who had run Britain since 1688. And he was hostile to the new United States, the first major subversion of those values.[15]
Smith died in 1790, at a time when it seemed possible that events in France would simply shift power to a wider elite, as 1688 did. Living longer, he’d probably have become as shocked and hostile as his friend and supporter Edmund Burke.
Contrary to Smith’s claims, Britain built its industry behind strong protectionist walls. It became Free Trade only when it was stronger than its rivals. And exactly the same happened with the rise of the USA and United Germany.[16] Allowed for Japan during the Cold War, along with other highly regulated economies based on elites and private property, and thus valued when Global Leninism was a major rival. And allowed for Peoples’ China when it was useful as a balance against the declining but still-powerful Soviet Union.
Naively still tolerated for China at a time when the USA was vastly richer, in a belief that a rising middle class would soon embrace Western values. They actually remained solidly Chinese, helped by being aware of the massive decline that Russia suffered under the naively pro-Western Yeltsin. Something that the plutocrat-owned Western media have successfully removed from the mainstream of Western thinking.
Russia reversed its decline under Putin. Has a much more normal society than the USA, thanks to not letting capitalism run wild. And not supposing that a magical entity called ‘The People’ can substitute for real politics and political authority.
Reagan’s economics were in the long run a disaster. He and Thatcher could have produced a much stronger West had they simply contained 1970s rebelliousness. Had they not tried to purge the system of anything that did not match an ideal system of capitalism. And this has left most people confused. Opponents mostly don’t demand a simple return to what we had from the 1940s to 1970s.[17] Don’t see that it would be a big step forward.
‘Power to the People’ is meaningless. Most people are unclear what they want. Don’t like taxes, but need to be told that there is no alternative. Just make sure that the rich pay their share, and there would be no shortage of money.
A much larger pool of wealth in the hands of the extraordinarily rich does not benefit anyone except the extraordinarily rich. Though it also lures many with a mostly-unrealistic hope.
Old newsnotes at the magazine websites. I also write regular blogs – https://www.quora.com/q/mrgwydionmwilliams
[1] https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/shooting-an-elephant/
[2] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/very-old-issues-images/magazine-001-to-010/magazine-007-july-1988-2/the-1968-invasion-of-czechoslovakia-doomed-the-soviet-union/
[3] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/past-issues/labour-affairs-before-2014/why-trotskys-politics-achieved-nothing-solid/
[4] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/problems-magazine-past-issues/how-mao-greatly-strengthened-china/
[5] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/m-articles-by-topic/040-religion-as-a-mode-of-human-existence/religions-as-imperfect-human-understanding/
[6] https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41643718.html
[7] https://mrgwydionmwilliams.quora.com/Society-Exists-and-Immigrants-Strain-It
[8] https://x.com/GwydionMW/status/1936694633024618919
[9] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c056pyv723vo
[10] https://mrgwydionmwilliams.quora.com/Suicidal-Zionism
[11] https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/truth-or-fake/20250618-israel-iran-war-did-pakistan-threaten-a-nuclear-bomb-against-israel
[12] https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/putin-was-asked-why-russia-is-not-helping-iran-his-reply-8736770
[13] https://drpatwalsh.com/2022/10/11/putin-the-reluctant-annexationist/
[14] https://mrgwydionmwilliams.quora.com/The-Civil-War-in-Ukrainian-Minds
[15] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/very-old-issues-images/magazines-020-to-029/magazine-032-not-yet-placed/adam-smith-and-the-american-revolution/
[16] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/m-articles-by-topic/48-economics/037-adam-smith-misleading/how-real-economic-growth-was-not-based-on-adam-smiths-ideas/
[17] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/problems-magazine-past-issues/the-mixed-economy-won-the-cold-war/
Labour Affairs 