STOKING THE FIRES OF CIVIL WAR

Useful idiots

by J.R.Nyquist

It is January 2023. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, with support flowing in from communist China and North Korea. On the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons, Iran also supports Russia. It is no surprise, therefore, that Cuba and Venezuela are hoping for a Russian victory in Ukraine, along with the old/new President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who ambiguously supports “peace” in Eastern Europe – if only to mask his commitment to the Russia-China bloc.

Countries keep falling, one after the other, as the creeping red frontier advances. Within the U.S. Establishment everyone has eyes, but nobody sees. Everyone has ears, but nobody hears. Everyone has a brain, but nobody knows how to think. The government is sleepwalking toward an abyss. What passes for sight, and sound, and thought, is a muddled hash of unanalyzed “data.” On the right and the left, only a few glimmers of independent thought remain – bypassed by the surrounding wave of mental extinctions.

In his book, The Demon in Democracy, Polish statesman and philosopher Ryszard Legutko explained that he had encountered a curious affinity between communism and liberal democracy. Legutko realized this, back in the 1970s, the first time he “managed to get out of communist Poland to travel in the so-called West.” Legutko wrote:

"To my unpleasant surprise, I discovered that many of my friends who consciously classified themselves as devoted supporters of liberal democracy – of a multiparty system, human rights, pluralism, and everything that every liberal democrat proudly listed as his acts of faith – displayed extraordinary meekness and empathy toward communism."

Legutko had imagined that Western liberals would have a visceral dislike of communism. He was surprised to find they were anti-anticommunist. During the post-Watergate era, the people who were most frequently condemned by liberals were anticommunists. That is somewhat funny, since one of the biggest liberal heroes – John F. Kennedy – was stridently anticommunist. But who dares to remember such an inconvenient fact? After Kennedy’s assassination, liberal anticommunism steadily declined. Today, liberal democrats are inclined to lump conservative anticommunists with antisemites, fascists, and Nazis. Stranger still, as the left continued down the path of anti-anticommunism after the fall of the Soviet Union, conservatives also began to evolve away from the old anticommunist way of thinking – either moving further left, or further right.

We heard so much about the “collapse of communism” back in 1991. But nobody, except a solitary KGB defector (Major Anatoliy Golitsyn), said anything at the time, or later, about the collapse of anticommunism. The collapse of anticommunism, first among liberals and then among conservatives, opened the door to a scissors strategy which might well lead to a follow-on convergence strategy – along the lines of a “red-brown” alliance. You only had to push liberals further left and conservatives further right, bringing them closer to a common revolutionary/authoritarian model. The key to this strategy of Western destruction was to enlarge the sphere of the radical left and the radical right, eliminating the tepid middle ground.

Once the Soviet Union pulled down the hammer and sickle flag, new political thinking could be promoted in the West. People who were then on the right and the left may have credited themselves as champions of freedom, but now that the burden of anti-Sovietism and anticommunism was lifted from their shoulders, they were free to gather power to themselves, without concern for the mechanisms that preserved liberty (or the principles they once espoused). The left could move further left, taking all institutions with them. Libertarians were free to reminisce about the Confederacy while praising Putin’s economic policies. The conservative right, feeling more and more alienated, would drift further into a paleo void that was, to put it mildly, full of shadows. Was the whole ideological transformation of the West, which began as the Cold War ended, a process shaped and intentionally unleashed by Moscow? The key to this question was that every side – and every shade of opinion – had to eschew genuine anticommunism (that is, an anticommunism that knew how communism worked, and how it could shapeshift by appropriating non-communist symbols and ideals). The key insight that everyone missed in 1989-1991 was that communism did not die. Instead, it went underground and put on a disguise, only to pop up on all sides, wearing several different masks (i.e., environmentalism, globalism, free trade, and conspiracism). All the new ideological innovations displaced anticommunism – which was thought to have no relevance and certainly no appeal. Anyone who tried to argue for the relevance of anticommunism to the present situation was, like Diana West, attacked from the right.

According to Legutko, anti-anticommunism “was almost immediately recognized as an important component of the new political orthodoxy that was taking shape [after the fall of the Soviet Union]. Those who were anticommunists were [said to be] a threat to liberal democracy….” For many years, of course, our free institutions were held together by fear of the Soviet Union. In retrospect we can see how clever it was to remove that fear. Once removed, the hollowness of the West became apparent. Our political traditions, which traced back through Britain to Greece and Rome, were not on a solid footing because we had forgotten about Polybius. This general forgetfulness regarding the principles of “mixed government” meant that nobody understood the importance of constitutional checks and balances. It is difficult to find a politician or a political commentator, who has read Polybius’ commentary on the Roman constitution which, in fact, inspired our own constitution. They do not know the origins of the liberty they enjoy. And, not understanding anything of importance, many have shown themselves ready to toss whatever stands in the way of their ambitions. Only a few voices, on the right and the left, seem to understand this instinctually. It seems, rather, that players from both ends of the political spectrum crave a cudgel with which to persecute their political opponents.

What the former communist agent, Whittaker Chambers, once said about liberalism [Witness (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2002 – 50th Anniversary Edition), p. 202.] is now true of many right-wingers; for the ever mutating communist bloc, artfully depicting its Russian Federation structures as nationalist and Christian, has made full use of rightwing solicitudes, “and sometimes flatter them to their faces, [but] in private they treat them with that same sneering contempt that the strong and predatory almost invariably feel for victims who volunteer to help in their own victimization.”

A PLAN FOR CIVIL WAR?

Igor Nikolaevich Panarin, born in 1958, graduated from the Higher Military School of Telecommunications of the KGB and the Division of Psychology of the Lenin Military-Political Academy (with a gold medal). In the 1990s he did strategic forecasting for Boris Yeltsin and headed the Analytical Division of the Central Election Commission of Russia. In 1998 Panarin allegedly used data from classified sources to assess American society. After careful consideration, he forecast the “probable” breakup and conquest of the United States. If his prognostications are correct, North America will eventually look something like this:

In 2008, when a global financial crisis was approaching, Panarin suggested the U.S. might break up by 2010. Notice, from the map above, that China gets the Western states while Alaska goes to Russia. According to the GRU defector Stanislav Lunev, at the end of the Cold War China and Russia negotiated a division of spoils that would occur at the conclusion of a future world war in which Chinese manpower and Russian missile-power would combine into an irresistible military combination. Lunev’s map is different, yet more believable; for Lunev does not include Japan or the European Union, or Mexico or Canada in the division of spoils. After all, if the United States actually collapsed, all these countries would find themselves in a subservient position to Moscow and Beijing. Why would these minor powers be entitled to chunks of America? But Panarin, who was then making a public presentation, had to pander. “Look,” he was cynically saying, “you will get a piece of the pie. We won’t leave you out. Don’t worry.”

Of special notice is the length of time during which Panarin’s study of a future civil war in America has been ongoing. According to Daniele Scalea, writing in Eurasia, Panarin’s study of America’s collapse into civil war was not completed in 1998. The study was a continuing project, as if Russian strategists were interested in the subject for reasons other than momentary curiosity. This, of course, makes Panarin’s study sound like an adjunct to somebody’s military planning. One might ask whether Russian and Chinese agents are presently at work, promoting American disunity, infiltrating the America left and right, using information warfare (for example, through things like the QAnon operation, through the open border policies of corrupt Democratic politicians, through the summer riots of 2020 and rising concerns about voter fraud).

Ironically, we are already awash in claims – from the right and the left – that Russia and/or China are manipulating our internal politics. So, ask yourself: What if Russia and China are playing divide and conquer ping-pong with our divided electorate? What if various American factions are being manipulated by the country they think will be their future indispensable partner? (For example, what if the right is being manipulated by Russia and the left by China?) Here is a hypothesis worth entertaining.

Some might argue that America is committing suicide without outside interference. But there is interference, and it is coming from the outside. We know that Antifa was connected to China. We know that Russia played some kind of game with us during the 2016 election. Consider the fact that America’s enemies are patient, but they are not infinitely patient. A slow and organic process might require a “good hard push” from behind. Beijing and Moscow would be remiss if they failed to take advantage. If America has become neurotic to the point of suicidal tendencies, why not exacerbate the situation? So, China and Russia do not mind if they are seen dabbling in our politics. The Russians want liberals to think conservatives are Russian puppets. The Chinese do not mind if everyone knows they have bought our “liberal” President. Do you see how this works?

At the same time, Americans are presently confused about their enemies, ideologically disoriented, and locked into various conspiracy narratives about America’s military-industrial complex, the CIA, the bankers, the Satanic baby-eaters, and the little grey molesters from Zeta Reticuli. The Dealey Lama is still under Dealey Plaza, orchestrating JFK’s firing squad. Or as QAnon used to say, “Where we go one we go all” – yes! – to the madhouse. People are now so paranoid, so distrustful, that they are open to anything – will believe in anything, however absurd. Given these circumstances, it would be child’s play for Russia and China to use information warfare to trigger a civil war between these sad disoriented people.

In an interview on RT in November 2008, Panarin made a rather remarkable admission which makes the whole civil war scenario even more alarming. Panarin said that he began writing his theory on America’s breakup in 1990, when the USSR was still intact (before the Russian and Chinese generals were meeting secretly and making agreements about the division of North America, according to Col. Lunev). It follows that Panarin’s U.S. civil war scenario was being worked on for at least eighteen years by the time of his RT interview, regardless of political changes in Russia (i.e., suggesting continuity between Soviet and Russian policy).

In the RT interview, Panarin noted the differing historical and cultural situations of America’s regions. Undoubtedly, like Ukraine, America is not a real country. It is something that can and should be eliminated and absorbed. Various states, he said, “have different levels of economic significance.” Logically, the interests of north and south are not the same. The interests of east and west are also not the same. In this 2008 interview, Panarin suggested that a “huge crisis may develop in the fall of 2009.” Panarin’s analysis is akin to Marx’s “crisis of capitalism” which, in Marxist theory, summons revolutionary forces into existence. Here is an event long anticipated by Soviet military theorists. What Panarin has done, in some sense, is recast the future collapse of capitalism as “the breakup of America,” changing out communist rhetoric about “revolution” for a divide-and-conquer narrative about civil war. 

The old Soviet idea about the start of World War III was that capitalism would collapse and America’s wicked “military-industrial complex” would be wiped away in short order. The American “imperialists,” seeing their inevitable doom, would naturally lash out against the socialist bloc, launching a desperate nuclear salvo. Stopping this from happening, the glorious Soviet military would launch preventive nuclear strikes to stop “the aggressor.” Given the changes that were planned in the Soviet Union, this way of talking about a future world war had to be revised at some point. Panarin appears to be the man charged with the revision. We may suspect, in this context, that Panarin was tasked in 1990 with updating the rationale for invading and occupying North America. Instead of a Leninist revolutionary rationale, which was not likely to occur, Panarin envisioned a more realistic civil war scenario.

“[Eventually] the United States will be divided into six separate states,” said Panarin, organized under five foreign power bases: New York and Washington will be under London, the rest being divided between Mexico, Canada, China and Russia. “I believe that Alaska should return to Russia,” said Panarin, “and there is a very good manager, Roman Abramovich, who is been really successful at managing Chukotka [Autonomous Okrug], so I believe he will manage with ruling Alaska as well.”

What will trigger the Second American Civil War? “The dollar is not backed by gold,” noted Panarin, “and there are too many dollars.” A situation of economic collapse, leading directly to political collapse and internal warfare, is inevitable. Panarin further stated that Russia could put its currency on the gold standard and thereby become the reserve currency for Eurasia. (It may not be a coincidence that Russia has since backed its currency with gold. In fact, it is believed that Russia and China have been conspiring for many years to create a new gold-backed currency to replace the dollar worldwide.)[x]

If we are to understand the current political situation, we need to keep Panarin’s scenario in mind. We should also look unfavorably on anyone who would divide the United States ideologically while looking to Russia as an ally. In fact, there are factions on the American right who have flirted with the so-called Russian “philosopher,” Alexander Dugin, who falsely styles himself a “Traditionalist.” I would like to close this essay with a warning to these folks by quoting from a genuine Traditionalist named Charles Upton, who wrote a brilliant book titled Dugin Against Dugin:

Man is not a function of politics; politics is a function of man. To alienate man from himself by claiming [as Dugin does] that he is a function of, a creature of, something less than himself – namely, ‘violence and legitimate power’ in the human world – is neither to liberate him nor to assign him to his true place and function in the Hierarchy of Being; it is to denature him, deconstruct him, crush him.

Also published at the J.R.Nyquist Blog