1. The Linguistic Roots of our Current Political Confusion
One can think of language as a set of railway tracks along which we think and from which its is very difficult for us to stray. In ‘Four Quartets’, T. S. Eliot described such departures from existing lines of thought as raids upon the inarticulate: the finding of ways to say something one had not been able to say before. In the ‘Critique of Judgement’, Immanuel Kant called this the essence of genius. How we do it, of course, we don’t know. For no one has yet created a language for talking about it. To those who think of language as akin to a computer program, in fact, this thinking beyond our existing programming to create a new program should not even be possible. And yet we do it all the time, usually when an existing language is found to be either incoherent, containing inconsistencies which produce contradictions, or at odds with reality. Either way, we are invariably resistant to the linguistic changes needed in order to think in a different way, either because we do not like to admit that our previous way of thinking was wrong or, more profoundly, because we do not like to think that what we previously thought of as real was just a linguistic construct, a way of thinking about the world which was imposed on us by language.
As a result, any major change in the way we think and talk is nearly always revolutionary and is often violent, especially when the subject of the way we think and talk is the way we live our lives, a subject which can be even more hotly contested when the language of politics, one of the languages we use to talk about the way in which we live our lives, is itself part of the problem, being incoherent and in need of change, as it is today.
As an example of this incoherence, take, for instance, the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ as they are used in political discourse, which, as I have explained elsewhere, is derived from the seating arrangements in the French National Assembly during the French revolution, when, during debates on the future form of government in France, those who favoured a constitutional monarchy of the kind we already had in England sat on the right of the aisle in front of the Speaker’s chair, while those who favoured a republic of the kind recently established in the United States sat on the left. This arrangement, however, was entirely accidental and arbitrary. The constitutional monarchists could have congregated on the left while the republicans could have congregated on the right. What’s more, there is nothing intrinsically ‘leftish’ about being a republican, any more than there is anything intrinsically ‘rightish’ about being a constitutional monarchist.
One may of course argue that there is something intrinsically conservative about being a constitutional monarchist, especially in the 1790s when the English constitutional monarchy had already been in existence for around a century and was therefore tried and tested, while the American republic was little more than fifteen years old and still experimental. What’s more, a change in France from being an absolute monarchy to being a constitutional monarchy was more of an evolutionary step than a revolutionary transformation, while a change to being a republic was a far more radical departure from what had gone before, which is what we tend to associate with the left. While thus reflecting different human character traits, however, such as caution and conservatism on the one hand and a desire for something different on the other, these associations do not necessarily reflect the actual politics involved.
Take, for instance, the principal political division in England during the 18th century, which was between the ‘Tories’ or conservatives on the one hand and the ‘Whigs’ or classical liberals on the other. As I have explained elsewhere, the Conservatives stood for what their name suggests – traditional conservative values – and more especially, traditional conservative institutions, such as the monarchy, the aristocracy and the Church of England, whereas the Liberals stood for a principle of personal liberty based on the philosophy of John Locke, who argued that, as long as one is not hurting anyone else, one should be allowed to live one’s life in the way one choses without the authoritarian constraints traditionally imposed on us by the very same conservative institutions listed above. To balance this, however, Locke also argued that if we want the freedom to live our lives the way we choose, we cannot be dependent on and thus beholden to others and must therefore take responsibility for ourselves: a political philosophy which was very appealing to the 18th century’s emerging middle class, who, whether they made their money in manufacturing or trade, were eager to throw off the yoke of traditional social structures and embrace the modern world. While they were consequently revolutionaries, the last thing one could call them, therefore, was ‘left wing’ in the way we think of this term today. They were entrepreneurs and business men, who, while they may have shared a common human character trait with other revolutionaries, namely an enthusiasm for change, certainly did not share a common political philosophy with most of the revolutionaries who succeeded them.
The real problem here, however, is not just that, having associated the seating arrangements in the French National Assembly with certain character traits, we then confused these character traits with political philosophies, but that we thought that all political philosophies could be mapped onto this particular seating arrangement, placing all political philosophies somewhere on a one-dimensional spectrum from left to right.
Not only does this only work if there are only two distinct and opposing political philosophies, however, forming the two poles of a spectrum, but it also assumes that everything in between is some sort of gradually sliding compromise between the two. This then leads us to think of the two poles as the far right pole and the far left pole, with something between the two which we call the middle ground and something on each side of this political centre which we call the centre right and the centre left. The problem with this, however, is that, while this way of structuring the world of politics is logically dictated by the discursive formation we have now created, I strongly doubt whether it actually corresponds to anything in reality beyond what the language itself has spawned.
To make matters worse, this acceptance of the idea of a polarised political spectrum, along with the assumption that those of a conservative disposition must sit somewhere on the right, led American English speakers in particular to conclude that anyone who opposed conservatism as a political philosophy, including liberals, must sit somewhere on the left. Even this, however, was not the end of the linguistic chaos to which the adoption of this left/right dichotomy gave rise. For to make matters even worse, we then compounded the original error by committing the logical fallacy of concluding that, because liberals sit on the left of the spectrum, everyone on the left must be a liberal, which is akin to saying that, because all apples are berries, having pips or seeds at their core – which is the botanical definition of a berry – all berries are apples.
By this point, the language of politics had thus become so incoherent and dysfunctional that we actually had to create a new word to refer to classical liberals, whom we now call libertarians, to distinguish them from those whom many conservatives call liberals simply as a term of abuse. Indeed, one of the most pernicious consequences of the left/right dichotomy in politics and the linguistic chaos to which it has given rise is the creation of political hostilities based far more on misunderstanding and emotion than on reasoned argument and facts. For while John Locke was clearly correct in his assumption that most people value the right to live their lives the way they chose, few people fully understand that exercising this right entails taking responsibility for one’s choices, which, if they really understood it, many people would find challenging.
That’s not to say, of course, that people knowingly choose irresponsibility. Indeed, most people think that they are taking responsibility for themselves even when they live off the state, which is precisely the kind of dependency on those in power against which Locke warned us. The real problem with not taking full responsibility for ourselves, however, is not just that this leads to dependency but that it leads to a kind of infantilisation, to people never really growing up and remaining permanent Peter Pans, which, to some, may seem quite attractive – indeed, it may be what they think ‘being free to live their lives as they choose’ really means – but it is choice on which most responsible adults look down with a certain degree of contempt, causing those so regarded to feel a similar level of hatred towards those who would impose values and a way of life on them they have chosen to reject.
Since the manifest failure of communism in the 20th century, in fact, this polarisation – between contempt for those who fail to grow up and take responsibility for themselves on one hand and hatred for those who would force responsibility on them on the other – has probably become the most dominant political axis in the western world, most fully expressing what we now mean by ‘left’ and ‘right’. The problem is that those who prefer to remain children and see it as their right to do so then feel the need to justify their choice by grounding it in a genuine political philosophy. Because they think of themselves as left wing, moreover, they think that this political philosophy also has to be left wing, which, today, does not mean classical liberalism but some form socialism or communism. Because they have no more understanding of communism than they have of classical liberalism, however, they do not understand just how incompatible with their own form of freedom loving liberalism communism is, with the result that they are once again tricked by language into believing something that doesn’t make any sense.
Instead of thinking in terms of ‘left’ and ‘right’, therefore, it would be far better if we tried to actually understand political philosophies as they really are, which, as briefly as possible, I shall now attempt to do.
2. Communism, Globalism, Nationalism & Fascism
One of the biggest mistakes people make when thinking about communism is to assume that it stems from – and is thus legitimised by – Karl Marx’s mostly valid critique of capitalism in ‘Das Kapital’, where he argues that capitalism is based on the difference between the commodity and usage value of labour, which is to say the price at which labour is purchased and the price at which the goods and services produced by labour can be sold. This produces a profit which leads to the accumulation of capital, which can then be used to develop technologies which reduce the amount of labour needed to produce the same quantities of goods and services, thereby creating pools of unused labour which force the price of labour down still further. This is then further exacerbated if capital is exported to places where labour is cheap or if cheap labour is imported into the country in which the capital resides, both of which are happening in the current global economy.
Indeed, it is one of the main reasons why the West is currently undergoing an economic crisis. For it has not only failed to prevent or control the free movement of capital and people, but it has positively encouraged technological innovation – such as the building of massive AI data centres – so as to reduce the need for high value labour and thus remain globally competitive.
The main reason we have made these catastrophic choices, however, is because, once again, we have imposed our left/right dichotomy on our policy decisions, thereby failing, once again, to properly understand political reality. We think, for instance, that supporting mass immigration is good, not only because it offers people from poorer countries a new and better life, but because it is ‘internationalist’ and therefore ‘left wing’. At the same time, we think that opposing mass immigration is bad, not only because it is uncharitable, but because it stems from nationalism and is therefore ‘right wing’. What we don’t realise, of course, is what Marx tried to teach us: that mass immigration is a tool of global capitalism, designed to make labour cheap. Nor do we understand that liberal or socialist governments in the West have been unwittingly supporting global capitalism for decades. For by not tackling the causes of low priced labour and choosing, instead, to mitigate its effects by providing extensive welfare support, we have been effectively subsidising global capitalism’s labour costs. Worse still, low income employment does not generate the tax revenues required to support this subsidy, which therefore has to be paid for by borrowing and printing money, leading to inflation, which has not only eroded the commodity value of labour still further but has now actually brought us to the point of economic collapse.
Indeed, it is why many young people today are once again turning to communism. The problem, however, is that while Marx correctly identified many of capitalism’s problems, his alternative solution is not entirely based on this analysis and actually stems from a much older tradition, dating back at least to the German Anabaptists of the 16th century, who believed that money is the root of all evil, giving rise to such negative human emotions as envy and avarice, and that all wealth and property should therefore be held in common.
There are, however, a number of problems with this political and economic model, many of which stem from the fact that most Anabaptist communities were led by charismatic preachers who allocated the community’s resources to its members, not just on the basis of need but on the basis of spiritual purity and obedience, which, in many cases, led to abuses: a problem which is even more acute in communist societies, in which the power to allocate resources is no longer vested in just one man but distributed across a hierarchical network of bureaucrats who are allocated resources according to their place within the hierarchy and then allocate resources to others in return for favours.
This makes rising within the hierarchy – by demonstrating both revolutionary zeal and obedience to the party – the principal aim of most people in the society, both so that they can be officially allocated more resources and so that they can request greater favours for the resources they themselves allocate.
This has two main consequences. The first is that corruption becomes systemic. Having visited the Soviet Union a number of times in the 1970s, I not only witnessed this corruption first hand but actually participated in it, firstly by selling currency and ‘luxury’ goods on the black market and then by using some of the proceeds to bribe doormen in order to obtain tables at some of the best restaurants in St. Petersburg.
The second and even more important consequence of this system, however, is that rising within the party and gaming the system become the only two ways to make a better life for oneself, with the result that it is into these activities that people invest most of their energy, rather than the production of goods and services which the economy needs but which produce very little reward for those engaged in actually producing them. The economic collapse which the Soviet Union suffered in the 1990s was thus baked into the system from the outset, as it has now also become in the West.
This is because, in its own way, the West has become just as corrupt as the Soviet Union. For by allowing global capitalism to suppress the commodity value of labour and transfer its capital to safe havens within the global financial system, the West has created a billionaire class which, through its ownership of the media, has the power to both make and break governments, forcing politicians of whatever nominal political persuasion they avow to dance to the globalist tune, both in order to stay in power and to join the ranks of their globalist paymasters when they finally leave it. Not only do all western governments consequently implement domestic policies, such as the free movement of people, which constantly suppress the commodity value of labour, but they also pursue geopolitical policies, such as support for the war in Ukraine, which directly benefit multinational corporations, such as arms manufacturers, which global capitalism owns.
Not, of course, that any western leader would ever admit this, especially not in Europe. For that would be to admit that the war which Europe has been supporting for over four years and which has cost European countries an estimated €2 trillion in lost GDP, has not been for the benefit of Europe’s population, but for the benefit of the globalists behind the entire European project, which, ever since the creation of the single market, has been about creating the perfect environment for globalised capitalism, in which national borders have been effectively removed and the power of national governments to prevent the free movement of people and capital ended.
It is also why nationalism, itself, has had to be demonised, with parties such as the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) being labelled ‘far right’ in what has got to be one of the most corrupt manipulations of an already corrupted language in history. For the two most important policies advocated by the AfD are, of course, the restoration of good relations with Russia, so as to restore the flow of cheap Russian energy, and stricter controls on immigration, so as preserve German culture and social cohesion, both of which are clearly in the best interests of Germany and the German people. For this, however, the AfD is compared to the Nazi party, while it is the party of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the CDU, which actually wants to invade Russia.
In fact, the demonisation of nationalism in Europe, including Britain, has reached a point at which it is no longer just absurd but has actually become an existential threat, both to Europe, itself, and the nation states of which it is comprised. For as I have argued elsewhere, it is having a common background and cultural identity that binds people together. Without it, countries, provinces, cities and even villages may not only fail to cohere but can actually tear themselves apart. By demonising nationalism, therefore, Europe is now deliberately engineering a loss of cohesion at the national level, which could cause nation states, the cornerstones of democracy, to collapse.
This is not, of course, to justify or excuse historical regimes – such as those of Mussolini in Italy and Hitler in Germany – which incited nationalist feelings in their populations in pursuit of aims which were ultimately catastrophic, not just for Italy and Germany, but for the whole of Europe. It would be equally wrong, however, to confuse ‘nationalism’ with ‘fascism’, by assuming that, just because the two fascist regimes of which we are most aware were also nationalist, all nationalists must be fascists, which would constitute another example of the logical fallacy I highlighted earlier. After all, Irish nationalists may have committed terrorist acts against the British during and after the first world war in their fight to obtain independence but, as far as I know, they never invaded another country with the aim of asserting dominion over it. For that’s not nationalism; that’s imperialism.
Indeed, nationalism is far more associated with defensive wars than offensive ones, one of the best examples being the Soviet Union during the second world war – or the Great Patriotic War as the Russians call it – during which 20 million Russians gave their lives in defence of Mother Russia. More to the point, nationalism is not actually a political philosophy. For while appealing to a population’s sense of national and cultural identity may be a powerful way of getting people to rally behind the flag, it doesn’t actually tell them how they should live their lives or how society should be organised. Fascism, on the other hand, as first expressed by Marxist Hegelian philosopher Giovanni Gentile in his 1925 ‘Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals’, attempts to do precisely that. For having read ’Das Kapital’, Gentile knew that, if a nation state wanted to maintain the commodity value of labour – which he believed was in the best interests of any nation’s population and therefore of the nation itself – it had to control the movement of people and capital, which meant that, as a philosophy designed to defend the nation state against globalised capitalism, Marxism, itself, entailed a form of nationalism.
The question this raises, therefore, is how fascism, as conceived by Gentile, went from being a form of Marxism to being a form of imperialism. The answer, however, is actually very simple. For while Mussolini greatly admired Gentile and co-authored a book with him called ‘The Doctrine of Fascism’ in 1932, he believed that Gentile’s arguments in favour of nationalism – and of the powers the nation state had to accrue to itself in order to control the movement of people and capital – were too dry and academic to appeal to the people to whom he needed to appeal. Not only did he need some other cause or national aim with which ordinary working people could identify, therefore, he also needed a different language in which to express it; he needed the language of cinema.
3. Fascism & The Cinema
It is no coincidence, therefore, that fascism developed in Italy in the 1920s, at a time when the cinema was not only giving a largely illiterate working class population access to information they had never had before but was also allowing them to share in a visual and emotional experience which literally no one had ever had before, making it, at that time, the most powerful medium in history, which Mussolini was among the first to recognise. What’s more, he was quite open about how he intended to use it. At the grand opening of the Italian film corporation, Istituto Luce, in 1924, for instance, he had photographs of himself taken standing behind a camera which were then displayed behind the podium, beneath which was a caption proclaiming that ‘Cinematography is the strongest weapon’.
His most effective use of this new weapon, however, began in 1927, when he not only launched Italy’s first weekly newsreel, ‘Giornale LUCE’, editions of which he personally approved before they were distributed, but commissioned a fleet of mobile projector vans to take them around the countryside, where they were shown in village squares along with documentaries on just about every aspect of Italian life, from land reclamation to advances in medicine, which Mussolini encouraged film studios throughout Italy to produce, not just in order to show people how much progress Italy was making under his leadership, but to make them feel proud of both their country and themselves.
It was through Italian feature films of the period, however, that the most powerful, if often subliminal messages were sent. These concentrated on modern realism, which ordinary Italians greatly appreciated, being sceptical of anything that didn’t reflect real life as they experienced it, and history, especially the history of ancient Rome, with which the Italian National Fascist Party had associated itself from the very beginning, the word ‘fascist’ being derived from ‘fascio littorio’, the Italian name for the bound bundles of wooden rods surrounding an axe which were carried by lictors in both the Roman Republic and later Empire to signify the authority of the magistrates whom they guarded.
Whether this association was born of some genuine affinity with ancient Rome or was manufactured – either to remind Italians of their glorious past or to enhance the image of the Fascist Party by drawing a parallel with that past – is hard to say. But I suspect that it was a mixture of all three. For while it was certainly Mussolini’s ambition to make Italy great again, with imperial Rome representing the pinnacle of that greatness, he clearly wanted to glorify himself and his party by reflecting the spectacle of ancient Rome – as depicted in Italian cinema – in fascist pageants and parades, with their flags and banners and soldiers in sharp black uniforms. And the fact is that it worked. For while Mussolini certainly had his opponents, especially in Italy’s industrial north, at the height of his power, most Italians not only approved of his modernising reforms but supported his attempt to rebuild the Roman Empire in North Africa, an imperialist fantasy created first on film and then projected onto reality in an imperialist adventure which was to prove such a disaster.
If fascist Italy pioneered the use of cinema to promote an imperialist dream, however, in many ways Nazi Germany did the exact opposite. For while the Nazis made films of their rallies, which, with their burning torches and huge swastika banners, were even more spectacular than Mussolini’s, and while they also had their newsreels and documentaries documenting Germany’s industrial and technological progress since the depression of the 1920s, Joseph Goebbels, who was in charge of Nazi Germany’s cinema industry, had two objectives which he deemed far more important than merely showcasing Nazi achievements. The first was to maintain public morale, which he felt Germany had neglected during the first world war and which he believed had significantly contributed to its defeat. The second and even more important objective, however, was to distract people, not only from their still often hard lives but from what the Nazis, themselves, were actually doing. To this end, he therefore set about building a German film industry which produced films which were, above all else, glamorous and entertaining.
The glamour he provided through a star system which he largely modelled on Hollywood, to which the German film industry had lost both Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich in the 1920s, forcing Goebbels to create a new stable of stars who would actually owe their careers to the Nazis and to Goebbels, himself, making them far more pliable than Garbo and Dietrich would ever have been. The best-known of these was Swedish actress Zarah Leander who was hired by Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft GmbH (UFA) in 1937 and quickly became the most prominent and highest-paid German film star of the period.
It wasn’t just for their work in film, however, that Goebbels hired so many beautiful actresses; it was also to add glamour to the rather unglamorous and male-dominated Nazi party. Even if they hadn’t taken pleasure in it and believed it their right, Hitler, Göring and Goebbels, himself, would have all felt it their duty, therefore, to regularly appear in public with some of the most beautiful women on the planet. Hitler's preferred dinner dates were the actresses Olga Chekhova and Lil Dagover, Hermann Göring was actually married to the popular actress Emmy Sonnemann, while Goebbels had affairs with so many actresses that his wife, Magda, found it impossible to keep track of them. Just as important to Goebbels, however, was the image this gave the party. For there were always, of course, photographers on hand to take pictures of party leaders getting out of slick Mercedes limousines and entering the most fashionable restaurants and nightclubs in Berlin with their chosen dates for the evening on their arms. It was the celebrity culture of the era and audiences lapped it up as much as they lapped up the films. And that was the point.
For unlike Mussolini’s propaganda, which was intended to garner support for his strategic political aims, Goebbels’ propaganda was largely intended to distract people from what he didn’t want them to see: not just the concentration camps and the extermination of the Jews, but Hitler’s plans to renew the war in Europe and eventually invade Russia, preparations for which were clear for everybody to see, if only they looked. It was Goebbels’ job, therefore, to ensure that they didn’t. Instead of giving them the time and opportunity to look at the frightening and often very ugly things going on behind the barbed wire fences, therefore, he constantly put beautiful things in front of them, principally by having those beautiful things appear in dozens of feature films each year, but also by having their photographs printed in newspapers and magazines almost every day.
It was pure misdirection of the kind magicians use when they have their beautiful and scantily clad assistants distract the audience from what they are actually doing. And it is more or less what is happening in the western media today, not just with its superficial and misleading coverage of our dire economic predicament and endless wars and its infantile love of celebrity game shows, but with its labelling of anyone who points out what is actually going on as ‘far right’.
4.Imperialism & Globalism
The idea that we are being deliberately distracted by trivia so as to not see what is important is not, of course, new. What’s more, I suspect that we are all, to some extent, aware of it. After all, we are all being constantly bombarded by media content of one form or another, most of which is intended to entertain rather than inform, while that which is informational tends towards the trivial, which, in Britain, means that much of it concerns the royal family, especially Meghan and Harry. Anything that is happening of importance in the world is either completely ignored or reported in a way that is diametrically opposed to the truth.
Not, of course, that the truth is easy to discover. After all, hiding it is the entire purpose of the exercise. On the other hand, it is very hard to keep the truth hidden completely or forever. One way or another it tends to come out, either because it is difficult to keep false narratives consistent or because serious problems tend to have serious consequences which it is very difficult to just sweep under the carpet.
In the latter category, for instance, we shall soon be feeling the effects of what is probably best described as the death of the US Empire, which no one is yet willing to talk about primarily because we don’t want to admit that the USA is, indeed, an imperial power. The fact that it has between 750 and 800 military bases distributed across 80 countries, however, and that since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the publication of the Wolfowitz doctrine in 1992, its has been fighting almost continuous wars to preserve its global hegemony – either directly, as in the case of Iraq, Afghanistan and now Iran, or through proxies, as in the case of Syria and now Ukraine – would clearly indicate that, while Mussolini’s empire was largely a fantasy, the American Empire is all too real.
Even those who accept that the USA is an imperial power, however, seldom want to admit that it is now in decline, not least because that would entail talking about why this is so, which is something we certainly don’t want to do. For the answer, of course, is that it failed to maintain the commodity value of US labour. It allowed its large corporations to take their capital abroad where labour was cheap and then import goods back into the USA, undercutting US produced goods and reducing the number of high paid US jobs. At the same time, it allowed low cost immigrants into the country to fill mostly menial jobs which did not pay enough to produce the level of tax revenues necessary to fund the welfare benefits it had to provide in order to subsidise the low pay. The result has been that, for the last thirty-odd years, the US Treasury has consistently run a deficit and now owes over $40 trillion, on which it has to pay $2 trillion a year just in interest. Needless to say, this is not going to end well.
To make matters worse, many of the same multinational corporations that have eroded the commodity value of US labour have further diminished its imperial power by selling it weapon systems that are either too expensive to be used in anything but very short wars against vastly inferior opponents, too complicated to be easily maintained or too out of touch with the modern battlefield to be effective.
Take, for instance, the MI Abrams battle tank, produced by General Dynamics Land Systems at a price of $10 million each. It weighs 73.6 tons, is propelled by a jet engine and can travel at speeds up to 43 mph, which all sounds very impressive. The trouble is that the jet engine not only sucks in air but, when travelling over rough ground rather than paved roads, it also sucks in debris, clogging up the engine which has to be taken apart, cleaned and rebuilt each time it is used. The result is that, depending on the terrain, it can require up to eight hours of maintenance for every hour of usage.
Then there is the F-35, produced by Lockheed Martin at a price of $92 million for the most basic model, rising to $121 million for the top of the range. With a top speed of 1,220 mph, there is no doubt that it is an impressive aircraft with a wide range of capabilities. The problem again, however, is maintenance and availability, which can be as low as 20%, meaning that, for 80% of the time, an F-35 is likely to be having work done on it.
In fact, there is a general principle at work here which is demonstrated by so many US arms manufacturers. For while most weapon systems are greatly improved by the addition of more sophisticated capabilities in the early stages of their development, as they become more complicated, there comes a point at which their lack of availability due to maintenance outweighs any improvement in capability. In fact, there is a similar problem in the commercial automotive industry, where greater sophistication and complexity of components, particularly a vehicle’s electronics, leads to more expensive replacements and repairs, which can lead to a car being written off as too expensive to repair at just four or five years old.
This problem is compounded by the fact that manufacturers of both weapon systems and motor vehicles either don’t see the disutility in overly complex systems or do not want to see it, in that the latest gadgetry is what sells both cars and planes and allows the manufacturers to charge higher prices.
With respect to the F-35, the enormous complexity of the systems also causes problems with respect to the integration of the human component, the pilot. This is especially the case with respect to the plane’s avionics and sensors which are designed to improve the pilot's situational awareness and command-and-control capabilities. Not only does it take a lot of time to train a pilot to use these systems, however, but pilots trained on other aircraft often find them counter-intuitive and cannot adapt to them. Given their $121 million price tag, their 20% availability, and the difficulties pilots have in flying then, one has really got to wonder, therefore, whether the F-35 is really fit for purpose.
The weapon system that wins first prize for its almost unbelievable level of unfitness for purpose, however, is the Patriot air defence system, which comprises a mobile radar system and a mobile launch vehicle with 16 launch tubes, which means that it is capable of firing 16 PAC-3 interceptor missiles before it has to be reloaded. This in itself, however, is a problem. Because, for safety reasons, the missiles cannot be stored with the launcher. This means that the launcher has to be driven somewhere else for reloading, which requires a crane to lift each missile into its launch tube where it then has to be connected up to the launch control system, all of which takes at least two hours even for well trained crews, during which time the launcher is out of action.
When the system was first brought into service in 1981, this of course was not a problem. For it was designed to shoot down manned aircraft, which attacked in limited numbers. A battery of three launch vehicles with a total of forty-eight missiles could therefore see off most attacks without having to be reloaded. In June 2025, however, when Iran responded to Israel’s attack by launching drone and missile strikes against Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities, it did so by first sending in hundreds of low cost drones which simply overwhelmed Israel’s so-called ‘iron dome’, which largely consists of Patriot missile batteries. Only when these batteries were exhausted did it then send in its ballistic missiles which did the real damage.
What makes the Patriot air defence system even more unfit for purpose, however, is the fact that each PAC-3 interceptor costs $4 million, while the average cost of the Shahed drones the Iranians were then using was just $40,000. What’s more, it is generally believed that two interceptors are required to shoot down each target, giving the Patriot system a 50% efficiency rating and resulting in the rather staggering statistic that, on average, it cost $8 million to shoot down one $40,000 drone.
This 50% efficiency rating, however, is just a rule of thumb based on the targets being relatively slow manned aircraft. The efficiency rating is much lower when the targets are cruise missiles or the latest jet propelled Russian drones, where it is probably as low as 20%, though Lockheed Martin, which manufactures the missiles, has not actually released any statistics on this. The rate gets even worse, however, when the targets are ballistic missiles, which have a very high arcing trajectory and approach their targets in a steep dive at very high speeds. In this case, the efficiency could be as low as 2%, which would mean that it costs $200 million to shoot down one ballistic missile. The worse case occurs, however, when the targets are hypersonic, flying at seven or eight thousand miles an hour, when the efficiency rate reaches zero, in that no hypersonic missile has ever been shot down by a Patriot interceptor.
Given how useless these missiles are, it makes one wonder, indeed, why President Zelenskyy keeps asking for more of them. The fact is, however, that given the protracted war in Ukraine and the very intensive war against Iran, world stockpiles of Patriot interceptors have almost run out, providing us with even more evidence of US decline. For given the demand, one has to ask why Lockheed Martin hasn’t increased supply. The answer, however, is that it can’t. For to even double production from its current 800 a year – which the Ukrainians would use in a single day if they had enough launchers – it would have to double its production capacity, which would mean building and equipping another factory and hiring a complete new workforce of top engineers and skilled technicians. After decades of deindustrialisation, however, the USA no longer has the industrial base necessary to support such a rapid expansion.
The result is that it is not just individual weapon systems that are unfit for purpose but America’s entire military industrial complex, on which it depends to maintain its global empire. Even if it weren’t on the brink of financial and economic collapse, therefore, that empire cannot survive much longer, especially as defeat against Iran has already shown the rest of the world that the US military is no longer to be feared.
What this means, therefore, is that Giovanni Gentile was absolutely correct: if a nation state wants to prevent globalised capital from eroding the commodity cost of its labour and eventually destroying its economy, it has to defend its borders against the free movement of capital and people and hence embrace some form of nationalism. Mussolini, however, made the mistake of trying to garner support for nationalism by turning it into imperialism, which eventually led to his overthrow and execution. The USA, in contrast, made the slightly different mistake of opting for imperialism without being sufficiently nationalist, which is to say Marxist. For while it projected imperialist military power abroad, it did not defend its own borders against the free movement of capital and people, which has now so eroded its economic base and military power that its empire cannot last much longer.
5. A Lack of Critical Thinking & Cognitive Dissonance
Not that any American politician would ever admit this, of course, not only because it would be tantamount to treason but because it would entail doing the kind of analysis I have just been doing, which I don’t think modern politicians see as part of their job. For they attain whatever position they reach, not through critical thinking, but through the support of a like-minded group, which collectively shapes the thinking of its members far more than any single member shapes the thinking of the group itself.
What is slightly more interesting, therefore, is the fact that no one in Europe is admitting to the demise of the American empire either, which is largely due to the fact that having handed over their sovereignty to a group of globalist bureaucrats, whose principal aim it has been to prevent nation states from erecting barriers to the free movement of people and capital and hence put an end to nation states and nationalism altogether, those nominal nation states which remain are in an even worse position, both economically and militarily, than the USA.
Both Britain and France, for instance, are effectively bankrupt and even though Germany’s debt to GDP ratio is still comfortably below 100%, its industrial decline is so steep that this state of affairs cannot last much longer. As for Europe’s military, it hardly even exists. It has depended on the USA for its defence for so long that its armed forces have dwindled to almost nothing. As of April 2026, for instance, the British army comprised just 74,360 men and would be hard pressed to deploy a single division to Ukraine if asked.
Indeed, it makes one wonder why European leaders are so bellicose towards Russia. For they have to know that they wouldn’t stand a chance against a battle hardened Russian army of 1.36 million. And yet it seems that they have developed a kind of reality blindness, which partly stems, I suspect, from the fact that they originally supported America’s engineering of the war in Ukraine because, as vassals of the USA, they didn’t really have a choice. Because they couldn’t admit this, however, they therefore concocted this narrative about having to stop Putin in Ukraine or he would take the whole of Europe. At the same time, however, they were also saying that the Russian army was so poorly equipped and led that it couldn’t even beat little Ukraine and that the Russian economy was so weak and brittle that another round of sanctions would surely cause it to collapse, both of which claims clearly contradict the narrative that the Russians are a threat to the whole of Europe.
Indeed, it is difficult to see how our leaders could not see the obvious contradiction themselves, which initially led me to believe that they were cynically maintaining what they knew to be untrue because they couldn’t go back on it without admitting that they had been wrong. Then, however, they started acting even more belligerently towards Russia, providing Ukraine with drones and missiles to strike deep inside Russian territory while actively preparing for war themselves, which, given their weakness and Russia’s strength, defies all reason. At this point, therefore, I started to think that they were only pretending to prepare for war in order to distract their populations from the economic problems at home: another classic case of misdirection.
None of these explanations, however, ever seemed quite right. And that’s when it occurred to me that if one repeats a fictional narrative often enough, it is not just other people who may come to believe it; one can also come to believe it oneself. It is not quite the same as believing that ‘left’ and ‘right’ in politics denote real position, because these terms have actually become part of the language and determine the way we think, whereas the contradiction in the claims that Russia is both weak and a threat to Europe is not actually built into the meaning of the terms used. The two phenomena are nevertheless very similar, however, in that the idea that the ‘left’ and ‘right’ in politics are real entities and the belief that, at one and the same time, Russia can be both weak and a threat to Europe are propositions which most people just accept without asking whether they actually make any sense. It is just that, in the first case, we are being tricked by language, itself, while, in the second case, we are being fooled by our own lack of critical thinking.
Nor do I think that this is unusual. In fact, I rather suspect that we do it all the time, especially when the language in which a false narrative is expressed is cinematic rather than verbal. For as Mussolini clearly understood, we believe what we see, even when a moment’s thought might make us think again.
The first time I realised this was not the first time I saw ‘Star Trek’ and accepted that a suspension of disbelief was required in order to enjoy a scientific series in which a spacecraft was required to travel at six times the speed of light, but the first time I saw a film in which a 50kg woman defeated a 100kg man in unarmed combat, something which the audience seemed to think was perfectly possible but which, all other things being equal, actually isn’t. This is because ‘force’ – technically in this case ‘momentum’ – can be defined as mass times velocity. This means that for a 50kg woman to punch a 100kg man with the same force as he could punch her, her fist would have to be travelling at twice the speed of his, which, even if it were possible, would probably break or dislocate a number of fingers in her own hand.
Of course, there are martial arts techniques designed to compensate for a difference in mass between opponents. But one also has to take into account the fact that a 100kg man hitting a 50kg woman with twice the force of that with which she can hit him is also hitting a much more fragile object, with lighter bones etc. Whereas her 50kg fist hitting his thick skull is unlikely to do very much damage, therefore, his 100kg fist striking her much thinner skull would probably break her jaw, smash her cheek bone and cause concussive brain damage.
In this feminist era, however, we see 50kg women beating up 100kg men in just about every action film we watch. And not only do we believe it but we transfer this belief into real life by allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports, where their greater mass, strength and speed not only give them an unfair advantage – ruining the sport for many women – but can pose a real threat of bodily harm.
Nor is this the only example of the way in which we believe what we see in the cinema even though a moment’s thought might make us think again. In nearly every action film one sees, for instance, there will usually be someone who walks away from an horrendous car crash or is shot in the arm or leg but carries on as if nothing has happened. Any surgeon will tell you, however, that a bullet striking the shoulder will probably shatter the scapula, break two or three other bones and make it impossible to use the entire arm for months. A single stab wound to the abdomen can take over a year to heal and can still leave one wincing in pain every time one twists or stretches one’s torso. If we really understood what such violence does to the human body, in fact, I like to think that there would be a lot less of it. But we believe what we see in the cinema instead.
It is also why the flip side of propaganda is censorship. For if one wants others to believe things that are not real, one cannot allow them to actually see the truth, whether that be the real effects of violence or the true character of someone one wants them to fear or hate.
During this year’s question and answer session at Valdai, for instance, President Putin took a question from a former CNN journalist, who prefaced his question by praising Putin for actually taking questions from Americans, to which Putin responded by joking that, unlike President Trump, who had recently banned CNN from the White House, he was always happy to talk to CNN, thus not only demonstrating his quick wit and sense of humour but making it clear that he knew exactly for whom the journalist had previously worked. To the best of my knowledge, however, this has never been shown on British television, the reason for which is fairly obvious. For it would have revealed the man most British people believe to be a monster as both witty and intelligent, which cannot, of course, be allowed.
Of course, it may be argued that this, in itself, disproves the suggestion that European leaders have talked themselves into believing their own propaganda. For if they or their associated media really did decide not to show this exchange to European audiences because it made Putin look too warm and human, this would suggest that they secretly know that he isn’t actually a monster. This is to suppose, however, that our leaders think in well-constructed logical arguments of the type I have just demonstrated. This, however, is almost certainly not the case. For like the rest of us, they mostly think along the lines which language or a frequently repeated but contradictory narrative has laid down for them. Just as they are consequently able to believe that Russia is a threat to all of Europe while at the same time believing that it is too weak and backward to conquer Ukraine, so they are also able to believe that Putin is a monster while simultaneously believing that he should not be shown on television sharing a joke with an American journalist because this would give the wrong impression.
We call this ‘cognitive dissonance’ and it is almost certainly the biggest threat to the world today: not the propagandist who knowingly fabricates a false narrative to get people to do what his government wants them to do; nor the censor who knowingly prevents a story from being published or aired because it would compromise his political masters; but the politician who holds contradictory beliefs without realising or understanding that they are contradictory and so acts on them as if they were true.
I recently listened to a speech by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who stated that he was not concerned about the German economy, the cost of living or Germany’s rapid deindustrialisation. He said that he was only concerned about Ukraine, which, he told his audience, he would not allow to surrender to the Russians on any terms, making it sound as if Russia were not just an existential threat to Ukraine, but to the whole of Europe.
It was one of the most chilling speeches I have ever heard, not only because it was so out of touch with reality, but because the last German Chancellor who thought he was fighting an existential war against Russia was, of course, Adolf Hitler. And we all know how that ended.
6.Conclusion
So what have we learnt from all this?
Firstly, that globalism, which advocates the free movement of capital and people, destroys the economies of nation states.
So why do nation states allow it?
Partly, one suspects, because the people in power do not understand this, but mostly because politicians and political parties need financial support from people with money, including multinational corporations and financial institutions, which benefit from globalisation and label anyone who opposes it as a far right nationalist.
But why do we think that nationalism is bad? After all, most nationalist movements are focused on national independence not imperialism.
Most people who support globalisation, however, draw our attention away from independence parties such as the Scottish Nationalist and focus on nationalists who were also imperialists, such as the fascists in Italy and the Nazis in Germany.
But why doesn’t anyone point out this fairly obvious piece of misdirection?
Because anyone who does so is also labelled ‘far right’ and is thus effectively censored, even though the terms ‘right’ and ‘left’ in politics are actually meaningless.
But given how economically destructive globalism is, why don’t our political elites object to it?
Partly because they don’t understand this basic fact, having never been taught to think critically, but mostly because they are implicated. For having taken the globalist’s silver and ruined their economies as a result, they cannot now address the root cause of the problem without admitting that they are, themselves, to blame. So they stay silent on the problems they have caused while pointing the finger at external actors like Russia, using propaganda techniques ironically pioneered by Mussolini and Goebbels.
So how do we get ourselves out of this mess?
We can’t. For not only can our politicians not admit to the mistakes they have made, but those who have benefitted from them are too rich and powerful to allow those mistakes to be rectified, which means that there is nothing we can do but wait until the entire system collapses and then start again, hopefully having learnt our lesson.
The real question, therefore, is that, if we do get to start again, what do we have to do differently next time to avoid making the same mistakes? And that will be the topic of my next essay.
