Independence (new rollout for 2020)

The Fourth of July celebration -- in origin quite earnest, and a time for historico-political speechmaking and some semi-military display -- has gradually softened and loosened, like an old sweater, into a fairly agenda-free holiday for kids:  Family, fireworks, fun, and french fries -- the four Fs of sweet July.  Well I recall, how we as kids  lined up along Ridgewood Avenue, excitedly half-comprehendingly, to watch the parade flow by.

As you grow older, some of it does get old.  Brief bursts of bright blotches against the night sky  no longer move me -- not, at any rate, so much as the least glimpse of God’s own handiwork, like the more permanent pattern-and-colorburst on the leaves of a coleus, or a lady cardinal in the bush.

But in another way, the meaning of this day grows ever deeper, even sombre.  For the success and permanency of the American Revolution was by no means a foregone conclusion -- we were truly in uncharted territory back then.   The more you learn about history, and the more history itself keeps happening, you are forced to conclude:  Most revolutions  go awry.

To begin with our own.   Contrary to the impression we got in school (back in the fifties, when we all sat dutifully at our desks), at the time of the Declaration of Independence, a bare one third of the American population was in favor of rebelling against Britain; a third against; a third undecided.   The perfect setting for an immediate post-revolution civil war.  Yet it did not happen (the Civil War a century later fell along quite different lines).  The only threat came again externally, in 1812 (“the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air”), when the wrath of the British Empire was again turned against us, and the nation’s capital was set in flames.   The pinwheels and cherry bombs of latter days  commemorate an actual peril.

Nor were the political logistics of the Revolution so simple as that of one entity rebelling against one other:  at the time, we were not yet quite even America, let alone the United … States;  but an assemblage of upwards of a dozen colonies, founded at different times by various creeds and ethnicities (Catholics in Rhode Island, Puritans in Massachusetts, Quakers and various German sects in Pennsylvania, and so forth) many of which had been at odds with one another back in the mother country, which is why some of them came here in the first place.  Yet they fought side by side;  and when victory was won, did not then fall to quarreling over the spoils, nor into strife as to which should be cock of the walk;  but together founded  a unified nation.
By contrast, India was one country at time of independence from Britain -- yet immediately fractured, savagely, along sectional lines.  What had been contemned as the British “yoke”  turns out to have been a garde-fou (et les fous se sont emparés de l’asile).

Remarkably as well, we managed, over the years and (by now) centuries, to maintain (most of us) extremely cordial, even intimate relations with the Mother Country -- an unusual trans-hemispheric affinity, unmatched by the relations of the Latin American countries to Spain and Portugal (let alone Haiti or Algeria to France).

Consider next the French revolution -- “next”, because in fact it was subsequent to our own, having broken out in 1789;  though the way Europeans run on about it, you’d think it was the first revolution in the history of the world.  Anyhow, it remains a proud occasion;  the French version of Independence Day is Bastille Day, celebrated on July 14, with great fanfare.  (For our friendly nod to our old ally, click here:  Merci la France.)
Yet their revolution was -- franchise oblige -- a gorawful bloody cock-up.  Not content with overturning centuries of monarchy, the revolutionaries proceeded to la Terreur, and to a sort of overreaching ideological Gleichschaltung that foreshadowed the Bolshevik excess, and of successive waves of revolutionaries being eaten by their children, in a way that prefigured the Stalin-era trials. And to crown it all, it didn’t even stick:  within a couple of decades, the kings were back.
France did not ultimately found a Republic that stuck, after the imperial and revived-monarchical interludes, until 1871, with the Third Republic (which segued into the Fourth and Fifth, not without strife, but without a relapse into pre-Republican polity).   Nor did this event stem in any direct way from the events of 1789.  As William Shirer tells it, in The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969, chapter “A Freakish Birth): 

It came into being by a fluke.  The National Assembly, elected in 1871 … had not wanted a Republic.  Nearly two thirds of its members were Monarchists.  But they could not agree on a king …

So the lawmakers … sort of backed into the harness of a republic … by a majority of one vote … 353 to 352 -- though there would have been a tie  had one deputy, who was against it, not been late in arriving for the balloting.  Even then it was not clear to many members that they were actually choosing a republic.  The day before, they had rejected it, or thought they had.
By contrast, the Constitution that came out of our revolutionary days  has lasted and guided us down to the present, with comparatively modest and incremental additions.

~

Since the end of the Second World War, world history has been spotted by rebellions and revolts, mostly anti-colonial, in quest of independence.   And for the most part, the results have not been pretty.
Myanmar.  Zimbabwe.   Algeria. Somalia.  Cambodia.  South Africa.  Congo.  The fragment that is Pakistan, and the mini-fragment of Bangladesh.  And now more recently, South Sudan and Azawad.  Names like tombstones along the  the corpse-strewn path of History’s forced-march.
And thus the American declaration of independence, which shone at the time, shines yet more brightly now, against the contrasting dark.  It is as though the metal of which men then were made, deemed sturdy bronze at the time, were revealed, in the fullness of time, with the reckonings in and the dust dispersed, to have been, in actual and astonishing fact, of purest gold.

~

[Update, 4 July 2020]  The above reflections were written some years ago, re-posted annually by way of commemoration.   But at present, the nation seems more riven than at any juncture of my lifetime  since 1968.  In particular, the valedictory-nostalgic dismissal of fireworks along with french-fries as one of the simple childhood pleasures that one outgrows, has come up against a startling volte-face, as, in the now-lowering national mood, these have taken on implications  no longer celebratory, but menacing.]

The Ontology of History (updated)

The pageant of all that has happened is, to begin with, a blooming buzzing confusion.   Historically, one aim of the chronicler has been to slice up some of it, and dress it up into a narrative that will be entertaining or edifying for the audience.  More analytically-minded historians (such as Ibn Khaldun and his successors) have set themselves an additional task:  To make sense of it.

ابن خلدون

A wide-ranging comparative historian acknowledges the wealth of data which confront the historiographer, but

The “intelligible fields of study”, the comparable units of history, remain inconveniently few for the application of the scientific technique.

-- Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (12 volumes; 1934-61; introduction, last paragraph)

One classic move is to organize the ever-mingling, ever-onrushing flow of events  into coherent thematic chunks;  as:  the Dark Ages; the Renaissance; the Reformation;  the Enlightenment.   Others refer to calendric stretches but, if so, normally must modify the defining termini a quo and ante quem  to reflect actual historical development:  thus, “the long nineteenth century” (which lasted into the Edwardian autumn, and winked out forever at Sarajevo), and “the Sixties”,  which  in the good sense  began with JFK’s election, and  in the bad sense  with his assassination;  and then petered out ignobly in the early seventies.

Anyhow, huge subject, won’t treat it here, but merely serve up a couple of quotes specifically related to Islamic historiography -- thus posting at least a place-holder for the topic, in our wildly successful “Ontology of …” series (soon to be featured on bubble-gum cards, suitable for trading).

“Classic” or “classical period” is likewise a construct, all the more obviously so  since it is being borrowed from one phenomenon, Greek and Roman antiquity, and used to somehow periodize another quite different one, Islam.

-- F. E. Peters, preface to A Reader on Classical Islam (1994)

History is a seamless garment;  periodization is a convenience of the historian, not a fact of the historical process.  By choosing carefully, one can slant history without any resort to actual falsehood.  For example, a writer on relations between the United States and Japan can start with Hiroshima, or he can start with Pearl Harbor.

-- Bernard Lewis, “In Defense of History” (1997/1999), reprinted in From Babel to Dragomans (2004), p. 389

He goes on to make an exact parallel with the historiography of the Crusades, of intense current relevance, but too hot to handle in this space;  consult the (excellent) original article.

The essential human unit  in which man’s nature is fully realised  is not the individual, [n]or a voluntary association which can be dissolved or altered or abandoned at will, but  the nation.

--Isaiah Berlin, “Nationalism”, repr. in Against the Current (1979), p. 342

(Cf. individual vs. group selection  in Darwinism.)

[Afternote] We sometimes also find explanatory periodization, not by historians, but by the people themselves:

The Aztecs … sought relief … from the oppressive idea of eternity, by breaking it up into distinct cycles … each of several thousand years’ duration.  There were four of these cycles;  and at the end of each, by the agency of the elements, the human family was swept from the earth, and the sun blotted out from the heavens, to be again rekindled.

-- William Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843), p. 53

~

Glanced at above is the internal ontology of historiography -- its structure and staffage.  There is also the matter of its external ontology -- how it fits in with other disciplines.

“History is an art, like the other sciences,” a felicitious paradoxical epigram crafted by Veronica Wedgwood.

--John Lukacs, The Future of History (2011), p. 81

.

Word of the Day: “Appropriation”

The latest catchphrase from the “trigger-warnings” crowd  is:  “cultural appropriation.”   Snowflakes are melting in the heat of the phrase.
The current epicenter of this kerfuffle is Canada.  Since Canada doesn't get to be the epicenter of all that much, we'll put the maple-leaf links front & center:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/writers-union-of-canada-apology-cultural-appropriation-1.4109186

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/jonathan-kay-cultural-appropriation-should-be-debated-too-bad-canadas-writers-union-instead-chose-to-debase-itself

http://www.newsweek.com/cultural-appropriation-outcry-succeeds-cancelling-gallery-show-white-painter-594924

Additionally:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-lefts-misguided-obsession-with-cultural-appropriation/2017/05/12/59e518bc-3672-11e7-b4ee-434b6d506b37_story.html?utm_term=.f04e49efef68

Bad, bad  Bard !

Take an example: Logically, if an author is male, there could be no female characters in his book.  He couldn't possibly present their inner truth -- and if he did, it would be even worse:  appropriation.

Quickly running the classics through the mind, the only novel that passes the test is Moby Dick.  All others, by male authors, must be burned.

It's okay -- a male whale

 

For more about our lovable subaqueous sea-chum, try these

~ Moby-Dick monostichs ~

[Update] This just in:  PETA has demanded the censorship of Moby Dick.

HarperCollins is preparing a new P.C. edition, minus the whale.

(/ satire.  Not worth analyzing.  We have not to get down in the sandbox with the bisounours, to wrangle over such notions.  As Hegel (or someone) once wittily put it:  “When you hear the terms ‘safe space’ or ‘appropriation’ -- entsichern Sie ihren Glock.”)

~

A generation ago, a somewhat related notion was that of coöptation.   The Establishment (that was the “They”, back Then) would dangle a carrot; and if you took it, you’d been co-opted.

~

Although lists of huffy demands by aggrieved poetical Eskimos  have little resonance outside a certain milieu, there is a deeper and much more general issue hiding behind it, one discussed  over the decades  under such rubrics as “The Uses of the Past”.

An especially subtle one is offered by the historian Tony Judt, in his wide-ranging pre-post-mortem exposition Thinking the Twentieth Century.   Here he refers to the “misappropriation” of the Holocaust narrative, by a motley assortment of factions.

~

Related vocabulary:

Film critic Anthony Lane, recalling Dustin Hoffman in “Tootsie”:

… Hoffman playing an actor playing an actress.  That isn’t mimicry, it’s an identity heist.

-- “Folies à deux”, in The New Yorker, 1 June 2020, p. 71

Hittila the Hun

(Another in our series of “Analogs and Anticipations” -- parallels from History.)

Both Hitler and Attila have so passed into proverb  as no longer to be generally perceived in their actual variety.   The name of “Hitler” is now just the conversation-stopper -- the argumentum ad Hitler, the Nazi-Keule, signalling that reasoned discussion is at an end.   Attila figures mostly in unanalytical snarky put-downs of ultra-conservatives -- “to the right of Attila the Hun”.  (I myself  stooped to such sport, in a satirical trifle,  Attila versus Trump.)

And yet the two figures of actual history, as opposed to the straw-filled bugbears  that are flourished for rhetorical purposes, do share a trait, quite apart from their extremism and violence.   Namely, a knack for diplomacy, and a keen eye for the geopolitical field of force.   That might surprise anyone who was lazily raised as I was in the primary schools of the ‘fifties, where we were taught that the little man with the funny moustache had been a “house-painter”, who had jumped-up beyond his proper station, and improbably become a dictator  quite unrelated to any qualities he might possess.  And yet more surprising in the case of Attila, who, with his Hun-horde, was typically depicted  (to the nodding pupils) as essentially a plague of locusts, without politics or policy or personal characteristics of any sort.

Consider, then, this:

The facility with which Attila had penetrated into the heart of Gaul  may be ascribed to his insidious policy  as well as to the terror of his arms.  His public declarations were skilfully mitigated by his private assurances;  he alternately soothed and threatened the Romans and the Goths;  and the courts of Ravenna and Toulouse, muturally suspicious of each other’s intentions, beheld with supine indifference  the approach of their common enemy.

-- Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788)

For Gaul and the Romans  substitute France and the French;  for the Goths, the English; for Ravenna et alia, the Slavic nations,  and you pretty much have a picture of European diplomacy in the 1930s.

~

There are other parallels;  these we mention, only because they run counter to the brainless-bulldog stereotypes of both men.  Gibbon, referring to the forces of Aëtius and Theodoric, writes:

On their approach, the king of the Huns  immediately raised the siege, and sounded a retreat  to recall the foremost of his troops  from the pillage of a city which they had already entered.   The valour of Attila was always guided by his prudence;  and as he foresaw the fatal consequences of a defeat in the heart of Gaul, he repassed the Seine, and expected the enemy in the plains of Châlons, where smooth and level surface was adapted to the operations of his Scythian cavalry.

Though never more than a corporal in the war, Hitler does seem to have possessed a sound military-political instinct at times, especially in the early stages of his career, before conquest went to his head.  William Shirer’s accounts repeatedly emphasize how Hitler had secretly been prepared to climb down (e.g. in the re-occupation of the Ruhr), had the French and the British called his bluff.   They did not;  he took their measure;  the rest is history.

~

[Auxiliary sub-footnote:

Gibbon likewise proceeds to adduce a surprising incident involving Attila and the princess  Honoria, which illustrates the Bluebeard motif  in feminine psychology.  We alluded to that briefly here.    The subject may well be beyond the depth of our plumb-line; and at any rate deserves, not a note, but a book.  And as that book may well already have been written -- possibly twelve-times over -- we here fall silent.]

The View from History

Apart from brief respites here and there (usually not extending beyond the boundaries of a city-state), the history of the world is at best  tragic --  at the frequent worst, not rising to that Sophoclean-Shakespearian dignity, since merely mad.

Americans at present harbor the impression   that we live in uniquely querulous/perilous  times.   A glance at the record  will disabuse you.  Throughout almost all of our national history, matters have been much worse (save, again, here and there -- Ben Franklin’s Philadelphia;  the Boston/Cambridge/Concord of the Transcendentalists).  The reason we nonetheless nurse this misimpression  is that  those of us in the Baby Boom (or their parents, remembering raising them)  grew up in exceptionably untroubled times (be it only on the surface, which was all we kids perceived) -- and this, not merely in this hamlet or that, but pretty much across the land.  There was so much hope -- much of it rewarded.   True, there were threats then, graver than even those now, as of an obliterating nuclear war (that might be triggered, moreover, by misunderstanding or accident).  Yet somehow such matters  receded beind the horizon of consciousness, so pleased were we  with all the babies, milkshakes, the G.I. bill, tailfins -- so much that was suddenly  new.

That might sound like Pollyanna’s comfort -- “It might be worse”.  But actually it is the flipside of that bright twinkling coin, that casts its shadow.  For the clear statistical implication is that our recent state is no more than a blessed bubble, metastable, which a pinprick might annihilate, and history revert to form.

~

A remarkable, very readable essay of historical pessimism, is Lord Raglan’s How Came Civilization (1939).   His answer:   It came via discoveries that happened once, and then diffused.   Most societies never invent anything, and, left to their own devices, degenerate, forgetting even the skills they once had, unless these come to be re-imported.  The candle, once snuffed, does not relight itself.

A much more widely held theory  is that nations, like individuals, have their day.  When that is done, and when they have made every contribution to progress that they are capable of making, then the mysterious force which controls the universe  sweeps them away  to make room for younger and more vigorious races, which will begin again  where the old ones left off …

When, however, we examine this theory, we find that it will not fit the facts.  The builders of Babylon and Borobudur, of Uxmal and Zimbabwe, and of many another great city of the past, were succeeded, not by people who could revive and carry forward their civilization, but by the savage, the jungle, or the desert.

--p. 25

(Here he is speaking of ancient Zimbabwe;  but indeed, in the post-Colonial nation of the same name, the devolution is repeating itself.)

The exhausted cultural autocides of Europe, resigned before the prospect of le grand remplacement, or even welcoming its hordes with teddy-bears,  may hope, consciously or not, for such renewal -- but alas:

There is nothing in the history of Europe, or any other part of the world, to support the view that an occasional barbarian invasion  supplies civilization with a necessary tonic, a view which would involve our keeping enough barbarians in being  to sack London and Paris every few centuries, whenever it might be considered that we had reached the appropriate degree of senility.

-- p. 27

Of barbarians (fortunately for that Weltanschauung) the world now has a plentiful supply.

ISIL : the Prequel

To people ill-acquainted with history, the antics of ISIL (ISIS, Dâ`ish, the Islamic State) seem something utterly new under the sun.   But there are precedents.   (Here we speak only of their public theatrics.  Their actual theology, rather than really innovative, is second-hand Wabbabi Salafism.)

ISIL trademarks, with antecedents:

Destruction of antiquities:

Hitler retaliated for the raid on Lübeck, sending German bombers against British cities with medieval town centres.  The raids were known as Baedeker raids, after the German guide books.

-- Martin Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, vol. II (1998), p. 438

More here.

Head-fetishism:

Aztec skull-racks.

The Huns, marking their advance  with mountains of skulls.

(H.G. Wells, on Hulagu:  “Pyramids of skulls were his particular architectural fancy;  after the storming of Ispahan, he made one of 70,000.” -- Outline of History.)

Mexican narcotraficantes, using severed heads as bowling-balls.

More here.

Morals police

We summarized the VICE News ride-along with ISIL’s al-Raqqa Hisbah (حسبة) here.   This kind of unit is not unique to ISIS -- AQAP now has one of the same name, and both are preceded by the dreaded Saudi muṭawwiʿūn (مطوعون)

There are precedents as well among American Puritans:

The state exists to punish vice, to spread “salutary terror” in the hearts of men.

-- Wilson McWilliams, The Idea of Fraternity in America (1973), p. 126

Bragging about it:

A historian quotes a memoir from Japanese-occupied Manchuria during WWII:

As part of their education, my mother and her classmates  had to watch newsreels of Japan’s progress in the war.  Far from being ashamed of their brutality, the Japanese vaunted it  as a way to inculcate fear.  The films showed Japanese soldiers cuting people in half, and prisoners tied to stakes being torn to pieces by dogs.  There were lingering close-ups of the victims’ terror-stricken eyes  as their attackers came at them.

The Japanese watched the eleven- and twelve-year-old schoolgirls  to make sure they did not shut their eyes, or try to stick a handkerchief in their mouths to stifle their screams.

-- Martin Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, vol. II (1998), p. 443

Note that the point here  is not that the Japanese committed atrocities, but that (unlike, for instance, the Nazis, for the most part, or Stalin) they boasted about it, publicized it.

In the case of ISIL (we have argued), the beheadings are aimed at more (much more) than terrorizing the enemy:  they have a demonstration effect on their own ranks. 

Ditto for the Japanese;  re the year 1937 (when the Japs were already up & active, well before Pearl Harbor):

The Japanese company commander, Tominaga Shogo, later explained how, after decapitating a Chinese prisoner with his sword, “I felt something change inside me.  I don’t know how to describe it, but I gained strength somewhere in my gut.” 

-- Martin Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, vol. II (1998), p.165

That wasn’t done to “inculcate fear”;  it may well have been done out of sight.  Psychologically, it is more comparable to cannibals eating the warriors they have slain, to incorporate the mojo.

These were not isolated, private acts.  From 1942:

On Singapore Island, 5,000 Chinese civilians  … were rounded up and … killed:  first their hands were tied behind their backs, and then their heads cut off with a sword.

-- Martin Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, vol. II (1998), p. 165

That, note, is likewise ISIL’s favored posture for decapitation.

More here.

C’est parti -- ça commence

A discarded cellphone  which the police found near the Bataclan, contained this text-message:

“on est parti  on commence’’

Loosely translated:  “Let’s roll.”

That might prove, for November/Friday-the-13^th,  what “The match begins tomorrow” became (in the public mind) for 9/11.

Not because of that day’s body-count;  but because the event may later be seen as the “tipping-point” -- das Umkippen -- when even slow learners like Hollande  finally got the message.  Epigram/epitaph  going forward:

C’est parti -- ça  commence.

Loosely:  “Now we’re in for it.”

~

If so, this may, in some sense, be bigger than 9/11.

For:  the freakishly high death-toll of 9/11  was in part due to an unexpected result of architectural engineering.  Watching the twin towers just … collapse … vertically … engendered disbelief.  (The bastard offspring  of such disbelief  was a conspiracy theory.)  Moreover, there has been almost no follow-up on American soil.  And this, because it really was an extraneous attack of a few intruders; there was no indigenous Muslim fan-club for those guys, in America, at that point.

Quite different is the scene in France, where a follow-on op to Nov/Vendredi-13, was not long in coming. Here, a magnificent public presentation by the Procureur de Paris, François Molins -- Churchillian in its focus and concision:

Le commando neutralisé à Saint-Denis était prêt à «passer à l'acte»

http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2015/11/18/01016-20151118ARTFIG00345-le-commando-neutralise-a-saint-denis-etait-pret-a-passer-a-l-acte.php

And here, an unusually detailed blow-by-blow account of the Saint-Denis raid, from its leader, Jean-Michel Fauvergue:

http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2015/11/18/01016-20151118ARTFIG00320-assaut-a-saint-denis-l-intervention-du-raid-heure-par-heure.php

Kudos to you, gentlemen.

Eyewitness from the Bataclan:

http://www.bz-berlin.de/welt/polizei-sanitaeter-schildert-graeuel-aus-dem-bataclan

День Победы

Remembered Victory

The media have,  justly,  been giving ample coverage to today’s Victory Day celebrations in Russia, commemorating the defeat of the Axis in World War II.   The coverage of this largest-ever patriotic-military display  has been better than perfunctory, examining in addition  the political undercurrents which -- more than a typical Fourth of July celebration in the States these days, say -- deeply color this year’s remembrances.

There is one aspect of the generally unisonous coverage  that I wish to take issue with, however.   The tone of the presentation in America -- and this, through no fault of the Russians -- has been skewed by the increasing hegemony of sentimentalist victimology in the American media’s treatment of just about anything.   Again and again, the reporters intone:  The Soviet Union suffered 27 million dead over the course of that conflict.  An enormous (key word) “Sacrifice”.

Now, a funeral is not the time for the historian to step into the pulpit;  but these deaths happened seventy years ago;  moreover, they are being cynically instrumentalised by Putin  to revive the cult of Stalin -- and thus, of Putin himself.  (Kudos to the media for having reported the recent law making it a crime to criticize the USSR’s behavior in that war.)

First, a bit of moral clarity, to clear the head of the fumes of sob-story sentimentalism.   If, seeing someone about to drown, you leap into the pounding sea to save them, and so doing, die, then you can properly be said to have sacrificed  your life.   (Note:  A sacrifice can be in a good cause or a bad one;  that is not the point.)  But if you are simply sauntering down the sidewalk chewing gum, and you get squooshed by an asteroid -- that is not a sacrifice;  that is just bad luck.

Similarly:  If you spot someone being beaten or robbed, and intervene, you are sacrificing your own safety.   But if you yourself have been backed into a corner and are being pummeled with murderous intent, your fighting back, while courageous or prudent, is hardly a “sacrifice”.

Now:   What the USSR suffered in the war was, morally, closer to bad luck than to sacrifice (as we shall show), nay indeed was worse than the mere bad luck of the stroller in the parable, who after all did not provoke the asteroid in any way -- did not shake his fist at Olympus and cry “Bring it on!”  But the Soviets, to some extent, indeed Brought It On.

(1)  First, by the Stalinists’ instructions to the Comintern.   Although the KPD had no love lost for the Nazis, they nevertheless, on instructions from Moscow, during “Third Period” Stalinism (inaugurated 1928) objectively treat the SPD and other labor/reformist parties as the main enemy of the moment (the Nazis presumably to be mopped up later).   Had they formed (as the pejorative catchphrase had it, back in the day) a “United Front from Above” against the Brownshirts, Hitler might never have come to power.

To be sure, one he did come to power, and all moderate or progressive forces had been crushed like a bug, such Kommunisten as remained did, belatedly, try to oppose the Nazis, faute de mieux.  But it was way too late, and partly their own fault.

(2)  Second:  For several months prior to the outbreak of world hostilities in September of 1939,  France and Britain had been courting Stalin to form a pact directed against potential further aggression from Germany, in particular in preventive defense of Poland.  Stalin toyed with them, then let them drop.  Instead -- stunning the world -- he signed a pact with Hitler.  That was the signal for Hitler to launch his Blitzkrieg.  As for Poland, Stalin and Hitler carved the thing up between them in advance (along with much else along Spheres-of-Influence lines).  Had Stalin not done this, WWII might never have occurred, or might have been quickly decided quite differently if it had;  for Hitler was, tactically, more cautious (in the early days) than most folks are aware of.  (Cf. his gingerly occupation of the Ruhr, the plebiscites in Sudetenland and the Saar, etc.)

Presumably, those events are among those that are now illegal to criticize.

As for the Komintern … during the Popular Front that succeeded the Third Period, the various CP’s did form anti-fascist alliances.   But the instant Stalin inked his Nazi pact, they all turned on a dime and began denouncing the democracies instead.  So much for anti-Nazi steadfastness.

(3)  During the purges that began in earnest in 1937, Stalin choreographed the legal murder of the flower of the early leading Bolsheviks.   In itself, that is not germane to our tale.  But he followed it up with the decapitation of the Soviet officer corps, thus greatly weaking his army on the eve of world conflict.  Worse than imprudent -- reckless.

(4)   True, the Soviet Union did eventually fight the Nazis; and it may well be that the average Soviet soldier was unusually valorous, I don’t know.  But Stalin did not turn against Hitler until Hitler turned on him -- to Stalin’s astonishment.  Stalin had even had advance warning of Unternehmen Barbarossa from a well-connected spy in Tokyo, but discounted the warning:  he just couldn’t believe that his good buddy Adolf would do that.

In short:   When he had a free and unforced choice whom to ally with,  Stalin chose Hitler.   Only when backed into a corner did he fight back.

So:   Not to be churlish, but to depict the events being commemorated today as a noble “sacrifice” on the part of the USSR, is to be blinded by the Care Bears version of world history.   Putin has been working towards reviving the cult of Stalin as part of his pursuit of the “Total Vertical”.   The West should not be his cheerleader in that plan.

~

As for genuine sacrifice:  Britain and France get at least half credit.  True, they tried apeasement for several months;  but knowledge of the futility of this  is due to hindsight.  Indeed, if Hitler had succumbed to one of the various assassination attempts, or had choked on a grape-pip, history might commend the Munich Pact as having spared the continent another war.   Only after Hitler invaded Poland -- while still making irenic gestures and cooing noises towards the West (noises that had become all too familiar, and to which the West was now immune) -- did France and Britain realize that it was only a question of sooner or later, and the longer they left it to later, the stronger Hitler would be when he eventually turned on thém.   So, they hadn’t been driven into a corner yet, but they could foresee the corner:  thus, at that point, declaring war on Germany was a matter of enlightened self-interest, not sacrifice.   Still, the general public was not widely aware of that, and grumbled at “dying for Poland”.  Also, none of the various other European states and statelets  came to their aid;  so, kudos, as far as it goes.

On the other hand, full marks go to Canada, which got into the game early, ramping up arms production to (prospectively) support Great Britain, and punching well above her weight in the war, when it came.  This, though Canada hadn’t been attacked, and was not likely to be.

(The U.S., of course, stayed out of it until Pearl Harbor forced their hand.)

~

In Washington,  the festivities were, by contrast, non-political, and much lower-key:  an Antique Airshow -- A Good Time Was Had By All.   (In fact, I wasn’t even aware of the Washington celebration, though I listen to a D.C.-based radio station;  they gave much more coverage to the event in Russia.)

Basically, for better or worse, Americans don’t pay a lot of attention to world history, and certainly do not ‘get’ the deep psychopolitical currents that roil the Old Continent.   Thus, here an original twist on the commemoration, from Berlin, at which Americans would merely blink:

http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/44/44886/1.html

Reichsbürger scheitern beim Sturm auf den Reichstag

Rechtsextreme Demo am Hauptbahnhof - aggressive Stimmung gegen Journalisten

Der 8. Mai als Tag der Befreiung vom Hitlerfaschismus ist ein Tag, der an die grausamen Folgen von Nationalismus und Faschismus erinnern soll. Doch in Berlin nutzen Rechtsextreme, Reichsbürger und braune Esoteriker das Datum für ihre eigenen Zwecke. Auf zahlreichen Demonstrationen stellen sie ihr völkisches Weltbild zur Schau - welches sie selbst als antifaschistisch verbrämen. Unterstützung erhalten die Extremisten von den Nachtwölfen aus Russland.

We cum 2 celebrate with U

~

In eastern Ukraine, pro-Russian separatists put on a demo similar in sabre-rattling tone, though not in scope, to that of Putin.

In Kiev, no military parade at all:  Just a laying of a bouquet at the tomb of the unknown soldier.

~

Yet another layer beneath these nation-specific undercurrents, lies another, inchoate, and more obscure, which spans Europe.  

(1) Visible and above the depths of public sentiment,  there is one hegemonic ideology reigning in “Europe” -- “Europe” in the European sense of the ECC:  the Eurocrats.   These answer to no constituency, but carry on merrily, demanding this and legislating that.  The overall silhouette of their proposals is to abolish traditional European national cultures, and to let go even of much (like Christianity, traditional marriage, or masculine valor) that has long spanned political boundaries,  and allow the European peninsula (for so it suddenly appears, exposed and frozen, on the map) gradually to melt into the African and Middle-eastern landmass, without resistance.

(2) In antithesis to this, are worries whether that is such a good thing.  Nervous glances at what-all is happening throughout Africa and the Middle East, are not reassuring.   Such worries churn the gut of das Volk, of la France profonde, but are scarcely permitted to disturb the Narrative in the bien-pensant media.   So soon as a Swede, or a German, gives voice to qualms, he is shushed up and branded a Nazi;  and we have already disposed of them.

And this is where Putin comes in:  not from stage left (Stalin), but stage right.

[No time to develop this analysis further here;  meanwhile, the catchword for this countercurrent is:  Eurosibérie.]

Putin and his biker buds

[Update 11 May 2015]  Can’t make this stuff up:

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2015/05/11/01003-20150511ARTFIG00216-poutine-rehabilite-le-pacte-molotov-ribbentrop.php

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