J.R. Nyquist Blog

Has there ever been so much lack of character, so little civil courage, so much conformity and cynical opportunism, so many weak knees as in our generation?

Wilhelm Roepke

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Roepke wrote those words in 1948. He was a German, living in the rubble of World War II. He said there had been plenty of physical courage on the part of those who fought the world war, but not enough civic courage. Roepke said that democratic slogans and politicking led to a flight from responsibility. People wanted a demagogue who promised to solve all their problems. Of course, Hitler was that demagogue, and he left Germany and Europe in ruins.

Roepke wrote, “We are unable to comprehend the history of recent decades unless we know that there has taken place an unbelievable shifting towards collectivism, regimentation of opinion, socialization of existence and an abandonment of personality passing through … reluctant submission to the most shameless opportunism.”[i] And that shifting towards collectivism and regimentation of opinion exists on the right as well as the left. Our decadence is comprehensive, rather than selective. Right now, opinion leaders on the right are parroting Kremlin talking points. “Ukraine is doomed,” they say. “Give up and let the Russians win.” This was the same message heard from the left during the Vietnam War. Only today this message is coming from the right in the face of naked Kremlin aggression. Here we find a lack of character coming from the very people who want to “take America back.” It would be unwise to trust these voices, as many do. As they are repeating Kremlin lines, and Joe Biden has been a Kremlin and communist stooge his entire career, who do we imagine governs our country? If your plan is to take the country back from a communist network, you do not sing Moscow’s praises. Right? And you do not disrespect the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians fighting to hold the Russian armies back from the borders of NATO. But Laura Ingraham thinks nothing of disrespecting and dismissing as a moral nullity, the heroic stand of the Ukrainian people against America’s enemies. Does she realize that the same communist movement that has infiltrated our country’s government is aligned with Moscow and its invasion of Ukraine? The job of a high-level mole or infiltrator is to pretend to be against Moscow and against our country’s enemies. If you believe Joe Biden is a liar, why do you believe he genuinely supports Ukraine? He does not. He has been giving Ukraine as little as he can get away with. He is looking for every excuse to cut Ukraine off. And his plan is to blame Trump and the Republicans if Ukraine loses.

I was sickened by the leftists and communists in the university system. And now I am sickened by our big-name conservatives who sound like Moscow shills. The left and the right are now committed to a course of national suicide. If the famous conservative pundit William F. Buckley misread the fall of the Soviet Union back in 1989-91, his successors are misreading the war in Ukraine today. Buckley denounced the KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn in 1991. You see, Golitsyn had warned about a false Soviet liberalization; and when that false liberalization was in full swing, Buckley attacked Golitsyn instead of realizing that Russia was not in the process of becoming a liberal democracy as everyone then believed. If Golitsyn or his CIA sponsor James Angleton made mistakes in the 1960s, that does not make everything they said automatically wrong. We have this odd idea in America that people need to be perfect before we can credit them with being right. The simple procedure of checking the accuracy of their predictions should have been enough. But it was not enough.

It is true, of course, that Golitsyn and Angleton had unfairly suspected people of being KGB moles in the 1960s. But it’s a non sequitur to say that Golitsyn was wrong about the Soviet long-range strategy. If someone is wrong in judging the loyalty of spies, which is an easy mistake to make, it does not mean they are wrong about Moscow’s overall strategy. Buckley never attempted to explain Golitsyn’s successful predictions regarding the supposed fall of communism. Buckley never saw that collapse as a fraud, which it obviously was. If Golitsyn was wrong about everything, how could he have made so many correct predictions? Consider, as well, how consequential those predictions were; for they point to further predictions which have since come true. Now we have a shift in the nuclear balance where Russia and China have a preponderance of nuclear weapons while our nuclear arsenal is old and past its shelf life. Was this merely an accident? And why are none of the big-name conservatives warning us about this? I do not trust our big-name conservatives. I believe that celebrity status in our country comes with a price tag. Do not mention communism; and if you do, never tie it back to the Kremlin, or to a reemerging communist bloc. I believe our right-wing pundits would lose their status if they started to warn the country about Russia and China still being communist as they work behind the scenes with our businessmen and politicians. Why are so many failing to sound the alarm?[ii]

Our conservatives were wrong thirty years ago in their strategic assessment of Gorbachev. I submit that Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham and Jessie Waters are also wrong in their assessment of the Moscow-Beijing threat; for we cannot expect them to treat Russia and China as a combined threat. They will, predictably, refer to our enemies as separate cases. They will blame NATO for Putin’s enmity, as if Putin could have been won over. No, he could not have been won over. He was always our enemy. He gave us a hundred different clues beginning with his first year in office, and more. Only a fool who cannot read history properly thinks Putin could be a genuine ally of the West.

The Russians and Chinese know how our media works. They know that 99 out of 100 Americans do not read books. They also know the preconceptions most Americans have, so they can play up to those preconceptions – about capitalism, about big corporations, about elite politics. And they can shape narratives to exploit those misconceptions and thereby widen the gap between public perception and reality. The bureaucrats in Russia and China do this with their own people. Why would they not do it to us? 

Since our media tailors its messages to a low level of education and intelligence, why should our leading journalists bother with complexity? Time is money. People want to make money. And this has led to inauthenticity as our pundits pretend to a sophistication they do not possess. At the same time, the masses have always been led. Only now they are misled. I am so sick of the fakery, and the way it feeds off the credulousness of the public. I am sick of conspiracy narratives poisoning our discourse. Okay, you are alienated. I get it. But that does not mean all these conspiracy narratives are true. Conspiracy theorists exploit and sometimes make money by employing a sensationalist approach. And now these narratives are entering the mainstream, dumbing everyone down as they go. These narratives are becoming commonplace. Reciting lines from a conspiracy script is not analysis. It is not insightful.

How many conservatives have supported fraudulent narratives, as Mike Lindell did, with his Absolute Proof documentary? How many conservatives realize they were cheated out of a proper investigation of the 2020 election by Lindell’s fraudulent narrative about election fraud? How many realize, at this late hour, that we are never going to have a proper investigation of the 2020 election because Lindell jumped in and conducted an improper investigation? And look at all the people who took his money and participated in the fraud – without an apology or a reckoning?

And think, if you still can, of all those conservatives who have opposed support for Ukraine, who have mocked Zelenskyy, who think we are incapable of enforcing our border while sending military supplies abroad at the same time. In fact, these people are helping Russia. There are 600,000 Ukrainians holding back the Russian armies. Do we really come out ahead by abandoning them? Surely, you all know better. But then, I am hearing Moscow’s talking points gaining traction on the American right. What will happen to all these political geniuses when America ends up at war with Russia after Ukraine has collapsed and their 600,000 men are no longer there to hold back the Russian war machine? I address all those who despise the Ukrainians: Go through and replay your rants about Ukrainian corruption, your sneering regard for President Zelenskyy. Will you say that America should be destroyed because of Biden? Are you that insane? If you are an American, then you die with the rest of us. When the worst happens how will Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham and the INFOWARS people excuse themselves? Of course, they will say NATO has it coming. But do these people understand what war is? – or what it means to make statements that help a mortal enemy fulfill his plans? Of course, our anti-Ukrainians justify their rhetoric by pointing to Joseph Biden, as if Biden’s covert support for Russia during a long political career justifies overt support for Russia now.

After decades of trying to warn Americans about Russia and China, I seem to have made no meaningful impression on most readers. That is something I expected, and wrote about, back in the 1980s. The Russian and Chinese missiles are being built. Their nuclear bombs are being readied, the invasion forces are being set – and these people denounce their own country’s policy of helping Ukraine. Thus, we have Candace Owens saying “F—k Ukraine” while the once brave Jordan Peterson suggests Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine is a justifiable reaction to NATO aggression. Better surrender Ukraine now or you will be nuked, he says unashamedly. Peterson forgot Churchill’s famous warning, that an appeaser will get attacked despite his appeasement.

Our truth-talking heroes stopped being heroes when they became celebrities and turned their fame into fortune. In that moment they were targeted by enemy agents. They were influenced. I say this because there is an inconsistency in people who have denounced totalitarianism in the past and run interference for it in the present. How could that be? Does anyone honestly think they are going to avoid nuclear war by giving in to Putin’s threats? Dictators do not work that way. When threats work for them, they escalate. With the breakdown of collective security and the failure of containment, America could face destruction alone. Perhaps the Japanese will follow Candace Owens’s example by saying, “F—k America” and join with China. Perhaps all of Europe will simply join with Russia. How long will we survive, then?

Does she realize that Putin is supporting communist countries around the world? If he is a Christian conservative, why would he do that? Those who fed the communist narratives of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, used to be on the left. Now the right chimes in, because the communist narrative has been disguised as a conservative narrative. Yet men are such poor observers, generally, that they can mistake “cranky originality and perverse individualism” for authenticity. Candace Owens says we must not help Ukraine because people in America are struggling to pay for gas and groceries. But I say, if Ukraine falls the plight of our people will be worse – especially if Russia and China attack Japan in the aftermath of a Russian victory in Ukraine. And, indeed, in 2021 Russia was contemplating a strike against Japan.[iii]

If they had only bothered to study their enemy before opening their mouths. The problem has always been that our loudest people do not read the right books. They do not know enough. In this new year, a word or two is required on where we stand. Since I began writing regular columns, I took the position that KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn had been correct about the direction of communist bloc strategy in his 1984 book, New Lies for Old. There is no arguing against the facts here. Golitsyn made his predictions about a controlled liberalization in the Soviet Union and the Communist Party giving up its monopoly of power. These predictions came true. And also, his prediction that Russia and China would form into an alliance, into a “once clenched fist.” Excepting the present writer, has anyone noted the correctness of these predictions? Only a handful of people who are not accepted by the mainstream.

Because our people have largely succumbed to what Roepke called conformism and cynicism, we are failing as a country. For thirty years the West’s financial and industrial elite wanted to invest in China and Russia. All the money, and the celebrity, and the media power, was behind this mistake. For three decades the truth about Russia and China was blockaded. But the truth will come out. Russia and China are run by elites that are determined to destroy America. That is the simple truth, though we still resist learning it.

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Friends and Enemies: What’s Wrong With NATO?

Notes and Links

[i] Wilhem Roepke, The Moral foundations of Civil Society (New Brunswick: Transactions Publishers, 1996), p. 99.

[ii] Look at the career of Art Bell as an example.

[iii] Russia Planned To Attack Japan in 2021: Leaked FSB Letters (newsweek.com)

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