I have been thinking, perhaps too much, about delusions and the role of propaganda during wartime. I’ve also come to the conclusion that Paris doesn’t feel real. These two thoughts are related.
Paris has the vibe of a living museum, a place with a past. There’s a surreal quality to this city. Tourists come to see what the French used to be: gorgeous architecture, wide-ranging art and music, culture writ large, fashion and food, philosophical gabbing and much more. They don’t come to see the people who make Paris what it is today. I’ve watched tourists from so-called “developing countries” enjoy this city as if it were a museum containing the relics of a society that no longer exists. Like yesterday’s Rome, Paris feels like the capital of a country that had conquered a good hunk of the world, bequeathed it’s legal, administrative and cultural heritage to surrounding nations … then slowly faded into obscurity.
In the frightening but witty words of Michael Hudson: “The Eurasian countries will still visit Europe as tourists, as Americans like to visit England as a kind of theme park of post-feudal gentry, the posting of the palace guards and other quaint memories of the days of knights and dragons. European countries will look more like that of Jamaica and the Caribbean, with hotels and hospitality becoming the main growth sectors, with Frenchmen and German waiters dressed in their quaint quasi-Hollywood costumes. Museums will do a thriving business as Europe itself turns into a kind of museum of post-industrialism.”
I briefly spoke with a tourist from a rarely mentioned country — Burkina Faso — who told me in so many words that Paris was a third-world tourist destination with a first-world history. His hatred for France was palpable. “So, why are you here,” I asked after listening to his diatribe? He shook his head and didn’t answer. If this man was a tourist who planned to go home after a couple weeks, I wouldn’t be worried about his words, but this guy appears to be in Paris for the long haul. He’s probably an illegal immigrant — a “migrant.” And, a France-hating one. I rather doubt he will want to protect French culture or fight for the France he says he hates.
No one here seems to have a viable plan to save France’s culture; if they do, it’s not working. I’d like to see the heritage French fight for their own country and culture but this doesn’t seem to be happening.
People fight for what they believe is real and protect what they value. Children are protected by the mothers. Men (who haven’t been pussified) instinctively protect their wives as well as children. One’s home and property must be real enough to protect, too. In America we have “castle laws” which allow a man or woman to use deadly force against home intruders. That’s how seriously we take our stuff. And lastly, entire militaries exist because the idea of “nation” is real enough to defend.
It’s interesting to note the very real things the government will NOT defend. In liberal parts of the United States such as Portland, Oregon, storeowners must allow thieves to steal less than $1,000 USD of goods before the law deems this to be “criminal.” As cops look the other way, the small business owner is not permitted to defend his livelihood with force. This represents a sea change in the government’s willingness to defend the middle class and their cultural values. I remember the 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, during which rooftop snipers defended their small businesses — “roof Koreans,” they are now called mostly with envious reverence though a few use the term with racialist hatred.
The government is unwilling to defend churches as well. Most larger churches in America have armed guards. In the past couple decades, Christians have been murdered inside churches by anti-Christian bigots. The media downplays these murders — the government does nothing to prevent them. Consequently, American churches have had to take it upon themselves to guard their own worshippers by training and employing guards. Most church guards are “camouflaged.” They carry well-concealed weapons and appear to be ordinary churchgoers mingling in the vestibule or sitting in pews.
In 2007, for example, after killing four people and wounding several more, a bigoted murderer was killed by a armed female guard inside New Life Church in Colorado Springs (she was ex-military, interestingly). Laughably, the reflexively anti-Christian media, unwilling to admit that an armed person had prevented further murder, euphemistically described her as part of the “church safety team.”
A third thing that Western governments will not defend are borders. They will not defend their existing cultures from those who do not share, cannot agree with, or will not adopt the culture. Case in point — the Burkina Faso guy described above.
It’s clear that churches, small businesses and borders are either unprotected or less protected by the government because they’re either less “real” or less important than things which merit the government’s concern. It could be the case, too, that the government has a known, positive inclination against the existing culture. The West could be imploding from self-hate.
At times, I wonder if governments have expanded to the point where they can only protect themselves. I can’t walk past an embassy in Paris without seeing armed guards, some with machine guns; no where else in this city have I seen armed guards, though perhaps they’re in the high-end stores I can’t afford to shop in.
So, to recap so far …
- First, there’s a connection between the “realness” of something and a willingness to defend it. One can reason backward from the things defended to that which is perceived as real.
- Another connection exists between “realness” and importance. Again, it’s possible to reason backward …
- But there’s a third element that also exists and that’s the capacity for a person or collectivity to be deluded. Here, propaganda plays it’s hand. If this is the case, than reasoning leads nowhere.
Let me give a present example: the war in the Ukraine. No matter which side you take in this Russia v. West war, you can’t deny that the Russians perceive this war existentially, as a battle to preserve the existence of the Eastern Orthodox and Russian way of life. In their mind, their future as Russians hinges on victory. Russians elites are fighting what they perceive as a corrupt, effete, anti-Christian and culturally spent West. They’ve drawn a line in the sand between their idealized society and our imagined one. They don’t want to be like us. They want to be themselves.
As far as I’m concerned, that’s okay — live and let live, right? — but few poohbahs in the West share my pacific views. The West is deluded in thinking that they’ll easily win this war because they represent the “rule of law” and “democracy.” Nothing could be further from the truth. It could be, too, that the West no longer considers it’s own cultures worth defending.
- Does America think of itself as in an existential battle right now? No.
- Does France think of itself as in an existential battle that preserves France as a nation and culture? No.
- Does Russia think of itself as in an existential battle to preserve Eastern Orthodoxy and it’s Russian culture. Yes.
So, who wins?
In part, Westerners don’t perceive this war as important because they’ve been fed media-government propaganda. War propaganda is hard to resist because everyone wants to be on the side of angels as well as be counted among the winners. In the US, the state department has hired hundreds of PR firms and individuals to prosecute the so called “information war,” to keep ordinary citizens placated with stories of victory, not reality.
In part, too, it’s easy to be deluded when war doesn’t impact daily life. The Ukraine is far, far away from America — most Americans can’t find it on a map and really don’t care what goes on there. The war is much closer to Europeans, but like Americans, Europeans been fed a steady diet of a stronger propaganda over a longer time period. It’s more difficult to get beyond censorship here. It’s pervasive. It’s also overt. The sinister quality of censorship in the United States is due to the fact that it’s well hidden — in France, it’s ubiquitous and obvious. Since the French are cynical by nature, they’re good at ignoring what doesn’t seem true but, at some point lies overwhelm reality.
(Musk’s exposé at Twitter — how the US government and three-letter agencies used Twitter to delude, lie to and manipulate citizens — is juicy stuff! I’m certain that Facebook, Google search engine results and the rest have been comped by the government, too.)
It’s hard to care about culture when knowledge about it is manipulated, when the country is being filled with people who don’t understand or appreciate it, when heritage French defer to Brussels and heritage Americans don’t know who they are, when decline seems inevitable and no source of information can be trusted. Even Ukrainian President Zelensky, was able to say, “…. no one would just surrender Crimea for no particular reason. Reconquest always starts with society: with its will and readiness. I believe the start has been made.“
Bracket, for a moment, Zelensky’s tendency toward fantasy. (Anyone with their feet on the ground know that US proxies in the Ukraine have already lost this war.) The West seems as if it would rather bask in the delusion of it’s own hegemony than admit it was wrong. It’s easy for Western elitists to retain hegemonic delusions when the consequences of these decisions shift up the feeding chain toward supra-national organizations such as the EU. When no one is responsible or when the decision made is not at the level of nation, it’s easy to “pass the buck,” that is, to skirt responsibility. It’s even easier to be deluded when you really think you are not making decisions.
Having said this, Zelensky is right. The will and readiness to fight starts in society, that is, in the people. A nation’s people are the repository of their culture, not buildings, history, art, memories, etc.
French politician Éric Ciotti recently tried to attract more pols to the Renaissance Party (Macron’s party) by suggesting they be “faithful to their values.” He plea was self-serving, of course, but I find it interesting that “values talk” is making it’s way back into French politics.
This can only be good. For Zelensky to talk about social will and Ciotti about cultural values means their eyes are looking down to where reality is located. In the end, reality IS culture. Reality is no more than blood and soil, faith and family, what is created, made and built, and what the nation is willing to defend. Note this, however: though a nation’s people are the repository of culture, their thinking about their own culture is visceral, not rational. People “feel” culture. They don’t rationally determine it’s boundaries though they intuit what belongs and what doesn’t belong.
Ciotti, then, may be “feeling” the loss of French culture without knowing it.
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Right now, as I type, a World Cup soccer/football game is being televised in Paris. I hear the screaming of men, the sound of a crowd in ecstasy. Maybe I’ll muster the courage to walk down a few cold streets to find the bar from where the shouting seems loudest. Soccer unites the French, I’ve been told. Someone just texted me to tell me that I should find a bar to watch the soccer game because “… it is the ONLY time French people come together as one, fly the French flag and the French colors (never happens otherwise) … a fleeting but enjoyable moment.“
Think about this. According to this woman, the French ONLY gather as a nation for a soccer game. They do so while surrounded by incredible medieval buildings, galleries, orchestras and bookstores. In part, this can be explained by the high-culture v. low-culture binary. The reach of low-culture like soccer is universal so anyone can participate; the reach of so-called high culture is limited because it’s a challenge to learn and appreciate that which is not easily accessible or ubiquitous.
I hear the sound of a crowd of screaming, shouting men which, to my California ears, sounds a lot like the breaking surf. Men shout in unison as fireworks blast loudly. I hear a woman’s screaming voice above the men’s.
I hear the man across the street saying to his kids in French, “Get in here and shut the door quickly.”
