Stefan Heidenreich on Tue, 14 Feb 2023 11:02:48 +0100 (CET)


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Re: <nettime> Stormy weather? Daniele Ganser edit 

if you wanted to have a good example of what I referred to as
"liberal fascism", it's here:
self empoewered thought police feeling entiled to go for a witch-hunt to cancel voices off the mainstream. 
Even as I do not agree with some stuff the Ganser says, I would always 
defend his right to speak, as in "die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" 
(Rosa Luxxemburg).

with these kind of interventions we drift towards some type of liberal 
... I don't know what to call it: totalitarianism ...

S



Am 14.02.23 um 10:48 schrieb Michael Guggenheim:

Dear Nettimers and Hans-Christian,


D’Eramo’s NLR sidecar article indeed contained a reference to Daniele 
Ganser, but it was a little bit more than a reference (I copy the whole 
passage into the email further down below). As you can see from the 
passage, D’Eramo does not just cite Ganser, but really advertise Ganser, 
and seems to be well aware of who he is: “Swiss Historian”, book 
available in x-languages but “not yet in English”.

For those outside the German speaking world: Ganser is a notorious 
conspiracy theorist, anti-semite (The unvaccinated are like the jews in 
Germany in the 1930s), anti-vaxxer etc. He indeed used to be a 
“historian” or rather a security analyst at ETH Zurich, and lost his job 
there over his conspiracy theories. Since then, he has built an online 
business model, selling “courses” on “inner peace” “content: 
Denigration, Digital Detox, Forest, Hope” or “Consciousness creates 
Peace” “content: Values, Deception, Corona, Awareness”. You get it.
If you want more info, begin with his German wikipedia page 
here: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniele_Ganser
Or read this article in a respected Swiss left weekly (before he went 
completely off rail during COVID):
https://www.woz.ch/1703/wahrheit-und-verschwoerung/das-ganser-phaenomen 
<https://www.woz.ch/1703/wahrheit-und-verschwoerung/das-ganser-phaenomen>

The book that D’Eramo is referring to indeed contains a mixture of left 
hits: Everything is NATO’s fault, combined with highlights of the right 
behind all of this, maybe, are the, you know, Bilderbergs.

There would obviously have been plenty of better serious historical 
sources that D’Eramo could advertise that critically discuss the role of 
NATO, the US, and the CIA during the Cold War.

I sent an email to NLR alerting them to this quote. Maybe I was not the 
only one. I was hoping, and suggesting, they would add a comment to 
D’Eramo’s text, explaining who Ganser is, and maybe asking D’Eramo to 
explain to the reader why he included the passage. Instead they deleted 
it, without leaving a note as to the alteration of the text.

I understand that the editors of NLR may not know who Ganser is, and 
that they cannot be expected to check every reference in every text.

Given the passage in the text, I doubt that D’Eramo does not know who 
Ganser is.

I would have hoped that the editorial standards of NLR go beyond simply 
deleting the passage.

best
Michael


Deleted from: https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/sleepwalking-elites


And Russia’s unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine doesn’t absolve NATO of 
its responsibility in producing the conflict. (To get an idea of the 
Atlantic Alliance’s ‘pacifist’ vocation, it’s worth reading Swiss 
historian Daniele Ganser’s 2022 book /NATO’s Illegal Wars/, available in 
German, French and Italian, not yet in English). In today’s world, we 
rely on elites – technocrats, the ‘cognitive aristocracy’ 
<https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/iron-musk> – to pilot us 
through perilous waters with their superior wisdom.

Passage now reads:


And Russia’s unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine doesn’t absolve NATO of 
its responsibility in producing the conflict. In today’s world, we rely 
on elites – technocrats, the ‘cognitive aristocracy’ 
<https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/iron-musk> – to pilot us 
through perilous waters with their superior wisdom.





nettime-l@mail.kein.org

On 14 Feb 2023, at 00:25, hans christian voigt <sozwiss@gmail.com> wrote:


Dear Brian, weapons, munition and tools are coming from NATO states 
_and_ non NATO states.

Since you shared this weird opinion piece of D’Eramo just for the list 
of equipment which the US alone has sent, I would think it makes sense 
to keep in mind that this amount is just a fraction of what the US sent 
to the Soviet Union from 1941 on after Hitler Germany assaulted the up 
to this point ally in Stalin. I doubt you’d argue this made the UdSSR's 
war against Hitler Germany a proxy war.

After being raided the Ukraine to my knowledge had to buy lot of 
equipmentfrom arms dealer for months for inflated prices. On the, I 
suppose, free market for weapons. This is to a good extend because 
before the Ukraine was not allowed to buy equipment from "the western".

Besides weapons, if we are talking involvement of the US, I presume the 
intelligence provided by the US is probably as significant as the now 
not anymore totally refused weapons delivery. Does the sharing of 
information that another regime is amassing troops, that an echelon is 
coming from these coordinates and one from there, does that, as it is 
vital for the course of the war and for defeating Russian troops, does 
that qualify the term of a proxy war or is that fair warning and vital help.

I see Putin's Russia very much as an imperial death cult the likes that 
Theweleit was analyzing so ingeniously. Yes, a defeat of Russia 
certainly will change the global security system. On the one hand I 
wonder why that is viewed as something bad and something one can 
intervene with and something that we can influence with anti-americanism 
while thousands die in the trenches and civilians get attacked 
constantly. Anyway, a defeat of Russia comes with huge risks for sure. 
As well as a defeat of the Ukraine. And there's all the other undeniable 
factors whose spillovers affect most people, as you wrote. At least 
there seems to be a larger-than-zero chance that one very powerful 
imperial death cult in our world might discontinue. May this cult 
crumble soon and it’s followers be forced to face it’s life-hostile 
<https://www.dict.cc/?s=life-hostile> ugliness.

On the other hand, no, I don’t think it’s so easy as to extrapolate from 
what was the NATO up until a while ago and expect uncontested Western 
military superiority. Even less so in the form as US superiority and the 
means to enforce the neoliberal capitalism the way it was enforced till 
f.e. the punishment of Greece (by Germany).

There are more countries joining NATO (Sweden and Finnland, possibly 
Ukraine and Georgia) and in the last year already it was the baltic 
states and Poland beside Scandinavia that were pushing "the west". The 
power structure inside NATO, inside "the west" seems to have changed 
quite a bit and where will it go from there? The same "west" has not 
just one but many countries that are on track of their own fascisms 
(imperial death cults included). As far as we experienced, fascism might 
be chaperoned with isolationism and even with strong opposition to NATO.

So, while NATO might grow in number it looks to me as it could get 
weaker and might disintegrate from within. Then there’s China that 
emerged clearly as more powerful than Russia. Russia as an empire might 
dissolve. But it’s not a given whose colonies the parts of the remains 
with all those resources will become. BRICS seems broken and the change 
from Lula to Bolsonaro back to Lula should be another reminder of the 
volatility of this world. Modi in India seems just as damn scary to me 
as the Arabic powers. Pakistan is huge, has nuclear weapons as well and 
faces a near future where most of the country will be to hot to survive 
is. Speaking of petro power, as an example, Austria’s chancellor looks 
to have opposed a gas-price brake (even on EU level) only because the 
emirates wealth funds have a big enough stake in the Austrian energy 
providers that his alliance lies with the emirates. Even against his voters.

Certainly dangerous time with immense future consequences. Feels like 
this is building up decade over decade honestly. A foreseeable future 
with huge areas of the planet made uninhabitable. Fascism permeating 
everywhere. A few times already made me cower in fear.

I remember specifically a period from 2007 to 2009 where I was 
struggling a lot with this paralyzing vista and it’s influence on my 
psyche. I same time found that immensely dangerous in itself. Dangerous 
and honestly very self centered. Since then I believe that this chilling 
effect is very dangerous for the individual psyche and our collective 
thinking. (Like D’Eramo who seems to argue that criminals with atom 
bombs should be allowed free terror reign because, well, they have the 
nuclear threat and look how stressed they are. I mean, it’s clearly not 
going the way he dreamed it up. Now that is making D'Eramo afraid and 
wouldn’t that be understandable? Poor fellow. Fuck real victims, I have 
my own problems, I am shitting myself.)

Sorry. Well, I absolutely second that it is important to analyze the new 
security systems emerging. Even more so as I guess they will not be very 
stable. In analyzing I hope we are wary of carrying forward 
outdated projections, bogeymen and conceptualities … and emotions. That, 
btw, in my world certainly does not come with amnesties for past crimes 
or historical misrepresentation of what NATO, the US and the likes did.


sry for my English



ps: pretty sure there was a positive reference to Daniel Ganser in 
D’Eramo’s text when I read it first that is not there anymore. Talking 
about dangerous. These men and women who make big bucks and a wealthy 
living in the business of conspiracy theories. They are thriving.




Am 13.02.2023 um 21:28 schrieb Brian Holmes 
<bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>:

Felix, I understand what you're reacting to, and to be clear, I 
support the Ukrainians in their war against Russian aggression. I 
think it's a necessary war for NATO to engage in, as I've said before. 
I also agree the term "liberal fascism" is meaningless, btw.

But this is also a great power war, fought with NATO weapons in 
Ukrainian hands. Up to now that's been called a proxy war, but if 
there's a better term, I'll take it. The point is definitely not to 
wallow in outdated concepts, but to grasp what's happening now.

I think this war is perceived by US and other Western strategists as 
the means for the installation of a new global security system in the 
face of increasing challenges to the post-WWII order. That order, 
originally defined by the US and cemented by NATO, is now 
fundamentally threatened by climate change and by the rise of East 
Asia. The intense bellicose signalling between China and the US 
reveals the larger stakes. Putin attempted to take advantage of this 
situation by establishing a partnership with China, but he failed.

Victory in Ukraine would reestablish uncontested Western military 
superiority at the global level, and allow the NATO countries to 
organize the next phase of capitalist development, just as the Gulf 
War did at the outset of neoliberalism in the 90s. But the world is 
now far more unstable than in the 90s. The Ukrainians are pushing for 
total victory,  which is hard to imagine without Putin's fall. I doubt 
it is possible to achieve regime change in Russia without NATO troops 
on the ground.

My point is that this is a dangerous time with immense future 
consequences. It would be important to analyze the new security system 
as it emerges. Support for the Ukrainians does not mean turning a 
blind eye to what the most powerful countries are doing. The 
international system that emerges from this war will be the one that 
deals with the existential challenge of climate change.

Thoughtfully, Brian


On Mon, Feb 13, 2023, 11:41 Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com 
<mailto:felix@openflows.com>> wrote:


    On 12.02.23 20:50, Brian Holmes wrote:
    > -- There's a war on in Europe, which is a proxy war that pits NATO
    > against Russia, via the fighting force of Ukraine. Definitely check
    > out the list of equipment which the US alone has sent:
    > https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/sleepwalking-elites
    <https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/sleepwalking-elites>
    > <https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/sleepwalking-elites
    <https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/sleepwalking-elites>> (list
    > begins in paragraph 3)


    I know this is not your point here, but to see this only as a proxy
    war really reductive and reeks of a "great powers" analysis in which
    some countries/people are just have to accept the fact that they are
    subordinate.

    The author of the NLR article comes right out with this world view:

    > Ten years ago, nobody could have imagined that Europe would risk
    > such a catastrophe for the sake of the Donbass – a region that
    few of
    > us would have been able to locate on a map.

    I'm sure most Ukrainians knew already 10 years ago where the
    Donbas was,
    but why bother with their view. Also, the war in the Donbas started
    2008, so not to know where the Donbas was in 2012 is really an act
    of metropolitan ignorance. It happens, nothing to be proud of.

    So, this war is primarily one of Ukrainian survival. I'm sure that
    many
    in the US security apparatus see it also as a proxy-war, but I think
    also Biden's theme of democracy-vs-authoritarianism plays a role. I
    don't think it's a given that a republican administration under Trump
    would have done the same (even if some in the military would still
    have
    liked to fight a proxy war).


    On 13.02.23 08:45, Stefan Heidenreich wrote:

    > - the defeat of NATO could lead to a "decolonization" of Western
    > Europe (not that this by itself leads to positive results.
    Repressive
    > "liberal" fascism remains as likely an outcome as some sort of
    > independence.)

    Oh my, what this is supposed to mean, only chatGPT can explain.









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