The New Dark Age

16 January 2015 — The Wolf Report: Nonconfidential analysis for the anti-investor

Can we sum up here?  Probably not.  Probably a fool’s errand, but call me foolish:

1. Assassination of journalists (not really clear who killed the hostages in the supermarket) by those claiming allegiance to iterations of Al-Qaeda and/or ISIS/ISIL

2. After shock, outpouring of grief:  Everybody (well, almost everybody) is flicking their Bics, like at a big concert, humming the tune “Unity, Republican Values,” holding hands and swaying to the music.

3. A few, tone deaf Marxists, anarchists, etc. can’t hear the music, but do see where this “unity” is heading– or rather trailing.  It’s trailing behind in a march with Merkel, Cameron, Hollande, Netanyahu, etc. etc. ad infinitum at its head.

4. The danger, these few tone deaf off-key malcontents suggest, is that nothing greases the wheels of repression, and war like national unity….and republican values.  Check your history if you disagree

5. The few, different drummers provide the usual, and requisite disclaimers–
opposition to terrorism;
opposition to hostage taking;
opposition to executing journalists;
opposition to “fundamentalism.”

They repeat this despite  the fact that all their previous actions, arguments, positions amount to a rejection of terrorism. religion, etc.  They do this for a number of reasons:
a) they believe it’s worth repeating
b) they do it in the attempt to pre-empt the unity and value crew
c) they do it to provide some protection against the repression that is sure to follow the attacks
d) they do it because they think there’s a deeper problem, a deeper “reason”– using “reason” to mean a determining force that is getting expressed in the warped actions by the assassins.
e)That deeper “reason” of course is of course the conflicts, antagonisms, that both rend, and bind, capitalism
.
6. The few, different drummers, point out, tactlessly, vulgarly, rudely, whatever-ly, that the victims,  were actively promoting the dominant side, in a conflict– that is to say the ridicule and demonization of an entire “type”–  “the other”–  those who are associated with Islam.

7. Well, that’s just intolerable to unity and value, so the argument is joined.  Meanwhile, of course, what the few pointed out, that any expression of unity and values that excised “bourgeois” from “republic” only provides a cover for repression,  takes material shape. Quelle surprise.

And here’s a bit of obiter dictum for comrades who think the institutions and “democratic values” of France were built by the French Revolution– bullshit.  Those institutions were built by bringing the revolution to an end. Read your history. 

Your institutions, your values are built upon slavery, upon the re-imposition of slavery, you ignorant, blind “republicans” you.