Authoritarians like Putin, Xi, or Kim do not relish public confrontations but act behind the scenes to enforce their will by using thugs like secret police.
Trump, Musk and their ilk derive great pleasure from the personal confrontation and humiliation as well as the satisfaction of getting their way and thrilling their followers.
US has come clean as Bully on a lot of things recently.
The Biolabs are now available as undeniable evidence. Suddenly USAID secrets can be told.
Syria has evolved in a way that makes it crystal clear how US/Turkey/Israel and a bunch of other knowing participants used and even created terrorists groups to break down Assad. They have pretty much owned up to that now with a smirk on their face.
While Biden's "pretend" games at not quite approving of the Israeli Genocide has been replaced by Trump's attempt to take it over and claim full credit.
Near off is the admission that 1 million Ukrainian military died as US proxies to fight Russia - hideous.
So why now and why Biden and Trump doing much the same?
The Phoney hegemony war with China had gone hot. US is commanding every state to allign itself to US Trade Block now. This is not just Canada, Mexico Greenland and Panama. This is South Korea where US seems to have backed a military attempt at Martial law to maintain the US friendly President. Pakistan where US has bribed the judges to impeach Imran Khan. Direct intervention into Romania, Moldova and Georgia elections.
The Masks dropped this is open war against China.
(I have been waiting, it will continue to be ugly).
Kissinger: It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.
Russia invaded Ukraine. Ukrainian soldiers died to defend their country. It is a 'proxy war' only if you think Ukraine is not a real country. Is that what you think?
Don't be silly. 120k Russian soldiers on an expedition in a country with 700k men who had been threatening to take Donbas for the last year. Most provoked war ever.
US and Nato prepared the Ukrainian forces, had already given them weapons had spent 8 years supervising the building of defence positions outside Donbas and and encouraged them to shell civilians for those 8 years.
IS Ukraine a real country - well it certainly had a fake US controlled government after the 2014 coup. Do you think a real Ukrainian government would allow 1m Ukrainians to die so easily? 50% of population has left Ukraine since 2014. Why do you think that is?
That is silly. You talk to Ukrainians - they are in the most civilian friendly war ever. 15k civilians, 1 million soldiers dead.
50% of Ukrainians just left their country post 2014 - they are not stupid, they just didn't think their government was fit to stay for and weren't going to fight an American war. 75% of Ukrainians voted for the Dove, Zelensky not the Hawk, Poroshenko. They liked what Zelensky promised - respect for Russia, negotatiations and a determination to make a peace with Russia. They got a man who told Nazis to stop shelling Donbas civilians but got told to get lost or he'd end up hanging off the streetlights in Kiev Central. He turned, and listened to the US master - Servant of the People turned Servant of the CIA.
Ask your Ukrainian friends: did they leave Ukraine because of the terrible bombing and shelling, because their homes were being destroyed by nasty Russians? (if they say yes ask where, no where, even Mariupol, has really seen much damage - it is a convenient press fiction).
Or did they just not like the economic collapse, the horrendous likelihood of any male over 25 to be called up to fight unwillingly, the vicious bullys of Azov and the conscriptors telling all what to do (or worse for Russian speakers).?
Tell them to be honest.
Ask why there as many emmigrants from Ukraine BEFORE 2022 as since.
Of course Ukrainians are real people, and deserve real sympathy - espeically the wives, mothers and children of the 1 million dead, mostly middle aged men dragged off against their will to fight somebody else's enemy.
Western press haven't reported on large scale damage to Mariuopol for the obvious reason there isn't much there. Pretty sure if they had flown drones over Mariupol and found damage you would have seen it, just as I have seen very little damage when Russian media fly their drones. Some truths are easy to prove and the absence of prove is important. Of course the Steelworks was seriously damaged - that is where Azov was staying - it survived until they released the civilian hostages.
Bucha is the same. BBC reported from Irpin on the day after Russian forces pulled out - Irpin is the other side of the bridge from Bucha. BBC has still not reported from Bucha
It did report a lot of Kiev complaints about Mariuopol and Buch. It did show Ukrainian produced documentaries about both. But very very strangely BBC has never reported directly from Bucha, or reported from Mariuopol except early on under a great deal of supervision.
The press story about both is always "accusations exist". The semantics of ukraine reporting are quite interesting. The reporting is non-existent.
Bullies abused me in early life. It left me with a lot of anger, of course. They select the vulnerable… those safe to bully. But bullies don’t last very long, do they? Eventually they bully the wrong person, someone not as vulnerable as they thought.
There are three ways to deal with a bully. Snitch to teacher only to get beat up when she’s not looking, challenge him to a fight and get your ass kicked, or run him over with a car and flee the scene.
This comment section is a dispiriting microcosm. Still, I thought it was worth pointing out that Josh Marshall has been calling this "bitch slap" politics for years. In general, you seem a bit sanguine about what's going down. I guess I would have to concede that Rumsfeld coined the term "shock and awe", in other words there is considerable continuity between now and what has gone before, and if you are an internationalist there is not so much difference between applying shock and awe to a defenseless, though odious, foreign state and your own country. Despite the performative cruelty and ad hoc feel of a lot of it, I fear there is considerably more method to the madness than is appreciated and that we know remarkably little about the plans and the planners. I wonder whether you, as an historian of fascism, agree. The inaugural spectacle of the world's richest, powerful entrepreneurs being displayed as thralls of the new power certainly reminded me of a scene from Wages of Destruction.
I just listened to this Friday's Ones and Tooze podcast and realized I should have cut you more slack. You conveyed a much greater sense of urgency. And evidently, that was before the attack on US science funding...
Yesterday I listened to the Ones and Tooze podcast-episode on why Trump voters clearly favoured him over the 'lawyer lady' (you elucidated the power dynamics succinctly)... and it makes perfect sense in the light of what just happens.
A kind of eerie, very dark schoolyard dialectic. Reading Mary Trump's story of her father's plight in the family you can see where it all comes from (and I could not finish Isaacscon's Musk bio because it made me too angry - same damaged psychological structure of grandure and sad narcissism beyond (self-) recognition).
It is so encouraging to have you pointing these things out loud (let alone in a way not many ppl on this planet can or will say it). Yes! I am glad we have your publications and your substack! Thank you!
As I read this post I was reminded of the experiences of many women and some men, over the past 10 years, who have been bullied out of their jobs for stating that sex is real.
Very interesting thoughts. How do we defeat the bully? Is shame? Is it empathy? Is it violence? How do you stand up effectively to a bully?
Also incidentally this morning a heard a story about Kanye West praising his 7 year old son for being a bully and that his new song or album is called bully.
Your distinctions are useful - but two books come to mind that have contextualized this in the American case.
In regards to placing psyops in its historical context, as something that has shaped the American Mind - and derived from the American Indian Wars till the present - Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind by Annalee Newitz.
Regarding bullying/psyops as a spillover from Manifesto Destiny as well as advertising, Newitz places it in its context. From the Red Scare to Lavender Scare, such tactics and attitudes have been mainstreamed. They noticed the convergence of same attitudes from the American Indian Wars to Abu Ghraib and follow up to US Afghanistan's and Iraq's endless Wars. How from foreign wars to internal wars, such psyops manuals are increasingly being used as bullying how to - against both the weak, especially against immigrants, as well as academia (the anti-intellectual strawmen argument about cultural Marxism) or anyone who dares challenge the reactionary rhetoric.
Second book is Roddey Reid's Confronting Political Intimidation and Public Bullying: A Citizen Handbook for the Trump Era and Beyond written during Trump 1.0 administration.
Roddey Reid follows step by step this masculinist heroization in media and the press during the 1980s. The Gordon Gecko and the arrival of the pitiless and publicly humiliating reality shows ( TV shows very much like The Running Man SF dystopia) have promoted the bully style of business as the natural product of the corporate milieus from the corporate raiders era till today. This has then migrated into politics. Again this is not an accident - and feminist writers are also pinpointing to how the Sillicon Valley CEO has been reclaimed as the bully-hero of the manosphere.
Dangerous to focus only on the bully in the foreground and not the total nut-jobs in the background - not just Musk, but Thiel, Curtis Yarvin's 'dark enlightenment' and Balaji Srinivasan's The Network State
Reminds me of a mafia protection racket: "That's a nice little economy you've got there... it would be a shame if something happened to it." At this point it is just performative muscle-flexing both for international and domestic spectators.
Thanks for drawing attention to this distinction.
Authoritarians like Putin, Xi, or Kim do not relish public confrontations but act behind the scenes to enforce their will by using thugs like secret police.
Trump, Musk and their ilk derive great pleasure from the personal confrontation and humiliation as well as the satisfaction of getting their way and thrilling their followers.
Sounds like American WWE!
US has come clean as Bully on a lot of things recently.
The Biolabs are now available as undeniable evidence. Suddenly USAID secrets can be told.
Syria has evolved in a way that makes it crystal clear how US/Turkey/Israel and a bunch of other knowing participants used and even created terrorists groups to break down Assad. They have pretty much owned up to that now with a smirk on their face.
While Biden's "pretend" games at not quite approving of the Israeli Genocide has been replaced by Trump's attempt to take it over and claim full credit.
Near off is the admission that 1 million Ukrainian military died as US proxies to fight Russia - hideous.
So why now and why Biden and Trump doing much the same?
The Phoney hegemony war with China had gone hot. US is commanding every state to allign itself to US Trade Block now. This is not just Canada, Mexico Greenland and Panama. This is South Korea where US seems to have backed a military attempt at Martial law to maintain the US friendly President. Pakistan where US has bribed the judges to impeach Imran Khan. Direct intervention into Romania, Moldova and Georgia elections.
The Masks dropped this is open war against China.
(I have been waiting, it will continue to be ugly).
Kissinger: It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.
now more than ever
Russia invaded Ukraine. Ukrainian soldiers died to defend their country. It is a 'proxy war' only if you think Ukraine is not a real country. Is that what you think?
Don't be silly. 120k Russian soldiers on an expedition in a country with 700k men who had been threatening to take Donbas for the last year. Most provoked war ever.
US and Nato prepared the Ukrainian forces, had already given them weapons had spent 8 years supervising the building of defence positions outside Donbas and and encouraged them to shell civilians for those 8 years.
IS Ukraine a real country - well it certainly had a fake US controlled government after the 2014 coup. Do you think a real Ukrainian government would allow 1m Ukrainians to die so easily? 50% of population has left Ukraine since 2014. Why do you think that is?
What a deeply warped and nasty perspective. You should talk to Ukranians sometime, they are real people you know.
That is silly. You talk to Ukrainians - they are in the most civilian friendly war ever. 15k civilians, 1 million soldiers dead.
50% of Ukrainians just left their country post 2014 - they are not stupid, they just didn't think their government was fit to stay for and weren't going to fight an American war. 75% of Ukrainians voted for the Dove, Zelensky not the Hawk, Poroshenko. They liked what Zelensky promised - respect for Russia, negotatiations and a determination to make a peace with Russia. They got a man who told Nazis to stop shelling Donbas civilians but got told to get lost or he'd end up hanging off the streetlights in Kiev Central. He turned, and listened to the US master - Servant of the People turned Servant of the CIA.
Ask your Ukrainian friends: did they leave Ukraine because of the terrible bombing and shelling, because their homes were being destroyed by nasty Russians? (if they say yes ask where, no where, even Mariupol, has really seen much damage - it is a convenient press fiction).
Or did they just not like the economic collapse, the horrendous likelihood of any male over 25 to be called up to fight unwillingly, the vicious bullys of Azov and the conscriptors telling all what to do (or worse for Russian speakers).?
Tell them to be honest.
Ask why there as many emmigrants from Ukraine BEFORE 2022 as since.
Of course Ukrainians are real people, and deserve real sympathy - espeically the wives, mothers and children of the 1 million dead, mostly middle aged men dragged off against their will to fight somebody else's enemy.
Think about them.
"Mariupo...is a convenient press fiction."
Got it.
Not even that really. A lot like Bucha.
Western press haven't reported on large scale damage to Mariuopol for the obvious reason there isn't much there. Pretty sure if they had flown drones over Mariupol and found damage you would have seen it, just as I have seen very little damage when Russian media fly their drones. Some truths are easy to prove and the absence of prove is important. Of course the Steelworks was seriously damaged - that is where Azov was staying - it survived until they released the civilian hostages.
Bucha is the same. BBC reported from Irpin on the day after Russian forces pulled out - Irpin is the other side of the bridge from Bucha. BBC has still not reported from Bucha
It did report a lot of Kiev complaints about Mariuopol and Buch. It did show Ukrainian produced documentaries about both. But very very strangely BBC has never reported directly from Bucha, or reported from Mariuopol except early on under a great deal of supervision.
The press story about both is always "accusations exist". The semantics of ukraine reporting are quite interesting. The reporting is non-existent.
As you say, that is silly. So very silly.
going to ad hominem without even daring to take a side is a bit weird isn't it?
you have something to say or not?
Bullies abused me in early life. It left me with a lot of anger, of course. They select the vulnerable… those safe to bully. But bullies don’t last very long, do they? Eventually they bully the wrong person, someone not as vulnerable as they thought.
Et tu, Brute? There's a reason for reading Shakespeare's tragedies.
There are three ways to deal with a bully. Snitch to teacher only to get beat up when she’s not looking, challenge him to a fight and get your ass kicked, or run him over with a car and flee the scene.
This comment section is a dispiriting microcosm. Still, I thought it was worth pointing out that Josh Marshall has been calling this "bitch slap" politics for years. In general, you seem a bit sanguine about what's going down. I guess I would have to concede that Rumsfeld coined the term "shock and awe", in other words there is considerable continuity between now and what has gone before, and if you are an internationalist there is not so much difference between applying shock and awe to a defenseless, though odious, foreign state and your own country. Despite the performative cruelty and ad hoc feel of a lot of it, I fear there is considerably more method to the madness than is appreciated and that we know remarkably little about the plans and the planners. I wonder whether you, as an historian of fascism, agree. The inaugural spectacle of the world's richest, powerful entrepreneurs being displayed as thralls of the new power certainly reminded me of a scene from Wages of Destruction.
I just listened to this Friday's Ones and Tooze podcast and realized I should have cut you more slack. You conveyed a much greater sense of urgency. And evidently, that was before the attack on US science funding...
Yesterday I listened to the Ones and Tooze podcast-episode on why Trump voters clearly favoured him over the 'lawyer lady' (you elucidated the power dynamics succinctly)... and it makes perfect sense in the light of what just happens.
A kind of eerie, very dark schoolyard dialectic. Reading Mary Trump's story of her father's plight in the family you can see where it all comes from (and I could not finish Isaacscon's Musk bio because it made me too angry - same damaged psychological structure of grandure and sad narcissism beyond (self-) recognition).
It is so encouraging to have you pointing these things out loud (let alone in a way not many ppl on this planet can or will say it). Yes! I am glad we have your publications and your substack! Thank you!
As I read this post I was reminded of the experiences of many women and some men, over the past 10 years, who have been bullied out of their jobs for stating that sex is real.
Do you know these people personally?
Yes, the bullying by the leftist-woke people has become extreme.
And in response to what Trump
Says and does, the leftist-woke forces will launch many viscous counter-attacks with lots more bullying
Very interesting thoughts. How do we defeat the bully? Is shame? Is it empathy? Is it violence? How do you stand up effectively to a bully?
Also incidentally this morning a heard a story about Kanye West praising his 7 year old son for being a bully and that his new song or album is called bully.
I do not like this trend.
Here we have a bully in a partnership with a wanna be dictator. When that power struggle ignites will flames spread or self extinguish?
My modes of power will be compassion and understanding. I will not stoop to bullying like a reprobate.
Your distinctions are useful - but two books come to mind that have contextualized this in the American case.
In regards to placing psyops in its historical context, as something that has shaped the American Mind - and derived from the American Indian Wars till the present - Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind by Annalee Newitz.
Regarding bullying/psyops as a spillover from Manifesto Destiny as well as advertising, Newitz places it in its context. From the Red Scare to Lavender Scare, such tactics and attitudes have been mainstreamed. They noticed the convergence of same attitudes from the American Indian Wars to Abu Ghraib and follow up to US Afghanistan's and Iraq's endless Wars. How from foreign wars to internal wars, such psyops manuals are increasingly being used as bullying how to - against both the weak, especially against immigrants, as well as academia (the anti-intellectual strawmen argument about cultural Marxism) or anyone who dares challenge the reactionary rhetoric.
Second book is Roddey Reid's Confronting Political Intimidation and Public Bullying: A Citizen Handbook for the Trump Era and Beyond written during Trump 1.0 administration.
Roddey Reid follows step by step this masculinist heroization in media and the press during the 1980s. The Gordon Gecko and the arrival of the pitiless and publicly humiliating reality shows ( TV shows very much like The Running Man SF dystopia) have promoted the bully style of business as the natural product of the corporate milieus from the corporate raiders era till today. This has then migrated into politics. Again this is not an accident - and feminist writers are also pinpointing to how the Sillicon Valley CEO has been reclaimed as the bully-hero of the manosphere.
Both are important to this discussion.
Damn. That was brilliant.
Perceptive, helpful essay.
As you say, that is silly. So very silly.
Dangerous to focus only on the bully in the foreground and not the total nut-jobs in the background - not just Musk, but Thiel, Curtis Yarvin's 'dark enlightenment' and Balaji Srinivasan's The Network State
Reminds me of a mafia protection racket: "That's a nice little economy you've got there... it would be a shame if something happened to it." At this point it is just performative muscle-flexing both for international and domestic spectators.