EMPIRE A MUST

It may seems counter-intuitive to laud the concept of empire, just when, for the first time since 1938, a great power has invaded another country, while evoking the same exact reasons as Adolf Hitler.

But who stopped Hitler? The empire of the West (don’t tell me it was Stalin, far from it). So it’s not surprising that extolling empire as the core of civilization is exactly what I will do.

The basic idea of empire is simple: law makes civilization possible, but only force can implement it. Let me repeat, with more details:

The law says what ought to be done, and what cannot be done, so that civilization can survive. As civilization progresses, so does the law. As civilization penetrates every nook and cranny, all the way down to atoms, so does the law.

Frankish Fasces: Twice The Blade

However, one cannot just have the law. “Dura Lex, Sed Lex.” Said the Romans: the law is hard, but it is the law. How is law made hard? Through the application of power.

The symbol of the Roman state was the fasces. A bunch of weak rods, representing the People, bound together, around a fearsome axe, representing the lethal power of the state in its application of justice.

In the symbolic of the fasces one finds many ideas: the People makes one of the many (“E Pluribus Unum”), and that makes the People strong, and People’s justice can cut through infamy.

The fasces was adopted as the symbol of both the American and French republics.

To implement the law one needs, ultimately armed force, and that’s directed by “imperium”, the all-encompassing authority top Roman generals were endowed with. In its most frequent original version, the imperium was exerted by a Consul, the top executive and justice officer of the Roman state. The Consul had enormous power, but just for one month (then the power rotated to their colleague, also elected for just one year).

An empire is just a place over which the law can be implemented.

The notion has been much abused. There had been terrible empires. Or empires with terrible episodes: Congo as the heart of darkness, when the king of Belgium treated it as its personal property; Namibia under the crazed, racist Prussians; even South Africa, when the UK went feral on the Boers; the Mongols destroying Kiev, etc..

Yet, without empire, there is no law, and thus no civilization.

Fasces Dwarf Politicians: USA Congress

Some of the “politically correct” are sure to howl, when told that empires are a necessity. Howling is what they do best, and why they are “politically correct” to start with.

Intelligence is about mastering many emotions, logics, semantics, data, and distinctions. All too many who present themselves as “progressive”, or “anti-Neo-Cons”, or from the self-proclaimed left, and not just in the USA, have long identified empire, fascism, Nazism, capitalism, Neo-Cons, the West, etc.

Now they have been joined, loud and clear, by full blown plutocrats and Putin himself. Silicon Valley plutocrats scream that their critics, such as yours truly, are Neo-Nazis, and Putin has followed the American tycoons, to claim exactly the same.

(Those familiar with Hitler’s Big Lie technique will recognize it, for what it is. Similarly, Hitler, an agent of the plutocracy, claimed to be against “plutocrats”, for peace, and the rights of minorities. At some point at least half a billion people believe him: the German speakers, the Italians, the Japanese, Spaniards, Soviets, and many others.)

The world is divided nowadays in three major empires: the West, Russia and China. There are also minor powers, such as Pakistan, North Korea, Vietnam, Iran.

There is just one dominant civilization, though, and its instrument of implementation is the United Nations. Even China and Russia are supposed to submit to that (when the USSR refused to take part to the UN, it found itself with the UN intervening in Korea).

What are we going to make of the necessity of empire?

Well, it’s exactly as with nuclear power: if one has to deal with it, one should concentrate not on denial, but on making the situation better.

Lincoln Power Rests On Fasces For All To See

The problem with Putin is not that he wants to be part of an empire, but the kind of empire he wants Putin calls what he wants the “Eurasian Union”, a good concept. However, instead of being articulated around the Rights of Man, it’s articulated around the rights of Putin, as perceived by Putin.

The biosphere needs an empire of the Rights of Man. Real progressives ought to embrace it, and nobody else could seriously deny it. The pseudo-left, Putin’s, and plutocracy’s, best friend, cannot brandish fake versions of history, as we brandish the Rights of Man.  Because the Rights of Man trump the past. Especially when the past is fake.

What does this means in the situation at hand? Putin has violated international law by invading a country without any international law fig leaf (as the Bushes and Clinton had when attacking Iraq; or Afghanistan in 2001). The empire of the West is immensely more powerful than Putin’s.

So why did Putin attack? For the same reason as Hitler attacked.

Hitler, just as Putin, came to be persuaded that their friends the plutocrats control the West, and thus that democracy is weak. This is sort-of-true, I can’t deny.

However, in 1939, Hitler underestimated the French Republic and the Polish nation which, in spite of the obvious danger, decided, grimly, to go to war against Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Tojo, and the infernal cortege of thousands of American plutocrats and their corporations (who were the creatures Hitler counted on, to conquer the world).

Britain and the Commonwealth courageously followed. By then it was clear that, barring a miracle, Hitler had lost of the war. However, in May-June 1940, such a near-miracle happened: the astounding defeat of France, caused by a confluence of many unexpected and weird circumstances.

In any case the fact remains that France and Britain did not make in 1939 the mistake they had made in 1938: wearily, they finally went to war against Satan (for want of a better word).

On this small planet, this small cosmic spaceship, there is space for just one imperium. The law, the only law compatible with civilization, needs to be imposed, from Silicon Valley to Wall Street, to Moscow. One of course needs to be tolerant and lenient.

However, when plutocrats, or their allies (Putin, Hitler) decide that a new regime, a purely diabolical one, can now rule, that democracy is dead, that’s exactly the best time for democracy to be born again from its ashes, and incinerate all those who call the People “Nazi” for refusing to live on its knees.

Humans are minds, and minds can’t live on their knees.

Patrice Ayme

Tags: empire, fascism, plutocracy, Putin, The West