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Off-Guardian deletes then puts back my critique of their 'fake binary' article

#1

After I made a stink and got some key support the editors at Off Guardian ‘un deleted’ my critique of their fake binary article. Never admitting of course that they had ever deleted my post.

Here is my post, below is the link to the article to which I was reacting.

Thanks for a stimulating article: The ‘fake binary’ is certainly a useful concept but as with all useful concepts it can be used to distort as well as clarify.

Let me explain. Look at this assertion from the article above:

Off Guardian "In other words, the divide over Covid tactics is as real as the fight over Ukraine. It all serves the same purpose, promoting the great reset and the global technocratic government."

Do you see this as both a glib non sequitur to the preceding statements AND a simplistic faith based assertion? This is what I call the ‘priest move’, when political writers, not content with their role, aim to move into the ‘priest class’ where their assertions about reality are supposed to be taken on ‘faith’ by the non-initiated multitude.

First, let’s take real world counter evidence that the assertion simply ignores: 1) the people in Donbass certainly know the fight in Ukraine is REAL 2) The govt controlled banking system in China promotes industrial productive capitalism, the privately controlled banking system in the USA empire promotes non-productive financial capitalism (see the writings of Michael Hudson). 3) China and Russia are promoting an alternative trading system (see the writings of Pepe Escobar).

Second, a, hypothetical. Suppose you witness a battle between two mafia families for control of a neighborhood gambling operation. Would you conceptualize the battle as a ‘fake binary’ simply because they were both mafia families? No, there would real winners and real losers which would have an effect on the people living in that neighborhood (for example, one family exploits less than another family) and in the mafia family itself (the boss can get killed and others also): Saddam Hussein was a leader of a hierarchical system based on organized violence, but his demise had real effects on the people of Iraq: It would have been an error to view the invasion of Iraq as a ‘false binary’.

Third, this concept of ‘false binary’ can be used, or should I say misused, to analyze, in a phony way, and trivialize, ANY conflict. WWI? Oh ho ho, a false binary! Both sides were pushing for more industrialization! The Vietnam war? Oh ho ho! a false binary! Both sides wanted to control the Vietnamese people! etc ad-nauseam.

The concept ‘false binary’ when used correctly can be a useful analytical tool. But it can also be used to manipulate in a priest-like fashion.

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#2

Well said E!

You’re floggin’ a dead 'un there, though, I think. Both the ed-crew and (most of) the btls at Off-G are pretty solidly on the ‘all in it together’ article of faith. The sort of glaring realworld facts that contradict that rather unconvincing hypothesis, such as you adduce here, are simply brushed aside.

Similarly, a lot of them, in both parts, cling to the cornucopian, startrekkytechietechie articles of faith, which deny any possibility of a Long Descent for humankind due to vital stuff running out; nor any possibility of there ever being an unsustainably large overshoot in human population (and if you disagree with that, then the ONLY possibility is that you’re a damned Malthus-worshipping eugenicist, seeking to genocide innocents by the billion!!)

I may exaggerate a little, perhaps. :slight_smile:

But there’s a strong whiff of that faith-based thinking (meaning: ‘This is what I BELIEVE, so the universe HAS TO give it to me!!!’) in the tone of many of the btls.

Whilst I have your attention, E, can I hark back to a discussion we were having about where ultimate realpolitikal power really resides in the world. You thought maybe amongst the richest super-rich, I leaned towards the mafia-like purveyors of skilled professional violence within state power-structures - the makers of offers which no sane person without an urgent death-wish can ever refuse - as the ultimate controllers, even of the oligarchs. The ones who deal in disappearances, horrifying kompromat, execrable tortures, and blunt killing (both retail and wholesale) as a necessary business of life. The fascist mindset, in a word.

I just wanted to offer this potted history of the Gladio racket, posted by Cynthia Chung at Saker, as an illustration of the sort of outfits I mean. I think the people and the clandestine formations which set up - and continue to run - Gladio and similar protection rackets worldwide are perhaps nearer to ultimate, capo-di-tutto-capi raw power in the world.

Not completely in charge, of course. As you know, I don’t believe ANY coterie of humans is up to that spot. But still, purveyors of skilled violence such as these must come somewhere near the top of the heap of - the always competing - global mafias:

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#3

If someone is in charge in an industrialized world it’s going to be the people with money, who buy the violence. The time when hordes of warriors swept in and took the land and enslaved people and became the aristocracy ended back in the bronze age. Then the investors and priests took over and paid the warriors. Think about it Rhis, these mafia deep state goons have to be paid a lot and require a very expensive system of support and resources.Who pays them? That’s who has the power.

That said, my non political side says that nobody really has the power we think they have. I just finished reading War and Peace by Tolstoy and he includes a running philosophical commentary throughout the book whose theme is that nobody is really in control but it’s the historians who make it seem that way. And as J. Krishnamurti suggested the daily conflict of all individuals together creates a society based on the violent resolution of conflict, either war or the legal system, and that we are thus all responsible. Sometimes I believe that and sometimes I don’t.

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#4

Nice to know that I agree with Lev Nikolayevich! :slight_smile:

I quite agree that having control of a dragon’s hoard of loot confers a whole lot of WealthPowerStatus on the holder. It’s just that I think that in a straight contest between money and violence, violence will mostly win; especially as those who have the loyalty of teams of skilled, professionally violent operatives will always have an edge over the merely rich (and their merely-paid thugs). And of course they will always arrange to have a cut of the wealth-grubbers’ money, either by protection-racket reluctant-but-unavoidable agreements, or by straight smash-and-grab taking, in the way that the Western gics strongholding in Washington seized gold belonging to the Ukraine, Libya, Venezuela, etc., plus the foreign-bank-held reserves of Russia in the West, plus other straightforward violent gun-point theft instances. Where are those bars now? In the hands of capi who manage effectively both money rewards and the loyalty of skilled thugs.

In practice, the only thing that can prevent or reverse such strokes is equal and opposite concentrations of rival violent operators.

It’s a chaotic dog-eat-dog rivalry, I must again agree, in which no single outfit is ever fully, globally in charge, and never likely to be. It’s just that my odds-calculator reckons that in a straight struggle between money-wealth and teams of loyalist thugs under a respected leadership, the violent lot will eventually triumph. Money just doesn’t buy that degree of loyal commitment, the way the esprit de corps of an effective gang of doctrinally-committed thugs under canny leadership will.

Cynthia’s piece gives a vivid description of just such self-motivated thugs at work, aware of, and managing cannily, the wealth flows within their reach, but still mainly trading in violence-induced terror, to control people. It remains a potent instrument in human affairs - dammit! But yeah, it’s a seamless thing. The loot and the violence are both crucial, in modern settings.

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#5

look at the language, ‘professional’, ‘operatives’. In what context does one become a professional, in any field? It requires training and equipment, a structure, a system. Who pays for that training and equipment, who provides the money to pay for those at every level of the structure, the system? Think it through in terms of the real world of human beings with human needs. How does an ‘operator’ operate? Only within a system of operations. A doctor does not ‘operate’ in a vacum. He needs training, financial support during training and during the operation, he has logistical needs, a table, tools, assistants. It’s the same with the ‘violent operator’.

I think your fallacy Rhis is one of imagination, to some extent we must imagine an accurate context for how violence occurs in the real world. Simply ‘being violent’ is not possible in order to gain anything beyond your schoolmates lunch money. Being violent, in true power ways, means being part of a hierarchical structure of paid violent operators. In the end always, the piper does not call the tune, those who pay the piper, who maintain the hierarchical structure with financial support, call the tune.

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#6

It’s a really weak article. Kit seeks to spread his bets within an overall narrative that “they’re all in this together”, hence the tired ‘false binary’ trope. The degree of control that he asserts is simply not feasible.

It is feasible to use overwhelming control of narrative in a society, or a cluster of States, to create the illusion of total control. And to create (but more likely to condone) within that framework two or more competing strands: virus/terrain, Republican/Democrat, etc. At this abstract level KK’s thesis is convincing. But the world is much more complex than that and true power consists of allowing strategies to emerge and then capitalising upon them. Was Covid deliberately concocted so that certain well placed folks could make massive profits from PPE, phone apps, vaccines, and the rest? Maybe, but it’s the fact that certain people were well placed and/or reacted first, that is much more interesting and revealing of the power grid running through societies.

The real struggle is in the information sphere. This does not contradict the fact that, tragically, real bullets are killing real people all over the world. Why that is happening is shaped very forcefully by vested interests, but it is contested. Unless and until countering information can be entirely suppressed or ridiculed the grip on narrative power is not secure.

This is why so much effort is being taken to shut down non-approved media, to shout down prominent dissidents, to chill discussion and enforce obedience.

As for China: much of the coverage I’ve seen is choreographed, carefully filmed, but often clumsily executed. I would say the same of Canadian, Australian, American and especially British reporting. President Xi is now able to ‘cave in’ to public pressure and adopt a less ferocious Covid response.

But watch out for continuing outbreaks in places that, weirdly, are critical parts of the supply chain. Apple factories, container ports, computer assembly complexes. “Oh dear. Hopefully you were insured against that?” says the nice manager over the Zoom from Beijing. Cue another collapsed conglomerate.

Using crude bullshit to hide the real agenda ‘works’ in China because to really undermine it would be to invite dismantling of the same m.o. here.

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#7

Thanks for a stimulating response.

Surely the ‘fake binary’ frame must prove the ‘true unity’ exists.

This can be done for example with Republicans/Democrats with, for example the documented bipartisan support for the military budge and war policy.

If the ‘true unity’ is not proven it’s just an assertion on the writer’s part.

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