The emergence from the shadows of the global Fourth Reich is the greatest story of our time, and the most terrible shared public trauma and unfolding of malign historical process; sometimes by subversion of our values and ideals and capture of our institutions of government, often by terror and the weaponization of fear and divisions of exclusionary otherness in service to authority and the centralization of power to carceral states of embodied violence, and always by falsifications of ourselves by propaganda and the Wilderness of Mirrors, lies and illusions, misdirection, the absurdities of conspiracy theories, the loyalty tests of rewritten histories, and the manufacture of consent through alternate realities.
Wilderness of Mirrors, a phrase from T.S. Eliot’s Gerontin, is one I use to describe the pathology of falsification of ourselves through propaganda, lies and illusions, rewritten histories, state secrets, alternate realities, authoritarian faith which devours truths. This I disambiguate in comparison with its opposite, journalism and the witness of history as the sacred quest to pursue the truth. We are made counterfeits of ourselves by systems of elite hegemonic power such as patriarchy, and by those who would enslave us, through capture of our stories as theft of the soul.
James Angleton, evil genius of the C.I.A.’s Counterintelligence Service on whom John Le Carre based his character of George Smiley, infamously used the phrase in this sense as well, and it has become universalized throughout the intelligence community he shaped and influenced during the Second World War and its aftermath the Cold War. Writing in reference to David Martin’s biography of himself entitled Wilderness of Mirrors, Angleton described it as a “myriad of stratagems, deceptions, artifices, and all the other devices of disinformation which the Soviet bloc and its coordinated intelligence services use to confuse and split the West … an ever fluid landscape where fact and illusion merge.” And of course, everything he ascribed to the Soviets was true of himself, his own agency, and America as well, and of all states, for all are houses of illusion.
The Netflix telenovela Operation Mincemeat uses the phrase, in a story about the creation of a fictitious officer bearing documents designed to trick the Nazis into preparing for the invasion of Europe somewhere other than Sicily, a series I watched with rapt attention because each of us is created by our stories exactly like this false identity attached to the body of a derelict. Within each of us, a team of authors, archetypes and transpersonal figures, create our personae through stories, a network of memories, histories, and identity; and they do so for their own purposes, which we do not always understand.
As T. S. Eliot has written in Gerontin;
“After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities”
As I described the Fourth Reich’s America of falsifications, alternate realities, conspiracy theories, rewritten histories, book burning and repression of dissent, propaganda and thought control as a primary strategy of our subjugation and the manufacture of consent in my post of August 25 2020, Welcome to Bizarro World, Where Truth and Lies Change Places and All Our Values Are Reversed; A funhouse mirror, filled with distorted images, a thing of surfaces without substance offering a mirage of illusions, lies, and reflections into infinite regress of our atavisms of fear and hate, shadows which we drag behind us in our wake like an invisible reptilian tail, and which like the picture of Dorian Grey reveal our disfigured souls and our failures as Americans and as human beings.
It is an image designed to terrorize us into submission, and to steal our souls.
Among the freaks and monsters, the litanies of victimhood and retribution, of dominion, white supremacy, patriarchy, and fascisms of blood, faith, and soil sung by the barkers and screaming johnnies who warmed up the main show, among all these and reigning over them like a ringmaster was the shadow of the tyrant himself, Traitor Trump, spewing abominations and depravities as the puppet of the demons he worships, Moloch the Seducer chief among them, the lies of those who would enslave us.
For an excellent interrogation of how tyranny operates through falsification, lies, illusions, rewritten histories, alternate realities, and conspiracy theories in our subjugation, enslavement, and the theft of the soul, see Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season one, episode 8; I, Robot…You, Jane. Crucial to the understanding of conspiracy theories is that Moloch, whose name means King, is claimed as the Big Bad of QAnon; the first principle of propaganda is deflection or to claim your enemies are doing whatever you actually are. The second is to assault the idea of truth itself by exaggerating claims to the point where belief becomes an act of perverted faith and a loyalty test.
For a brilliant fictionalization of how conspiracy theories work as falsification in the context of QAnon’s previous iteration, the Nazi blood libel against the Jews, read Umberto Eco’s magisterial novel The Prague Cemetery.
Thanks for showing us what’s under your masks, Republicans; Treason, Racism, Untruth, Misogyny, Predator.
Yet the willingness of the enemy to demonize himself is a great advantage, for we need only perform the four primary duties of a citizen to seize the moral high ground; Question Authority, Expose Authority, Mock Authority, and Challenge Authority.
As written by David Smith in The Guardian, in an article entitled Viktor Orbán Turns Texas Conference into Transatlantic Far-Right Love-In; “The authoritarian Hungarian leader was embraced as a kindred spirit by Trump fans at the CPAC event in Dallas.
“The globalists can all go to hell,” declared Viktor Orbán. “I have come to Texas!”
The crowd roared, whooped and gave a standing ovation as if at a campaign rally for former US president Donald Trump. It was evident they saw in Orbán a kindred spirit – a blunt weapon to wield against liberal foes.
The Hungarian prime minister was the opening speaker at this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, Texas, and perhaps the most vivid demonstration yet of the mutual and rapidly growing affinity between the far right in America and Europe.
Orbán, who has been prime minister for 12 years, boasted about his hardline stance on illegal immigration, law and order and “gender ideology” in schools. He touted a rise in marriages and fall in abortions. He was unapologetic in his defence of blood-and-soil nationalism and contempt for “leftist media”.
And extraordinarily for a foreign leader, he overtly sided with an opposition party – the Republicans – rather than the incumbent Democrats, paying homage to Trump at his golf club in Bedminister, New Jersey, while ignoring Joe Biden at the White House.
Calling for Christian nationalists to “unite forces”, Orbán told CPAC: “Victory will never be found by taking the path of least resistance. We must take back the institutions in Washington and in Brussels. We must find friends and allies in one another. We must coordinate the movements of our troops because we face the same challenge.”
He noted that US midterm elections will be later this year followed by the presidential contest and European parliamentary elections in 2024. “These two locations will define the two fronts in the battle being fought for western civilisation. Today, we hold neither of them. Yet we need both.”
Rarely has the alliance between nationalist parties across the Atlantic been so bold, overt and unshackled. CPAC was once the domain of cold warrior Ronald Reagan. But in recent years guest speakers have included the Brexit cheerleader Nigel Farage and Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, niece of the far-right French politician Marine Le Pen.
On Friday the lineup included Steve Bannon, who has worked with openly racist far-right leaders across Europe and once leased a medieval monastery outside Rome to run a “populism bootcamp”.
Bannon is former executive chairman of Breitbart News, which he once described as “the platform of the ‘alt-right’”, a movement associated with efforts to preserve “white identity” and defend “western values”. He served as chief strategist in the Trump White House and is now facing prison after being convicted of contempt of Congress for failing to comply with the January 6 committee.
CPAC Texas also heard from the Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who railed against the media and told the audience: “When I said that I’m a Christian nationalist, I have nothing to be ashamed of because that’s what most Americans are.” The event will close on Saturday with Trump who, like Orbán, has faced scrutiny over his relationship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Peter Montgomery, a senior fellow at the non-profit group Right Wing Watch, said: “Rightwing leaders, and especially the religious right leaders in the US, love Viktor Orbán for the same reasons they love Vladimir Putin. This overt embrace of Christian nationalism, willingness to use strongman tactics and the power of the government to enforce so-called traditional values about family and sexuality.”
Montgomery added: “We’ve actually seen some signs of that illiberalism and authoritarianism on the Trumpist right in their efforts to ban the teaching of racism in schools, in their aggressive attacks against LGBTQ materials and information in schools and libraries, and even their encouragement of harassment and violence that we’ve seen against election officials and school board members.
“All those signs are signs of a disturbing embrace of authoritarianism on the US right and Orbán is a model and a hero for that to them.”
Orbán has few bigger fans than Tucker Carlson, a Fox News host who interviewed him during a week-long broadcast from Hungary last year. Carlson has promoted “great replacement theory” – the baseless claim of a plot to turn white people into a minority through immigration – in 400 of his shows, according to an analysis by the New York Times.
Orbán’s visit to the US came amid backlash over anti-migrant remarks in which he warned that Europeans must not “become peoples of mixed race” and cited The Camp of the Saints, a 1973 French novel by Jean Raspail that portrays a dystopia in which a flotilla of south Asian people invade France. The novel has also been promoted by Trump allies such as Bannon and Stephen Miller.
Rick Wilson, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “Orbán represents a quiet part out loud element of today’s Republican party. That quiet part out loud is the overt appeal to racial politics, the not-bothering-to-hide-it white supremacy element of the global alt-right and authoritarian movement. Donald Trump was the thing that let it loose in the US.
“Orbán has struck a set of blows against the media in Hungary, which is one of their main targets here. He has overtly embraced the sort of white replacement politics that are so popular with the Tucker Carlson set and a lot of the other folks that are members of the American Maga [Make America great again] movement.”
Wilson, author of Everything Trump Touches Dies, added: “Those things have all added up to giving Orbán a kind of fanboy following in the US of people who were once conservative Republicans and who are now racially driven authoritarian wannabes. He’s the guy who’s pulling it off at a scale that Donald Trump didn’t achieve in the US.”
That appeal includes a stealth attack on democracy. Critics say that Hungary’s judiciary, media and other institutions are suffering death by a thousand cuts as Orbán slowly and surely consolidates power. His rightwing Fidesz party has drawn legislative districts in Hungary in a way that makes it very difficult for opposition parties to win seats – not dissimilar to partisan gerrymandering efforts for state legislative and congressional seats in America. The process currently favors Republicans because they control more of the state legislatures that create those boundaries.
And at CPAC, purveyors of Trump’s “big lie” – the false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him – held prominent slots. Mike Lindell, chief executive of MyPillow, pushed preposterous conspiracy theories about voting machines. Several speakers denounced the congressional investigation into the January 6 insurrection as a sham.
Kurt Bardella, an adviser to the Democratic National Committee, said of Orbán: “They see a blueprint for fascism. They see someone who embodies the Republican party’s values of obstructing free and fair elections, of undermining democratic institutions, of expanding government power and politicising the judicial branch, marginalising minority communities and corrupting the pillars of a free society.
“When you talk about an autocratic regime, that’s what Prime Minister Orbán is in Hungary and it’s exactly the blueprint that Republicans are hoping to follow here in the United States of America. It’s not surprising in the least that, especially in a place like CPAC Texas, these rightwing white nationalists are embracing someone like Orbán.”
Earlier this year, when CPAC held an event in Europe, it naturally chose Hungary. Orbán remains an outlier on the continent – for now. Le Pen lost the French presidential election to Emmanuel Macron, though she gained the far right’s biggest share of the vote yet. In Italy Giorgia Meloni, leader of a party with neofascist origins, is strongly positioned to become prime minister after snap elections this autumn.
Robert P Jones, founder and chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute thinktank in Washington and author of White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, said: “There is this identifiable movement. The difference in many of the European countries is it is represented in minority parties.
“In the US now, I think it’s safe to say that this ethno-religious vision of the country has taken over one of our two major political parties. Even demographically speaking, nearly seven in 10 Republicans are white and Christian today in a country that’s only 44% white and Christian. You can see that identity taking hold as the animating beating heart of the party. It’s a really dangerous situation.”
As I wrote in my post of May 21 2022, The World the Fourth Reich Wants to Condemn Us To: Orban’s Hungary; This week’s gathering of global fascist leadership in Hungary holds up a mirror to the world the Fourth Reich and their front organization the American Republican Party wants to condemn us to.
This includes the use of faith and race in divide and conquer strategies of authoritarian state tyranny and terror and the institutionalization of white supremacist terror, patriarchal sexual terror, and Gideonite Christian fundamentalist identity politics, as well as the total control of all information and history by the state as propaganda.
Remember always the names of the fascists attending CPAC, among the most notorious Fourth Reich organizations of global tyranny and terror which in the arrogance of power does not conceal itself and its members, unlike myriads of other such cabals which conceal secret power and agendas of elite hegemonies of wealth, power, and privilege which wait as ambush predators to pounce on us from the shadows. Remember, and bring a Reckoning.
First we must establish clearly that CPAC is a Nazi revivalist institution, beyond its public identification with White Replacement Conspiracy Theory whose origin is in Nazi antisemitic propaganda.
As I wrote in my post of February 28 2021, Nazi Terror and Tyranny: SS Black Magic and Madness at the CPAC Anti-Democracy White Supremacist Rally; When I write of exposure as hunting Nazis, I don’t mean people I disagree with; I mean actual Nazis, members of a network of hate crime organizations committed to our destruction, and only those active threats of hate crime who by mission of action intend death, mass destruction, and harm to others they consider subhuman. This week’s Conservative Political Action Caucus was designed and attended by Nazis as well as ideological fascists, among them the descendants of war criminals our government collected to use against Communists and others they deemed subversive during the Red Scare of the 1950’s McCarthy Era.
They form a global network which I refer to as the Fourth Reich, a secret society whose membership is exclusive to families of the original Nazi loyalists and their allies and minions, thousands and possibly tens of thousands who have had seventy years in which to infiltrate the world’s governments and elites. I say this not as speculation or as a conspiracy theory, but as a simple fact, one which remains a threat to our liberty.
Someone knew enough about black magic as it was practiced by the SS to design the CPAC stage as a Nazi symbol, soul-stealing magic aimed at transferring the life force of the audience to the speaker for the purpose of submission to the leader’s will, exactly as it was used at the Nuremberg Rallies. It is a masterpiece of propaganda, a dog whistle hidden in plain sight which would have gone entirely unnoticed by outsiders but for the many vigilant Norse pagan antifascists who monitor social media.
Among them is my sister Erin, an antifascist and prominent Norse pagan gythia or priestess, author of Asatru A Beginners Guide to the Heathen Path and manager of the Asatru facebook forum, literate in Old Norse and medieval forms of Gaelic and German among other languages, and practitioner of the traditional arts of galdur or poetic vision, seidr or sacred trance, and berserkergangr or martial arts, and like myself an admirer of Loki the Trickster.
Here is her post on Witches and Pagans entitled The Nazi Symbol That Is the CPAC Stage; “There are photos circulating on social media of the stage of CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Caucus. One is included in this blog post. The stage is an odd and awkward looking design that could not have arisen purely from functionality, it looks like “the Odal Rune,” and it appears that the speakers at CPAC will be standing on a Nazi platform.
Let’s talk about Othala as distinct from “The Odal Rune.” The symbol you see in the photo is “The Odal Rune” which is 100% a Nazi symbol. The upturned feet on the ends of the legs appear only on the Nazi version, Odal, not on any version of Othala, the historical rune used in historical heathen alphabets.
A curious thing, though. Modern rune magic has adopted the “symbol upside down = opposite” thing that is common to Tarot cards, aka regular or reversed, and of course the dichotomy between the regular cross and the upside down cross. From the perspective of speakers backstage, the symbol is right side up in this photo, but from the perspective of the audience it’s upside down. Regular Othala in rune readings basically means real estate or psychic inheritance, but the “Odal Rune” is usually said to mean “heritage.” So, whose “heritage” is being protected and encouraged in this photo? Not the audience’s. If whoever designed this stage actually understands magic, the intent is to concentrate power in the hands of the speakers, away from the general public. Magically, it would take heritage energy from the audience and allow the people standing on the platform to vampirize that energy for their own use.
If the intent behind the choice of the shape was not magical, though, it’s probably meant to be a dog-whistle to neonazis. Experts on neonazis are mostly being more cautious about calling this out. American Iron Front tweeted the picture and called it “probably a coincidence.” I’m glad that the anti-fascist community is being careful not to stomp on heathens and pagans when they aren’t sure what symbol they’re looking at. But I’m an expert on heathen symbols and I know this isn’t one. There is no possible way an actual Asatruar drew the footed or winged version on a design program thinking it was a nice historical heathen rune. It’s unlikely the stage designer is heathen, anyway. That is not Othala, the heathen rune, it’s Odal, the Nazi symbol.
You can read about more symbols in my article Heathen Vs. Hate in the latest issue of Witches & Pagans Magazine.”
And why should an American political organization which designates itself as “conservative” find a safe haven for Nazi revivalism, allyship, kinship, and an aspirational figure of the America and global humankind they want to shape as our common future in Viktor Orban’s Hungary?
Because here Nazis are celebrated as national heroes, officially and openly in holidays, parades, and monuments. This is unique among nations in all the world, though fascisms of blood, faith, and soil are now the world’s dominant ideology and tyranny has eclipsed democracy as the system by which we have chosen to be human together.
Hungary in the jaws of Viktor Orban models how fear can be weaponized in service to power and identity politics leveraged to manufacture consent and centralize authority. Of this I say; beware of those to claim to speak and act in your name, for they are trying to subjugate you to their will and uses.
And this we must resist. To fascism there can be but one reply; Never Again!
As I wrote in my post of March 31 2020, Democracy Falls in Hungary; As the pandemic disrupts and destabilizes the global order, eager would-be tyrants seize the chance to amass and consolidate power against the forces of democracy pulling structures and systems in the other direction.
Hungary’s Viktor Orban is among the most venal and odious of democracy’s foes, having already established Hungary as a fascist state which lionizes Nazis and provides a secure base of operations and launchpad for the reconquest of Europe by the Fourth Reich.
Yesterday he seized totalitarian powers as well, making Hungary the first nation to surrender liberty to the fear with which the pandemic has gripped the world.
As described in The Washington Post; “A decade under the nation’s illiberal nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orban, has corroded the state’s checks and balances, cowed the judiciary, enfeebled civil society and the free press, and reconfigured electoral politics to the advantage of Orban’s ruling Fidesz party. So, when the coronavirus pandemic hit, Budapest’s ailing democracy proved all too vulnerable.
On Monday, Hungary’s parliament passed a controversial bill that gave Orban sweeping emergency powers for an indefinite period of time. Parliament is closed, future elections were called off, existing laws can be suspended and the prime minister is now entitled to rule by decree. Opposition lawmakers had tried to set a time limit on the legislation but failed. Orban’s commanding two-thirds parliamentary majority made his new powers a fait accompli.”
In the words of Dalibor Rohac; “COVID-19 is about to claim a new victim: Hungary’s democracy.
The country’s parliament is set to adopt a new law that will give the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban a legal mandate to rule by decree, without any sunset clause and without parliamentary oversight. The government initially sought to fast-track the legislation and adopt it already on March 24, but it lacked the supermajority needed to accelerate the proceedings. The party, however, does not lack the votes to ensure that the legislation is passed through the normal legislative process a few days later.
The brazenness of Orban’s power grab is without any parallel in recent European history.
Like Hungary, other European countries have declared a state of emergency and are resorting to draconian measures. They include shutting down air travel, closing borders, restricting personal freedom and even nationalizing sectors of the economy. While all European governments need flexibility in order to respond to the lethal pandemic in real time, any new powers they acquire are subject to parliamentary review and are planned to remain in effect only for limited periods.
Similarly, the Hungarian constitution allows the government to maintain a state of emergency (in place since March 11) only for an initial period of 15 days, after which it must seek parliamentary approval.
Yet instead of asking parliament for an extension for a fixed period, to be followed by another round of parliamentary deliberation if necessary, the new Hungarian legislation would ensure that the state of emergency remains in force as long as the government deems necessary, while normal parliamentary oversight is suspended. Throughout that time, the government would be free to legislate by decree. No snap elections or referendums could be held, and even the rules of procedure of the country’s Constitutional Court could be altered by its president.
The proposed legislation also creates two new crimes. Interfering with the quarantine would lead to a prison sentence of up to five years (eight if anyone dies as a result). More strikingly, to “claim or spread a falsehood or claim or spread a distorted truth in relation to the emergency in a way that is suitable for alarming or agitating a large group of people” would be punishable by up to three years of imprisonment (Section 10 of the law). A government-run news outlet has already called for the prosecution of opposition politicians under the new statute — simply for pointing out the lack of readiness of the country’s public health system.
Everyone should think twice before giving Orban the benefit of the doubt. His decade-long premiership has been marked by a continual assault on any constraints on his power — whether by courts, civil society or the media. Hungary’s previous moves toward authoritarianism were disguised as a necessary reaction to outside threats: foreign corporate interests during the financial crisis, “cosmopolitan elites” during the refugee crisis of 2016, or, whenever the occasion demands, the philanthropist George Soros (a staple of Orban’s nativist playbook).
True to his past, Orban did not hesitate to connect the virus to migration: “We are fighting a two-front war. One front is called migration, and the other one belongs to the coronavirus. There is a logical connection between the two, as both spread with movement.”
Indeed, the first patient with covid-19 in Hungary appears to be an Iranian student. The government responded by imposing a travel ban on Iran (among other countries) and expelling 15 Iranian students. Yet, the 2,500-strong Iranian student population in Hungary is not a result of uncontrolled immigration imposed from Brussels but of Orban’s conscious policy choices, especially the gradual warming of Hungarian-Iranian and Hungarian-Syrian relations, visible also in the lenient treatment of wealthy Syrians applying for residency in Hungary.
Hungary’s new Law on Protecting Against the Coronavirus demonstrates that Orban will never let a serious crisis go to waste in the quest to entrench himself as prime minister for life. As of now, there are few reasons to believe that his wager will fail, as the combination of nativism and fear of a deadly yet invisible threat makes for a potent political mix. Unless there is strong pushback from Brussels and Washington — which are both understandably preoccupied by more urgent matters — Hungary is bound to emerge from the current crisis as a full-fledged dictatorship.”
As I wrote in my post of March 15 2020, Hungary: in the Shadows of Nazi Revivalism and Dominion; As Viktor Orban elevates Hungary’s Nazi past to a national mythology, Budapest has become a center and staging area for Nazi revivalism throughout Europe. This has occurred in concert with the weaponization of Christian faith and the use of the Syrian and Libyan refugees from the Turkish-Russian conflict of dominion as a fear factor in the seizure of political power by European fascists.
The Fourth Reich has met varying degrees of success in its attempts to reawaken global fascism; there are now many tyrannies and autocracies throughout the world, including the United States of America under Traitor Trump’s Republican alliance of white supremacist terrorists and Gideonite fundamentalist patriarchs, Xi Jinping’s Chinese Communist Party, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Narendra Modi’s India, and other fascisms of blood, faith, and soil, but only in Viktor Orban’s Hungary are actual Nazis celebrated as heroes and zealously sheltered by the power and authority of a government. In Hungary the Fourth Reich has an incubator for the reconquest of Europe.
And this is the nightmare which has come to Texas.
The twilight of democracy looms over the world, and with it comes an age of fascism and of darkness.
To which we may reply with Shakespeare; “”If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”
Gerontin, by T.S. Eliot
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47254/gerontion
Wilderness of Mirrors: Intrigue, Deception, and the Secrets that Destroyed Two of the Cold War’s Most Important Agents, by David C. Martin
Operation Mincemeat Netflix trailer
Discussion of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season one, episode 8; I, Robot…You, Jane, by JustDaggers
The Prague Cemetery, by Umberto Eco
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/03/day-of-honor-viktor-orban-hungary-neo-nazis-rally
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/03/day-of-honor-viktor-orban-hungary-neo-nazis-rally
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