When Russian troops began their invasion of Ukraine on February 24, some announced that world war three had just started. Some of this idea’s most vocal supporters are quite well-known, like dissident Garry Kasparov. However, except Fiona Hill, former National Security Advisor, and a few others, they are not security “experts”. On the contrary, many professional security analysts are much more cold-headed and emphasise the unique history behind the war. Nevertheless, most media and governments in virtually all NATO countries, the EU and even hedge funds are spreading this narrative.

The waning of liberal-democratic freedoms

At the time of writing, a full-fledged military confrontation between Russia and NATO has not started — perhaps not yet. Though, in many the liberal-democratic NATO countries, it would be easy to get the opposite impression. Progressively, over less than 20 days of fighting, several countries invited to or imposed a ban on Russian media. Nowadays, RT (formerly Russia Today) and Sputnik TV are out of the air in virtually every EU country. Moreover, anyone who refuses to adhere to this warmongering narrative of fear faces generalised hostility within and outside public institutions. Essentially, everything the Western has criticised the Russian government for doing to free-thinkers and dissidents. The Russification of the West began without the need for a single shot fired against a NATO soldier.

Crucially, neither this degeneration of liberal democracy nor its driving mechanisms are unique to the 21^st century. On the contrary, the same malaise began manifesting already at the eve of the First World War. Most commonly, politicians and laymen held that it may have been “necessary to Prussianize ourselves in order to destroy Prussianism in Europe”. In other words, there were fears that defeating the Second German Empire’s militarism required the “prussianization of the democracies”. Thus, there was an acknowledgement that one needs to be careful of whom to choose as the enemy “because that’s who you become most like”.

A known script

Since 9/11, Western media and governments have been finding new ways to scare the public and scapegoat mostly harmless minorities. Inarguably, Americans witnessed the impressive efficacy with which a government can infiltrate blameless citizens’ everyday life. Back then, many saw the Bush administration’s PATRIOT Act as an attempt at restoring the US’s lost sense of security. On the contrary, it was a prime example of the ways in which liberal-democratic publics can forgo their freedoms in a Faustian bargain for inexistent security.

Meanwhile, the criminalisation of Muslimspioneered the systematic defamation of those hindering the government’s agenda. Clearly, this strategy underpinned the mainstream contempt, first, for Trump supporters and vaccine sceptics and, then, anti-interventionists and Russian.

Liberal democracies win their wars because theyremain free

As it is the case today, when a war starts in Europe pacifist sentiments dissipate almost overnight. Thus, US citizens’ and their government’s position become even more weighty for the future of global peace.

Against his background, the works of Bertrand Russel, one of the greatest public intellectuals of the past century, resound strongly. As an active opponent to US and British war efforts, Russel wrote extensively on war and its acceptability. Eventually, he came to realise that “the evils of war are almost always greater than” those of an unjust peace. Moreover, he argued that it is not enough to abstain from participating in the war effort on the individual level. Indeed, “a civilized and humane way of life” requires women and “men who try hard, beforehand, to prevent their country from going to war”. The only reason to take up arms is “resistance to tyranny and aggression” against an aspiring “Emperor of the World”.

But there is no sane mind who would compare the current Russian leadership to such an enemy. Still, liberal-democratic publics are renouncing their rights at an alarming speed while the steadfast Prussianization of democracy goes on. And this time it brings a poisonous dose of cultural racism and a heightened risk of segregation. Yet, no one prevented British Nazi sympathisers from doing propaganda in support of the Third Reich. Yet, no one censored Henry Ford’s antisemitic publications for their astounding consonances with Nazi ideology. Yet, no one prevented artists and intellectuals from Fascist Italy from perform or have exhibitions in the US. And liberal democracy not just survived: it grew stronger. Even if NATO was at war with Russia, demonising everything Russian would not help win it.

In conclusion, the majority of conservatives and democrats against US interventionism is heartening. But it cannot cancel the hawkishness of elected and campaigning representatives from both the left and the right. It is freedom itself that is stake.

There are many who still continue clinging to an illusion of the future prospect of U.S.-China relations. They believe that if there are some positive factors, then both countries could get back to their former harmonious relationship. The number of people who hold this view or are in a wait-and-see mood is rather high, and most of them are entrepreneurs. In Shanghai which is under lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Japanese diplomatic community pointed out that 11,000 Japanese companies are still in the city, and more entrepreneurs from other countries and regions are based in China, looking forward to the happier days.

In addition to entrepreneurs, there is also a large group of people who have been trapped by certain interests and who have had a long history of harmless cooperation with China, such as those having academic or technological partnerships, or those with financial investment relationships. These relations, initially harmless, have increasingly become dangerous. Apart from that, there are a large number of people from both countries who have family ties and children. The marriages between China and the United States alone involve several hundred thousand Chinese and American couples. All these people are very much looking forward to the normalization, or “rather re-normalization” of U.S.-China relations.

Little is known today that the “normalization” of U.S.-China relations was once a big buzzword before the reform and opening-up of China. In February 1972, President Richard Nixon visited Beijing, Hangzhou, and Shanghai, met with Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai, and signed the Shanghai Communiqué. In the communiqué, both countries pledged to pursue “full normalization” of their diplomatic relations. Indeed, this has been achieved, after the relations between the two nations were frozen for 23 years.

Understandably, many are now eager for U.S.-China relations to be normalized again because they are involved in it.

The question is, is this possible?

The answer is simple. If the U.S.-China relationship cannot get back to normal under the administration of President Biden of the Democratic Party, then it will not be normalized in the future. There are two reasons for this, one is China, and the other is the United States.

China has maintained good relations with the U.S. for a long time, and it is more willing to deal with the pro-establishment American Democratic administration. For instance, when Barrack Obama was the President, Michelle Obama and her mother Marian Robinson during their visit to China were said to “bark” at the hotel staff, so much so that the hotel employees complained about the entourage. Michelle’s brother Craig Robinson had his shares of controversies too. China tolerated all these, as long as the overall situation was acceptable. When President Biden took office, many in China had expectations that relations between the two countries would improve, but unfortunately, due to the overall system and the constraints of the U.S. Congress, Biden was unable to make any major adjustments. All he can do is to ensure the U.S.-China relationship would not further deteriorate from that of Donald Trump’s presidency, but that is as far as it goes. Therefore, China’s expectations of this Democratic administration have been lowered to almost zero, and the coldness between the two sides remains the same.

On the U.S. side, the process of decoupling in U.S.-China relations has always continued. There are various reasons for this, among them the strength and rise of China’s economy, the increase in competitiveness, the beginning of the contest for international discourse, and its desire for the international order to change in a direction favorable to China. Of course, there is also the issue of the Hong Kong protests and demonstrations, the issue of democracy and human rights, the Taiwan issue, China-Russian relations, and many other issues that are troubling. All these issues are seen as a threat and a challenge for the U.S. from China. Therefore, the positioning of China in the United States has changed from being a collaborator to being a competitor. This will remain so, even with the change of ruling party in the U.S. The reason for this is not due to any individual in the U.S. leadership but because of geopolitical competition in the international order. At the back of this issue are numerous points in question, such as currencies, exchange rates, capital, armaments, alliances, regional stability, etc. None of these can be changed easily.

In fact, the window of opportunity for change in U.S.-China relations is in the Biden administration. If no changes can be done, it will be even less likely that the next U.S. administration, whether Democratic or Republican, could accomplish anything further. The replacement of the non-establishment Trump administration by the establishment Biden administration provided a major opportunity for a fix. It has to be admitted that the Biden administration did change quite a few of Trump’s policies, such as immigration policy, transatlantic partnership, global climate issues, etc. That said, the only thing that Biden has not fixed or adjusted is the U.S.-China relationship.

In such a scenario, would it be possible for China to take the initiative to promote the normalization of U.S.-China relations in the future? The possibility of this is also rather thin.

Although China’s economic growth is to a large extent dependent on net exports, which are very much linked to the U.S. market, there are certain limitations to China’s growth potential. Now that China’s economic growth rate has been declining year on year, gradually falling back from the double-digit rates of the past, and basically fluctuating around 5%, the economic element in political achievement is becoming less and less relevant. The only thing that can replace economic achievements in the political structure is to stimulate more and stronger nationalist sentiments, such as anti-U.S. hostility. This, of course, is the basis for the long-term deterioration of U.S.-China relations, rather than the driving factor for normalizing them.

In other words, in a period when the economy is important, the U.S.-China relationship matters a lot and is a positive bargaining chip. Conversely, in a period when the economy is unimportant, the relationship will not matter much. China is now at a critical stage where the economy is not very important. Instead, what is important is politics. This adjustment of the Chinese society determines that it is almost impossible to normalize the relations between the two countries again.

Therefore, it is probable that U.S.-China relations will deteriorate in the long term in the predictable future, and there should be no more illusion about this.

On April 19th, Glenn Greenwald, who is not only a great lawyer but one of the world’s most brilliant investigative and analytical journalists, headlined “The WashPost’s Doxxing of @LibsOfTikTok Reveals Who Corporate Journalists See as Their Targets”, and he exposed how the billionaires (the controlling owners of those mega-corporations) have used their ownership and control of the U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media in order to blackball and blacklist, from their liberal media, anyone or anything that would constitute a real threat against their own control over the media, over the government, and over their profit and nonprofit corporations. In short: he exposed that the money-power people won’t allow their control to be effectively challenged or weakened. He explained how fascism, and even nazism (racist fascism), can be liberal, and not ONLY conservative — can be leftist, and not ONLY rightist; can be far left, and not ONLY far right. (His presentation there includes also a brief summary of how he had switched from being a lawyer, to his becoming an investigative journalist — a profession that he describes as, and was attracted to on account of its being aimed at — “exposing the secrets and crimes and improprieties of the most powerful actors in society.”)

Greenwald, being the genius that he is, was able there quickly to expose — rip off the mask of — nazism, and to reveal it so deeply as to penetrate beyond and beneath the superficial level of the standard ideological labels, so that the public might ultimately become able to be freed from the lies by which the billionaire-class has captured and mentally enslaved the public — enslaved them into neoconservative-neoliberal beliefs and commitments that benefit ONLY the super-wealthy, such as are those billionaires themselves.

That masking is the phenomenon which has caused the publics in all of the U.S.-and-allied nations to think in terms of “us” versus “them” as being inter-ethnic, or inter-‘racial’, or inter-religious, INSTEAD OF as being inter-economic-class: the owners of mega-corporations, versus the employees and customers of mega-corporations — the super-wealthy versus all of the “ethnicities,” and all of the ‘races’, and all of the “religions.” (While the other partisan distinctions do play a role, that role is, in reality, vastly less powerful than that of the one distinction which is the same in ALL countries, and which actually controls almost all countries’ governments — the distinction between the rich versus the poor.) 

Labor unions become crushed in this way (by the public’s having the wrong targets — targets that aren’t the billionaires). Consumers’ rights to safe products become crushed in this way. All protections of the weak against the strong become crushed in this way. All accountability (obligations that the owners have toward their employees and other agents, and toward their corporations’ customers) become crushed in this way. And “this way” can be liberal, and not ONLY conservative. Fascism and even nazism can be liberal, and not only conservative. (The only difference there, is the difference between liberal billionaires versus conservative billionaires, but rule by ANY billionaires is an aristocracy not a democracy. It doesn’t represent the public; it represents the super-rich.)

A good example of this phenomenon is the French election for that nation’s Presidency, on April 24th, between Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron: On April 24th occurred the second and final round of voting for the next French President. Macron beat Le Pen by 58% to 42% — a 16% lead above Le Pen — and the reason why that happened was this engineered-by-the-super-rich confusion of ideological labels.

On the night prior to the April 24th election, Politico’s French “Poll of Polls” showed very clearly that immediately after the first-round voting on April 10th, Le Pen rose and Macron fell in the voter preferences, so that at the time of the April 20th lone Presidential candidates’ debate between the two top finishers in the first round (Le Pen and Macron), the voters’ preference of Macron over Le Pen was at its lowest point ever, around 6%, but that between the 20th and the 23rd, it had grown back to around 10% — which it had previously been. This had happened despite the major polling organization Elabe having found that whereas only 16% of viewers of the debate said that Le Pen came across as “arrogant,” 50% of its viewers said that Macron came across that way. Yet in that same poll, 59% said Macron won the debate, while only 39% said Le Pen did. So: very clearly, the French public viewed Le Pen’s “non-arrogant” performance in that debate to have attracted them less than Macron’s “arrogant” performance in it did. What could explain this? It was purely the labeling thing. Not only did the report of that poll refer to Le Pen as being “la candidate d’extrême droite” (the candidate of the extreme right), but all of France’s ‘news’-media did.

And yet, Le Pen, on issue after issue during that debate, was advocating a more progressive, or more social-democratic, a more leftist, position than the moderate conservative (pro-corporate-dictatorship) Macron did, and she stated very clearly what she would do differently than what Macron had done as President, virtually all of which was to Macron’s left — she was consistently favoring the rights of the poor over the rights of the rich, workers over stockholders, small businesses over the mega-corporations, economic competition over concentrated economic power and monopolies, and consumers over the big corporations. While Macron praised the former French Empire, Le Pen did not: she was anti-imperialistic. Though those were all views that were closer to the polled policy-preferences of French voters than were the positions that Macron espoused and had been practicing as France’s President, her expressed views appealed to the voters less than did the more right-wing views that Macron expressed and had done. What seems to have been absolutely decisive is that all of the French media, and all of France’s leading politicians — prominently including the leading leftist candidate in the first round, the socialist Jean-Luc Melenchon, who had come in third with 22% of the vote in the first round, and who, as Wikipedia accurately summarized, “advised his voters not to vote for Le Pen in the second round, but did not endorse Macron” — even Melenchon and other “leftists” were referring to Le Pen as being “far-right.” (In fact, Melenchon’s Party, when they had met to decide on their recommendation to voters, “The option of voting for Le Pen was not given to respondents.” They said: no Melenchon follower should even consider voting for her.) In other words: Melenchon and other self-declared “leftists” were advising their followers to prefer actually the (by far) more conservative candidate. Those ‘leftists’ were saying: if you’re going to vote for a candidate in the second round (but please do not), then vote for Macron. Melenchon and all of the self-alleged “leftist” parties said that Le Pen is “far-right” (and thus ideologically beyond the pale). That label was believed by “leftist” voters. Those voters followed the labelings that were being applied by the leading people who had been describing themselves as “leftists.” It’s like, in a sense, a mob mentality, but not against a minority ethnic group; it was instead against an ideological label, no matter how fraudulently that ideological label was actually being applied. Furthermore, in France, which had been so brutalized by Hitler’s Nazis, no political label is even nearly as toxic to a candidate as is the label “far right.” That label, alone, prevented the Presidential candidate who had the (by far) most progressive platform and political commitments, from defeating France’s incumbent, very unpopular, moderate conservative President Macron. That is how France’s billionaires won — yet again. As their Reuters ‘news’ report said, “One notable winner has been the hard-left Jean-Luc Melenchon, who scored 22% in the first round and has already staked a claim to become Macron’s prime minister in an awkward ‘cohabitation’ if his group does well in the June vote.” Another report on the outcome said “Leftist voters — unable to identify with either the centrist president or Ms Le Pen’s fiercely nationalist platform — were agonising with the choice on Sunday. Some trooped reluctantly to polling stations solely to stop Ms Le Pen, casting joyless votes for Mr Macron.”

On the morning of the April 24th vote, the American ZeroHedge financial news site bannered “As France Votes For President, Wall Street Warns Le Pen Upset Would Be Bigger Shock Than Brexit”. France’s ‘leftists’ and ‘news’-media had been campaigning actually for the same candidate (Macron) that the billionaires had been backing in this contest. Whereas many of those ‘leftists’ might have been doing it because they were sincerely suckered, few if any of the billionaires had been like that — they instead had been financing that suckering.

The same thing had happened during the 2017 contest, which likewise had been between Le Pen and Macron. (The only difference then was Le Pen’s greater emphasis then on “protecting our borders” against an unlimited influx of Muslims and possibly even jihadist ones into France. In 2022, that was no longer a big issue for her, and the Party that Le Pen had inherited — which once had been conservative — became even more progressive than it was in 2017.) 

The 2022 result, in other words, was basically history repeating itself. And this is the way that billionaires continue effectively to rule a country, by getting the public to vote for labels instead of for policies. The public fall for it time after time; they don’t turn against the people who were lying to them before. They vote for them yet again. There is thus no accountability. It’s easy for people to do if they pay more attention to labels than to policies. And no democracy can actually function in that way. And none does. Only an aristocracy can. And it does.