russia-insider--2020-10-15--The US Intelligence Community Is Tearing the Country Apart from the Inside

This article from our archives was first published on RI in July 2018 Orlov is one of our favorite essayists on Russia and all sorts of other things .
He moved to the US as a child , and lives in the Boston area .
He is one of the better-known thinkers The New Yorker has dubbed 'The Dystopians ' in an excellent 2009 profile , along with James Howard Kunstler , another regular contributor to RI ( archive ) .
These theorists believe that modern society is headed for a jarring and painful crack-up .
He is best known @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American collapse ( he thinks America 's will be worse ) .
He is a prolific author on a wide array of subjects , and you can see his work by searching him on Amazon .
He has a large following on the web , and on Patreon , and we urge you to support him there , as Russia Insider does .
His current project is organizing the production of affordable house boats for living on .
He lives on a boat himself .
If you have n't discovered his work yet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ archive of articles on RI .
They are a real treasure , full of invaluable insight into both the US and Russia and how they are related .
In today ’ s United States , the term “ espionage ” doesn ’ t get too much use outside of some specific contexts .
There is still sporadic talk of industrial espionage , but with regard to Americans ’ own efforts to understand the world beyond their borders , they prefer the term “ intelligence.
” This may be an intelligent choice , or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at things .
First of all , US “ intelligence ” is only vaguely related to the game of espionage as it has been traditionally played , and as it is still being played by countries such as Russia and China .
Espionage involves collecting and validating strategically vital information and conveying it to just the pertinent decision-makers on your side while keeping the fact that you are collecting and validating it hidden from everyone else .
In recent years , the US intelligence agencies have decided that torturing prisoners is a good @ @ @ @ @ @ @ torturing innocent bystanders , not professional spies , sometimes forcing them to invent things , such as “ Al Qaeda.
” There was no such thing before US intelligence popularized it as a brand among Islamic terrorists .
Most recently , British “ special services , ” which are a sort of Mini-Me to the to the Dr .
Evil that is the US intelligence apparatus , saw it fit to interfere with one of their own spies , Sergei Skripal , a double agent whom they sprung from a Russian jail in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ using an exotic chemical and then tried to pin the blame on Russia based on no evidence .
There are unlikely to be any more British spy swaps with Russia , and British spies working in Russia should probably be issued good old-fashioned cyanide capsules ( since that supposedly super-powerful Novichok stuff the British keep at their “ secret ” lab in Porton Down doesn ’ t work right and is only fatal 20 % of the time ) .
There is another unwritten , commonsense rule about spying in general : whatever @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out of the courts , because the discovery process of any trial would force the prosecution to divulge sources and methods , making them part of the public record .
An alternative is to hold secret tribunals , but since these can not be independently verified to be following due process and rules of evidence , they don ’ t add much value .
A different standard applies to traitors ; here , sending them through the courts is acceptable and serves a high moral purpose , since here the source is the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ divulged without harm .
But this logic does not apply to proper , professional spies who are simply doing their jobs , even if they turn out to be double agents .
In fact , when counterintelligence discovers a spy , the professional thing to do is to try to recruit him as a double agent or , failing that , to try to use the spy as a channel for injecting disinformation .
Americans have been doing their best to break this rule .
Recently , special counsel Robert Mueller indicted a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hacking into the DNC mail server and sending the emails to Wikileaks .
Meanwhile , said server is nowhere to be found ( it ’ s been misplaced ) while the time stamps on the files that were published on Wikileaks show that they were obtained by copying to a thumb drive rather than sending them over the internet .
Thus , this was a leak , not a hack , and couldn ’ t have been done by anyone working remotely from Russia .
Furthermore , it is an exercise in futility @ @ @ @ @ @ @ citizens in Russia .
They will never stand trial in a US court because of the following clause in the Russian Constitution : “ 61.1 A citizen of the Russian Federation may not be deported out of Russia or extradited to another state.
” Mueller may summon a panel of constitutional scholars to interpret this sentence , or he can just read it and weep .
Yes , the Americans are doing their best to break the unwritten rule against dragging spies through the courts , but their best is nowhere near good @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no reason to believe that the Russian spies couldn ’ t have hacked into the DNC mail server .
It was probably running Microsoft Windows , and that operating system has more holes in it than a building in downtown Raqqa , Syria after the Americans got done bombing that city to rubble , lots of civilians included .
When questioned about this alleged hacking by Fox News , Putin ( who had worked as a spy in his previous career ) had trouble keeping a straight face and clearly enjoyed the moment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emails showed a clear pattern of wrongdoing : DNC officials conspired to steal the electoral victory in the Democratic Primary from Bernie Sanders , and after this information had been leaked they were forced to resign .
If the Russian hack did happen , then it was the Russians working to save American democracy from itself .
So , where ’ s the gratitude ?
Where ’ s the love ?
Oh , and why are the DNC perps not in jail ?
Since there exists an agreement between the US and Russia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ offered to question the spies indicted by Mueller .
He even offered to have Mueller sit in on the proceedings .
But in return he wanted to question US officials who may have aided and abetted a convicted felon by the name of William Browder , who is due to begin serving a nine-year sentence in Russia any time now and who , by the way , donated copious amounts of his ill-gotten money to the Hillary Clinton election campaign .
In response , the US Senate passed a resolution to forbid Russians @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of issuing a valid request to have the twelve Russian spies interviewed , at least one US official made the startlingly inane request to have them come to the US instead .
Again , which part of 61.1 don ’ t they understand ?
The logic of US officials may be hard to follow , but only if we adhere to the traditional definitions of espionage and counterespionage— “ intelligence ” in US parlance—which is to provide validated information for the purpose of making informed decisions on best ways of defending the country @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if we disabuse ourselves of such quaint notions and accept the reality of what we can actually observe : the purpose of US “ intelligence ” is not to come up with or to work with facts but to simply “ make shit up.
” The “ intelligence ” the US intelligence agencies provide can be anything but ; in fact , the stupider it is the better , because its purpose is allow unintelligent people to make unintelligent decisions .
In fact , they consider facts harmful—be they about Syrian chemical weapons @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from Bernie Sanders , or Iraqi weapons of mass destruction , or the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden—because facts require accuracy and rigor while they prefer to dwell in the realm of pure fantasy and whimsy .
In this , their actual objective is easily discernible .
The objective of US intelligence is to suck all remaining wealth out of the US and its allies and pocket as much of it as possible while pretending to defend it from phantom aggressors by squandering nonexistent ( borrowed ) financial resources on ineffective and overpriced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the aggressors are not phantom , they are specially organized for the purpose of having someone to fight : “ moderate ” terrorists and so on .
One major advancement in their state of the art has been in moving from real false flag operations , à la 9/11 , to fake false flag operations , à la fake East Gouta chemical attack in Syria ( since fully discredited ) .
The Russian election meddling story is perhaps the final step in this evolution : no New York skyscrapers or Syrian children were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fake narrative , and it can be kept alive seemingly forever purely through the furious effort of numerous flapping lips .
It is now a pure confidence scam .
If you are less then impressed with their invented narratives , then you are a conspiracy theorist or , in the latest revision , a traitor .
Trump was recently questioned as to whether he trusted US intelligence .
He waffled .
A light-hearted answer would have been : “ What sort of idiot are you to ask me such a stupid question ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ were caught lying more than once , and therefore they can never be trusted again .
In order to claim that they are not currently lying , you have to determine when it was that they stopped lying , and that they haven ’ t lied since .
And that , based on the information that is available , is an impossible task.
” A more serious , matter-of-fact answer would have been : “ The US intelligence agencies made an outrageous claim : that I colluded with Russia to rig the outcome @ @ @ @ @ @ @ burden of proof is on them .
They are yet to prove their case in a court of law , which is the only place where the matter can legitimately be settled , if it can be settled at all .
Until that happens , we must treat their claim as conspiracy theory , not as fact.
” And a hardcore , deadpan answer would have been : “ The US intelligence services swore an oath to uphold the US Constitution , according to which I am their Commander in Chief .
They @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them .
They must be loyal to me , not I to them .
If they are disloyal to me , then that is sufficient reason for their dismissal.
” But no such reality-based , down-to-earth dialogue seems possible .
All that we hear are fake answers to fake questions , and the outcome is a series of faulty decisions .
Based on fake intelligence , the US has spent almost all of this century embroiled in very expensive and ultimately futile conflicts .
Thanks to their efforts , Iran , Iraq and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of religiously and geopolitically aligned states friendly toward Russia while in Afghanistan the Taliban is resurgent and battling ISIS—an organization that came together thanks to American efforts in Iraq and Syria .
The total cost of wars so far this century for the US is reported to be $ 4,575,610,429,593 .
Divided by the 138,313,155 Americans who file tax returns ( whether they actually pay any tax is too subtle a question ) , it works out to just over $ 33,000 per taxpayer .
If you pay taxes in the US , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the various US intelligence “ oopsies.
” The 16 US intelligence agencies have a combined budget of $ 66.8 billion , and that seems like a lot until you realize how supremely efficient they are : their “ mistakes ” have cost the country close to 70 times their budget .
At a staffing level of over 200,000 employees , each of them has cost the US taxpayer close to $ 23 million , on average .
That number is totally out of the ballpark !
The energy sector has the highest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1.8 million per .
Valero Energy stands out at $ 7.6 million per .
At $ 23 million per , the US intelligence community has been doing three times better than Valero .
Hats off !
This makes the US intelligence community by far the best , most efficient collapse driver imaginable .
There are two possible hypotheses for why this is so .
First , we might venture to guess that these 200,000 people are grossly incompetent and that the fiascos they precipitate are accidental .
But it is hard to imagine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ manage to funnel $ 23 million apiece , on average , toward an assortment of futile undertakings of their choosing .
It is even harder to imagine that such incompetents would be allowed to blunder along decade after decade without being called out for their mistakes .
Another hypothesis , and a far more plausible one , is that the US intelligence community has been doing a wonderful job of bankrupting the country and driving it toward financial , economic and political collapse by forcing it to engage in an endless series of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ act of grand larceny the world has ever known .
How that can possibly be an intelligent thing to do to your own country , for any conceivable definition of “ intelligence , ” I will leave for you to work out for yourself .
While you are at it , you might also want to come up with an improved definition of “ treason ” : something better than “ a skeptical attitude toward preposterous , unproven claims made by those known to be perpetual liars .
”

This article from our archives was first published on RI in July 2018
Orlov is one of our favorite essayists on Russia and all sorts of other things. He moved to the US as a child, and lives in the Boston area.
He is one of the better-known thinkers The New Yorker has dubbed 'The Dystopians' in an excellent 2009 profile, along with James Howard Kunstler, another regular contributor to RI (archive). These theorists believe that modern society is headed for a jarring and painful crack-up.
He is best known for his 2011 book comparing Soviet and American collapse (he thinks America's will be worse). He is a prolific author on a wide array of subjects, and you can see his work by searching him on Amazon.
He has a large following on the web, and on Patreon, and we urge you to support him there, as Russia Insider does.
His current project is organizing the production of affordable house boats for living on. He lives on a boat himself.
If you haven't discovered his work yet, please take a look at his archive of articles on RI. They are a real treasure, full of invaluable insight into both the US and Russia and how they are related.
In today’s United States, the term “espionage” doesn’t get too much use outside of some specific contexts. There is still sporadic talk of industrial espionage, but with regard to Americans’ own efforts to understand the world beyond their borders, they prefer the term “intelligence.” This may be an intelligent choice, or not, depending on how you look at things.
First of all, US “intelligence” is only vaguely related to the game of espionage as it has been traditionally played, and as it is still being played by countries such as Russia and China. Espionage involves collecting and validating strategically vital information and conveying it to just the pertinent decision-makers on your side while keeping the fact that you are collecting and validating it hidden from everyone else.
In eras past, a spy, if discovered, would try to bite down on a cyanide capsule; these days torture is considered ungentlemanly, and spies that get caught patiently wait to be exchanged in a spy swap. An unwritten, commonsense rule about spy swaps is that they are done quietly and that those released are never interfered with again because doing so would complicate negotiating future spy swaps. In eras past, a spy, if discovered, would try to bite down on a cyanide capsule; these days torture is considered ungentlemanly, and spies that get caught patiently wait to be exchanged in a spy swap. An unwritten, commonsense rule about spy swaps is that they are done quietly and that those released are never interfered with again because doing so would complicate negotiating future spy swaps.
In recent years, the US intelligence agencies have decided that torturing prisoners is a good idea, but they have mostly been torturing innocent bystanders, not professional spies, sometimes forcing them to invent things, such as “Al Qaeda.” There was no such thing before US intelligence popularized it as a brand among Islamic terrorists.
Most recently, British “special services,” which are a sort of Mini-Me to the to the Dr. Evil that is the US intelligence apparatus, saw it fit to interfere with one of their own spies, Sergei Skripal, a double agent whom they sprung from a Russian jail in a spy swap. They poisoned him using an exotic chemical and then tried to pin the blame on Russia based on no evidence.
There are unlikely to be any more British spy swaps with Russia, and British spies working in Russia should probably be issued good old-fashioned cyanide capsules (since that supposedly super-powerful Novichok stuff the British keep at their “secret” lab in Porton Down doesn’t work right and is only fatal 20% of the time).
There is another unwritten, commonsense rule about spying in general: whatever happens, it needs to be kept out of the courts, because the discovery process of any trial would force the prosecution to divulge sources and methods, making them part of the public record. An alternative is to hold secret tribunals, but since these cannot be independently verified to be following due process and rules of evidence, they don’t add much value.
A different standard applies to traitors; here, sending them through the courts is acceptable and serves a high moral purpose, since here the source is the person on trial and the method—treason—can be divulged without harm. But this logic does not apply to proper, professional spies who are simply doing their jobs, even if they turn out to be double agents. In fact, when counterintelligence discovers a spy, the professional thing to do is to try to recruit him as a double agent or, failing that, to try to use the spy as a channel for injecting disinformation.
Americans have been doing their best to break this rule. Recently, special counsel Robert Mueller indicted a dozen Russian operatives working in Russia for hacking into the DNC mail server and sending the emails to Wikileaks. Meanwhile, said server is nowhere to be found (it’s been misplaced) while the time stamps on the files that were published on Wikileaks show that they were obtained by copying to a thumb drive rather than sending them over the internet. Thus, this was a leak, not a hack, and couldn’t have been done by anyone working remotely from Russia.
Furthermore, it is an exercise in futility for a US official to indict Russian citizens in Russia. They will never stand trial in a US court because of the following clause in the Russian Constitution: “61.1 A citizen of the Russian Federation may not be deported out of Russia or extradited to another state.”
Mueller may summon a panel of constitutional scholars to interpret this sentence, or he can just read it and weep. Yes, the Americans are doing their best to break the unwritten rule against dragging spies through the courts, but their best is nowhere near good enough.
That said, there is no reason to believe that the Russian spies couldn’t have hacked into the DNC mail server. It was probably running Microsoft Windows, and that operating system has more holes in it than a building in downtown Raqqa, Syria after the Americans got done bombing that city to rubble, lots of civilians included. When questioned about this alleged hacking by Fox News, Putin (who had worked as a spy in his previous career) had trouble keeping a straight face and clearly enjoyed the moment.
He pointed out that the hacked/leaked emails showed a clear pattern of wrongdoing: DNC officials conspired to steal the electoral victory in the Democratic Primary from Bernie Sanders, and after this information had been leaked they were forced to resign. If the Russian hack did happen, then it was the Russians working to save American democracy from itself. So, where’s the gratitude? Where’s the love? Oh, and why are the DNC perps not in jail?
Since there exists an agreement between the US and Russia to cooperate on criminal investigations, Putin offered to question the spies indicted by Mueller. He even offered to have Mueller sit in on the proceedings. But in return he wanted to question US officials who may have aided and abetted a convicted felon by the name of William Browder, who is due to begin serving a nine-year sentence in Russia any time now and who, by the way, donated copious amounts of his ill-gotten money to the Hillary Clinton election campaign.
In response, the US Senate passed a resolution to forbid Russians from questioning US officials. And instead of issuing a valid request to have the twelve Russian spies interviewed, at least one US official made the startlingly inane request to have them come to the US instead. Again, which part of 61.1 don’t they understand?
The logic of US officials may be hard to follow, but only if we adhere to the traditional definitions of espionage and counterespionage—“intelligence” in US parlance—which is to provide validated information for the purpose of making informed decisions on best ways of defending the country. But it all makes perfect sense if we disabuse ourselves of such quaint notions and accept the reality of what we can actually observe: the purpose of US “intelligence” is not to come up with or to work with facts but to simply “make shit up.”
The “intelligence” the US intelligence agencies provide can be anything but; in fact, the stupider it is the better, because its purpose is allow unintelligent people to make unintelligent decisions. In fact, they consider facts harmful—be they about Syrian chemical weapons, or conspiring to steal the primary from Bernie Sanders, or Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, or the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden—because facts require accuracy and rigor while they prefer to dwell in the realm of pure fantasy and whimsy. In this, their actual objective is easily discernible.
The objective of US intelligence is to suck all remaining wealth out of the US and its allies and pocket as much of it as possible while pretending to defend it from phantom aggressors by squandering nonexistent (borrowed) financial resources on ineffective and overpriced military operations and weapons systems. Where the aggressors are not phantom, they are specially organized for the purpose of having someone to fight: “moderate” terrorists and so on.
One major advancement in their state of the art has been in moving from real false flag operations, à la 9/11, to fake false flag operations, à la fake East Gouta chemical attack in Syria (since fully discredited). The Russian election meddling story is perhaps the final step in this evolution: no New York skyscrapers or Syrian children were harmed in the process of concocting this fake narrative, and it can be kept alive seemingly forever purely through the furious effort of numerous flapping lips. It is now a pure confidence scam. If you are less then impressed with their invented narratives, then you are a conspiracy theorist or, in the latest revision, a traitor.
Trump was recently questioned as to whether he trusted US intelligence. He waffled. A light-hearted answer would have been:
“What sort of idiot are you to ask me such a stupid question? Of course they are lying! They were caught lying more than once, and therefore they can never be trusted again. In order to claim that they are not currently lying, you have to determine when it was that they stopped lying, and that they haven’t lied since. And that, based on the information that is available, is an impossible task.”
A more serious, matter-of-fact answer would have been:
“The US intelligence agencies made an outrageous claim: that I colluded with Russia to rig the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. The burden of proof is on them. They are yet to prove their case in a court of law, which is the only place where the matter can legitimately be settled, if it can be settled at all. Until that happens, we must treat their claim as conspiracy theory, not as fact.”
And a hardcore, deadpan answer would have been:
“The US intelligence services swore an oath to uphold the US Constitution, according to which I am their Commander in Chief. They report to me, not I to them. They must be loyal to me, not I to them. If they are disloyal to me, then that is sufficient reason for their dismissal.”
But no such reality-based, down-to-earth dialogue seems possible. All that we hear are fake answers to fake questions, and the outcome is a series of faulty decisions. Based on fake intelligence, the US has spent almost all of this century embroiled in very expensive and ultimately futile conflicts.
Thanks to their efforts, Iran, Iraq and Syria have now formed a continuous crescent of religiously and geopolitically aligned states friendly toward Russia while in Afghanistan the Taliban is resurgent and battling ISIS—an organization that came together thanks to American efforts in Iraq and Syria.
The total cost of wars so far this century for the US is reported to be $4,575,610,429,593. Divided by the 138,313,155 Americans who file tax returns (whether they actually pay any tax is too subtle a question), it works out to just over $33,000 per taxpayer. If you pay taxes in the US, that’s your bill so far for the various US intelligence “oopsies.”
The 16 US intelligence agencies have a combined budget of $66.8 billion, and that seems like a lot until you realize how supremely efficient they are: their “mistakes” have cost the country close to 70 times their budget. At a staffing level of over 200,000 employees, each of them has cost the US taxpayer close to $23 million, on average. That number is totally out of the ballpark! The energy sector has the highest earnings per employee, at around $1.8 million per. Valero Energy stands out at $7.6 million per. At $23 million per, the US intelligence community has been doing three times better than Valero. Hats off! This makes the US intelligence community by far the best, most efficient collapse driver imaginable.
There are two possible hypotheses for why this is so.
First, we might venture to guess that these 200,000 people are grossly incompetent and that the fiascos they precipitate are accidental. But it is hard to imagine a situation where grossly incompetent people nevertheless manage to funnel $23 million apiece, on average, toward an assortment of futile undertakings of their choosing. It is even harder to imagine that such incompetents would be allowed to blunder along decade after decade without being called out for their mistakes.
Another hypothesis, and a far more plausible one, is that the US intelligence community has been doing a wonderful job of bankrupting the country and driving it toward financial, economic and political collapse by forcing it to engage in an endless series of expensive and futile conflicts—the largest single continuous act of grand larceny the world has ever known. How that can possibly be an intelligent thing to do to your own country, for any conceivable definition of “intelligence,” I will leave for you to work out for yourself. While you are at it, you might also want to come up with an improved definition of “treason”: something better than “a skeptical attitude toward preposterous, unproven claims made by those known to be perpetual liars.”


russia-insider--2020-10-15--Europe Commits Suicide by Importing Barbarians - Russia Watches With Great Sadness

`` A large chunk of human history is about to get trampled and despoiled .
Having spent the last several decades resurrecting Eastern Christendom after the damage caused to it by the Bolshevik barbarians , they watch with dismay as the relics and ruins of Western Christendom are becoming submerged by a new barbarian wave . ''
This article from our archives was first published on RI in June 2018 Orlov is one of our favorite essayists on Russia and all sorts of other things .
He moved to the US as a child , and lives in the Boston @ @ @ @ @ @ @ better-known thinkers The New Yorker has dubbed 'The Dystopians ' in an excellent 2009 profile , along with James Howard Kunstler , another regular contributor to RI ( archive ) .
These theorists believe that modern society is headed for a jarring and painful crack-up .
He is best known for his 2011 book comparing Soviet and American collapse ( he thinks America 's will be worse ) .
He is a prolific author on a wide array of subjects , and you can see his work by searching him on Amazon .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ web , and on Patreon , and we urge you to support him there , as Russia Insider does .
His current project is organizing the production of affordable house boats for living on .
He lives on a boat himself .
If you have n't discovered his work yet , please take a look at his archive of articles on RI .
They are a real treasure , full of invaluable insight into both the US and Russia and how they are related .
Around the world , very few people are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ European reaction to the migrant crisis .
On the side of the migrants , we have avid displays of barbarism , fanaticism and aggression ; on the side of the Europeans , we have abject fear of appearing… intolerant .
In an out-of-control situation where we would expect people to organize , protest , put up road blocks and vote en masse for nationalist parties , we are instead subjected to the ridiculous spectacle of meek , effeminate Europeans dressed up in unisex outfits chalking “ No to terrorism !
” on sidewalks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in this an orchidaceous display of anthropological nullity .
“ Is Europe dead ?
” they wonder aloud .
Lest you think that this impression is politically incorrect or undiplomatic or somehow marginal rather than mainstream , Russia 's FM Sergei Lavrov , a senior Russian statesman and a diplomat ’ s diplomat , is on the record saying that the European Union is “ committing suicide ” by letting in the invading hordes from the Middle East and North Africa .
Here we have a flood of people coming in , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ military service back home , and relatively few of them are qualified to seek asylum .
Most of them are unqualified to do any sort of work within the EU due to lack of literacy , education or work ethic .
Many of them would not be trainable in any case , coming as they are from populations bred for physical stamina and disease tolerance rather than intelligence .
Quite a few are Islamic radicals who see themselves as actual colonizers ; many more have no qualms about robbing Europeans and raping European @ @ @ @ @ @ @ terrorists being sent in to await orders .
For most of them , crashing into the EU and freeloading there is part of an excellent adventure—far more exciting than herding cattle or growing millet in their native villages .
European NGOs equip them with inflatable lifeboats and life vests and set them adrift off the coast of Libya or in the Adriatic .
European NGO ships then scoop them up and deliver them to ports in Italy , Greece or Spain .
And then they get to freeload , for months on end @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the paperwork and clog up the courts with lawsuits they file on on their behalf .
I am sure that some Europeans might think me unkind for presenting such an unflattering summary of the situation .
But there is a much higher standard by which to measure it than mere kindness : is it truthful ?
Truth is often cruel and painful , and yet without truth—with which to understand the true consequences of our actions—we are all but lambs to the slaughter .
Refusal to face the truth by hiding behind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kindness ” is mere cowardice .
Indeed , cowardice is often on display in Europe , hiding behind another threadbare veil—of “ security.
” When ISIS bombed the airport in Brussels , the Belgian king Philippe and his royal spouse were swiftly evacuated .
During medieval times such cowardly behavior would have cost the monarch his crown , possibly along with his head .
But now it is fine for a cowardly nation to have a cowardly king .
It is quite difficult to understand the rationale behind such enforced cowardice .
Why @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ramming “ tolerance ” down the throats of their citizens and replacing them with imported barbarians ?
What happened to the spirit of bloodthirsty empires that had bled the entire planet dry for centuries , accumulating countless treasure ?
What I believe happened is that the Europeans became too comfortable .
Yes , they did experience some hardship during the two world wars , but it was nothing compared to what many other nations went through , Russia and China especially .
When life is a struggle , experience is vivid , simple @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are critical to survival and acts of heroism are both necessary and valued .
When life is comfortable , people become satiated and hard to satisfy , tastes become decadent and effete , questions of safety are pushed off on specialists and spontaneous acts individual heroism and bravery come to be treated as symptoms of social maladaptation .
Given enough safety and comfort , they become ends in themselves and the standards by which all things are measured .
Those less safe and less comfortable are perceived as less successful and fashionable , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ game of endless oneupmanship .
In turn , those yet to be seduced by safety and comfort , and willing to battle for principles higher than mere tolerance and kindness , become incomprehensible ; after all , what else is there but safety and comfort ?
But this is only a setup for the next leg down , because safety and comfort can not function as absolutes .
Safety can not be guaranteed in all places and at all times : accidents do happen .
You might get punched in the face by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a horny migrant , die in a terrorist attack because Allahu akbar or , more likely , break your neck by falling off your bicycle .
Since you are no longer responsible for providing for your own safety—it is now the work of paid professionals—you can ’ t blame yourself .
You can , of course , blame the paid professionals , but they are , you know , doing their best… Your only choice is to claim that you are a victim .
Victimhood becomes a prized commodity and a badge of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on all varieties of victims , who are encouraged to organize and to bargain collectively , helps assure the rest that their total security is very important .
You can be a victim , but you can ’ t be a victim of your own stupidity .
Speaking of stupidity , the realization that you are stupid is not comfortable , yet everyone—even the stupid—must remain comfortable at all times .
Given that exactly half the people are of below-average intelligence , this is rather tricky to arrange .
Claiming that half the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t exactly solve the problem : such an overabundance of victims hollows out the promise of universal comfort .
Nor is the problem addressed by imposing a system of universal meritocracy based on individual rights : the intelligent will do better than the unintelligent , causing the latter considerable discomfort .
The solution is to step back from the principle of meritocracy .
Instead of guaranteeing individual equal rights and opportunities based on ability and performance we strive for equality of outcome : everybody gets a participation prize and a bit of money @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the size of the prize and the sum of money carefully calibrated based on one ’ s level of victimhood .
This is now sometimes referred to by the strangely repurposed word “ equity.
” Since it is hard to organize the distribution of “ equity ” on an individual level , people are formed into a myriad of groups and each group gets weighted against the rest .
If you are a disabled black lesbian , you get to check off three victimhood boxes at once and be handed the same @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This is now strangely referred to as “ social ” justice—as if there were ever any other kind .
This new type of person , which arose first in Europe and then spread all over the West and beyond , does seem like a degenerate form of humanity : bereft of great passion and lofty goals , lacking any clear ethnic or social allegiance or preference , fixated on comfort and safety and deficient in both masculinity and femininity : a sort of civilizational eunuch imprisoned in a four-star LGBTQ concentration camp @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but on the plus side this type of person is mostly harmless .
Half a billion people now inhabit , without posing much of a danger to each other , a smallish peninsula jutting out of Western Eurasia that until recently has been the scene of endless armed conflict .
They do not destroy material or cultural artifacts but seek to accumulate them , investing in comforts and in consumption .
That , most people will agree , is progress .
The last major challenge to this way of being was presented @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where national passions still run high .
But that problem was easily solved by finding a scapegoat—Serbia—which was cursed for its lack of multiculturalism and tolerance and bombed into submission .
This scared everyone else in Eastern Europe into inaction , for the time being .
But now mass migration has presented a problem on an entirely different scale , causing Poland , Hungary and now even Italy to rise up in rebellion against the alien onslaught .
The newcomers predominantly come from cultures that are the opposite of tolerant and kind .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ passion , clannishness and religious and political fanaticism .
They want to live right here and right now , take pleasure in the beastlier side of human nature , and they see Europe as a treasure chest to be looted .
Their cultures hearken back to an earlier era of European history , when huge crowds gathered in city squares to watch people being drawn and quartered or burned alive .
The Europeans conquered their own medieval nature , but then reimported it .
The new , emasculated Western European Man is unable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can their governments , whose leaders are forced to abide by the same cultural codes of tolerance , political correctness and compulsory kindness .
But the Eastern European Man , only temporarily frightened into acting tolerant and emasculated , will not stand for any of this for much longer .
His medieval nature is still quite close to the surface , while their Western neighbors have placed theirs in museums and various other tourist traps .
This is already apparent : there was a recent EU summit on immigration ; the East Europeans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Looking at the situation from even farther east , from European Russia and the rest of the Eurasian landmass , there is a distinct sense of sadness in watching Europe die .
A large chunk of human history is about to get trampled and despoiled .
Having spent the last several decades resurrecting Eastern Christendom after the damage caused to it by the Bolshevik barbarians , they watch with dismay as the relics and ruins of Western Christendom are becoming submerged by a new barbarian wave .
Western Europe ’ s inhabitants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but they are still valuable as museum attendants and tour guides .
That Europe is turning itself into a museum was apparent to Dostoevsky 150 years ago , when he wrote this ( speaking through the character of Versilov ) : And then again , this time speaking as Ivan Karamazov , with even greater passion :

"A large chunk of human history is about to get trampled and despoiled. Having spent the last several decades resurrecting Eastern Christendom after the damage caused to it by the Bolshevik barbarians, they watch with dismay as the relics and ruins of Western Christendom are becoming submerged by a new barbarian wave."
This article from our archives was first published on RI in June 2018
Orlov is one of our favorite essayists on Russia and all sorts of other things. He moved to the US as a child, and lives in the Boston area.
He is one of the better-known thinkers The New Yorker has dubbed 'The Dystopians' in an excellent 2009 profile, along with James Howard Kunstler, another regular contributor to RI (archive). These theorists believe that modern society is headed for a jarring and painful crack-up.
He is best known for his 2011 book comparing Soviet and American collapse (he thinks America's will be worse). He is a prolific author on a wide array of subjects, and you can see his work by searching him on Amazon.
He has a large following on the web, and on Patreon, and we urge you to support him there, as Russia Insider does.
His current project is organizing the production of affordable house boats for living on. He lives on a boat himself.
If you haven't discovered his work yet, please take a look at his archive of articles on RI. They are a real treasure, full of invaluable insight into both the US and Russia and how they are related.
Around the world, very few people are capable of wrapping their heads around the European reaction to the migrant crisis. On the side of the migrants, we have avid displays of barbarism, fanaticism and aggression; on the side of the Europeans, we have abject fear of appearing… intolerant.
In an out-of-control situation where we would expect people to organize, protest, put up road blocks and vote en masse for nationalist parties, we are instead subjected to the ridiculous spectacle of meek, effeminate Europeans dressed up in unisex outfits chalking “No to terrorism!” on sidewalks.
Most people around the world see in this an orchidaceous display of anthropological nullity. “Is Europe dead?” they wonder aloud.
Lest you think that this impression is politically incorrect or undiplomatic or somehow marginal rather than mainstream, Russia's FM Sergei Lavrov, a senior Russian statesman and a diplomat’s diplomat, is on the record saying that the European Union is “committing suicide” by letting in the invading hordes from the Middle East and North Africa.
Here we have a flood of people coming in, the majority of them young adult males shirking military service back home, and relatively few of them are qualified to seek asylum. Most of them are unqualified to do any sort of work within the EU due to lack of literacy, education or work ethic. Many of them would not be trainable in any case, coming as they are from populations bred for physical stamina and disease tolerance rather than intelligence.
Quite a few are Islamic radicals who see themselves as actual colonizers; many more have no qualms about robbing Europeans and raping European women. A few thousand are actual terrorists being sent in to await orders. For most of them, crashing into the EU and freeloading there is part of an excellent adventure—far more exciting than herding cattle or growing millet in their native villages.
European NGOs equip them with inflatable lifeboats and life vests and set them adrift off the coast of Libya or in the Adriatic. European NGO ships then scoop them up and deliver them to ports in Italy, Greece or Spain. And then they get to freeload, for months on end, while more NGO types help them with the paperwork and clog up the courts with lawsuits they file on on their behalf.
I am sure that some Europeans might think me unkind for presenting such an unflattering summary of the situation. But there is a much higher standard by which to measure it than mere kindness: is it truthful? Truth is often cruel and painful, and yet without truth—with which to understand the true consequences of our actions—we are all but lambs to the slaughter.
Refusal to face the truth by hiding behind a hypocritical, threadbare veil of “kindness” is mere cowardice. Indeed, cowardice is often on display in Europe, hiding behind another threadbare veil—of “security.” When ISIS bombed the airport in Brussels, the Belgian king Philippe and his royal spouse were swiftly evacuated. During medieval times such cowardly behavior would have cost the monarch his crown, possibly along with his head. But now it is fine for a cowardly nation to have a cowardly king.
It is quite difficult to understand the rationale behind such enforced cowardice. Why are the European elites so insistent on ramming “tolerance” down the throats of their citizens and replacing them with imported barbarians? What happened to the spirit of bloodthirsty empires that had bled the entire planet dry for centuries, accumulating countless treasure?
What I believe happened is that the Europeans became too comfortable. Yes, they did experience some hardship during the two world wars, but it was nothing compared to what many other nations went through, Russia and China especially. When life is a struggle, experience is vivid, simple joys are profoundly felt, intelligent choices are critical to survival and acts of heroism are both necessary and valued.
When life is comfortable, people become satiated and hard to satisfy, tastes become decadent and effete, questions of safety are pushed off on specialists and spontaneous acts individual heroism and bravery come to be treated as symptoms of social maladaptation.
Given enough safety and comfort, they become ends in themselves and the standards by which all things are measured. Those less safe and less comfortable are perceived as less successful and fashionable, and become less popular, in a game of endless oneupmanship. In turn, those yet to be seduced by safety and comfort, and willing to battle for principles higher than mere tolerance and kindness, become incomprehensible; after all, what else is there but safety and comfort? But this is only a setup for the next leg down, because safety and comfort cannot function as absolutes.
Safety cannot be guaranteed in all places and at all times: accidents do happen. You might get punched in the face by a belligerent drunk, get molested by a horny migrant, die in a terrorist attack because Allahu akbar or, more likely, break your neck by falling off your bicycle. Since you are no longer responsible for providing for your own safety—it is now the work of paid professionals—you can’t blame yourself. You can, of course, blame the paid professionals, but they are, you know, doing their best… Your only choice is to claim that you are a victim.
Victimhood becomes a prized commodity and a badge of honor. Extreme attention and care lavished on all varieties of victims, who are encouraged to organize and to bargain collectively, helps assure the rest that their total security is very important. You can be a victim, but you can’t be a victim of your own stupidity.
Speaking of stupidity, the realization that you are stupid is not comfortable, yet everyone—even the stupid—must remain comfortable at all times. Given that exactly half the people are of below-average intelligence, this is rather tricky to arrange. Claiming that half the population are victims of stupidity doesn’t exactly solve the problem: such an overabundance of victims hollows out the promise of universal comfort. Nor is the problem addressed by imposing a system of universal meritocracy based on individual rights: the intelligent will do better than the unintelligent, causing the latter considerable discomfort.
The solution is to step back from the principle of meritocracy. Instead of guaranteeing individual equal rights and opportunities based on ability and performance we strive for equality of outcome: everybody gets a participation prize and a bit of money just by being obedient and polite, with the size of the prize and the sum of money carefully calibrated based on one’s level of victimhood.
This is now sometimes referred to by the strangely repurposed word “equity.” Since it is hard to organize the distribution of “equity” on an individual level, people are formed into a myriad of groups and each group gets weighted against the rest. If you are a disabled black lesbian, you get to check off three victimhood boxes at once and be handed the same prize as an able-bodied white heterosexual male. This is now strangely referred to as “social” justice—as if there were ever any other kind.
This new type of person, which arose first in Europe and then spread all over the West and beyond, does seem like a degenerate form of humanity: bereft of great passion and lofty goals, lacking any clear ethnic or social allegiance or preference, fixated on comfort and safety and deficient in both masculinity and femininity: a sort of civilizational eunuch imprisoned in a four-star LGBTQ concentration camp.
These may seem like major negatives, but on the plus side this type of person is mostly harmless. Half a billion people now inhabit, without posing much of a danger to each other, a smallish peninsula jutting out of Western Eurasia that until recently has been the scene of endless armed conflict. They do not destroy material or cultural artifacts but seek to accumulate them, investing in comforts and in consumption. That, most people will agree, is progress.
The last major challenge to this way of being was presented by the integration of Eastern Europe, where national passions still run high. But that problem was easily solved by finding a scapegoat—Serbia—which was cursed for its lack of multiculturalism and tolerance and bombed into submission. This scared everyone else in Eastern Europe into inaction, for the time being. But now mass migration has presented a problem on an entirely different scale, causing Poland, Hungary and now even Italy to rise up in rebellion against the alien onslaught.
The newcomers predominantly come from cultures that are the opposite of tolerant and kind. They are mainly characterized by cruelty, passion, clannishness and religious and political fanaticism. They want to live right here and right now, take pleasure in the beastlier side of human nature, and they see Europe as a treasure chest to be looted. Their cultures hearken back to an earlier era of European history, when huge crowds gathered in city squares to watch people being drawn and quartered or burned alive.
The Europeans conquered their own medieval nature, but then reimported it. The new, emasculated Western European Man is unable to push back against it; nor can their governments, whose leaders are forced to abide by the same cultural codes of tolerance, political correctness and compulsory kindness. But the Eastern European Man, only temporarily frightened into acting tolerant and emasculated, will not stand for any of this for much longer. His medieval nature is still quite close to the surface, while their Western neighbors have placed theirs in museums and various other tourist traps. This is already apparent: there was a recent EU summit on immigration; the East Europeans didn’t even bother showing up.
Looking at the situation from even farther east, from European Russia and the rest of the Eurasian landmass, there is a distinct sense of sadness in watching Europe die. A large chunk of human history is about to get trampled and despoiled. Having spent the last several decades resurrecting Eastern Christendom after the damage caused to it by the Bolshevik barbarians, they watch with dismay as the relics and ruins of Western Christendom are becoming submerged by a new barbarian wave. Western Europe’s inhabitants may no longer amount to much, but they are still valuable as museum attendants and tour guides.
That Europe is turning itself into a museum was apparent to Dostoevsky 150 years ago, when he wrote this (speaking through the character of Versilov):
“To a Russian Europe is just as precious as Russia; every stone in it is charming and dear. Europe is as much our Fatherland as Russia… Oh, how precious are to us Russians these old foreign stones, these miracles of an old, godly world, these shards of holy miracles; they are more precious to us than to the Europeans themselves!”
And then again, this time speaking as Ivan Karamazov, with even greater passion:
“...I want to travel to Europe, and so I will. Of course, I know that I will just be visiting to a cemetery. But so what? The corpses that lay in them are precious; every headstone tells the story of a great life, of passionate belief in heroism, in one’s own truth, one’s own struggle. I know already that I will fall to the ground and kiss these stones, and cry over them—even though convinced with all my heart that all of this has turned into a cemetery long ago, and is nothing more.”
[Inspired by E. Kholmogorov]


russia-insider--2020-10-16--The Nazis Strongly Supported the Arts - The Story of Munich's 'House of German Art'

`` Prizes would be given for artistically exemplary representations of genetically healthy families with many children . ''
This article from our archives was first published on RI in April 2019 The Haus der Deutschen Kunst ( House of German Art ) , a monumental colossus of sandstone and marble , was fashioned after Schinkel ’ s neo-classical Old Museum in Berlin .
The contemporary art museum in Munich is located at Prinzregentenstraße 1 at the southern edge of the Englischer Garten ( English Garden ) , Munich ’ s largest park .
The opening ceremony on July 18 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ festivities celebrating Two Thousand Years of German Art , paying tribute to Germanic and Hellenist heritage and honouring Dürer and Cranach as the culmination in German art .
Chancellor Adolf Hitler spoke at the opening address .
“ This temple will be part of the immortal achievement of the German artistic heritage ” .
Paul Ludwig Troost with Hitler before a model of the Haus der Deutsche Kunst .
Location : the atelier of Troost in Münich , beginning of August 1933 .
Notice the portrait of Frieda Thiers at the background .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Right from Hitler : Gauleiter Adolf Wagner .
The original plan was to fill the Haus der Kunst with art which would pay tribute to Germany ’ s two thousand years of culture .
The House of German Art attracted 2,009,899 visitors , more than three times the number that attended the German Exhibition , and was probably the most popular art event of all time .
From this point on , art in a form preferred by the National Socialists held undisputed sway in the cultural life of Germany and , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the liberated countries of Europe as well .
The eight exhibitions that were held in the House of German Art in Munich between 1937 and 1944 offered a valid cross-section of the best artistic efforts from all of Germany .
The spectacular ceremony surrounding these exhibitions clearly emphasised their representative nature .
Local publicity at the opening of exhibitions was provided in a number of ways .
Pageants designed around the theme of a Day of German Art took place .
Participants wore historical costumes and fancy dress , and models of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Chancellor gave cultural speeches , at which events the National Socialist leadership and public were in attendance .
Periodicals carried pages of promotional overviews .
Many were the magazine reports , pictures , postcards , radio , and newsreels that publicised the events .
The attendance was as follows : In 1937 there were 600,000 visitors ; 1938 , 460,000 ; and 1939 , 400,000 .
In the early war years , attendance rose even higher .
In 1940 there were approximately 600,000 visitors ; in 1941 , 700,000 ; and in 1942 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exhibition of 1937 was the first of these exhibitions and acted as a template for similar exhibitions .
Broadly speaking , these exhibitions displayed both alien ( to Germany ) degenerate art and German renaissance art .
The pageant called Two Thousand Years of German Culture was intended as an embodiment of German history , as an aesthetic manifestation of what was permanent in that history , not as a historical illumination of an ever-changing present or of the present world .
The Völkischer Beobachter , the leading newspaper at the time , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mere imitations of mighty symbols drawn from the mythical world of our ancestors have the power to overwhelm our modern sensibility .
The sun , the symbol of day , the moon , and the goddess of the night convinces and impress upon us their brilliant colours .
Figures from our forefathers ’ sagas are suddenly among us , the stirring tones of trumpeters and drummers on horseback rouse us from our ecstatic meditation .
The first great scene in this pageant has passed by .
The next great era of German history @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Charlemagne , King of the Franks ; his enemy Widukind ; Henry II , founder of cities ; Frederick Barbarossa ; Henry the Lion , the great colonizer , all belong to this epoch .
Representations of their deeds affect us more powerfully than the symbolised figures themselves .
Bamberg and Naumburg , cities founded by Henry II , and Henry the Lion ’ s German colonisation , symbolically evoked before us , become tangible , become reality .
Then come the Gothic period with its knights , ladies , and its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , small details , carvings on capitals , choir stalls , and altar-pieces .
Mercenaries , accompanied by pipers and drummers , head the parade of the German Renaissance .
In the shadow of their sword , Durer , Holbein , and Cranach created their works of art for the German people .
Are they not brothers , the artists , and soldiers ?
Tableaux from the High Baroque , the classic , and the romantic periods are followed by the modern age , our age .
The historical part of the pageant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ section included 3,191 taking part in the parade , 456 animals , horses , dogs , falcons , and 26 trucks .
The exhibitions were organised by the NS-Kidturgemeinde ( NS Cultural Committee ) in 1935 and 1936 .
There were also historical exhibitions .
In some cases , the combination of sponsors interested in a given theme is worth noting .
The exhibit Seafaring and Art was jointly sponsored by the National Socialist Cultural Committee and the Reich Association for German Dominance of the Seas .
The National Socialist Cultural Committee and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a competition for the exhibition Pictures of the Family .
In their announcement , they stated that prizes would be given for artistically exemplary representations of genetically healthy families with many children .
At the end of this pageant celebrating 2,000 years of German culture , soldiers appeared again , soldiers in grey , soldiers in brown , soldiers in black .
The Wehrmacht and the SA ( Sturmabteilung ( Storm Troop ) marched down lanes of cheering spectators .
NSKK ( Nationalsozialistisches Kraftfahrkorps , National Socialist Motorised Units ) , Arbeitsdienst ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Elite Guard ) reaped the final waves of applause .
Group marching in the “ Pageant in Honor of the Day of German Art ” with a model of the House of German Art , Munich , October 15 , 1933 .
Chancellor Adolf Hitler laid the cornerstone of the great building on October 15 , 1933 .
Remarkably , only 8-months had passed since the National Socialist German Workers Party had in the General Election of 1933 been elected to govern Capitalist-Communist free Germany .
The ceremony was accompanied by a lavish @ @ @ @ @ @ @ German Art .
A model of the new building was exhibited in the parade held at that time .
The Munich museum , designed by Paul Ludwig Troost with Hitler ’ s active collaboration , was built of massive cut stone and had a marble interior .
The materials chosen had a special significance .
Professor Troost insisted from the Art in the Third Reich beginning that the House of German Art be not merely a showplace for paintings but a representative structure , a temple of German art .
The cellar houses @ @ @ @ @ @ @ powered by gas .
At a lower underground level , there was situated a modern air-raid shelter .
It would be fair to say that the most advanced technology available has been utilised , but the building does not in its appearance bear the mark of technology .
In the case of the Munich museum , the building was to express “ in its proportions and in the quality of its materials the dignity and greatness ” of German art .
That is to say , the building itself was to support and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Eyewitnesses report that Chancellor Adolf Hitler himself stepped in at a preview and accepted a number of works by painters who had not been previously selected .
Among them was Ferdinand Staeger , who later expressed his gratitude and devotion in propaganda painting .
The building symbolised the sovereign right of the people to enjoy and , in an ideal sense , to own their own art , which was no longer to be reserved for royalty alone .
The original plan in Munich , too , had been to extend the theme @ @ @ @ @ @ @ entitled A Thousand Years of German Art , which would pay tribute to the history of German culture and its popular character .
In effect , the popular German Chancellor was giving German art back to the German people who were in truth its parent .
Adolf Ziegler , the painter of nudes and president of the Kulturkammer ( Chamber of Culture ) , signed the announcement for the entry competition .
“ All German artists in the Reich and abroad ” were invited to participate .
The only requirement for entering the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ According to the catalogue , papers for 25,000 works were submitted and of these , about 900 were exhibited .
The Haus der Kunst is a museum built on the instruction of Adolf Hitler .
The works of contemporary artists Promoting the National Socialist idea and racial purity were exhibited from 1937 to 1944 .
The ambition here was to contribute to the rebirth of the purity of the European soul .
MICHAEL WALSH is a British born Irish journalist , author , and broadcaster .
His 52 books include best-selling REICH AND @ @ @ @ @ @ @ RED BRIGANDS , RANSACKING THE REICH , THE ALL LIES INVASION and SCULPTURES OF THE THIRD RIECH : ARNO BREKER AND REICH SCULPTORS , SCULPTURES OF THE THIRD RIECH : JOSEF THORAK AND REICH SCULPTORS

"Prizes would be given for artistically exemplary representations of genetically healthy families with many children."
The Haus der Deutschen Kunst (House of German Art), a monumental colossus of sandstone and marble, was fashioned after Schinkel’s neo-classical Old Museum in Berlin. The contemporary art museum in Munich is located at Prinzregentenstraße 1 at the southern edge of the Englischer Garten (English Garden), Munich’s largest park.
The opening ceremony on July 18, 1937, was preceded by pageants and festivities celebrating Two Thousand Years of German Art, paying tribute to Germanic and Hellenist heritage and honouring Dürer and Cranach as the culmination in German art.
Arno Breker's Flora
Chancellor Adolf Hitler spoke at the opening address. “This temple will be part of the immortal achievement of the German artistic heritage”.
The Haus der deutschen Kunst (Model)
Paul Ludwig Troost with Hitler before a model of the Haus der Deutsche Kunst. Location: the atelier of Troost in Münich, beginning of August 1933. Notice the portrait of Frieda Thiers at the background. Left from Hitler: Paul Ludwig Troost. Right from Hitler: Gauleiter Adolf Wagner.
The original plan was to fill the Haus der Kunst with art which would pay tribute to Germany’s two thousand years of culture. The House of German Art attracted 2,009,899 visitors, more than three times the number that attended the German Exhibition, and was probably the most popular art event of all time. From this point on, art in a form preferred by the National Socialists held undisputed sway in the cultural life of Germany and, after 1939, was the much-approved fashion in the liberated countries of Europe as well.
The eight exhibitions that were held in the House of German Art in Munich between 1937 and 1944 offered a valid cross-section of the best artistic efforts from all of Germany.
The spectacular ceremony surrounding these exhibitions clearly emphasised their representative nature. Local publicity at the opening of exhibitions was provided in a number of ways. Pageants designed around the theme of a Day of German Art took place. Participants wore historical costumes and fancy dress, and models of German artworks were displayed. The German Chancellor gave cultural speeches, at which events the National Socialist leadership and public were in attendance.
Periodicals carried pages of promotional overviews. Many were the magazine reports, pictures, postcards, radio, and newsreels that publicised the events. The attendance was as follows: In 1937 there were 600,000 visitors; 1938, 460,000; and 1939, 400,000. In the early war years, attendance rose even higher. In 1940 there were approximately 600,000 visitors; in 1941, 700,000; and in 1942 it was more than 840,000.
The exhibition of 1937 was the first of these exhibitions and acted as a template for similar exhibitions. Broadly speaking, these exhibitions displayed both alien (to Germany) degenerate art and German renaissance art.
The pageant called Two Thousand Years of German Culture was intended as an embodiment of German history, as an aesthetic manifestation of what was permanent in that history, not as a historical illumination of an ever-changing present or of the present world.
The Völkischer Beobachter, the leading newspaper at the time, July 19, 1937:
“What we are seeing here is another world, the images, figures, and symbols of history recaptured. The language they speak is powerful and awe-inspiring. And indeed thousands upon thousands stand spellbound by this splendour, by the incredible beauty of this spectacle, a spectacle that dissolves the present day and moment, a scene that is the distillation of centuries: The Two Thousand Years of German Culture exhibition is an understanding of history that dissolves the present day and moment, that excludes experience of the present, and that manifests itself in the form of aesthetic images.
Even these mere imitations of mighty symbols drawn from the mythical world of our ancestors have the power to overwhelm our modern sensibility. The sun, the symbol of day, the moon, and the goddess of the night convinces and impress upon us their brilliant colours. Figures from our forefathers’ sagas are suddenly among us, the stirring tones of trumpeters and drummers on horseback rouse us from our ecstatic meditation. The first great scene in this pageant has passed by. The next great era of German history is the Romantic period (sic). Charlemagne, King of the Franks; his enemy Widukind; Henry II, founder of cities; Frederick Barbarossa; Henry the Lion, the great colonizer, all belong to this epoch.
Representations of their deeds affect us more powerfully than the symbolised figures themselves. Bamberg and Naumburg, cities founded by Henry II, and Henry the Lion’s German colonisation, symbolically evoked before us, become tangible, become reality. Then come the Gothic period with its knights, ladies, and its works of art. Here, too, small details, carvings on capitals, choir stalls, and altar-pieces. Mercenaries, accompanied by pipers and drummers, head the parade of the German Renaissance. In the shadow of their sword, Durer, Holbein, and Cranach created their works of art for the German people. Are they not brothers, the artists, and soldiers? Tableaux from the High Baroque, the classic, and the romantic periods are followed by the modern age, our age.
The historical part of the pageant included 3,212 costumed participants. The modern section included 3,191 taking part in the parade, 456 animals, horses, dogs, falcons, and 26 trucks.
“Is it really necessary to portray the modern age to us who are the builders, workers, and toilers of this last era of German history? Yes! We are too close to our own time. We lack the perspective on it. Today, on this day, we were granted that perspective. Today we sat as spectators in the theatre of our own time and saw greatness.
The exhibitions were organised by the NS-Kidturgemeinde (NS Cultural Committee) in 1935 and 1936. There were also historical exhibitions. In some cases, the combination of sponsors interested in a given theme is worth noting.
The exhibit Seafaring and Art was jointly sponsored by the National Socialist Cultural Committee and the Reich Association for German Dominance of the Seas. The National Socialist Cultural Committee and the Reich Association for Large Families held a competition for the exhibition Pictures of the Family. In their announcement, they stated that prizes would be given for artistically exemplary representations of genetically healthy families with many children.
Arno Breker's Flora
At the end of this pageant celebrating 2,000 years of German culture, soldiers appeared again, soldiers in grey, soldiers in brown, soldiers in black.
The Wehrmacht and the SA (Sturmabteilung (Storm Troop) marched down lanes of cheering spectators. NSKK (Nationalsozialistisches Kraftfahrkorps, National Socialist Motorised Units), Arbeitsdienst (Work Corps) and SS (Schutzstaffel Elite Guard) reaped the final waves of applause.
Group marching in the “Pageant in Honor of the Day of German Art” with a model of the House of German Art, Munich, October 15, 1933.
Chancellor Adolf Hitler laid the cornerstone of the great building on October 15, 1933. Remarkably, only 8-months had passed since the National Socialist German Workers Party had in the General Election of 1933 been elected to govern Capitalist-Communist free Germany.
The ceremony was accompanied by a lavish celebration in honour of this Day of German Art. A model of the new building was exhibited in the parade held at that time. The Munich museum, designed by Paul Ludwig Troost with Hitler’s active collaboration, was built of massive cut stone and had a marble interior. The materials chosen had a special significance.
Professor Troost insisted from the Art in the Third Reich beginning that the House of German Art be not merely a showplace for paintings but a representative structure, a temple of German art.
The cellar houses a combined heating and humidity control system powered by gas. At a lower underground level, there was situated a modern air-raid shelter. It would be fair to say that the most advanced technology available has been utilised, but the building does not in its appearance bear the mark of technology.
In the case of the Munich museum, the building was to express “in its proportions and in the quality of its materials the dignity and greatness” of German art. That is to say, the building itself was to support and complement the artistic self-expression it housed.
Eyewitnesses report that Chancellor Adolf Hitler himself stepped in at a preview and accepted a number of works by painters who had not been previously selected. Among them was Ferdinand Staeger, who later expressed his gratitude and devotion in propaganda painting.
The building symbolised the sovereign right of the people to enjoy and, in an ideal sense, to own their own art, which was no longer to be reserved for royalty alone.
The original plan in Munich, too, had been to extend the theme of the pageant to an exhibition also entitled A Thousand Years of German Art, which would pay tribute to the history of German culture and its popular character. In effect, the popular German Chancellor was giving German art back to the German people who were in truth its parent.
Adolf Ziegler, the painter of nudes and president of the Kulturkammer (Chamber of Culture), signed the announcement for the entry competition. “All German artists in the Reich and abroad” were invited to participate. The only requirement for entering the competition was German nationality or race. According to the catalogue, papers for 25,000 works were submitted and of these, about 900 were exhibited.
The Haus der Kunst is a museum built on the instruction of Adolf Hitler. The works of contemporary artists Promoting the National Socialist idea and racial purity were exhibited from 1937 to 1944. The ambition here was to contribute to the rebirth of the purity of the European soul.
VIDEO: Day of German Art 1933; Hitler salutes crowds
MICHAEL WALSH is a British born Irish journalist, author, and broadcaster. His 52 books include best-selling REICH AND WRONG, WITNESS TO HISTORY, THE RED BRIGANDS, RANSACKING THE REICH , THE ALL LIES INVASION and SCULPTURES OF THE THIRD RIECH: ARNO BREKER AND REICH SCULPTORS , SCULPTURES OF THE THIRD RIECH: JOSEF THORAK AND REICH SCULPTORS


russia-insider--2020-10-16--The Best 'Kalinka' Ever Recorded - Red Army Chorus Sings WW2 Favorite - 1965

This article from our archives was first published on RI in May 2020 This post first appeared on Russia Insider @ @ @ @ @ , copy , and redistribute the text in this content ( but not the images @ @ @ @ @ medium or format , with the right to remix , transform , and build upon @ @ @ @ @ as long as they provide a backlink and credit to Russia Insider .
It is @ @ @ @ @ Insider .
Licensed Creative Commons

× Disabling adblock
Disabling adblock for a specific site just takes a couple of clicks.
Usually it is as simple as clicking on the adblock icon in your browser, and choosing the ‘disable on this page or domain’ option.
If that doesn’t work this wikihow article gives more detail: https://www.wikihow.com/Disable-AdBlock
Thank you for your support!


russia-insider--2020-10-17--A Holocaust Was What the Americans Did to the Germans

This article from our archives was first published on RI in January 2019 Never had so many people been put in prison .
The size of the Allied captures was unprecedented in all history .
The Soviets took prisoner some 3.5 million Europeans , the Americans about 6.1 million , the British about 2.4 million , the Canadians about 300,000 , the French around 200,000 .
Uncounted millions of Japanese entered American captivity in 1945 , plus about 640,000 entering Soviet captivity .
As soon as Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945 , the American Military Governor , General Eisenhower @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” throughout the huge area that he commanded , making it a crime punishable by death for German civilians to feed prisoners .
It was even a death-penalty crime to gather food together in one place to take it to prisoners … The order was sent in German to the provincial governments , ordering them to distribute it immediately to local governments .
Copies of the orders were discovered recently in several villages near the Rhine … The message [ which Bacque reproduces ] reads in part : “ … under no circumstances @ @ @ @ @ @ @ local inhabitants in order to deliver them to the prisoners of war .
Those who violate this command and nevertheless try to circumvent this blockade to allow something to come to the prisoners place themselves in danger of being shot….
” Eisenhower ’ s order was also posted in English , German and Polish on the bulletin board of Military Government Headquarters in Bavaria , signed by the Chief of Staff of the Military Governor of Bavaria .
Later it was posted in Polish in Straubing and Regensburg , where there were many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ One US Army officer who read the posted order in May 1945 has written that it was “ the intention of Army command regarding the German POW camps in the US Zone from May 1945 through the end of 1947 to exterminate as many POWs as the traffic would bear without international scrutiny.
” … The [ American ] army ’ s policy was to starve [ German ] prisoners , according to several American soldiers who were there .
Martin Brech , retired professor of philosophy at Mercy college in New York @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 1945 , has said that he was told by an officer that “ it is our policy that these men not be fed.
” The 50,000 to 60,000 men in Andernach were starving , living with no shelter in holes in the ground , trying to nourish themselves on grass .
When Brech smuggled bread to them through the wire , he was ordered to stop by an officer .
Later , Brech sneaked more food to them , was caught , and told by the same officer , “ If you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be shot.
” Brech saw bodies go out of the camp “ by the truckload ” but he was never told how many there were , where they were buried , or how .
… The prisoner Paul Schmitt was shot in the American camp at Bretzenheim after coming close to the wire to see his wife and young son who were bringing him a basket of food .
The French followed suit : Agnes Spira was shot by French guards at Dietersheim in July 1945 for taking food to prisoners .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ written by one of her chidren , reads : “ On the 31st of July 1945 , my mother was suddenly and unexpectedly torn from me because of her good deed toward the imprisoned soldiers.
” The entry in the Catholic church register says simply : “ A tragic demise , shot in Dietersheim on 31.07.1945 .
Buried on 03.08.1945.
” Martin Brech watched in amazement as one officer at Andernach stood on a hillside firing shots towards German women running away from him in the valley below .
The prisoner Hans Scharf @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with her two children came towards an American guard in the camp at Bad Kreuznach , carrying a wine bottle .
She asked the guard to give the bottle to her husband , who was just inside the wire .
The guard upended the bottle into his own mouth , and when it was empty , threw it on the ground and killed the prisoner with five shots .
….Many prisoners and German civilians saw the American guards burn the food brought by civilian women .
One former prisoner described it recently : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the nearby town brought food into the camp .
The American soldiers took everything away from the women , threw it in a heap and poured gasoline [ benzine ] over it and burned it.
” Eisenhower himself ordered that the food be destroyed , according to the writer Karl Vogel , who was the German camp commander appointed by the Americans in Camp 8 at Garmisch-Partenkirchen .
Although the prisoners were getting only 800 calories per day , the Americans were destroying food outside the camp gate .
James Bacque , Crimes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Civilians Under Allied Occupation , 1944-1950 , pp .
41-45 , 94-95 .
Note from RI : See also Thomas Goodrich 's : Summer 1945—Germany , Japan and the Harvest of Hate

This article from our archives was first published on RI in January 2019
Eisenhower’s Starvation Order
By James Bacque
Never had so many people been put in prison. The size of the Allied captures was unprecedented in all history. The Soviets took prisoner some 3.5 million Europeans, the Americans about 6.1 million, the British about 2.4 million, the Canadians about 300,000, the French around 200,000. Uncounted millions of Japanese entered American captivity in 1945, plus about 640,000 entering Soviet captivity.
As soon as Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945, the American Military Governor, General Eisenhower, sent out an “urgent courier” throughout the huge area that he commanded, making it a crime punishable by death for German civilians to feed prisoners. It was even a death-penalty crime to gather food together in one place to take it to prisoners … The order was sent in German to the provincial governments, ordering them to distribute it immediately to local governments. Copies of the orders were discovered recently in several villages near the Rhine … The message [which Bacque reproduces] reads in part: “… under no circumstances may food supplies be assembled among the local inhabitants in order to deliver them to the prisoners of war. Those who violate this command and nevertheless try to circumvent this blockade to allow something to come to the prisoners place themselves in danger of being shot….”
Eisenhower’s order was also posted in English, German and Polish on the bulletin board of Military Government Headquarters in Bavaria, signed by the Chief of Staff of the Military Governor of Bavaria. Later it was posted in Polish in Straubing and Regensburg, where there were many Polish guard companies at nearby camps. One US Army officer who read the posted order in May 1945 has written that it was “the intention of Army command regarding the German POW camps in the US Zone from May 1945 through the end of 1947 to exterminate as many POWs as the traffic would bear without international scrutiny.”
… The [American] army’s policy was to starve [German] prisoners, according to several American soldiers who were there. Martin Brech, retired professor of philosophy at Mercy college in New York, who was a guard at Andernach in 1945, has said that he was told by an officer that “it is our policy that these men not be fed.” The 50,000 to 60,000 men in Andernach were starving, living with no shelter in holes in the ground, trying to nourish themselves on grass. When Brech smuggled bread to them through the wire, he was ordered to stop by an officer. Later, Brech sneaked more food to them, was caught, and told by the same officer, “If you do that again, you’ll be shot.” Brech saw bodies go out of the camp “by the truckload” but he was never told how many there were, where they were buried, or how.
… The prisoner Paul Schmitt was shot in the American camp at Bretzenheim after coming close to the wire to see his wife and young son who were bringing him a basket of food. The French followed suit: Agnes Spira was shot by French guards at Dietersheim in July 1945 for taking food to prisoners. The memorial to her in nearby Buedesheim, written by one of her chidren, reads: “On the 31st of July 1945, my mother was suddenly and unexpectedly torn from me because of her good deed toward the imprisoned soldiers.” The entry in the Catholic church register says simply: “A tragic demise, shot in Dietersheim on 31.07.1945. Buried on 03.08.1945.” Martin Brech watched in amazement as one officer at Andernach stood on a hillside firing shots towards German women running away from him in the valley below.
The prisoner Hans Scharf … was watching as a German woman with her two children came towards an American guard in the camp at Bad Kreuznach, carrying a wine bottle. She asked the guard to give the bottle to her husband, who was just inside the wire. The guard upended the bottle into his own mouth, and when it was empty, threw it on the ground and killed the prisoner with five shots.
….Many prisoners and German civilians saw the American guards burn the food brought by civilian women. One former prisoner described it recently: “At first, the women from the nearby town brought food into the camp. The American soldiers took everything away from the women, threw it in a heap and poured gasoline [benzine] over it and burned it.” Eisenhower himself ordered that the food be destroyed, according to the writer Karl Vogel, who was the German camp commander appointed by the Americans in Camp 8 at Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Although the prisoners were getting only 800 calories per day, the Americans were destroying food outside the camp gate.
James Bacque, Crimes and Mercies: The Fate of German Civilians Under Allied Occupation, 1944-1950, pp. 41-45, 94-95.
Note from RI: See also Thomas Goodrich's: Summer 1945—Germany, Japan and the Harvest of Hate