Laissez-Faire Institute - Freedom Without Compromise

Libertarianism is against aggression (3)

continued from “Libertarianism is against aggression (2)”

We have words for that: useful idiots of the void.

Libertarianism is against socialism

Thus, fortuitously, from a mixture of theoretical and practical grounds of their own, the Soviets arrived early at what libertarians consider to be the only proper and principled foreign policy.

– Murray N. Rothbard, “A Soviet Foreign Policy: A Revisionist Perspective”

the United States, not the Soviet Union, is the main menace to the peace of the world

– Murray N. Rothbard, “The Afghan Scam”

Che is dead, and we all mourn him.

– Murray N. Rothbard, “Ernesto Che Guevara, RIP”

Forget the Entrepreneur, forget the Industrialist, Rothbard’s libertarian role-model: the prison warden of a socialist dictatorship!

But first, some introductions:

Quite the lovely bunch, aren’t they?

As for socialism (noticed the common denominator in the list?):

a policy which aims at constructing a society in which the means of production are socialized

not an alternative to capitalism; an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.

– Ludwig von Mises

Si, en définitive, j’avais à trouver une formule générale pour exprimer ce que m’apparaît le socialisme dans son ensemble, je dirais que c’est une nouvelle formule de la servitude.

[were I to attempt to sum up what socialism is, I would say that it was simply a new system of serfdom]

– Tocqueville, Œuvres complètes, IX, p. 541 [ Tocqueville’s Critique of Socialism ], 1848

Socialism is aggression by definition2. Socialist regimes have committed and commit aggression – on a massive scale. Libertarianism is, therefore, very much against socialism.

Now then:

Assad did not share the US role as the world leader of capitalist globalization. Instead Assad was using Syria’s wealth for the benefit of the Syrian people, just as Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.

– David William Pear, “Who Really Defeated ISIS?”

From Antiwar.com, a website (it regularly publishes LRC/LvMI/RPI authors as well) whose authors call themselves libertarians:

we do have a political affiliation; we are libertarians. Emphasizing non-intervention abroad and here at home, our opposition to war is rooted in the Randolph Bourne’s concept that “War is the health of the State.”

Justin Raimondo is [was] the editorial director of Antiwar.com and its principle columnist. […] He is [was] an Adjunct Scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, […] a Senior Fellow at the Center for Libertarian Studies, and […] the author of An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard.

Q: How can I contribute financially to Antiwar.com’s cause?
A: As a non-for-profit group, we survive on generous contributions from our readers to keep the site active and growing. Please donate.

We’ll pass.

Jean Ziegler, member of the same political party that Lenin was in, fittingly published a book whose title is a quote from Lenin, Retournez les fusils ! Choisir son camp. In 1964, Che Guevera ordered him to remain in Switzerland, which he did, alas for us:

In 1964 Jean Ziegler chauffeured the then legendary Che Guevara at a conference in Geneva. Enthusiastically, he wants to set off for Cuba with the revolutionary. But Guevara refuses. Jean Ziegler should fight against the “head of the capitalist monster” here in Switzerland, where he was born.

The very same year, Che Guevara was proudly defending his regime’s executions of opponents before the UN General Assembly. “Communist at heart”, Ziegler is a longtime friend and apologist for most of the living dictators listed above: Castro, Chavez, Gaddafi… Ziegler co-founded the eponymous Gaddafi prize for Human Rights (sic), which was then awarded to Chavez, Castro, and… Ziegler himself. Even his name Jean (it was actually Hans) was given to him by the French communist Simone de Beauvoir (“Hans is not a name”, she decided, and like with the communist Guevera, little Jean obeyed).

On Antiwar.com, conversely, Ziegler is introduced as “a UN specialist on hunger” and “a recognized authority on international law and human rights from Switzerland”, with his report on Israel taken at face value… The same Ziegler who secretly negotiated with the PLO terrorists in 1970, right after they murdered 47 passengers of a Swissair flight, in Switzerland – international law and human rights, indeed. The terrorist attack was claimed by the PFLP, a “Marxist–Leninist and revolutionary socialist organization… the second-largest of the groups forming the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the largest being Fatah” Like for Fatah, a glance at its logo is enough to know what exactly they stand for, and that everything else are just lies and deceptions.

Notice: socialism, once again, the common denominator of all these abominations.

Libertarianism is against socialism (collectivism, terrorism, wars)

Indeed, the “peaceful” and “proper and principled” foreign policy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics implied massive subsidies for terrorist and communist movements all around the world. Rothbard, apparently, was as ignorant in geography as he was incompetent in history:

Soviet foreign policy, since the days of Lenin, has had one guiding star: protecting its borders by dominating the nations on its periphery. And this “domination” is largely concerned with seeing to it that no anti-Soviet nations are contiguous to Russia.

So the Soviet Union must have had borders with Angola, Egypt, Cuba, Vietnam… How interesting!3

Israel’s peaceful neighbors

For a short history of Israel, read: “A Short History of Israel”.

We’ll limit ourselves to three points here:

  • that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics bears a heavy responsibility in the ongoing conflict, contrary to Rothbard’s assessment of it limiting itself to defending its borders. Certainly a foreign policy that finances antisemitic terrorism in far-away lands4 is by no means “the only proper and principled foreign policy”;

  • that Rothbard was also wrong in his assessment of the conflict in general;

  • that he was wrong, in particular, by treating property rights in a collectivist way.

Socialism and terrorism

Czechoslovakia saved Israel by supplying weapons at a much needed time, then stopped… when ordered so by Russia, supplying Israel’s enemies afterwards (neither Czechoslovakia nor Israel are “contiguous to Russia”, of course):

The Soviet [socialist] dictator Josef Stalin’s general paranoia focused particularly on Jews, and now on Israel. While the 1948 war was still in progress, he ordered Czechoslovakia to cease supplying arms to Israel. In 1949 the Soviet press began an ‘anti-cosmopolitan’ campaign – ‘cosmopolitans’ being a code word for Jews. Many Jews were arrested on trumped-up charges, tortured, and executed or sentenced to long terms in labour camps. In 1953 Stalin ‘discovered’ a fictitious plot by a group of doctors, most of them Jewish, to overthrow the Soviet regime. Mass murder of Jews was probably averted only by Stalin’s own death a few weeks later, after which the new Soviet leadership disavowed the ‘Doctor’s Plot’ and posthumously annulled the fifteen death sentences already carried out on account of it.

However, the Soviet Union continued to persecute Jews, and its foreign policy stance became violently anti-Israeli. In 1955 it began supplying large quantities of arms to Egypt and Syria. Egypt signed a treaty with Syria and Jordan placing the Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdul Nasser [another socialist, who’d have thought!] in command of all three armies. This was one of the high points of the pan-Arab nationalist movement, led by Nasser, which wanted to unite all Arabs into a single nation.

In July, 1956, Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal [socialism, once again!], an international waterway owned by the British and French governments [socialism is stealing, as usual]. Israeli ships, and ships travelling to or from Israeli ports, were banned from using the Canal. Nasser ignored the UN’s perfunctory protest. He had already imposed a similar ban on another international waterway, the Straits of Tiran, thus blockading Eilat, the port that Israel was trying to develop at its southern tip.

Violent incidents on Israel’s borders increased. Jordanian and Egyptian soldiers and fedayeen crossed the border and attacked both military and civilian targets. The shelling of Israeli towns and villages within range of Egyptian artillery became almost continuous. Israel prepared for war against Egypt. It planned to lift the blockade of Eilat by seizing and holding Sharm-el-Sheikh, a town where a large military base had been built, dominating the Straits of Tiran. It also planned to retaliate for Egypt’s attacks, and impair Egypt’s ability to threaten invasion, by striking at its army, now deployed on the Sinai peninsula and in the Gaza Strip. To do all this, the IDF needed modern weapons. The United States would not supply any. Nor would any Soviet-bloc country including [socialist] Czechoslovakia (which was now supplying [socialist] Egypt).

... Within months of the end of the Six Day War, Nasser embarked on the War of Attrition – a series of attacks by land, sea and air, predominantly on Israeli military targets. These were designed to be sufficiently frequent and deadly to force Israel to remain in a constant state of war-readiness, but on any particular occasion to be insufficient to provoke all-out war. Some of the aircraft participating in the war were flown by Soviet pilots who were among the 20,000 Soviet ‘advisors’ (in reality, soldiers and military technicians) who were stationed in Egypt.

... In 1970, Egypt and Israel agreed to a ceasefire proposed by the US, one of whose terms was that nether country would build new military installations within 50 kilometres of the Canal. Egypt immediately began doing so, installing state-of-the-art surface-to-air missile sites, supplied by the Soviet Union and manned by Soviet ‘advisors’.

The [socialist] Soviet Union provided significant military hardware to [socialist] Iraq, such as military aircraft (including MiG fighter jets), tanks, and a surface-to-air missile system), as well as aid in the form of Soviet military and civilian advisers who provided technical assistance. In 1967, Iraq signed an agreement with the USSR to supply the nation with oil in exchange for large-scale access to Eastern Bloc arms.

The Baathist [socialist] regime “drew even closer to the Soviet Union, with relations hitting their peak from 1969 to 1973.” After 1972, Iraq soon became one of the Soviet Union’s closest allies in the Middle East. A fifteen-year Iraqi-Soviet “treaty of friendship and cooperation” was signed in April 1972. Iraq participated in the Yom Kippur War against Israel, and received Soviet military aid during the war. Soviets assisted the Iraqis in the development of the Rumaila oil field, and Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin participated in the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Soviet arms were also used by the Iraqis to crush the Kurdish uprising led by Mustafa Barzani, in 1975. Iraqi secret police received training from Soviet and East German agents.

– Wikipedia, “Iraq–Russia relations”

There’s more, of course: “Soviet Russia, Creator of the PLO and Inventor of the Palestinian People”.

Acknowledged leaders and pan-nationalism

the Arabs would have to overthrow all of their stagnant reactionary monarchies and form a united pan-Arab nation–for the splits into nation-States in the Arab world are the consequence of the artificial machinations and depredations of British and French imperialism.

– Murray N. Rothbard, “War Guilt in the Middle East”

What happened to secession and decentralization into small states? Is this only for Western countries, whereas for others “pan-Arab nationalism” is suddenly libertarian?

From at least the 1960s onward, Murray Rothbard regarded secession and what he called “radical decentralization” as central to libertarian ideology.

– “Why Rothbard Wanted ‘Radical Decentralization’”

And yet, these Arab brethren part of one great pan-nation somehow couldn’t integrate refugees from their own blood into their warm collective midst:

hapless Arab refugees, their ranks now swollen by natural increase to 1.3 million, have continued to live in utter destitution in refugee camps around the Israeli borders, barely kept alive by meagre UN funds and CARE packages“

– Murray N. Rothbard, “War Guilt in the Middle East”

Ah yes, those meagre UN funds!

According to World Bank data, for all countries receiving more than $2 billion international aid in 2012, Gaza and the West Bank received a per capita aid budget over double the next largest recipient, at a rate of $495.

Yes, they should definitely be given more taxpayer money. US policy today is much more “rothbardian”, paying the full amount of subsidies for terrorism:

Our government alone has been paying the Palestinian Arabs on the order of $400 million a year. The Jewish News Syndicate cites a report that the outlays for 2017 would come in at $363 million. JNS quotes Prime Minister Netanyahu as reckoning that the Palestinian Authority parlays something like $353 million a year to terrorists and their families.

– “Taylor Force Becomes Law”

Meanwhile, Israel successfully integrated all the refugees expelled from Arab countries, instead of artificially maintaining them in camps and poverty to be used as political tools. Incidentally:

The amount of land confiscated from Jews forced to flee Arab and Muslim countries amounted to 40,000 square miles, or five times the size of Israel in 1948. Recent estimates value the pan-Arab confiscations as worth $250 billion

– “Ignored by the UN, Mizrahi Jews survived pogroms and expulsions, too”, emphasis added

It gets worse:

The acknowledged leader of the Palestinian Arabs, their Grand Mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini, was summarily deposed by the long-time British tool, King Abdullah of Trans-jordan, who simply confiscated the Arab regions of east-central Palestine, as well as the Old City of Jerusalem.

– Murray N. Rothbard, “War Guilt in the Middle East”

Indeed, who needs individualism and decentralization when you’ve got pan-nations and “acknowledged leaders!” Also... did he say Haj Amin al-Husseini?

His historical importance may be found in the texts of his speeches and essays of the 1930s and 1940s. They offer abundant evidence of his impact on Nazi Germany’s Arabic language propaganda aimed at North Africa and the Middle East during World War II and the Holocaust. Before, during and after his presence in Berlin from 1941 to 1945, Husseini played a central role in shaping the political tradition of Islamism by offering an interpretation of the religion of Islam as intrinsically antisemitic and anti-Zionist and in connecting that version to the antisemitic conspiracy theories of modern European history.

– “Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Nazis and the Holocaust: The Origins, Nature and Aftereffects of Collaboration”

When the Nazis heard Mohammed Amin al-Husseini calling for Arabs to “kill the jews wherever you find them,” they knew they had found an ally in their terrible ideology.

– “The Nazis, with the help of an Arab cleric, used Islamic extremists as a tool”

During World War II he collaborated with both Italy and Germany by making propagandistic radio broadcasts and by helping the Nazis recruit Bosnian Muslims for the Waffen-SS

– Wikipedia, “Amin al-Husseini”

In 1944, at the behest of Husseini, Hitler ordered a five-man team to dump a lethal toxin in the water supply of Tel Aviv. Luckily, the unit, which comprised three Germans and two Arabs, was caught by police in Jericho before they had chance to execute their plan. It is estimated that a quarter of million people would have died if the plot had succeeded.

– “Hitler’s war against Jews continues in ’Palestine’”

Well. That sheds an interesting light on comments such as these:

Is there any difference at all between this kind of attitude and that of the Nazi persecutors of the Jews whom our press has been attacking, day in and day out, for well over twenty years?

– Murray N. Rothbard, “War Guilt in the Middle East”

Yes, why “attack” nazi persecutors of the Jews (was Rothbard even aware of the Holocaust?5), when the best thing for the world would be to have, instead of high-tech startup-nation Israel (nah, who needs entrepreneurs!), yet another oppressive islamist dictatorship, ran by an “acknowledged leader”, friend of Adolf Hitler no less!

Shorn of Western influence and Western imperialism, that harmony can reign once more.

– Murray N. Rothbard, “War Guilt in the Middle East”

Ah yes, this horrible Western influence, destroying the civilized non-Western world and its peaceful harmony! Ah, those poor Arab individuals suffering under Israeli rule as full citizens and suffering from democracy (Israel had about 4 elections in the last two years, when was the last time the “Palestinian authority” had one?), free markets, freedom of speech and now having to debate such issues as surrogacy for gay couples, when they could be “harmoniously” executing gays and jailing adulterers on “their” land living under “their” “acknowledged” leader!

Property rights, individual and collectivist

Zionism had succeeded in carving out a European Jewish State, over Arab territory in the Middle East.

– Murray N. Rothbard, “War Guilt in the Middle East”

It should be obvious for everyone that from a libertarian perspective, there is no such thing as “Arab territory”. There are only private properties owned by individuals. Private property, of course, includes the right to sell it to whomever you want, regardless of their religion, nationality, etc.

Finally, regarding the legitimacy of Israel as a state, even according to Israel’s most vociferous critics of which Rothbard was one, 7% of pre-1948 Palestine was purchased legitimately by Jews. Given that, would Jews have a right to set up a State on that limited territory, and if attacked, expand those lands in a defensive action? From the perspective of libertarians who recognize the right to set up a minimalist state for the purposes of security and defense only, certainly.

Our conclusion is that Israel is in fact built on both legitimate land purchases as well as legitimate land claims from the past, specifically the Roman period. Ideally, all land in Israel with obvious signs of previous Jewish homesteading dated to the Roman destruction should revert to Jews by shares of stock, i.e. to those Jews who descend from the original homesteaders. These include the Temple Mount (which we know was built by Jewish Kohanim) and the entire Old City of Jerusalem as well as most of modern day East Jerusalem and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron.

While we do not encourage libertarians to take sides in this conflict, we suggest that if they wish to do so, they should side with Israel as the most (classically) liberal, and therefore the most relatively libertarian country in the region.

– Alan Futerman, Rafi Farber, Walter E. Block, “The Libertarian Case for Israel”

To say that an entire terrain is occupied (and also talking about “Arab land”) is an expression of unwarranted collectivism, something explicitly opposed in Rothbard’s work. He seems to be replacing homesteading (and therefore legitimate land ownership) by definition. And the definition of “occupied” would imply a previous homesteading of the land by Arabs, which was not the case.

– Walter E. Block6, Alan G. Futerman, Rafi Farber, “The Legal Status of the State of Israel: A Libertarian Approach”

Indeed, at the same time as Israel is accused of stealing land it bought at exorbitant prices… Selling land to Jews is punishable by death by the dictatorships oppressing the Arab populations:

Even Amnesty International is using very strange and racist definitions of ownership:

Lazar Berman: If I go anywhere over the Green Line and I buy a house, am I now a settler living illegally in East Jerusalem?

Philip Luther: Yes.

– Lazar Berman, “Amnesty to ToI: No double standard in accusing Israel, but not China, of apartheid”

Is everyone buying a house over the Green Line (you, me, Philip Luther) a “settler living illegally” there? Of course not. So on which side is the apartheid, now?

Cuba’s property rights

Speaking of property rights, we have Jacob G. Hornberger (ah yes, the same one…):

there is absolutely nothing the Cubans can do to regain their property.

… A great place to start would be by giving Guantanamo Bay back to Cuba

– Jacob G. Hornberger, “Give Guantanamo Back to Cuba”

Which raises the question: which Cubans, exactly? And if the US finds them (the actual legitimate owners of that land) and returns the property to them, would the Socialist regime ruling over the rest of the island actually let them keep it? Of course not, this is not what Hornberger means: he means to give “back” Guantanamo Bay to the group of thieves who never owned it, who never legitimately owned anything, in fact, and who happen to be against property rights to begin with. Why? “The Cubans” and “Cuba” here being equated with “whichever socialist dictator happens to be oppressing the Cuban people right now”.

Rothbard was also wrong in his assessment:

we all knew that his enemy was our enemy–that great Colossus that oppresses and threatens all the peoples of the world, U. S. imperialism.

– Murray N. Rothbard, “Ernesto Che Guevara, RIP”

Ah, the old, and wrong, principle, the “enemy of my enemy is my friend”? “US imperialism”, in fact, did not oppress “all the peoples of the world” – many were, at the time, oppressed by Rothbard’s “friends” – and would happily have been “oppressed” by the US instead (while many others such as Western Europe were only oppressed by their own governments). To Rothbard – and we see the same error today committed by his followers –, it seems that the difference between living in America or in Russia was just a matter of theoretical policy, say like one might discuss the different tax rates or parking laws between Texas and Nevada.

McDowell: That is a great change from the Russians I have always known, and I have known a lot of them. Don’t they do things at all like Americans? Don’t they walk across town to visit their mother-in-law or somebody?

Ayn Rand (Алиса Зиновьевна Розенбаум): Look, it is very hard to explain. It is almost impossible to convey to a free people what it is like to live in a totalitarian dictatorship. I can tell you a lot of details. I can never completely convince you, because you are free. It is in a way good that you can’t even conceive of what it is like. Certainly they have friends and mothers-in-law. They try to live a human life, but you understand it is totally inhuman. Try to imagine what it is like if you are in constant terror from morning till night and at night you are waiting for the doorbell to ring, where you are afraid of anything and everybody, living in a country where human life is nothing, less than nothing, and you know it. You don’t know who or when is going to do what to you because you may have friends who spy on you, where there is no law and any rights of any kind.

– Ayn Rand’s testimony before the House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities (video)

Did Rothbard pause for a second to consider had “Che” been successful in, say, causing Revolution in the USA, how his life would have been affected by it? Useful idiot indeed:

And so, with tragic irony, Che Guevara, in his daring and courage, was betrayed by the very Bolivian peasantry whom he was trying to liberate [sic], and who barely understood the meaning of the conflict.

– Murray N. Rothbard, “Ernesto Che Guevara, RIP”

Seems that the Bolivian farmers were wiser than Rothbard: he hadn’t “understood the meaning of the conflict”, at all.

Venezuela’s democrats

Speaking of Cuba…

At 24 years of age, Maduro resided in Havana with other militants of leftist organizations in South America who had moved to Cuba in 1986, attending a one-year course at the Escuela Nacional de Cuadros Julio Antonio Mella, a centre of political education directed by the Union of Young Communists. During his time in Cuba, Maduro was instructed by Pedro Miret Prieto, a senior member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Cuba who was close to Fidel Castro.

– Wikpedia, “Nicolás Maduro”

Under President Hugo Chávez, Venezuela enjoyed warm relations with Russia. Much of this was through the sale of military equipment; from 2005, Venezuela purchased more than $4 billion worth of arms from Russia.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro added to aggressive foreign policy initiatives sought by Chavez in saying that “the unipolar world is collapsing and finishing in all aspects, and the alliance with Russia is part of that effort to build a multipolar world.”

for 2011, Venezuela was the top customer for Russia’s arms for ground forces.

Maduro was re-elected for a second term in May 2018, but the result was denounced as fraudulent by most neighboring countries, the European Union, Canada and the United States. Russia, however, recognized the elections and Russian president Vladimir Putin congratulated Maduro.

In December 2018, Russia sent two Tupolev Tu-160 bombers to Venezuela. These jets are capable of carrying nuclear weapons. The Russian and Venezuelan militaries later conducted joint military exercises.

In January 2019, the majority opposition National Assembly declared that Maduro’s reelection was invalid and declared its president, Juan Guaidó, to be acting president of Venezuela. The United States, Canada, Brazil and several Latin American countries recognized Guaidó as interim president. Russia, however, continued to support Maduro. A month later, Russia, along with China vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for new presidential elections in Venezuela.

In February 2022, Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine. The invasion received widespread international condemnation; Maduro, however expressed his “strong support” for Russia in a phone call with Putin and condemned the sanctions Western nations imposed on Russia.

– Wikipedia, “Russia–Venezuela relations”

«Nous voulons remercier la Russie»: une fresque pro-Poutine dans un bastion chaviste de Caracas

Un Vladimir Poutine souriant à côté du défunt Hugo Chavez et, dans un coin, le «Z» de soutien à l’armée russe: des collectifs de gauche ont peint une fresque dans un quartier de Caracas, bastion chaviste, en soutien à l’invasion russe en Ukraine.

«Nous voulons remercier la Russie et son président pour tout le soutien qu’il nous a apporté», a déclaré à l’AFP Francisco Moreno, membre du groupe de gauche «zapatiste» qui avec ses camarades de «La Piedrita» a réalisé cette peinture dans le quartier de Catia. «C’est un message de solidarité avec le gouvernement russe qui nous a toujours soutenus: le premier vaccin que nous avons eu était le russe, ma mère a été vaccinée avec Spoutnik», a-t-il ajouté.

En haut à droite, au dessus du mot «Venceremos» («Nous vaincrons»), figure un avion de chasse russe Soukhoï, et en bas à droite un «Z», devenu un symbole du soutien à l’armée russe dans la guerre en Ukraine.

La Russie est un allié clé du Venezuela depuis l’époque de Chávez (1999-2013) et le reste avec l’actuel président Nicolás Maduro qui, grâce à cette relation, a pu contourner les sanctions imposées par les dans l’États-Unis et d’autres pays occidentaux contre son gouvernement.

Rothbard lamented in 1967 that the Venezuelans were not yet ready to embrace socialism:

In his head Che knew full well that he and a handful of Cubans, no matter how carefully trained, could never export revolution, could never impose revolution upon a Bolivian or a Venezuelan peasantry who were not ready for the struggle.

– Murray N. Rothbard, “Ernesto Che Guevara, RIP”

Well, a few decades later, alas, they were:

Dios proveerá

[God will provide]

– Nicolás Maduro, President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, in a speech quoted in “Venezuela, a la buena de Dios”, after the unsurprising utter failure of his socialist policies

Turning a country with the world’s largest proven oil reserves into an utter hellhole on the brink of famine is no small feat, yet socialism can accomplish anything. As Milton Friedman would say:

put them in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand

Quite literally actually.

Serbia’s non-genocide

Covering up the whole Yugoslav Wars and their coverage by “libertarians” would take another article. Relevant for us here is that, just as they repeat Russian propaganda now, the so-called “anti-war” libertarians then repeated the Serbian one. And now, they still stick to it, using the NATO intervention there as “proof” of NATO’s aggressiveness. On the Serbian (socialists’ – you guessed it) crimes, see for instance:

On “Antiwar.com”, conversely, you would have read about:

Raimondo himself, following up in the tradition of his mentor Rothbard of writing obits for socialist murderers. Of course.

Vietnam’s peaceniks

The Soviet Union supplied North Vietnam with medical supplies, arms, tanks, planes, helicopters, artillery, anti-aircraft missiles and other military equipment. Soviet crews fired Soviet-made surface-to-air missiles at U.S. F-4 Phantoms, which were shot down over Thanh Hóa in 1965. Over a dozen Soviet soldiers lost their lives in this conflict. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian Federation officials acknowledged that the Soviet Union had stationed up to 3,000 troops in Vietnam during the war.

Some Russian sources give more specific numbers: Between 1953 and 1991, the hardware donated by the Soviet Union included 2,000 tanks, 1,700 APCs, 7,000 artillery guns, over 5,000 anti-aircraft guns, 158 surface-to-air missile launchers, and 120 helicopters. During the war, the Soviets sent North Vietnam annual arms shipments worth $450 million. From July 1965 to the end of 1974, fighting in Vietnam was observed by some 6,500 officers and generals, as well as more than 4,500 soldiers and sergeants of the Soviet Armed Forces. In addition, Soviet military schools and academies began training Vietnamese soldiers—in all more than 10,000 military personnel

– Wikipedia, “Vietnam War”

Conversely, not a word about all that in this LvMI article about Vietnam:

The Vietnamese experience should have cast both communism and interventionist foreign policy into the shallow grave they have unjustly avoided for so long. But subsequent intrusions in South America, Iraq, Afghanistan, and most recently Ukraine demonstrate that the United States continues marching into doomed, futile interventions on behalf America’s military-industrial complex and cronyist foreign policy. It’s time for us to put interventionist foreign policy to rest and let peace and markets do their work.

– “Vietnam Should Have Been the End of US Foreign Intervention. It Wasn’t, and the World Is Worse Off”

Indeed, this should be entirely rewritten:

The Vietnamese experience should have cast both communism and [its] interventionist foreign policy into the shallow grave they have unjustly avoided for so long. But subsequent intrusions in South America, Iraq, Afghanistan, and most recently Ukraine demonstrate that Russia continues marching into doomed, futile interventions on behalf [of] Russia’s military-industrial complex and cronyist foreign policy. It’s time for us to put interventionist foreign policy to rest and let peace and markets do their work.

Vietnam Should Have Been the End of Russian Foreign Intervention. It Wasn’t, and the World Is Worse Off.7

Libertarianism is against socialism (its famines)

No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy.

– Amartya Sen, Democracy as Freedom

В стране, где единственным работодателем является государство, эта мера означает медленную голодную смерть. Старый принцип: кто не работает, тот не ест, заменен новым: кто не повинуется, тот не ест.

In a country where the sole employer is the state, this means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced with a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.

– Лев Давидович Троцкий, “Преданная революция”, [ Leon Trotsky, “Revolution Betrayed” ]

Ukraine has suffered not one but three horrible famines, courtesy of socialism, courtesy of being occupied by Russia:

Man – not nature – was the cause of the first mass starvation in Soviet Ukraine. In this respect, the Ukrainian famine of 1921-1923 was very different from the contemporaneous Russian famine, but quite akin to the Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933. Since starvation in Ukraine was the result of a policy of plunder by Lenin’s government, the responsibility lies with the Soviet state.

Moscow’s treatment of Ukraine at the time of the famine was that of an imperial government with regard to a rebellious colony. By removing grain from starving Ukraine, the Bolsheviks accomplished several objectives at once: Ukrainian grain helped nourish hungry Russia; it provided a marketable commodity easily exchanged for hard currency in the West; finally, and not insignificantly, it physically weakened Ukrainian opposition to Russian domination. Bullets can miss their target; famines – never.

– Dr. Roman Serbyn, “The first man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine 1921-1923”

Since 2006, the Holodomor has been recognized by Ukraine alongside 15 other countries as a genocide against the Ukrainian people carried out by the Soviet government.

– Wikipedia, “Holodomor”  

Sovereign states to have recognized Holodomor as genocide include Argentina, Australia, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Ukraine, and the Holy See in Vatican City.

– Wikipedia, “Holodomor in modern politics”

Conversely…

The Russian Federation officially says that the Holodomor is not an ethnic genocide. The State Duma passed a resolution in 2008 stating that the Holodomor should not be considered genocide,

On 17 November 2007, members from Aleksandr Dugin’s Russian nationalist group the Eurasian Youth Union broke into the Ukrainian cultural center in Moscow and smashed an exhibition on the famine. A Moscow Times article reported the event thusly: “The Kremlin argues that genocide is the killing of a population based on their ethnicity, whereas Stalin’s regime annihilated all kinds of people indiscriminately, regardless of their ethnicity. But if the Kremlin really believed in this argument, it would officially acknowledge that Stalin’s actions constituted mass genocide against all the people of the Soviet Union.”

It’s interesting to note here that our socialist “friend” Jean Ziegler, introduced at antiwar.com as “a UN specialist on hunger”, has systematically defended the very socialist regimes most responsible for causing famines… A specialist on hunger? Well… yes he is: a specialist on causing hunger through the regimes he supported, being best friends with every major socialist dictator: “de la Corée du Nord de Kim Il-sung à l’Ethiopie de Mengitsu, du Zimbabwe de Mugabe au Cuba de Castro”. (“Mengistu’s government is estimated to be responsible for the deaths of 500,000 to 2,000,000 Ethiopians, mostly during the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia.”, “Mugabe’s famine”, “somewhere between 240,000 and 3,500,000 North Koreans died from starvation or hunger-related illnesses” etc).

Bei der Wahl seiner Bündnisgenossen war der Schweizer Kapitalismusgegner Jean Ziegler noch nie wählerisch. So hat er – offenbar ahnungslos – auch eine deutsche Politsekte unterstützt, die bis heute Stalin und Mao Zedong verehrt.

Kim Il Sung, Muammar Ghadhafi, Fidel Castro, Robert Mugabe: Die Liste der Diktatoren, die Jean Ziegler in seiner schillernden Karriere als Autor, Kapitalismusgegner und SP-Politiker allzu eifrig verklärt hat, ist lang – und sie wird immer länger. So steht der 84-Jährige derzeit ebenso stur wie standesgemäss zu den linkspopulistischen, venezolanischen Despoten Hugo Chávez und Nicolás Maduro, die ihr Land innerhalb von wenigen Jahren heruntergewirtschaftet und die Demokratie faktisch abgeschafft haben.

– Lucien Scherrer, “Jean Zieglers Stalinisten-Connection”, NZZ

Ziegler co-wrote a preface to some translations of the book Fortunate Son with… Thierry Meyssan8. Meyssan wrote an article in the book Políticamente incorrecto, in good company with authors such as Noam Chomsky, and a postface by… Ziegler’s friend Fidel Castro. What a family!

Speaking of famines, surely we should mention Mao’s Great One: “It is widely regarded as the deadliest famine and one of the greatest man-made disasters in human history, with an estimated death toll due to starvation that ranges in the tens of millions (15 to 55 million).”

Yet Rothbard had no problem allying with Maoists:

Rothbard was attracted to the growing student movement and actually entered the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) with his small following. He broke with those libertarians still clinging to an alliance with the anti-New-Deal Right by opposing Barry Goldwater in 1964 and beginning publication of Left & Right in 1965. He actively attended New Left meetings, wrote for Ramparts magazine, and even formed tactical alliances at the Freedom & Peace Party conventions with Maoists against old-line socialists.

– Samuel Edward Konkin III, “History of the Libertarian Movement”

Strategy was always an issue of primary concern for Rothbard, and he always aligned himself with the anti-state forces of the moment, wherever they were. In the late 1960s, this was obviously the radical Left. It would have been insanity for anarchists to attempt an alliance with conservatives at the height of the Vietnam War, while the Cold War was still raging, and when virtually all right-wingers were cheering on police repression of the antiwar movement. Instead, the natural allies of libertarians for the moment were the antiwar protestors, student rebels, youth counterculture, the black power movement, and other popular radical strands of the time. Rothbard even participated in a coalition with Trotskyists and Maoists under the banner of the Peace and Freedom Party. These efforts worked remarkably well for a time, and the libertarian movement experienced much growth during the late 1960s and early 1970s, due in large part to an influx of countercultural radicals from the New Left.

– Keith Preston, “Rothbard’s Time on the Left”

Libertarianism is against socialism (its lies)

How enormously different is the conduct of the Cuban government from that of the government of the United States! The Revolution, based on truth, and the empire, based on lies!

– Fidel Castro, liar (on Thierry Meyssan’s website)

And of course I have said very clear [sic] that we are not communists; very clear [sic]

– Fidel Castro, founder of the Communist Party of Cuba

Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten.

[Nobody has any intention of building a wall.]

– Genosse Walter Ulbricht, First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, June 15, 1961 (Construction of the Berlin Wall started August 13, 1961. It stood until November 9, 1989.)

Я обращаюсь и к народу Украины. Искренне хочу, чтобы вы нас поняли: мы ни в коем случае не хотим нанести вам вред, оскорбить ваши национальные чувства. Мы всегда уважали территориальную целостность украинской державы… Хочу, чтобы вы меня услышали, дорогие друзья. Не верьте тем, кто пугает вас Россией, кричит о том, что за Крымом последуют другие регионы. Мы не хотим раздела Украины, нам этого не нужно.

[I also appeal to the people of Ukraine. I sincerely want you to understand us: in no case do we want to harm you, offend your national feelings. We have always respected the territorial integrity of the Ukrainian state… I want you to hear me, dear friends. Do not believe those who scare you with Russia, shouting that other regions will follow Crimea. We do not want the division of Ukraine, we do not need it.]

– Владимир Путин, “Обращение Президента Российской Федерации”, March 18, 2014

Of course we have no intention [of invading Ukraine], we have repeatedly said it all the levels … Nothing is happening, open your eyes.

– Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, February 17, 2022

We remind you that Russia has never attacked anyone throughout its history. And Russia, which has survived so many wars, is the last country in Europe that wants to speak at all, even pronounce the word ‘war’

– Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesperson, quoted in “Russia Never Attacked Anyone, Says Kremlin; Slams ‘war’ Narrative Set By West”, February 20, 2022

Россия не крала никакого зерна

– Песков

Вы знаете, что вчера Россия приняла решение признать суверенитет двух народных республик Донбасса.

Сразу же хочу сказать: мы видим и предвидели, можно сказать, спекуляции на эту тему – на тему о том, что Россия собирается восстановить империю в имперских же границах. Это абсолютно не соответствует действительности.

[ As you know, Russia decided yesterday to recognise the sovereignty of the two people’s republics in Donbass.

I would like to say right away that we can see, and we predicted speculations on this subject, that is, Russia’s alleged intention to reinstate the empire within imperial borders. This has absolutely nothing to do with reality. ]

– Владимир Путин, “Переговоры с Президентом Азербайджана Ильхамом Алиевым” [ Talks with President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev ], February 22, 2022

The corpses in Boutcha that didn’t exist before the Russian troops arrived … er, er, left, sorry - before they left …

– Russian ambassador to the UN, April 5, 2022 (see also)

Apparently, we are now at war with the whole world, as it was in the Great Patriotic War, the whole of Europe, the whole world was against us.

And now it’s the same, they never liked Russia.

– Rustam Minnekaev, deputy commander of the Central Military District, Russian Army, April 23, 2022

Readers of Mises should understand that a socialist regime, on its own, would not have survived so long were it not for subsidies and looting. Socialism is pure parasitism, it simply burns capital accumulated under the previous regimes, then steals abroad, then collapses. Ludwig von Mises was surely the greatest and staunchest critic of socialism that ever lived… It is sad that writers on a website bearing his name seem to have missed the point. Socialism is not just a somewhat less efficient economic policy. It is pure murder and looting – and it knows no borders. A regime based on the negation of rights of human beings… of course won’t stop at its “border”. Spreading misery abroad, too: socialism is “egalitarian” and “generous”: there’s no reason only one country should suffer from it. Mises understood it. His followers don’t.

“Russia never attacked anyone”: the aggressor playing the victim

Thus, while imperialist and deplorable, Soviet foreign policy is basically cautious and defensive; Russia has been invaded three times from Eastern Europe in this century, and therefore its concern with avoiding anti-Soviet governments there is understandable.

– Murray N. Rothbard, “The Afghan Scam”

The great irony in Russia claiming to “save people, demilitarize, denazify Ukraine”9 is that what enabled Nazism was Russia’s illegal militarization of Germany, and the subsequent alliance (surprise) between Soviet Socialism and National Socialism:

While Soviet-German military cooperation between 1922 and 1933 is often forgotten, it had a decisive impact on the origins and outbreak of World War II. Germany rebuilt its shattered military at four secret bases hidden in Russia. In exchange, the Reichswehr sent men to teach and train the young Soviet officer corps. However, the most important aspect of Soviet-German cooperation was its technological component. Together, the two states built a network of laboratories, workshops, and testing grounds in which they developed what became the major weapons systems of World War II. Without the technical results of this cooperation, Hitler would have been unable to launch his wars of conquest.

– “Sowing the Wind: The First Soviet-German Military Pact and the Origins of World War II”

In a dramatic scene in Babylon Berlin, Season 2, Episode 3, the main character goes on a dangerous mission to photograph a secret Luftwaffe base in Soviet Russia. Historically accurate.

So the one time Russia was attacked, in the last century, was in fact, entirely its fault. That is: the fault of its socialist leadership. The millions of Russians who died in that war did not “sacrifice themselves”, they were sacrificed on the altar of Stalin’s insanity. Then there are all the other aggressions, of course:

Throughout Russia’s history, it has been involved in many external and internal “attacks.” The Russian Empire fought wars and expanded its territory through force. The Soviet Union attacked Finland, annexed the Baltic states, crushed democratic revolutions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and fought a long war in Afghanistan. Post-Soviet Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine beginning in 2014. It brutally suppressed Chechnya. It also has been a combatant in Syria, attacking hospitals and civilian infrastructure. In sum, Peskov’s claim that “… Россия на протяжении всей своей истории никогда ни на кого не нападала” is outrageously false.

– “The claim that ’Russia, throughout all of its history, has never attacked anyone’ is false”

See also:

Also, while Rothbard mentions Iran, why does he skip the part that started all the troubles in the first place, out of a neutral country, namely the British-Russian invasion of Iran/Persia?

The pot calling the kettle black

A common tactic of Russian propaganda seems to be to “accuse the other of doing the exact thing you’re doing yourself”.

Other Russian nationalist volunteers involved in separatist militias [on the “separatist militas”, see part 5] included members of the Eurasian Youth Union, and of banned groups such as the Slavic Union and Movement Against Illegal Immigration. Another Russian separatist paramilitary unit, the Interbrigades, is made up of activists from the National Bolshevik (Nazbol) group Other Russia. An article in Dissent noted that “despite their neo-Stalinist paraphernalia, many of the Russian-speaking nationalists Russia supports in the Donbass are just as right-wing as their counterparts from the Azov Battalion”.

According to the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, a number of European politicians from far-right and extreme-left receive all-expenses-paid visits to Donetsk.

– Wikipedia, “Donetsk People’s Republic”

Do we even need to discuss, for instance, the whole claim about “denazification” of a country with a Jewish president? (Also, a native Russian speaker...)

Language discrimination?

Antisemitism?

Far-right groups?

Neo-Nazis?

Murder, torture, genocide?

The repeating of the Russian propaganda by the Lew Rockwell Cesspool seems to know no limits, either. Here’s Rockwell himself about Mariupol:

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., “Mariupol Residents Able To Move Freely, No Longer Have To Shelter From Nazi Shelling”, April 22, 2022

When the reality, of course, is that the city is completely destroyed:

But that failure by Russia to secure a rapid capture of the city, has prompted Russian commanders to resort to a 21st Century version of mediaeval siege tactics.

They have pummelled Mariupol with artillery, rockets and missiles - damaging or destroying over 90% of the city. They have also cut off access to electricity, heating, fresh water, food and medical supplies - creating a man-made humanitarian catastrophe

– “Mariupol: Why Mariupol is so important to Russia’s plan”

The number of bodies in Mariupol is overwhelming. Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian mayor, estimated that 22,000 died in the two months of fighting. However, a person among several coordinating burials in the city who spoke on condition of anonymity said they believed the total was closer to 50,000.

– “Makeshift graves and notes on doors: the struggle to find and bury Mariupol’s dead”

Cemeteries of Mariupol. Three month ago this was one of Ukraine’s fastest growing and comfortable cities. Now it a giant uninhabitable heap of ruins surrounded by graves.

This is what this Russian “liberation from Nazis” actually looks like.

– Illia Ponomarenko

“The whole world against us” paranoia

They [capitalists] will furnish credits which will serve us for the support of the Communist Party in their countries and, by supplying us materials and technical equipment which we lack, will restore our military industry necessary for our future attacks against our suppliers. To put it in other words, they will work on the preparation of their own suicide.

– Vladimir Ilich (Ulyanov) Lenin, as reported by I. U. Annenkov in an article entitled, “Remembrances of Lenin,” Novyi Zhurnal / New Review, September 1961, p. 147.

The Chinese governments were very clever. They did not expropriate the British. First, they prohibited them from exporting profits. Then they forced them to operate in such a way that there was no profit. Then they asked for taxes also, so that the British had to send additional money to China. Finally they made the British realize that you cannot do business with the communists, you especially cannot invest with them.

– Ludwig von Mises, Marxism Unmasked: From Delusion to Destruction

Indeed, if “The West” is to blame for something, it is for its excessive tolerance of national-socialism, socialism, and communism:

When the West was not actively helping the socialist regimes, the socialist regimes would steal or copy what they could from it:

The whole socialist failed experiment could be seen either as either a pet project of the Western political class, or as a mere parasite of capitalism.

C’est l’un des secrets les mieux gardés de l’histoire du gaullisme. À l’aube de sa légende, De Gaulle appuya sa fragile légitimité sur une alliance secrète qui se révéla, pour lui, décisive, mais n’alla pas sans lourdes contreparties: avec Joseph Staline. Elle le conduisit à torpiller, en 1944, l’exploitation de la victoire de l’armée française en Italie et le projet britannique d’une percée par les Balkans qui auraient permis d’éviter le retour de la guerre sur le sol français et auraient empêché l’URSS de s’imposer en Europe de l’Est.

Elle se traduisit aussi par l’installation du parti communiste, discrédité par sa conduite pendant la drôle de guerre et sa collaboration de vingt-deux mois avec l’Allemagne nazie, au cœur du jeu politique et de l’appareil d’Etat.

– “De Gaulle-Staline, les liaisons dangereuses” (see also: De Gaulle et les communistes)

A French libertarian online magazine once asked: “Sommes-nous suffisamment anticommunistes ?”. To which we would reply: no, one can never be anti-communist enough.

Libertarianism is against a new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Россия восстанавливает свое единство — трагедия 1991 года, этой страшной катастрофы нашей истории, ее противоестественный вывих, преодолены.

[Russia is restoring its unity – the tragedy of 1991, this terrible catastrophe in our history, its unnatural dislocation, has been overcome.]

– Петр Акопов, “Наступление России и нового мира” [ “The new world order” ]

It seemed then that there could be no greater dictatorship than in North Korea and Turkmenistan. Many things seemed impossible then, but not now. In the race of dictatorships today there is an absolute leader, and it is neither North Korea nor Turkmenistan.

– Nigina Beroeva, Russian journalist, “I wrote about people forced to flee their countries, now I have to flee mine”

Rehabilitation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Instead of rejecting its criminal past, like Germany did, Russia tries to either deny it or take pride in it:

The Soviet flag. The communist flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Socialism is theft

Это всё уходит очень глубоко. В трудах прошлого века люмпен-пролетариат осуждался разве только за некоторую невыдержанность, непостоянство настроения. А Сталин всегда тяготел к блатарям – кто ж ему грабил банки? Еще в 1901 году сотоварищами по партии и тюрьме он был обвин?н в использовании уголовников против политических противников. С 20-х годов родился и услужливый термин: социально-близкие. В этой плоскости и Макаренко: зтих можно исправить. (По Макаренко, исток преступлений – только “контрреволюционное подполье”). Нельзя исправить тех – инженеров, священников, эсеров, меньшевиков.

[And all that went very deep indeed. In works of the last century, the lumpenproletariat was criticized for little more than a certain lack of discipline, for fickleness of mood. And Stalin was always partial to the thieves—after all, who robbed the banks for him? Back in 1901 his comrades in the Party and in prison accused him of using common criminals against his political enemies. From the twenties on, the obliging term “social ally” came to be widely used. That was Makarenko’s contention too: these could be reformed. According to Makarenko, the origin of crime lay solely in the “counterrevolutionary underground.” (Those were the ones who couldn’t be reformed–engineers, priests, SRs, Mensheviks.)]

– Александр Солженицын, Архипелаг ГУЛаг

Surely not a coincidence that the current kleptocracy-oligarchy is blurring the distinction between common criminals and itself: “Criminals as Social Allies of Marxism”, a new form of Социально-близкие.

The limit between socialism and common theft is hard to tell… indeed, properly understood, socialism is theft. Common thieves or socialists? Anecdotic incidents or deep-seated tradition of plunder? Continuation of Soviet Socialism – or gang of thieves oppressing the people in both cases? You decide:

Perhaps there is a reason why Алиса Зиновьевна Розенбаум referred to socialist thieves as “looters”. She was Russian. She understood.

When a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law—men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims—then money becomes its creators’ avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they’ve passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket.

– Ayn Rand

Regarding “defenseless men”: more on that later.

Criminals-by-right and looters-by-law? One can almost read the Russian word-concept behind that: вор в законе, thief in law.

Rusko trpí spasiteľským komplexom [see also: Russischer Messianismus]. Keď som bola v polovici deväťdesiatich rokoch na reportáži o krstnom otcovi Ďalekého Východu, tak tento kriminálnik, ktorý si odsedel osemnásť rokov v trestaneckom tábore a potom vlastnil v Chabarovsku televizionnyj kanal, reštaurácie, hotely, kasíno, sa mi obklopený svojou ozbrojenou ochrankou úplne vážne zdôveril, že prorok, ktorý spasí ľudstvo príde z Ďalekého Východu - a čuduj sa svete, sedí predo mnou. Tak prečo by si Vladimír Putin nenárokoval na to isté poslanie, veď stoji v kriminálnom svete vyššie na rebríčku ako onen Chabarovský vor (zlodej). Inak označenie vor je v týchto kruhoch veľká česť. Ten, kto kradne na vysokej úrovni je uctievaný.

– Irena Brežná, “Príspevok k diagnóze Ruska” (French translation: “La Grande Russie entre foi et mensonge”)

Incidentally:

The use of middlemen in order to issue bounties on United States military personnel is a direct example of the Vory mafia being utilized as an instrument to the state. This level of integration between the state and organized crime is remarkably new in the sense that Putin denies all ties to the Russian mafia yet recent events such as bounties in Afghanistan and ‘little green men.‘

And unsurprisingly, in the new “People’s republics”:

In 2014-2015, however, they endured expropriation and terror at the hands of their new Russian-supported government. The takeover of this part of Ukraine by criminal gangs lining up under the banner of national self-defense led to the largest spate of robberies in post-Soviet history. Anyone of any means was at risk as squabbling warlords stole money, cars, even homes. But property crimes were far from the end of the affair: many victims were subjected to torture and humiliation in stinking pits nicknamed “basements,” where they were kept while their relatives scrambled to secure ransom. Many people died, and those who escaped often lost their health in the ordeal.

Under Russian management, the economic situation in the “people’s republics” quickly deteriorated. With zero enforcement of property rights, money and goods were simply stolen and redistributed. Factories and mines, once sources of regional pride, were taken apart and sold to Russia on the cheap. The few workers who remained at their posts found their meager salaries unpaid for six months at a time. What little income this once-prosperous region produced was funneled into the pockets of Moscow bureaucrats and oligarchs.

– Nikolay Mitrokhin, “‘For Eight Years They Sat There in Cellars Under Fire!’ — On One False Narrative About Ukraine” (Russian original)

Totalitarianism

“Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was about liberalism, not totalitarianism, claims Moscow diplomat”

A man was arrested in Moscow for standing in the street holding Tolstoy’s War and Peace

Meanwhile, A man, Dmitry Silin, was arrested in the Russian city of Ivanovo for offering free copies of George Orwell’s 1984 from a little trestle table in the street.

– “Inside story: Struggle for truth about Ukraine war in an Orwellian regime”, April 16, 2022

The book 1984, banned in the Soviet Union and its satellite states: my family in Socialist Czechoslovakia had a samizdat copy translated into Czech, I still remember the note on the title page: “the translator prefers to remain anonymous” – for obvious reasons.

Speaking of which, here’s from Anne Applebaum:

In Russia the state has ordered publishers to eliminate the word “Ukraine” from textbooks. An attempt to erase a nation and a people, and to leave no trace, has begun. («Перед нами задача — сделать так, будто Украины просто нет». Из учебников издательства «Просвещение» убирают упоминания Киева и Украины) [ Mentions of Kyiv and Ukraine removed from Russian schoolbooks: “We have a task to make it look as if Ukraine simply does not exist” ]

No wonder 1984 is censored again, indeed10. In, Russia, the truth is illegal (there are no limits to the lies: they even make it into museums):

La première personne condamnée en vertu de l’article 354.1 était Vladimir Luzgin, un mécanicien automobile de Perm. En 2014, il avait partagé sur les réseaux sociaux un lien vers un article en ligne sur l’histoire de l’Armée rebelle ukrainienne. L’auteur de l’article avait notamment soutenu que « les communistes […] ont activement collaboré avec l’Allemagne pour diviser l’Europe, conformément au pacte Molotov-Ribbentrop », et que « les communistes et l’Allemagne ont conjointement attaqué la Pologne et déclenché la Seconde guerre mondiale le 1er septembre 1939 ! ». En 2016, la Cour suprême de Russie a jugé que ces déclarations historiques contenaient des informations manifestement fausses sur les activités de l’URSS pendant la Seconde guerre mondiale et étaient contraires au jugement du tribunal de Nuremberg, bien que ce dernier ne se soit jamais prononcé sur l’invasion de la Pologne par l’Armée rouge soviétique en 1939. Luzgin a été condamné à une amende de 200 000 roubles (environ 2 200 euros). Depuis 2017, son affaire est en attente de jugement devant la Cour européenne des droits de l’homme (CEDH).

[The first person convicted under Article 354.1 was Vladimir Luzgin, an auto mechanic from Perm. In 2014, he had shared a link on social media to an online article about the history of the Ukrainian Rebel Army. The article’s author had argued, among other things, that “the Communists […] actively collaborated with Germany in dividing Europe according to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact,” and that “Communists and Germany jointly attacked Poland and started the Second World War on 1 September 1939!” In 2016, Russia’s Supreme Court ruled that those historical statements contained knowingly false information about the activities of the USSR during the Second World War, and were contrary to the Nuremberg Tribunal judgment, despite the fact that the latter never adjudicated the Soviet Red Army’s invasion of Poland in September 1939. Luzgin was fined 200,000 rubles (about EUR 2,200). Since 2017, his case has been pending at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).]

– “Russie : Crimes Contre l’Histoire”, Fédération internationale pour les droits humains [ “Russia: Crimes Against History”, International Federation for Human Rights, June 2021 / N°770a ]

Today’s Russia is an extremely oppressive regime, the dismal continuation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It should be obvious to any libertarian, that, like for all socialist, authoritarian and totalitarian states, the less people it is allowed to oppress, the better.

continued in “Libertarianism is against aggression (4)”