Elites
SURVEY: 47% of American Socialists Believe “taking violent action against the rich may be JUSTIFIED”
http://www.theorganicprepper.com
by Daisy Luther
In a nation that has prided itself on the “American Dream” – the dream that anyone can become wealthy if they work hard enough and make the right decisions – it’s probably a shock to learn that a lot of folks no longer believe in capitalism.
But the shock goes even deeper than that. A report from the Cato Institute that examined Americans’ opinions on wealth and the wealthy says that 47% of American socialists believe that “taking violent action against the rich may be justified.”
About the report
The Cato Institute is a think tank that performs independent, non-partisan research into a wide range of issues related to personal liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace. You can learn more about the Cato Institute here.
The new report is entitled What Americans Think About Poverty, Wealth, and Work.
The survey…investigates attitudes toward the rich and the poor and examines what Americans believe about work, welfare, and social mobility. (source)
Many of the results seem to be right down party lines and in this political climate, are frighteningly predictable.
Let’s take a look at the findings.
Socialism vs. Capitalism
Opinions have taken a shift since 2016.
In 2016, Democrats were about as favorable toward capitalism (58%) as socialism (56%). But after President Donald Trump took office, Democrats became more favorable toward socialism. Today, 64% of Democrats have favorable opinions of socialism and 45% are favorable to capitalism. Republicans continue to have overwhelmingly favorable views of capitalism (77%) while only 13% have favorable views of socialism. (source)
Why did this shift occur?
According to half of the Democrats surveyed, President Trump caused them to dislike capitalism and lean more toward socialism.
At the same time, 44% of Democrats say that Trump has not influenced their views on capitalism vs. socialism. 72% of independents and 64% of Republicans reported that President Trump has not influenced their views on the economic model.
Overall, 59% of Americans favor capitalism and 39% favor Socialism.
Thoughts on Wealth
Opinions on wealth were varied. Here were some of the findings:
84% of Americans believe “there is nothing wrong with a person trying to make as much money as they honestly can.”
- 61% want to raise taxes on anyone who makes more than $200,000.
- 53% want to raise taxes to a whopping 70% on those who make more than $10 million.
- 65% of Americans over age 60 oppose the increased tax on people making more than $10 million, while 62% of those under 30 support the increase.
A worryingly slim majority of Americans do not believe that wealth should be redistributed from the rich to the poor.
- 62% oppose the redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. (Where do they intend for that 70% millionaire tax to go?)
- Down party lines, here’s who believes in wealth distribution: 58% of Democrats, 36% of Independents, and 15% of Republicans think that money should be taken from the rich and given to the poor.
More than half of Americans (55%) believe that the distribution of wealth in this country is “unfair.” This is divided by age and political philosophy.
- 79% of Democrats find the distribution unjust.
- 55% of Independents find the distribution unjust.
- 67% of Republicans find the distribution just.
- 70% of people under 30 think the current distribution of wealth is unjust
- 61% of people over 65 think the current distribution is just.
The distribution of wealth (or lack thereof) will probably be a key factor in the next election. It was only a couple of years ago when a group went public about their desire to “expropriate” the assets of the wealthy and redistribute them to the poor.
Young people vs. old people
Let’s talk about younger people’s opinions versus older people’s opinions. Cato reports:
People under 30 are about 20–30 points more likely than Americans 65 and over to:
- believe the rich got rich by “taking advantage of other people” (52% vs. 27%)
- believe billionaires are a threat to democracy (51% vs. 26%)
- feel “angry” when they read or hear about rich people (44% vs. 11%)
- believe it’s “immoral” for society to allow people to become billionaires (39% vs. 13%)
- believe that citizens taking violent action against the rich may be justified (35% vs. 10%)
- support redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor (53% vs. 20%)
- support raising top marginal tax rates (62% vs. 43%)
Young Americans are about equally favorable toward socialism (50%) and capitalism (49%). In stark contrast, Americans 65 and over solidly prefer capitalism (76%) to socialism (34%). (source)
It is not out of line to blame our education system for pushing socialism and leftist professors who promote violence for these attitudes. In fact, the Democratic Socialists of America urge socialists to become teachers to accomplish just this.
However, it might be consoling to note that when a similar survey was undertaken in 1978, more than half (54%) of Americans under 30 believed that wealth should be redistributed from the rich to the poor. The young people who were 18-29 then are 59-70 now, and you can see how their opinions have changed. That should provide some hope that the attitudes of current young people will change as they become more mature and have more life experience.
People have wildly varying views on how rich folks became wealthy.
One of the biggest points of disparity was opinions on how rich people attained their money. Liberals and conservatives are completely at odds regarding this.
- Strong liberals say the top drivers of wealth are family connections (48%), inheritance (40%), and getting lucky (31%)
- Strong conservatives say the top drivers of wealth are hard work (62%), ambition (47%), self-discipline (45%), and risk-taking (36%)
- Strong Liberals say the top causes of poverty are discrimination (51%), an unfair economic system (48%), and a lack of educational opportunities (48%)
- Strong Conservatives say the top causes of poverty are poor life choices (60%), a lack of work ethic (52%), breakdown of families (47%), and drugs and alcohol (47%) (source)
With these differences in perspective, it is easy to see how difficult it would be for liberals and conservatives to come to a consensus regarding policy to “fix” the poverty in America.
What attitudes most influenced people’s points of view?
According to this report, there are two major factors that influence people’s points of view regarding capitalism vs. socialism: resentment and compassion. The report says:
Statistical tests find that resentment of high achievers has about twice the impact as compassion for the needy in predicting hostility toward capitalism and support for raising taxes on the rich. However, compassion is a better predictor of support for increasing welfare benefits. Both resentment and compassion predict support for socialism. (source)
At the same time, 69% believe that billionaires became wealthy by creating value for others, and 65% believe that the nation is better off when people become wealthy because they, in turn, will invest in businesses that create jobs.
Most Americans (82%) believe that people should be “allowed” to become billionaires. However, this really breaks down in the Democratic party, where 54% of them believe that billionaires are a “threat to democracy.” Unsurprisingly, 65% of socialists believe that “allowing” billionaires is immoral.
And this is where things get kind of scary.
There are more people than you might think who believe that “citizens taking violent action against the rich” is acceptable. Here are the people who believe that it is acceptable in some situations to be violent toward the wealthy.
- 17% of Americans in general
- 47% of socialists
- 36% of liberals
- 35% of those under 30
One must wonder what they mean by “violence.”
Do they mean that violence should be used to expropriate the wealth or violence should be used just for the sake of harming the wealthy for the audacity of being financially well-to-do? Do they want to use guillotines like the people in the French Revolution to enforce their goals of wealth distribution?
Conclusion
At this point, there’s a hard push toward socialism in this country.
Most folks who believe in socialism don’t see the correlation between those policies and the collapse of Venezuela for example. They don’t understand that every time in history that food production was collectivized, people died of starvation. On the other hand, a lot of the vocal people who are against socialism have views that appear to be condescending and judgmental, neither of which is going to win over hearts and minds.
As someone who has been dirt poor despite my very hard work, I find the opinions that cite laziness and drug use to be downright offensive. As someone who managed to dig myself out of poverty, I find the concept of having the results of my hard work “redistributed” to be equally offensive.
Also note: this article is based on the Cato Institute’s statistics – this isn’t an opinion piece.
What do you think of the results of this survey? Do you believe there will be violence against the wealthy? Do you think the push for socialism will continue until we no longer recognize the United States as the land of opportunity?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the findings. Do they seem accurate to you? Do you have any personal experiences that support or contradict the survey? Please share those stories in the comments.
And try to keep it civil – this only has to be volatile if we allow it to be.
Please visit The Cato Institute to read more details of this survey on the state of our union, and share your thoughts in the comments.
About Daisy
Daisy Luther is a coffee-swigging, gun-toting blogger who writes about current events, preparedness, frugality, voluntaryism, and the pursuit of liberty on her website, The Organic Prepper. She is widely republished across alternative media and she curates all the most important news links on her aggregate site, PreppersDailyNews.com. Daisy is the best-selling author of 4 books and runs a small digital publishing company. She lives in the mountains of Virginia with her family. You can find her on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.
RT.com
16 Sep, 2019
Limiting nuclear arsenals doesn’t make the world safer – not while the elites, who have never seen a big war, complacently believe they never will. This dangerous illusion invites apocalyptic conflict, a renowned scholar believes.
Humankind’s history might be a history of wars, but for several decades there was a sort of lull, with no really big armed conflict affecting leading world powers. That is, in part, thanks to nuclear weapons. Fear of their power kept the Cold War from becoming a hot one and restricted the actual fighting to proxy conflicts.
ALSO ON RT.COMWhat the new arms race will look like in a post-INF world
And that, in turn, has led to a situation where many of those currently in power don’t take the threat of war with the gravity it deserves, says Sergey Karaganov, a researcher of international relations and a dean at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics.
Complacency breeds danger
“The previous generations had a gut fear of war because their fathers or they themselves experienced World War II. But modern generations think of war very lightly,” he told RT.
This attitude is a major reason why the world now is in fact a more dangerous place than it was at the height of the US-Soviet confrontation, he believes. Some powers believe they are entitled to live in peace and cannot imagine that a smaller conflict elsewhere may escalate into a nuclear Armageddon. Meanwhile old mechanisms meant to prevent such a disaster are rapidly deteriorating, he said.
This year Washington scrapped one of the key Cold War agreements restricting nuclear weapons – the INF Treaty – and indicated that another one – New START – would not be extended beyond 2021. The US changed its nuclear posture and now doesn’t rule out responding with nukes to a cyberattack. The Pentagon’s generals want a larger toolbox of smaller nuclear weapons and are weighing up options on how to use them in regular conflicts.
These days, it’s more complicated than just nukes
That said, those old mechanisms are also failing for purely technological reasons. In the 1970s there was a reasonably clear distinction between strategic weapons and everything else, so ensuring parity was relatively simple. Basically the US and the USSR settled on numbers of missiles, long-range bombers, submarines and warheads they were comfortable with and agreed ways to verify that each party sticks to the limits.
“There are people in our country, as well as in other countries, who are stressing that we should go as we have been going in the 1960s and the ‘70s and the ‘80s. I must say I am very skeptical, because even in the ‘70s and the ‘80s we were basing our analysis on the very, very strange presumption of what was called parity,” Karaganov says.
But the distinction between “nuclear and non-nuclear, conventional and non-conventional” is blurred today. How does one take into the equation, for example, a conventional precision missile that can be fired across the border and take out the other nation’s military headquarters? Or a satellite that can blind an ICBM early warning spacecraft? Or a hypersonic glider? Or a computer virus that can shut down the power grid?
“Now strategic parity is almost impossible to count.”
Stop trying to limit nukes – change the thinking
Karaganov recently co-authored a report on this persistent danger. He admits it doesn’t have all the right answers, but offers some ideas where to begin – and philosophy is at least as important as politics or technicalities.
For example, nations should acknowledge that geopolitical rivalry was not an aberration of the ideologically-divided past but rather a natural order of things. Strong players have great appetites and will use any means to impose their will on weaker ones. Unfair, but such is life.
The next step would be to embrace a new multilateral deterrence arrangement that would include additional players, first and foremost China, and somehow incorporate non-nuclear things like cyber weapons into the calculation.
“The aim of the strategic policy of all responsible nuclear powers should not be doing away or even reducing their nuclear weapons, but strengthening mutual deterrence, and that is a completely different philosophy,” Karaganov suggests.
Essentially, he and his colleagues suggest ditching the old idea of nuclear stability – achieved through the reduction and capping of the two largest superpowers’ arsenals. Instead, any new treaties should focus on transparency – as well as developing protocols to wind down a nuclear conflict once it does start, which is much more likely to happen by accident than by intention.
The result may be somewhat of a Mexican standoff, but the alternative is far more dangerous, the scholars argue. An armed conflict involving nuclear-capable powers has the potential to spiral out of control, with sides trading increasingly serious blows and hoping the other one will chicken out.
A few decades ago the fear of nuclear weapons put a reasonably low cap on such games of nerves, but it is no longer the case and the risks are rising by the year. The solution would be for the great powers to put de-escalation as the paramount goal whenever a clash brews and treat any potential war between them as a doomsday in the making.
consortiumnews.com
Caitlin Johnstone discards the high-flown dogma around space colonization and challenges readers to accept themselves and life on planet Earth.
It’s rare to get a billionaire to share their grand plans for the future, which is weird because billionaires pretty much rule the world. Whenever they do, though, it’s always something incredibly sociopathic, like replacing all jobs with billionaire-owned automation/AI and giving people a Universal Basic Income set by the billionaire-owned government. Or loading all the humans onto rocket ships and sending them to live on Amazon Space Dildos.
Billionaire Elon Musk, who hates unions and wants to implant AI into human brains, has been continuing this trend of idiotic plutocratic futurology with a new campaign to detonate nuclear weapons on the planet Mars. This is not because Musk hates Mars, but because he wants to colonize it; the idea is to vaporize the red planet’s polar ice caps and throw carbon dioxide into the air to ultimately make the planet more habitable.
Scientists are voicing skepticism that such a plan could even work, before even opening up the “Just because you can doesn’t mean that you should” debate. Sending nuclear weapons into space for any reason whatsoever should receive an outright rejection from all of humanity, since getting nukes into earth’s orbit has been the wet dream of war machine engineers for decades and pretending they went to Mars would serve as an ideal cover story to circumvent international space treaties until it’s too late to prevent it.
Musk claims he wants to colonize Mars because a new dark age ensuing from a third world war appears “likely,” and he wants to ensure that there will be humans living off of the planet to re-populate it after we wipe ourselves out here. Rather than pouring wealth, brainpower and resources into pushing for a change in the status quo which has set the world’s nuclear-armed powers on a collision course for a world military confrontation that will destroy our biosphere, this billionaire has decided it’s better to nuke Mars so that a back bench of reserve humans can live on a desert space rock.
This is the class of people who are calling the shots in our world. These are the minds who are choosing our fate for us. I wouldn’t trust them to run a gas station.
And Elon Musk is one of the saner billionaires.
Elon Musk
✔@elonmusk
Nuke Mars!
43.6K people are talking about this
I’m going to take a lot of flak for saying this, but I honestly believe that the impulse to colonize space is one of the more pernicious cultural mind viruses in our society. I mean, think about it: we’ve got a planet right here for which we are perfectly adapted, and we’re burning it to the ground while looking up at a red dot in the sky going “You know I bet if I nuked that bitch I could build a hermetically sealed house on it someday.” How much more insane could you possibly get?
I’m pushing against a cultural dogma that’s been mainstream doctrine for generations, but I really find all this blather about adventure and the indomitable human spirit of exploration quite tedious and idiotic when it comes to space colonization. We’ve got creatures swimming in our own oceans with brains many times larger than our own, and we’re killing them all off before we’ve even developed any kind of real theory about what they’re doing with all that extra gray matter. There are parts of the moon that are better explored than vast expanses of our own seas. We don’t even know what consciousness is, and science is largely uninterested in answering this question. I don’t believe the spirit of exploration and adventure is what’s driving our longing to break for the stars. I think it’s nothing but garden variety escapism.
We’ve all got that one friend or family member who’s completely miserable and is always quitting jobs and relationships and moving house and changing their diet in a desperate attempt to find happiness. They rearrange their lifestyle for the umpteenth time and they’re barely settled in before their gaze lands on some other aspect of their life and they think, “That’s the source of my unhappiness right there. If I can only escape from that, I’ll be happy.”
Such people are exasperating to be around, because you can see what they’re doing and you just want to sit them down and go “The problem is in you, babe. Moving won’t help; your inner demons will follow you every time. You’ve got to stay put and deal with your issues.”
Looking for Escape Routes
Our species reminds me of that type of personality right now. So many of us are looking forward to some escape route coming from outside of us to rescue us from ourselves; some are looking forward to the second coming of Jesus, some are looking forward to the aliens coming in to save the day, some are looking forward to the Democrats or the Republicans finally capturing the whole entire government and setting things right with the world, and some are looking forward to billionaires setting up a space colonization program so we can get off this accursed blue orb before we destroy it. But there is no deus ex machina here. No one’s going to save us from ourselves. Even if we do succeed in running away from home, we’ll inevitably bring the same inner demons with us that got us into this mess in the first place.
We’ve got to turn inward and evolve beyond our self-destructive impulses. The only way out is through. The mind virus of celestial escapism stops us from doing this, because it offers us yet another false promise of deus ex machina. It lets us run away from doing the hard but necessary real inner work, just like doing drugs or binging on Netflix or any other kind of escapism.
Caitlin Johnstone@caitoz
Bezos Reveals His Ugly Vision For The World He’s Trying To Rule
“Bezos then went on to discuss his plan to ship humans off of the best planet in the solar system and send them to live in floating cylinders in space.”https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/bezos-reveals-his-ugly-vision-for-the-world-hes-trying-to-rule-5bb9d117b819 …
Bezos Reveals His Ugly Vision For The World He’s Trying To Rule
“Guess what the best planet is in this solar system?” asked Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos at a recent media event on his Blue Origin space program.
medium.com
480 people are talking about this
Can you try a little thought experiment for me? Imagine, just for a moment, if we took space colonization off the table. Completely. Forever. We just decided that it’s never going to happen and we all moved to accept that. Really imagine it. Really put yourself there for a minute.
What does that change in you? What does that change about your attitude toward our future? If we’re honest with ourselves, I think it would change quite a bit. For me, when I take space conquest off the table, it takes me in a direction that just so happens to look extremely healthy. It makes me say, “Oh, okay, so we’ll obviously have to get rid of the status quo of endless war and ecocide, since those will ruin this place, and that will mean radically changing our relationship with each other and with our ecosystem. It will mean getting women around the world full reproductive sovereignty and education since that’s proven to reverse population growth. It will mean ceasing to think like a cancer, believing that endless growth is a virtue. It will mean ceasing to believe that the existence of trillions of humans is the best our species can hope for, when we have yet to even scratch the surface of our own potential on a large scale. And I suppose it will mean getting together and figuring out how to detect and neutralize the threat of apocalyptic meteor strikes, too.”
Imagine
Imagine that. Imagine if instead of trying to figure out how to fill the sky with trillions of mediocre humans we turned inward, healed our inner demons, and realized our full potential. Such a world would be a paradise. I know from my own experience that humans are capable of so very, very much more than what we have attained so far; we really haven’t scratched the surface at all. If we’re going to explore, the direction of that exploration ought to be inward.
I really think the mainstream idea that we can always make a mad dash for the black emptiness in the sky if things go to shit here keeps us from truly confronting our urgent need to preserve the ecosystemic context in which we evolved, and which there’s no evidence that we can live without.
I mean, we don’t even know that space colonization is possible. As of yet we have no evidence at all that humans are sufficiently separate and separable from Earth’s biosphere for survival apart from our ecosystem to be a real thing. Humans aren’t really separate “things;” they’re a symbiotic collaboration of organisms with ecosystems of their own, all of which as far as we know are entirely dependent on the greater ecosystem from which we blossomed. So far all our attempts at creating independent biospheres have failed miserably, and the closest we’ve come to living in space has consisted of nothing but glorified scuba excursions: visits to space stations fully dependent on a lifeline of terrestrial supplies. That’s the difference between flying and jumping. It might be as delusional as our brains thinking they can hop out of our skulls and live independently of our bodies, or some river eddies saying they’re moving to dry land.
Rappler
✔@rapplerdotcom
Elon Musk’s Neuralink is developing a brain implant to connect people’s minds directly to a computer. These mind-reading systems could affect our privacy, security, identity, equality, and personal safety. https://www.rappler.com/technology/features/237931-privacy-concerns-elon-musk-neuralink-brain-implant?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1566024168 …
Silicon Valley wants to read your mind – here’s why you should be worried
Elon Musk’s Neuralink is developing a brain implant to connect people’s minds directly to a computer. These mind-reading systems could affect our privacy, security, identity, equality, and personal…
rappler.com
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And even if it is possible, why would you want it? Do people not know what space is? Are they aware that it’s nothing but boring desert wasteland that’s really, really, hard to get to and survive on? Have you ever been trapped for a long time surrounded by nothing but man-made things, like on an airplane or a cruise ship? Picture that, but way worse and for much longer. It would be a sterile, artificial existence; even if you managed to bring in plants and animals it would be ordered in a man-made way that is no more natural than the saplings grown on traffic islands. At best it would be like being in a mall your entire life. You’d be cut off from the primordial thrum of your home world. There’d be no real life there. No real soul.
Imagine never feeling the starry spatter of a shower of rain on your face. Imagine never ever again hearing the roar of wind on a wintry night or experiencing the thunder of the ocean on a big surf day. Imagine never again being blown away by the brightness of a rainbow or the thrilling crack of lightning or the astonishing beauty of a sunset or the first rays of springtime sunshine fondly warming the back of your neck. Imagine never again coming across a friendly squirrel or a shy possum or a little feast of wild blackberries. Imagine never again lying in the dappled light filtered through a magnificent tree. I don’t know about you but I would just miss the breeze playing in my hair too terribly to ever leave. I love it here and it loves me like a mother loves her child. This is not just my home, I grew from the earth as surely as a mushroom or a seahorse. I am a part of the earth and the earth is a part of me. We belong together.
It’s easy to feel helpless. The wise ones do not have any money and therefore any power. We are being run by a handful of coddled man-children and it seems like they might have the last word. But I have been thinking about Rupert Sheldrake’s ideas on morphic resonance a lot lately and I’m increasingly convinced that even just one of us bringing consciousness to an aspect of our collective darkness is enough to wordlessly and instantly inform the herd. So, do me a favor if you are willing. Go and run one more experiment for me. Go outside now and place your hand on the ground and say to the Earth these words — “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.” Say it as many times as you feel like. Say it, and mean it.
And then let’s see what happens next.
Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly at Medium. Follow her work on Facebook, Twitter, or her website. She has a podcast and a new book “Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.”
This article was re-published with permission.
humansarefree.com
Aug 22, 2019
It would seem that the normies/ sheeple of the world have not batted an eye at the fact that 13 wealthy celebrities and one royal have all died in the same manner in the past few years, under very similar and bizarre circumstances.
Perhaps this is because the mainstream media refuses to report on their connections to elite pedophilia rings which tie directly to powerful people in Washington, Hollywood, and the mainstream media. People on the last presidential ticket in fact.
14 independent and highly successful people with careers and influence hanged themselves on doorknobs. DOORKNOBS!!!
My first question is: How the hell does one hang themselves from a doorknob? Followed by: How common is this? Do people hang themselves from doorknobs regularly and I’m just now finding out about it? Is there a doorknob suicide club the rest of us aren’t aware of?
Well, the answer to that last question is “yes.” One need only substitute the word “suicide” with “murder.” Or simply use the word “suicide” in the past tense while maintaining its usage as a verb.
In order of “Suiciding” they are as follows:
1) Michael Hutchence – 37
INXS frontman Michael Hutchence’s body was found hanging from a doorknob in Room 524 at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Double Bay, Sydney. The occupant in the neighboring room heard an unidentified loud male voice and swearing at around 5 AM; the coroner was satisfied that this was Hutchence arguing with another male.
On February 6th, 1998, after an autopsy and coronial inquest, New South Wales State Coroner, Derrick Hand, presented his report ruling that Hutchence’s death was a suicide.
According to reports, Hutchence had information regarding a “VIP pedophile ring” in the UK that was connected to child-killing rapist Jimmy Saville and high-ranking politicians.
It should be noted that this was the first “suicide” of the 12 and began on the same day of the year JFK was assassinated. November, 22. Of course, the reason for this is because 11/22 add up to 33.
A numerical masonic/ occultic calling card to be sure. Hutchence’s age also adds up to 10 or “1”. Visit my numbers study page for more info on this.
2) David Carradine – 72
Perhaps the most occultic murder of them all. Hollywood actor David Carradine was found dead in his room at the Swissôtel Nai Lert Park Hotel on Wireless Road, near Sukhumvit Road, in central Bangkok, Thailand. He was there shooting his latest film, titled Stretch. Really? Stretch?
A police official said that Carradine was found naked, hanging by a rope tied to the doorknob of the room’s closet leading them to believe his death was suicide. However, later reports suggested that his death was accidental, the result of autoerotic asphyxiation.
Two autopsies were conducted, one involving the celebrity pathologist Pornthip Rojanasunan, and both concluded that the death was not a suicide. The cause of death became widely accepted as “accidental asphyxiation.” Carradine’s lawyer Vicki Roberts went on record stating: “I believe there may have been foul play.”
Reports around the time of his death suggest that Carradine may have been involved in child sex tourism; a rampant issue in Thailand where he was found. If he was involved in pedophilia, could he have been connected to a wider network of Hollywood elite pedophiles?
Here we have the almighty “72”. If ever there was a more complete and hermetic number for ritual work this is it. Of course, what better way throw collective common sense out the window than to write a sex scandal into the narrative. “Death by erotic asphyxiation.”
I’m calling Bullshit on that. Was Carradine into the Pedo scene? It sure seems like there are more than a few connections. Unlike other people on this list, he wasn’t in the process of attempting to out anyone at the time of his death.
3) Alexander McQueen – 40
The first of 3 fashion designers on this list, McQueen was found in the AM, hanging from a doorknob by his housekeeper at his home in Green Street, London where paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene. Metropolitan Police stated that the note McQueen left was not suspicious, however, they did not confirm that his death was a suicide.
Alexander McQueen with his muse, Annabelle Neilson the wife of ex-wife of Nathaniel Rothschild
Photos of McQueen’s fashion shows. It’s obvious that McQueen was in the thick of it and made a regular habit of signaling his allegiance. As an occultist, I can tell you that the attention to detail and themes portrayed in his shows were beyond that of casual decor. They ran deep.
4) Annabelle Neilson, 49
Muse of Alexander McQueen and the ex-wife of elite banker Nataniel Rothschild has been found dead at her home in Chelsea, London.
(She died in July 2018, but I thought it’s important to include her right after Alexander McQueen).
I will include the original report below:
49-year-old Annabelle Neilson’s body was discovered hanging from a doorknob in the bathroom of her $4.1 million mansion on Thursday, but news of her sudden and tragic death has only just been made public.
Police have yet to confirm the cause of her death, and haven’t ruled out drug or alcohol use, but say they are “not treating it as suspicious.”
Neilson was previously married to Nathaniel Rothschild – son of Lord Jacob Rothschild and heir to his family’s fortune – for three years after a six-year relationship.
After divorcing Rothschild she was reportedly forced to sign a confidentiality agreement and rescind the dynastic name.
Since splitting with the banking heir, she was in an extremely close relationship with fashion designer Alexander McQueen who also died in eerily similar circumstances to Neilson.
McQueen’s death was announced on the afternoon of 11 February 2010.
In the morning, his housekeeper found him hanging from a doorknob at his home in Green Street, London W1.
Annabelle Neilson was supposedly the last person to see McQueen alive and she was left devastated by his death.
As soon as people online have noticed that she allegedly killed herself in the same manner as her close friend and confidant, Alexander McQueen, the internet has been whitewashed and the true cause of her death covered up.
Originally, we were told she was found hanging by a red scarf from a doorknob in her bedroom, but later we were told that she died from a cerebrovascular accident or a heart attack.
5) Aaron Swartz – 26
Tech pioneer, and Reddit co-founder, Aaron Swartz was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment by his partner, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman. A spokeswoman for New York’s Medical Examiner reported that he had hanged himself from a doorknob. No suicide note was found.
According to former-CIA agent Robert Steele, Swartz hacked into MIT Computers and found a huge stash of Child Pornography shortly before his death.
Another numerologically significant date. Jan, 11th is “1/11” and this number has a few meanings. first, 111 is 3 “1’s” or 3. Master Mason is the 3rd degree. It is also the first 11 of the year. 11 symbolizes the pillars of Boaz and Jachin which sat at the entrance to King Solomon’s Temple.
11 is also the first number after “10” which is the most perfect number and represents ILLUMINATION.”
“11” represents imperfection in government because it is one number short of 12, which symbolizes a perfect theocratic government.
Satanists love to utilize this dystopian number in their ritual work. Of course, the triple and quadruple “1’s” holds extreme significance in pop culture as a number everyone seems to notice regularly.
At first, the numerology surrounding this murder seems a little overkill, no pun intended. 11 is quite a powerful and significant number to utilize when weaving into a ritual. But upon a closer examination of Aaron’s life, we realize that his death was most certainly to be used as an example to other budding geniuses.
Although Aaron no doubt more than likely had incriminating files of the elite pertaining to pedophilia he was also the spearhead of a movement to bring and maintain freedom of speech and presence on the Internet.
The internet HAS replaced TV and IS the default platform for the human species at this point. Aaron posed a real threat to this.
6) L’Wren Scott – 49
Our second fashion designer on the list is L’Wren Scott, long-time lover of Mick Jagger and (former girlfriend of Nate Rothschild) was found dead by her assistant at her apartment in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan on March 17, 2014.
The police reported that no note was found and there was no sign of foul play. The New York City Chief Medical Examiner determined Scott’s manner and cause of death to be “suicide by hanging.”
I wonder what sort information concerning the underbelly of sex, privilege, and decadence the ex-girlfriend of a Rothschild and mega rockstar would be privy to which would either put her at jeopardy for elimination or make her want to kill herself? And the fact that I’m not buying the whole “death by doorknob suicide” Bullshit, I’m guessing she was silenced.
7) Robin Williams – 63
Williams died at his home in Paradise Cay, California. The initial report released on August 12, the Marin County Sheriff’s Office deputy coroner stated Williams had hanged himself after he was found hanging from a doorknob with a necktie.
The final autopsy report, released on November 2014, ruled that Williams had committed suicide by hanging himself from the doorknob. Neither alcohol nor illegal drugs were involved, while all prescription drugs present in his body were at “therapeutic” levels, the coroner declared.
Williams had been a part of the Hollywood scene for so long, nearly anything one can imagine could possibly be true. There’s a 100% chance Williams rubbed elbows with everyone in the Hollywood scene at one time or another and was exposed to everything Hollywood had to offer.
The question is: How deep was he into the scene? Decades of cocaine and partying can lead to some pretty dark places. He most certainly knew the dirty secrets of Henry Weinstein and his ilk, but what most people forget is that these celebrities cross over into politics quite often and support the agendas of democrat candidates regularly. This is where we get into “brownstonin.”
Hollywood insider and whistleblower Jon Robberson has chimed in on the Hollywood pedophile sex rings. He recently made statements in an interview regarding his belief that Robin Williams was most likely blackmailed into making the film Patch Adams.
And would do we make the Family Guy predictive programming which transpired shortly before Robin’s death? It’s obvious that Seth McFarlane has a hand in the mechanics of these rituals.
8) Chris Cornell – 52
Cornell was found unconscious by his bodyguard, hanging from the doorknob in the bathroom of his hotel room at the MGM Grand in Detroit, after performing at a show with Soundgarden at the Fox Theatre on May 17. He was lying on the floor with an exercise band around his neck and blood in his mouth.
An MGM medic and EMS personnel were unable to revive Cornell. Cornell was pronounced dead by a doctor at 1:30 a.m. Police ruled out homicide by reviewing a hotel surveillance video, which showed nobody entering or exiting the suite after his bodyguard left at around 11:35 p.m. The cause of death was determined to be “suicide by hanging.”
Cornell’s death is surrounded by rumors that he was about to expose key players in the DC pedophile ring known as pizza gate.
It’s no secret that Cornell and Chester Bennington, (Next on this list) died two months later the exact same way, had begun an organization to help at-risk children. Chester Bennington as you will learn is the son of John Podesta. You can’t make this stuff up.
Several have questioned what they say are gaps in the timeline. The police report says the bodyguard was in Cornell’s hotel room at 11:30 p.m. to help the star with the victim’s “computer, which was not working at that time.”
It says Vicky Cornell talked to her husband at 11:35 p.m., and, alarmed by what she heard, she phoned the bodyguard to ask him to check on her husband. He told police he went to Cornell’s room at 12:15 a.m. Some question the apparent 40-minute gap between the start of Vicky’s conversation with her husband and the bodyguard’s welfare check at his room.
Assistant Wayne County Medical Examiner Theodore Brown said that upon a visual examination, “no pills were found in the stomach,” according to his report. But there’s no indication in the toxicology report that Cornell’s stomach was tested to determine the level of drugs there since only the blood sample is cited.
Cornell also had nine broken ribs discovered at his autopsy. The official explanation was that the medics broke his ribs trying to resuscitate him using CPR. An in-depth article on the investigation can be found here.
9) Chester Bennington – 41
Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington was found dead at his home in Palos Verdes Estates, California; his housekeeper discovered his body hanging from a doorknob around 9:00 a.m. His death was officially ruled as suicide.
Was Chest Bennington the bastard son of John Podesta?
On July 21, Brian Elias, the chief of operations for the office of the medical examiner-coroner, confirmed that a half-empty bottle of alcohol was found at the scene, but no other drugs were present.
Believing himself to be a victim of child abuse, Chester Bennington was working with his best friend Cornell to expose a high-reaching child trafficking network.
But to say that Bennington believed himself to be a victim of child abuse is like stating that Adolf Hitler was simply a charismatic politician. Good lord this rabbit hole runs deep.
The band’s logo was a broken version of the triangle used in pedophile networks. There is no doubt that Bennington’s entire existence was consumed by the ritualistic sexual abuse he sustained at the hands of John Podesta, who is rumoured to have been his biological father.
What are the odds that two best friends who are about to expose a DC pedophile ring of which one of the friend’s father was at the heart of died in the exact same bizarre manner and that the second want to die did so two months later on his best friend’s birthday?
There is no doubt that Bennington would’ve struck at the heart of this DC pedophile ring more than likely bringing down Podesta, Hillary Clinton, and their networks. After all, he had the DNA to corroborate his claim. I don’t think Bennington knew just how much danger he was in.
10) Avicii – 28
Swedish DJ Avicii, real name Tim Bergling, died on 20 April 2018 near Muscat, Oman, at the age of 28. No cause of death was immediately given. On 21 April, the Omani police stated that there was “no criminal suspicion” or evidence of foul play in Bergling’s death.
On 26 April, his family released an open letter stating that Bergling “really struggled with thoughts about meaning, life, happiness. He could not go on any longer.” On 1 May, TMZ reported that the cause of death was a suicide due to self-inflicted injuries.
Although full details of his death were not released, TMZ reports that he suffered cuts from broken glass along with neck injuries. Although it is unclear what the injuries to his neck were, it could have been caused by asphyxiation and hanging has not been ruled out.
After his death, it emerged that Avicii was working to expose an elite pedophile ring. One of his videos began to recirculate in which he attempts to expose child trafficking.
In 2015 Avicii did release a video for his song “For a Better Day” where he shows child sex tracking taking place and two girls that escape from a man trying to capture them. The video later reveals that the two girls seek revenge on the ‘elite’ that were running this pedophile operation:
Did Avicii have the clout and influence to help wake up an entire generation to the horrors of institutionalized and ritualistic pedophilia and our global governments and institutions? Or was he simply ritual fodder?
11) Kate Spade – 55
Our third fashion designer on this list is Kate Spade. Also linked to the Clintons Spade was found dead hanging by the neck from a doorknob in her Manhattan apartment. It is been said that “buying a Kate Spade handbag was a coming-of-age ritual for a generation of American women.” It’s obvious that’s not the only ritual going on here.
A note found at the scene was addressed in the Spade’s 13-year-old daughter indicating that what happened was not the child’s fault. Miss Spade’s entrance into the dark world of privilege and decadence was when she met her husband to be, the brother of actor and comedian David Spade.
According to a Clinton Foundation DOCUMENT, Kate Spade was among a group that traveled to Haiti on behalf of the Clinton Foundation. She was part of the foundation’s initiative to foster “economic growth, support small businesses, and empower girls and women.”
There’s no doubt that Spade, who seems like a generally good person came across the same information regarding the Clinton foundation Haitian child sex trafficking network that got Monica Peterson killed (by the Clintons?).
ALSO RELATED. Most believe that Klaus Eberwein, a former Haitian government official was also “SUICIDED” in his Miami motel one day prior to testifying in court. Eberwein was scheduled to appear Tuesday before the Haitian Senate’s Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission.
No doubt the topic of child sex trafficking and the Clintons was on the agenda. As a side note. Klaus was also a partner in a popular pizza restaurant in Haiti, Muncheez, and has a pizza — the Klaus Special — named after him.
Here is a List of 71 Clinton Associates Who Died Mysteriously or Committed Suicide Before Testimony
Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton, paid tribute to the fashion designer via Twitter. “My grandmother gave me my first Kate Spade bag when I was in college. I still have it. Holding Kate’s family, friends and loved ones in my heart.”
SICK!!!
Equally as strange as Kate Spade hanging herself with a red scarf from a doorknob was the reaction of her husband shortly after the incident. Two days after Kate hanged herself from a doorknob with a red scarf Andy Spade was videotaped walking around in public wearing a mouse mask with a red scarf and newspaper hat.
It was actually the mask of one of the characters from the classic Disney cartoon The Avengers. This is some strange behavior which doesn’t fit into any box. Who the hell just happens to have an Avengers mouse mask laying around the house? NO!!!
In my opinion, this was a public self-humiliation ritual. A nod, a message, signaling of subservience to the Clintons or whoever had Kate killed that he understands and will be playing ball.
There is defiantly a much deeper story here which will never be told.
12) Queen Maxima’s sister Ines Zorreguieta – 33
Do we even need to mention she was killed at 33? Dutch Queen Maxima’s sister Ines Zorreguieta (The only royalty on this list) was found dead in Argentina last year.
Queen Maxima (left) and her sister, Ines Zorreguieta (right)
Zorreguieta, 33, was found dead by a friend who discovered her body hanging from a doorknob in her apartment in the Almagro district of Buenos Aires. Police said the autopsy report would be available in a week but did not suspect foul play.
According to reports, Zorreguieta was connected to high-level elites involved in child trafficking. Queen Maxima stepped down after allegations of her involvement in “hunts” where children were raped and massacred by her dinner guests. Some speculators believe she may have been “silenced” before she could go public about a cabal-connected pedophile ring.
European royalty, especially the Dutch have a long history of being accused of not only engaging in pedophilia but hunting killing and eating children. If you’re a normie this may seem shocking, but for those of us in the trenches, this information is not new.
David Icke has been screaming from the rooftops about this for over three decades and it’s just now starting to get attention. Do your research, then share:
13) Anthony Bourdain – 61
At the height of his career, chef, TV personality, world traveler and armchair philosopher Anthony Bourdain decided to commit suicide by hanging himself from a doorknob. Because apparently, that’s just what you do when you’re successful and have a great life.
Just prior to being “SUICIDED” Bourdain tweeted:
“know what Hillary Clinton is NOT? She’s not stupid. Or unsophisticated about the world. The Weinstein stories had been out there for years.”
“Mindless Hillary hate aside, this was a terrible response to questions about a “friend” who’s been tormenting women for decades.”
“I have met Hillary Clinton. I liked her. I admired much about her. This interview was a real disappointment.”
“Hillary is CLEARLY not responsible for anything Weinstein. That’s screamingly obvious. Her response to questions though has been uninspiring.”
“..and I am in no way an HRC fan. I’ve been on the receiving end of her operatives’ wrath. And it ain’t fun,”
“It’s no secret that people who cross the Clintons wind up dead…mostly from suicide,”
Occultic and ritualistic mechanics surrounding his death include: the show he was working on was in its 11th season. He died in France which is the birthplace of the Scottish Rite within Freemasonry.
Interestingly, Bourdain participated in an ancient death ritual at the season finale of his TV show. It aired two weeks after he was suicided. If this isn’t predictive programming I don’t know what is.
Bonus:
14) Amschel Mayor James Rothschild – 41
Amschel Mayor James Rothschild, a billionaire investment banker and a noted sportsman in excellent health, was discovered lifeless on the floor of the bathroom of his suite at the luxurious Bristol Hotel in Paris on July 8, 1996, at 7:32 pm.
Police found that he had been strangled with the heavy cord of his own bathrobe. One end of the cord was attached to a towel rack as if to suggest that Rothschild’s violent death was self-inflicted.
“The [French] crime scene investigators never called it ‘suicide,'” reporter Theirry de Segonzac told *The Spotlight* in a telephone interview from Paris. “After photographing the body, one of the detectives gave the towel rack tied to the body a strong tug. It came right out of the wall.”
Had Rothschild really attempted to hang himself from that rack, he would have ended up with nothing worse than a couple of holes in the wall, de Segonzac said.
There was no suicide note, no discernible cause or reason for a finding of suicide, knowledgeable sources say.
Rothschild, an athletic and imperious figure in early middle age, was a renowned race car driver and the husband of Anita Guinness, herself one of the world’s wealthiest heiresses. The couple had three children who spent most of their time on the family’s baronial estate in Suffolk, England.
Rothschild had arrived in Paris to take over one of the many family consortium’s French assets — anagement operations which were to be merged with N.M. Rothschild’s London-based investment banking center.
“Far from being ‘troubled,’ Amschel Rothschild’s star was on the rise and he relished his success,” says an executive at Keefe, Bruyetter and Co., a respected Wall Street monitor of the financial services industry. “I don’t believe for a moment he suddenly went and killed himself. There’s much more to this story.”
But with frantic speed — within an hour after the body’s discovery — authorities and news executives in both France and Britain launched an unusual joint offensive to preempt a public inquiry or a press investigation into the circumstances of Rothschild’s death.
“Murdoch sent a hotline fax to his 600-odd editors and news managers around the world, ordering them to report Amschel’s death as a heart attack, if at all,” said British broadcast reporter Ian Gooding.
“No one around here has ever seen such pressure to kill a front-page story. But in the end, the cover-up was complete.”
By the way, this story was buried, it is obvious that Amschel was murdered. Apparently, the Illuminati are not immune to lethal attack, when they administer it themselves. If an enemy of the Rothschilds had done it, believe me, you’d know.
The Rothschilds appear to have a secret compact. Each member of the dynasty will die if he refuses to advance the plan for the subversion and enslavement of the human race outlined in “The Protocols of Zion.”
Obviously, Amschel Mayor James Rothschild did not have “the killer instinct.” We don’t know the details but he became an obstruction.
Amschel’s story is a great tragedy. A sensitive, intelligent and good man is born into a megalomaniacal family of generational satanists. He discovers he must be a ruthless predator. It’s not in his character. He has a soul. He resists and is murdered. (Source)
Excerpts from this article: Thephoenixenigma.com / Additions by HumansAreFree.com
The US mainstream media have moved hastily to shut down the Epstein affair as a prison suicide. End of story. Move on. And anyone who doesn’t move on but instead challenges the official story is dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist”.
The paradox is that it is the critics and skeptics of the official narrative who have much more credibility. The establishment media are the ones who are peddling credulity and indulging in a conspiracy to conceal the need for a thorough investigation.
Remember these are the same news media who helped launch wars and military strikes on foreign countries based on deceitful conspiracies concerning “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq and alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria.
These are the same media who have been telling the world for the last two years that Russia hacked into US and European electoral systems, that Trump colluded with the Kremlin to get elected to the White House, only for all that bogus storytelling to implode into nothing but evidence-free dust, as the farcical Mueller probe showed.
Their credibility has been shot over and over again. So, for this same media to hastily bury the Epstein affair along with his corpse and to dismiss skeptics as “conspiracy theorists” is in actual fact a sign that this media are doing what they usually do – covering up for the powers-that-be, or what we might call the “deep state”.
The alleged suicide by billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein in a New York City jail last weekend begs many legitimate questions. The suspicious circumstances are well known. Suffice to say that his death is far from proven to be suicide, despite the official autopsy report. His defense lawyers, for their part, aren’t convinced and are demanding an independent investigation. The suspicion is that Epstein was murdered in his prison cell by strangulation.
© AP PHOTO / ELIZABETH WILLIAMS
In this courtroom artist’s sketch, defendant Jeffrey Epstein, center, sits with attorneys Martin Weinberg, left, and Marc Fernich during his arraignment in New York federal court, Monday, July 8, 2019. Epstein pleaded not guilty to federal sex trafficking charges. The 66-year-old is accused of creating and maintaining a network that allowed him to sexually exploit and abuse dozens of underage girls from 2002 to 2005.
Why? Because the convicted sex offender had, according to his own admission, loads of blackmail dirt on many powerful or famous people in the world of politics, business, media, and so on. The implication of Britain’s Prince Andrew, former US President Bill Clinton and current President Donald Trump are just a few of the many cases of famous people possibly logged in Epstein’s reputed “black book” of names.
For mainstream US media to dismiss something sinister in the disposal of Epstein as a crank theory betrays a willingness to overlook the rampant culture of crime in American politics involving the use of sex traps and blackmail as a vice to buy politicians, military leaders, media figures.
Investigative journalist Whitney Webb recently published a series of in-depth articles on how organized crime and intelligence services in the US have for decades been involved in systematic use of sexual vice to entrap public figures who are then obliged to toe the line on policies that benefit their trappers. This culture of blackmail is probably as old as politics itself and is of course not unique to the US.
Nevertheless, it became an integral part of US politics over the last century from the years of alcohol prohibition, to the rise of the Mafia and the interlocking relationship between organized crime and state intelligence services to compromise politicians, business, military and media figures who would then henceforth serve as slaves for their vice masters.
People like J Edgar Hoover, who founded the FBI in the 1920s and served as its head until his death in 1972, long denied that organized crime existed in the US. That impossible credulity was because the mafia had dirt on Hoover as a closet homosexual who had a penchant for dressing up in women’s clothes. Hoover, in turn, had dirt on hundreds of politicians who were entrapped by living out their sexual fantasies in what they believed to be secret hotel rendezvous but which were being filmed. Those fantasies could be extramarital affairs, homosexual trysts, or perversions with children.
As Whitney Webb, as well as other investigative journalists, have documented, the culture of vice and blackmail is standard operating procedure by US secret services who have learnt well their dark craft from their organized crime counterparts. They are in fact often indistinguishable.
A key figure in this blackmail industry was the late attorney Roy Cohn who was a senior fixer and dirty trickster for the Reagan and HW Bush administrations in the 1980s until his death. The same people who surrounded Cohn are connected to current politicians and other public figures. It was out of this milieu that Jeffrey Epstein was spawned.
It is simply incredulous that Epstein’s systematic running of sex rings for the rich and famous was not part of the endemic blackmail culture of vice used in Washington.
Granted, it would be a stretch to claim that every member of Congress and mainstream media are victims of blackmail. But it is a fair assumption that many of them are. That sex trap-servility complex ensures that so many of the political class function as lackeys.
Why are American, and NATO country, politicians, as well as their news media, so often conformist to ludicrous policies of war, conflict, enriching the super-rich, and belligerence towards Russia, China and Iran, among others? The pathetic impotence towards challenging state and corporate power and its abuses suggests that many people within the political class are caught and bought by the sex trap-servility complex.
Views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.
The Isle of White: a Tale of the Have-Lots Versus the Have-Nots
AUGUST 19, 2019
Photograph Source: Jason Philbrook – CC BY-SA 2.5
The island of North Haven in the Penobscot Bay, Maine, is an eastern establishment, white-shoe summer-place overlain on a diesel swilling, bottom feeding lobster-industry that supports the year-round residents of this tiny, fractal-shored resort. It is washed by the Gulf Stream and reports the fastest rising ocean temperatures in the Western hemisphere, dramatic sea level rises and a devastated eco-system. Comprehensively cleared of its old-growth hardwood forests in the nineteenth century, its second growth pines are now attacked by bark beetles moving north under the duress of a warming climate. In place of the diseased trees, the severely invasive, non-native Buckthorn is proliferating. Lashed by several hurricanes in the twentieth century, the island now awaits the first of this century’s superstorms. Already, beaches are eroding into the bay at alarming rates.
But some still say it is paradise. Expensive yachts crowd its harbors and summer visitors wave cheerily to each other as they drive or bicycle along its well-paved roads. The summer houses of the rich and discreet spot its meadows, bays and palisades. Vacation revelers eat ice cream and drink the craft-beers of North Haven Brewery along the harbor front, eat gourmet pizzas, and enjoy coffee, movies and ping-pong at Waterman’s, the community center. Lily-white youngsters learn to sail off the Casino dock. There are a couple of art galleries, a hotel and restaurant and, in the summer months, a farmer’s market.
This east coast summer enclave of wealth and privilege was originally founded between 1910 and 1920 by Wall Street luminaries, including the Morgans, the Rockefellers and the Lamonts. Shortly afterwards, Thomas Watson, founder of IBM, established a 300-acre summer estate along the island’s northern shore. Several generations of their descendants still summer on this gilded isle, joined now by other families of post-Second World War, Twentieth-Century wealth.
The island is unspeakably white. There are other ‘white’ summer enclaves (and certainly not all are islands) just like it up and down the east coast of America. They are where many of the wealthiest, of old money and new, go to live the summers of their dreams–a summer amongst their peers, with just enough poor and middle-class workers to service their every need and, perhaps, to add just a little historical authenticity to their Fantasy Island.
North Haven is powered by three gleaming (white) wind turbines, discreetly located on an adjacent island. They illustrate the uncanny ability of the rich to thrive in green, sustainable communities while the poor often remain in the polluted cities, suburbs and exurbs from whence wealth is extracted. The island demonstrates the dark survival of what we can quaintly call the class struggle whilst establishing the evolution of that conflict within a subsuming ecological crisis.
Deregulation, since the early 1990’s, has facilitated the globalization of the economy and the out-sourcing of production to regions of low-cost labor, primarily Asia. This trend is resisted politically by the poor and middle class who have found a salve to their financial wounds in fierce nationalisms that cohere around skin-color, religion and territorial origin stories. This much we know. It is Bruno Latour, the French philosopher, who has added a third dimension to this dynamic by suggesting that those made wealthy in this global revolution are very aware that the climate catastrophe will now further curtail the well-being of most of humanity. In Latour’s telling (Down to Earth, 2018) the uber-rich have made the calculus that the world will be increasingly riven between the haves and the have-nots and that they will make no attempt, either politically or economically, to heal the rift. Indeed, they will, he suggests, continue to assiduously corral the world’s resources for their own benefit since there is not now, and likely never will be, enough to go around in a world closing in on eight billion people and whose natural beneficence is increasingly disrupted by weather terrorism.
The class struggle has metastasized, gone global, and is now conjoined wit the fight to maintain a habitable planet. The apparent prosperity that existed in the United States post 1945 allowed for a brief flickering of hope for something like wide-spread well-being (at least as evidenced by the white population’s material prosperity). Three decades of this historically anomalous economic circumstance were coopted by the state as an ideological weapon in the cold-war, but shortly abandoned in the mid-1970’s when corporate America reacted to the social challenges presented by the revolutions of the1960’s by self-interestedly assuaging calls for personal freedom and expressions of individuality by reducing security of employment and initiating the beginnings of the gig-economy. It was Luc Boltanski and Eva Chiapello, in The New Spirit of Capitalism, 1999, who painstakingly connected the dots. The increasing precarity this caused served the wealthy elites, while Bill Clinton’s vicious Violent Crime Control & Enforcement Act of 1994, enacted policies of mass incarceration, further intimidating neighborhoods already suffering from this financial destabilization.
It has only gotten worse. Wars waged against the poor, on drugs, on terror, on health, on welfare and on immigrants are all in service to protecting those elites, who, having abandoned all aspirations towards universally equitable social improvement, if indeed they ever harbored them, are now engineering the impoverishment of those eight billion ‘others’ with whom they nominally share the planet. As the global elites’ press their advantage in this war of the have-lots against the have-nots, some, in the most disaffected communities, retreat to the politics of extreme nationalism and race, manifested at the margins by apparently irrational mass violence. Perhaps white supremacists perceive their skin color as their only asset as they fight a rearguard action against diminished prospects of achieving self-respect and economic viability; extreme nationalists may perceive their birthplace as conferring special privileges within ancestral origin stories which are threatened by the arrival of the non-native born – their worth daily diluted. Whatever the motivations of the disaffected, they risk becoming grist to an over-arching war on the poor and middle-class – either coopted by governments as their shock-troops or used as a pretext for draconian social controls.
We live in a new era of exclusion and extirpation that is fundamental to the vision of America not-so-secretly harbored in the hearts and minds of the powerful and well-heeled. Spot fires of deadly violence inevitably flare up amongst the underclass, unknowingly aping the ideologies of the ruling caste who then lightly condemn them. As Todd Miller shows in Empire of Borders, 2019, U.S. border protection radiates beyond the homeland far across the planet – where its agencies attempt to hold the line against the infiltration of…’your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore’… and the non-white. Our southern border is the last in line of serried ranks of exclusionary practices made manifest and is the notorious site of graphic barbarity practiced for the edification of the world.
The United States displays exemplary leadership amongst those states in the Global North committed to harassing, impoverishing, quarantining, deporting, imprisoning and denying quality education and health care to most of its citizens (and almost a totality of its undocumented inhabitants). As Paul Street succinctly establishes here, this country no longer represents even a notional leadership in democracy; instead, for the last forty years we have led the world in income triage, abandoning fully ninety percent of the population in a relentless quest to achieve obscene levels of wealth disparity. This amassing of great wealth (which represents access to resources) is the ultimate hedge by global elites against a collapsing eco-system amidst catastrophic climate change. In this country it is practiced by the uber-wealthy with a sublime disregard for the immiseration caused by their wealth-hording.
Those who are politically & philosophically engaged in the travails of the Anthropocene understand that a revolution that attempts to install democracy in the United States is irrelevant unless it is framed within the larger struggle of the poor against the rich, which is a entwined with the war to preserve a viable planet for our shared future. Historically, it is has taken power and resources to destroy the environment – the traditional purview of the wealthy. The poor are but instruments of this depredation, as, for instance, miners, drillers, builders, fishers, farmers, soldiers, policemen and ultimately, as consumers.
If we continue to triage humanity along the wealth divide only the rich will live green, along with their select non-human companions, in their urban principalities, country estates, mountain aeries or idyllic islands. Others will endure in the brown fields of environmental devastation amidst the carnage of the sixth extinction, while the violence of the most disaffected bubbles up around them, disguised as nationalism, race-hate or religion. These ‘others’ may wait at the gates or loiter along the shores, and idly engage in discussions of freedom and democracy, but the vortices of effective power swirl ever further beyond their reach.
