Monday, September 18, 2017

The Saker Loses It

Over at Unz Review, the Saker goes ballistic on the concept that American military has ever done anything good, moral or effective. He begins by declaring what we would believe if we had been German during WII, or any other ethnicity in the wars that have been joined by the USA. Or if we were born in Germany just subsequent to the defeat of Germany - which is contrary to his following charges that the USA has always been defeated in every war, even in Granada. Our beliefs are based not in fact, he says, but in propaganda written by the "winner" who didn't actually win.

He declares that the USA is founded on poly-genocide of indigenes, as America was stolen from the natives who owned it. It is undeniable that the USA did in fact set out to neutralize those who were preventing expansion, and that obscene brutalities occurred, such as the Sand Creek Massacre and others. It is also undeniable that there were atrocities committed by the indigenes as well. So what? Were any of us there to object, to yell "Stop, we must go back to Europe - or even Africa - where our origins are found"? (1)
"But that is hardly all, the Anglo invaders then proceeded to wage another illegal and brutal war of annexation against Mexico from which is stole a huge chunk of land which includes modern Texas, California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico! Yes, all this land was illegally occupied and stolen by your side not once, but TWICE! And do I even need to mention the horrors of slavery to add to the “moral tally” of your side by the time the US entered the war? Right there I think that there is more than enough evidence that your side was morally worse than either the Nazis or the Soviets. The entire history of the US is one of endless violence, plunder, hypocrisy, exploitation, imperialism, oppression and wars. Endless wars of aggression. None of them defensive by any stretch of the imagination. That is quite unique in human history. Can you think of a nastier, more bloodthirsty regime? I can’t."
He declares that we stole, twice, much of the western USA by invading Mexico just for that purpose. He declares that the USA started the cold war with Russia after aborting plans to Atomic Bomb the major Russian cities. And he declares that slavery existed in the USA right up to the beginning of WWII. These are all false. (2)

And he declares that the Allies did NOT save Europe in WWII.

In fact the Saker declares all American history to be false, and his own source (he quotes Wikipedia several times, and Russian websites) to be correct, and the version to be believed.
"The truth is that the Americans only entered the war when it was clear that the Nazis would be defeated [by the Russians] and that their real motive was not the “liberation of oppressed Europe” but to prevent the Soviets from occupying all of Europe. The Americans never gave a damn about the mass murder of Jews or Russians, all they cared about was a massive land-grab (yet again)."
There was no "land-grab" by the Americans: all countries were restored to their peoples, save the land used for American forces, which -yes- were there to protect the new countries from the USSR communists, not to mention internal insurgency from remaining NAZIs.

The Saker goes on to quote statistics from Russian sources, thereby succumbing to the very thing he is actively deprecating: quoting the history which was "written by the winner", who he declares was the USSR communists, rather than the Allies.

But let's assume that the Russian front statistics he has found are valid. And let's also assume that the "real motive" for the Allied invasion was actually NOT to save Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, North Africa, etc. from NAZI overrun and slaughter. The "real motive" was to stop the Russians from defeating Germany and then taking the entire continent as part of the USSR. So. Which eventuality would Europe consider worse, conquest by Germany? Conquest by Russia? Conquest by the Allies?

The USA-British-Canadian-Australian coalition did NOT colonize any country in Europe or Africa. The USSR communists did. That history is undebatable. And those countries which were "liberated" into the USSR suffered severely for decades, until the demise of the USSR when their own autonomy was regained.

The Saker goes on to claim that it was the USA which heavily armed Europe, and that threatened Russia. But he had previously claimed that Russians had far more military in the East than did the Allies in the West and South.

The hegemonic, colonialist, USSR communists were not bashful about extending their reign of brutality to countries they came to control (they even tried to starve West Berlin, but the Allied air lifts prevented that).

The Saker is or was Russian, it appears. He prefers the history which is written by his homeland, which dictates that the USA is the most bloodthirsty country, ever.

The Saker is not an Enlightenment intellectual, regardless of his writing ability. He entertains internal contradictions and factual claims without substantive evidence, all with rhetorical flourish. But rhetoric is not factual; dialectic argumentation is, at its base. Which dialectic is the problem.

NOTES:
1. Modern Russia was founded in assassinations of leaders, genocides of entire populations which are now extinct, the mass murder of classes, including religious leaders.

2. Which history are we to find credible, that of the totalitarian? Or that of Enlightenment-based writers?

1 comment:

Steven Satak said...

A Soviet conspiracy theorist?

What a maroon.