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One of the most touching, sad antiwar songs ever performed is Mr.Lonely by Bobby Vincton. Vinton, who served two years in the Army, co-wrote this song when he was a lonely soldier. It was a #1 hit for him in 1964. He sung the song on the Mike Douglas Show in 1972 and in his introduction explains US troops are about to be coming home. Vinton continued to tour until 2014 and, at 90, is still with us.

The post Bobby Vinton’s Antiwar Song: Mr. Lonely appeared first on LewRockwell.

Austrian Economists Make Up The Superhero Needed To Save Civilization From Economic and Zionist Myths

Lew Rockwell Institute - Sab, 19/04/2025 - 05:01

As a kid growing up in the 80s one of my favorite cartoons was ‘Voltron: Defender of the Universe.” The main characters would pilot 5 robotic lions who would eventually assemble to create Voltron, who’d use a massive sword to defeat the enemy. In this article I’ll briefly introduce 4 main thinkers and impactful friends associated with the ‘Austrian School of Economics’, and how they create the superhero needed to defend civilization from the economic and Zionist fallacies-myths that threaten it.

Besides properly grounding economics on the subjective (not labor) theory of value, founder of ‘The Austrian School’, Carl Menger(1840-1921), via his seminal “Principles of Economics” also provided what I like to call the “flux-capacitor” idea of the social sciences: Menger’s explanation of the evolution of money.

Private-sector economic competition turns the planet into a supercomputer as companies innovate and copy the innovations of competitors thus spreading superior information. Business profit-loss accounting ensures that the private sector is ordered in a manner where more wealth is produced (sales revenue) than consumed (costs) and is thus profitable-wealth-order-life increasing. Overcoming the double-coincidence-of-wants problem allows the benefits of trade like the expanding division of labor and information to apply to populations above small tribes. All three depend on or emerge from money. Without money and its emerging benefits, homo sapiens would not have progressed beyond the tribal stage. Menger showed how similar to language, which is a vital communication mechanism that man did NOT design or invent, money too and emerging ‘Social Organism’ is “the unintended result of individual human efforts (pursuing individual interests) without a common will directed toward their establishment.” The fact that money and emerging civilization was not deliberately designed is key for understanding how we live in this mind-bogglingly complex world with complex airplanes, the Internet, microchips, etc., yet hardly anyone has the slightest clue regarding how the economy works, and the masses naively clamor for self-mutilation via coercive competition-immune-monopolistic government planning and tribalistic good vs. evil wars.

During the Christmas holidays of 1903, while a student at the University of Vienna, Ludwig von Mises(1881-1973) read Carl Menger’s “Principles of Economics” and, in his own words, “It was through this book that I became an economist.” Among other contributions (see my article on Mises’ business cycle theory), via his 1920 essay “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth“, Mises showed how it was impossible for soviet-style central planning to work (see my article for a Mises-Hayek inspired critique of central planning). By persuading leading Austrian politicians away from joining the Bolsheviks, Mises also helped stop its calamitous expansion. Mises properly identified economic ignorance as the main source of mankind’s problems and felt like “all reasonable men are called upon to familiarize themselves with the teachings of economics. This is, in our age, the primary civic duty.” This ethos made him a brilliant and inspiring writer, the intellectual Atlas upon whose shoulders future generations would stand.

1974 Nobel Laureate in Economics F.A. Hayek(1899-1992) writes: “the decisive influence was just reading Menger’s Principles.” And that it was “such a fascinating book—so satisfying.” By having a job under Mises, especially in 1922 when Mises published his majestic “Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis”, and having Mises help him get a job at the prestigious London School of Economics, this catapulted Hayek to prominence in the 1930s-40s where he played a leading role fighting socialist and Keynesian myths in the English-speaking world. With the help of fellow Mises disciples Henry Hazlitt(1894-1993), and Max Eastman(1883-1969), Hayek’s 1944 book ‘The Road To Serfdom’, and its condensed 40-page Eastman-created version, helped educate millions including future freemarketeers like Ron Paul, Margaret Thatcher, and countless others. His classic essays like “The Use of Knowledge in Society”, “Competition as a Discovery Procedure”, “The Theory of Complex Phenomena”, “The Three Sources of Human Values” and many other writings-books helped us further understand the vital role that markets play in generating and spreading the information that coordinates the socioeconomic order, and the complex co-evolution of the market and culture, ultimately providing a complete evolutionary hypothesis-framework for understanding all order, biological and socioeconomic. Like Mises, Hayek too felt like “nothing could contribute more to the cure of humanity’s ills than to give people a better understanding of economics.”

Absorbing the Misesian econogospel and educational ethos, Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995, Jewish like Mises) would write his own treatise “Man, Economy and State”, which according to Mises improved-refined his ideas. Murray’s friend, great freedom-entrepreneur and founder of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Lew Rockwell, writes in a brilliant collection of Murray’s educational essays:

”[Murray] also had a passion for public persuasion. A free society can only be sustained if the general public is aware of the vital importance of the market and the terrible consequences of statism. That’s why Rothbard hoped to convince everyone about the virtues of the free economy. For Rothbard, educating the public was strategically necessary and morally obligatory.”

If economic competition motivates the discovery and spread of superior information, why not allow competition in law, courts, police, defense, and everything we naively assume must be done by inherited competition-immune bureaucracies? Murray was a pioneer in these ideas referred to as Anarcho-Capitalism and described in his books like “For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto”

Mises:

“History speaks only to those people who know how to interpret it on the ground of correct theories.”

Rothbard used his Misesian glasses to better understand history, how perverse incentives in competition-immune governments grew state power, propagated myths of all kinds, and most importantly, promoted WAR. Murray rightly saw wars, not as necessary simplistic-tribalistic battles of good-homo-sapiens vs. bad-homo-sapiens, but as the result of complex historical events and negligent-ignorant ideologues. Murray knew, and had the courage and integrity to state, that the US should have never gotten involved in WWI, that Zionism was a monumental error, and how naive politicians, not Hitler, were the main culprits in sparking and expanding the WWII calamity.

Yes! Hitler held anti-Jewish fallacies, like misinterpreting Jewish overrepresentation in the horrific Bolshevik revolution and resulting Communist movements with some deliberately malicious plot masterminded by Jews and-or also tied to their “race”. These are very understandable and easy-to-overcome fallacies. But it was also a fallacy to neglect-overlook Hitler’s fallacies, and misrepresent Hitler as some non-homo sapiens maniacal conqueror, and prevent him from overturning the wrongs of the ‘Treaty of Versailles’ like reuniting the Danzig Germans, forcing Hitler to do it by force, and then persuading the world into a massive world war. Rothbard writes in a review of A.J.P. Taylor’s classic book, “The Origins of the Second World War”:

“Germany and Hitler were not uniquely guilty of launching World War II (indeed they were scarcely guilty at all);…Hitler, in brief, (in foreign affairs) was not a uniquely evil monster or daimon, who would continue to gobble up countries diabolically until stopped by superior force…Hitler had no designs, no plans, not even vague intimations, to expand westward against Britain and France (let alone the United States). Hitler admired the British Empire and wished to collaborate with it. Not only did Hitler do this with insight, he did it with patience, as Taylor excellently shows.”

Understandable economic fallacies fooled many into adopting Socialist mythology, morality, and “identity”. Similarly, as an understandable reaction to ‘anti-Jewish fallacies’, Jews fooled themselves, and rightly sympathetic supporters, into attempting to overcome anti-Jewish fallacies, NOT via reason and education, which are the ONLY ways to overcome fallacies, but by abandoning the humble Synagogues and towns where they were really from to create a secular and socialist state in an area already overwhelmingly populated by Muslims, Christians, and fellow anti-Zionist Jews. People who for understandable reasons were adamantly opposed to the creation of, and potentially living under a “Jewish State”. A state concocted by misguided European ideologues who inherited some of the imperialist-racist and Socialist fallacies of their times. For example, David ben Gurion, Israel’s architect and first Prime Minister, eagerly attended Moscow in 1923 to celebrate the 7th-anniversary of the Bolsheviks’ October Revolution.

Zionism, as with Socialism, was a massive intellectual error propagated by respective echo-chambers of fallacies-myths, negligence, perverse incentives, and ultimately violence-coercion. Like the Russians, Jews increasingly tied their “identity” and morality to an error and eventually reach the stage where we are today, where saying that Zionism and resulting Israeli state was an error is seen as hate-speech. CEO of the ADL Jonathan Greenblatt mentioned that: “Anti-Zionism is antisemitism”, and that: “Anti-Zionism is genocide”. Israeli author of the great books ‘The Invention of the Jewish People’, and ‘The Invention of the Land of Israel’, Shlomo Sand, astutely mentioned that: “Zionism has become…a sort of Stalinism.”

Rothbard’s classic essay ‘War Guilt in the Middle East’(1967) succinctly summarizes the inevitable fallacy that Zionism was bound to be. With Murray and friends, our freedom-superhero is better equipped to overcome, both, economic and Zionist myths-fallacies.

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Books LRC Readers Bought This Week

Lew Rockwell Institute - Sab, 19/04/2025 - 05:01

LewRockwell.com readers are supporting LRC and shopping at the same time. It’s easy and does not cost you a penny more than it would if you didn’t go through the LRC link. Just click on the Amazon link on LewRockwell.com’s homepage and add your items to your cart. It’s that easy!

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New Poll: Americans Reject Deporting Foreigners for ‘Wrongthink’ on Middle East

Lew Rockwell Institute - Sab, 19/04/2025 - 05:01

An important new public opinion survey taken by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has revealed very little American support for the deportation of legal foreign guests in the United States for expressing support for Palestine in its current conflict with Israel.

Responding to FIRE’s quarterly National Speech Index survey conducted by the Dartmouth Polarization Research Lab this month, a mere one-quarter of the respondents supported the deportation of non-citizens legally in the US for expressing pro-Palestine views. A solid majority of 52 percent are strongly opposed or opposed to such measures.

The survey result comes as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has boasted of revoking “at least 300” student visas for the “crime” of expressing a position on middle east politics that the current US Administration disagrees with. Derided by Rubio as “lunatics” for opposing ongoing US government support for Israel as Gaza is flattened, many foreign students have been arrested by masked, armed federal agents – who refuse to even identify themselves – and sent to a federal detention facility in Louisiana.

In the case of Turkish PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk, the State Department had already produced a report concluding that she neither supported terrorism nor anti-Semitism before masked federal agents accosted her on the street and arrested her.

Her “crime” was co-authoring an op-ed in her university newspaper a year earlier criticizing Israel.

In many cases these arrests are carried out based on lists provided to the federal government by a militant, extremist group called Betar. The group is so radical that it has even been added to the pro-Israel ADL’s “extremism” list, yet somehow it has the ear of the Trump Administration.

Commenting on the findings, FIRE Chief Research Advisor Sean Stevens said, “deporting someone simply for disagreeing with the government’s foreign policy preferences strikes at the very freedoms the First Amendment was designed to protect. Americans are right to reject this kind of viewpoint-based punishment.”

Additionally, the shocking arrests and incarceration of legal residents or guests for committing no crime beyond expressing a particular point of view has begun to eat away at Americans’ confidence that the Trump Administration can be trusted to uphold the First Amendment. From Inauguration day until the FIRE poll this month, a majority of Americans have now lost confidence in the Trump Administration’s respect for our most sacred right of free expression:

Many Americans mistakenly believe government “grants” rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights, and that it grants them to American citizens only. Constitutional scholar Andrew Napolitano dismisses such claims, writing:

We know from the writings of James Madison — who authored the Bill of Rights — that the Founders regarded the freedom of speech as a personal individual natural right. It is also, of course, expressly protected from government interference and reprisal in the First Amendment. The courts have ruled that it protects all persons — no matter their immigration status — who may think as they wish, say what they think, publish what they say, worship or not and associate with whomever they choose.

While many supporters of the Trump Administration are currently applauding the arrest and deportation of legal foreign residents who express political views they do not support, they would do well to keep in mind that the vicissitudes of the American body politic may well soon turn against them and their views, and – particularly given President Trump’s stated intent to begin deporting American citizens as well – once the trap of a precedent is set they may not be able to wiggle out of it.

Indespensible pro-liberty intellectual Jim Bovard expressed it best in a recent article:

What legal perils will pro-freedom protestors face in the coming years if the Ozturk rule is canonized, entitling federal officials to crush any disfavored opinion? Big-spending Democrats may consecrate Modern Monetary Theory and demonize anyone who criticizes the Federal Reserve. I took this ‘Kill the Central Bank’ photo of Ron Paul supporters at a 2008 Capitol Hill event for his presidential campaign. If the same protestors had peacefully carried the same banner within a half mile of the Capitol on January 6, they likely would have been nailed on a bevy of federal charges. Many politicians have made stark their hatred of libertarians and freedom advocates.

As long as anyone is sitting in shackles in a federal detention center simply for writing an op-ed, freedom of speech is not safe for anyone in the United States.

While a trip into the bowels of social media suggests a torch-bearing mob rallying to send those guilty of the “wrongthink” of the day to some El Salvadorian gulag, the good work of the freedom of expression organization FIRE reassures us that cooler heads continue to prevail. However, by no means does that suggest we can afford to let our guard down for a minute. This is not an issue of partisanship, but of principle. The mob – whether left or right – must not be allowed to take over.

Reprinted with permission from The Ron Paul Institute.

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Kilmar for President!

Lew Rockwell Institute - Sab, 19/04/2025 - 05:01

So, you wonder why Democrats are so anxious to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the USA. Is it to lead the national ticket in 2028? Who else have they got? Pete Buttigieg doesn’t have half of Kilmar’s charisma. AOC is just pretending to be Sandy-from-the-block — and everybody knows it. Who else best represents the party’s newest constituency: the undocumented (people unfairly deprived of documents by a cruel and careless bureaucracy)? Who best represents the Democratic Party’s number one policy goal: diversity fosterization! Kilmar, of course! Viva Kilmar!

It’s also pretty obvious by his recent actions, that Judge “Jeb” Boasberg is angling to be Kilmar’s running mate in ‘28. Perfect! He could fulfil the traditional role of vice-president by doing nothing for four years, which is exactly what people of non-color should do in the Democratic Party’s new national order. (Haven’t they already done enough?) Boasberg could set an example for the rest of America’s dwindling color-deficient population: quit hogging all the action, stop collecting all those dividends and annuities, step aside and give the other a chance at the American Dream!

Did you happen to notice how enterprising Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been since he boldly breached the border in 2011, fleeing persecution from the vicious gangs of his native El Salvador? Running a one-man jobs program, he crossed the country countless times indefatigably from Maryland to California in his mobile office — the legendary KAG SUV — seeking employment opportunities for young women of color otherwise condemned to clean hotel rooms and labor in senior care facilities filled with abusive people of non-color clinging pointlessly to life only to oppress their caretakers with never-ending demands for medication and extra portions of Jello.

Kilmar’s gritty organization, Mara Salvatrucha-13, has been among the Democratic Party’s most effective NGOs in a greater galaxy of justice-seeking ventures marshaled under the USAID umbrella — recently vandalized by Elon Musk’s DOGE band of pillaging oligarchs. MS-13, for short, was beloved among the undocumented for its fund-raising abilities, its networking expertise, and its relentless search for the missing documents the undocumented have been looking high-and-low for lo these many decades — rumored to be concealed in a vast underground complex in the Catoctin Mountains of Frederick County, MD. (More white peoples’ mischief!)

Thus, it came to pass that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Maryland Dad-of-the-Year, was cruelly snatched from an MS-13 board meeting last month and transported without benefit of due process to the Salvadorean hell-hole known as CECOT (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo). And so, his Senator, Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) traveled this week to Central America on his one-man rescue mission. The Senator claimed he was detained miles from the gate of CECOT, and yet we have this photograph of Mr. Van Hollen meeting with Kilmar (and an unidentified aide) over Margaritas and pupusas at a cantina in the nearby town of Tecoluca. Asked to comment on the photo, El Savador’s Presidente, Nayib Bukele, declared: “Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camp’ & ‘torture!’ Now that he’s been confirmed healthy, he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody,” Mr. Bukele added.

Oh, so you say Señor Presidente! But not if “Jeb” Boasberg can help it. The dauntless super-judge has ordered Kilmar to be returned the USA pronto expressimo, or else he, the judge, is laying criminal contempt charges on the entire West Wing staff of Donald Trump’s White House. They will go to jail just like Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, two capos regime of Trump’s MAGA gang, did last year for the insolence of refusing to testify in Congress. Only, they will get life-without-parole! Lessons to be learned, ye miserable color-deficient, oppressors!

Alas, the DC federal district court is a bit short of enforcement officers, so Judge “Jeb” has enlisted the Harvard rowing crew to bring Kilmar back home. Kilmar will take the coxswain’s place in the racing shell as the crew rows up the Pacific Coast to their planned landing spot at Las Olas, CA, just south of San Diego. Joy will reign in Wokeville.

Having displayed such pluck at diplomacy, unnamed sources say Senator Van Hollen is under consideration for Secretary of State when Kilmar wins the 2028 election. Up until now, we’d been hoping for Senator Adam Schiff to fill that spot, but he has his hands full fighting the influence of the Soviet Union on the Trump cabinet. Looking forward, though, to the bold prosecutor, New York AG Letitia ‘Tish” James, moving into the top spot at DOJ, if her term for mortgage fraud ends before Jan-20, 2029. The Democratic Party — such bright prospects! Forward together, with Kilmar and company! Documents for all, at long last!

Reprinted with permission from Kunstler.com.

The post Kilmar for President! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Trump Administration to Enforce Real ID

Lew Rockwell Institute - Sab, 19/04/2025 - 05:01

For 20 years, the REAL ID law has been languishing in enforcement purgatory. But Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem recently announced that’s about to change.

Anyone who wants to enter federal buildings, fly, or tour nuclear power plants will soon need a REAL ID. According to Noem, this is for our own good. She said:

Starting May 7, you will need a REAL ID to travel by air or to visit federal buildings in the United States. These IDs keep our country safe because they help prevent fraud and they enhance security. Please do your part to protect our country. Go today and don’t delay.

This is not what I supported!

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. – William Pitt the Younger

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announces everyone will need a REAL ID to fly starting MAY 7. pic.twitter.com/FB7r7QB4zs

— T (@Rifleman4WVU) April 12, 2025

Conservative Pushback

But many Americans aren’t interested in “doing their part.” Noem’s announcement triggered significant pushback.

Former Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas) likened justification for the REAL ID to the erroneous justification Americans received about the Federal Reserve Bank. He laughingly pointing out how “they always twist” laws such as these to fool people into believing it’s for their safety. He said advocates of the Federal Reserve justified that monstrosity by claiming it would prevent money counterfeiting. In reality, the point of the Fed was to establish a monopoly on currency. REAL ID, he said, is similar. It’s designed to establish a government monopoly on control. Paul signaled that he was becoming disillusioned with the Trump administration:

I’m not very happy with the direction we’re going right now. It looks like we’re going to lose a lot more privacy if this bill is re-opened and made much worse. It looks like it can do a lot more damage yet to come.

Representative Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) is also a vocal opponent. He said the REAL ID will not accomplish what the government claims it would:

Real ID isn’t needed and won’t stop terrorists from hijacking planes. Most of the 9/11 hijackers held Saudi, UAE, Egyptian, or Lebanese passports. Real ID is a national standard and database of IDs that is primarily a tool for control of Americans. Trump shouldn’t enforce it.

Popular conservative YouTubers The Hodgetwins asked, “Why not delay it like past administrations did so you can hear from the people on it? Americans don’t want a big government surveillance state.”

The American Policy Center said the REAL ID “has many tentacles that are each very egregious.” The group also believes this legislation could threaten Americans’ gun rights:

You may wrongly believe the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security would never add purchasing a firearm and/or ammunition to the OFFICIAL PURPOSE of the Real ID Act 2005…. In fact, Democrats in California have already made a move in that direction. The attempt failed at the time because all States/Commonwealths were not yet certified as being Real ID compliant. In 2021, the Department of Homeland Security certified all States/Commonwealths as being Real ID compliant.

The Secretary of the DHS can require the seller of the firearm and/or ammunition to swipe the back of the Real ID compliant drivers’ license and provide the information to the DHS.

ACLU Opposition

This law is so bad that it triggered a rare episode of clarity and dedication to values from the New York branch of the ACLU. The ACLU warned REAL ID would create the first national identification system in American history. It would also set federal standards for state driver’s licenses and identification cards. That means it could be required to vote, go to a ball game, access Medicaid, or even get a gun (you read that right; the ACLU is suddenly worried about your gun rights). REAL ID requirements could also spill over into the private sector, says the ACLU. And it “could establish an enormous electronic infrastructure that government and law enforcement officials — or whoever else hacks in — could use to track Americans’ activities and movements.”

Papers, Please

Paul made similar arguments in 2005 before the bill passed. He argued on the House floor that the REAL ID would lead to the nationalization of all identification. “It will be the introduction of the notion that we will be carrying our papers.” The REAL ID bill, Paul added, had no limitations. “There are minimum standards but no maximum limitations,” meaning the government can add anything it wants, including a category for people who are in gun clubs.

He took the gun analogy further. While some advocates truly believe the REAL ID will make Americans safe, the argument is about as solid as the one that says gun registration will tell authorities which criminals have guns. He said, “So you’re registering all the American people because you’re looking for a terrorist — and all a terrorist is going to do is evade the law. But we, the American people, have to obey the law. If we don’t, we go to prison.”

REAL ID Origins

Congress passed the REAL ID in 2005 after it was recommended by the 9/11 Commission. Representative James Sensebrenner (R-Wis.) sponsored the legislation. Sensebrenner also authored the Patriot Act, which gave the federal government enormous latitude to legally spy on Americans.

The primary argument for the REAL ID was that it would strengthen national security by preventing terrorists from obtaining fake IDs. Sensebrenner also touted it as a way to support law enforcement, a notion no patriotic American would ever oppose. And, according to the venerable 9/11 Commission, REAL ID would close the security gaps that allowed that terrible day to happen.

Read the Whole Article

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The FDA’s War on America’s Health

Lew Rockwell Institute - Sab, 19/04/2025 - 05:01

For most of my life, I’ve observed the FDA belligerently suppress natural treatments and any unorthodox therapy which threatens the medical monopoly while simultaneously railroading through a variety of unsafe and ineffective drugs regardless of how much public protest the agency meets. Consider this 2004 Senate testimony by the FDA scientist who got Vioxx banned that accurately described exactly what would come to pass with the COVID vaccines two decades later.

As such, I do not hold the FDA in a positive light, especially given that during COVID-19, I (like many others) spent hundreds of hours trying to get the agency to allow the limited use of off-patent therapeutics for COVID-19—all of which ultimately went nowhere due to the unjustifiable roadblocks the agency kept putting up.

Over the past year, especially since Trump’s election, I’ve received many questions about FDA reform. To address the issue properly, I’ve carefully examined both sides.

In medicine, “sensitivity” refers to a test’s ability to correctly identify those who have a condition (e.g., detecting an infection), while “specificity” measures how well the test avoids false positives (i.e., correctly identifying those who don’t have the condition). The challenge is that improving one often reduces the other. For example, increasing the PCR cycle threshold in COVID tests made it more likely to detect infections (higher sensitivity), but also increased false positives (lower specificity). This trade-off leads to problems, like breast cancer screenings, where high sensitivity can result in false positives and unnecessary “treatments” for women who don’t actually have cancer.

The FDA faces a similar challenge: it must prevent harmful foods and drugs from reaching the market while ensuring useful products aren’t blocked. Though this seems straightforward, it’s incredibly difficult, and the FDA has often failed at both, even with leadership dedicated to public health.

Crime Against the Food Law

In the late 1800s, food producers were selling adulterated products, and pharmaceutical companies peddled medicines with secret ingredients like opium and alcohol. Public outrage grew, especially after exposés like Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, which helped spark the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. This law gave the Bureau of Chemistry the power to ensure accurate labeling and prevent harmful additives in food.

The director of the Bureau of Chemistry (and thus the first head of the FDA), Harvey Wiley conducted tests on food additives, proving they made healthy volunteers sick. While the public and many scientists supported his findings, the food industry fought back with powerful lobbyists and legal tactics.

Note: the additives Wiley scrutinized were boric acid and borax, salicylic acid (aspirin) and salicylates, benzoic acid and benzoates, sulfur dioxide and sulfites, formaldehyde, sulfate of copper (used to green produce), and saltpeter (nitrates).

Gradually, the food industry hijacked the presidency, and in 1912, Wiley resigned, realizing he could achieve more for America’s health as a private citizen than within the government.

Wiley’s book “The History of A Crime Against The Food Law” details much of the same abhorrent industry tactics we see happening now. For example, a series of investigative reports recently showed that the processed food industry’s lobbyists worked fervently behind the scenes to block RFK’s nomination and had there not been widespread public protest, would have stopped us from Make America Healthy Again.

Those tactics also highlight a key point Wiley made—the only way to create change in this industry is to coax the public at large to demand it, as the moment you rely upon the members of the government to fix it, lobbyists will crush those efforts.

Generally Recognized as “Safe”

Many food additives are “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS), meaning they’re widely used without regulation. Wiley faced two major issues: food industry counterfeiting and harmful additives. The industry often faked products to cut costs, like selling grain alcohol as whiskey or using polluted waters to enlarge oysters.

Despite evidence of harm, the food industry claimed these additives were essential for production, even though competitors showed higher-quality (and ultimately more profitable) products could be made without them. Wiley also warned that chronic exposure to additives could cause long-term health issues, such as organ damage and aging.

Sadly, his concerns were ignored as industry influence grew and he was unable to ban them—rather they were eventually reclassified as “generally recognized as safe.” As a result, these “safe” additives have contributed to widespread chronic illness in society.

Note: those additives included sodium benzoate, sulfur dioxide, alum (potassium aluminum sulfate), sulfur dioxide, saccharin, modified corn sugars, saccharin, and nitrogen bleached flour—many of which were linked to cancer. Sadly, since 2000, nearly 99 percent of new food chemicals added to the food supply chain have exploited the GRAS loophole. I believe the widespread use of aluminum in processed foods is particularly detrimental (due to it greatly impairing the physiologic zeta potential and causing micro-clotting throughout the body), and provides a key explanation for why you often see certain rapid improvements in individuals once they stop eating processed foods and their additives.

The Kefauver–Harris Amendment

In the years that followed Wiley’s departure, the handicapping of the FDA continued. As such, the FDA agent assigned to the morning sickness drug thalidomide could only stall but not reject it—a tactic that prevented catastrophic birth defects across America. A 1962 amendment was then passed, giving the FDA the power to block unsafe drugs.

This law gave the FDA excessive power, slowing drug approval and causing mismanagement. It also required “well-controlled” trials for drug approval, which the FDA defined as expensive double-blind randomized controlled trials (RCTs). This:

Elevated RCTs, making drug approval a “pay-to-play” system, with approval costs soaring to 0.98-4.54 billion.1,2
Created bias, as RCTs cost so much they inevitably produce results in favor of their sponsor (which often outweigh any benefit of their expensive “controlled” design).
Sidelined smaller, effective observational trials, which, being affordable, are feasible for investigators to conduct without pharmaceutical sponsorship and can yield the same results as large RCTs (proven by a 2014 Cochrane Review).
Stifled innovative therapies, as unorthodox treatments lacking costly RCTs were dismissed. As a result, medical innovation in the U.S. slowed, with scientists financially pressured to avoid challenging existing paradigms, leading to fewer groundbreaking discoveries despite advancing technology.

Because the FDA had rapidly expanded in numerous directions it was not prepared for, it subsequently frequently failed to fulfill its primary responsibilities (e.g., taking something harmful off the market), and it simultaneously took things away Americans actually wanted. This in turn led to numerous committees investigating the FDA (e.g., Commissioner Lay’s Kinslow report of his agency’s serious shortcomings) and key officials with integrity like Lay being kicked out, all of which were encapsulated a series of scathing articles that were published by the New York Times in 1977.

In my eyes, the most important thing about this period of FDA reforms was that the FDA was the most complained about agency in the government. Congress made numerous attempts to fix it (as did ethical FDA officials)—but nothing was ever solved.

The DMSO Saga

Over the last seven months, I’ve begun exploring a remarkable forgotten side of medicine—DMSO. This simple and freely available natural chemical is incredibly effective at treating a variety of (often “incurable”) conditions, including many that are otherwise impossible to treat including:

•Strokes, paralysis, a wide range of neurological disorders and circulatory disorders.

•Chronic pain and a wide range of tissue injuries.

•Many autoimmune, protein and contractile disorders.

•Head conditions, such as tinnitus, vision loss, dental problems, and sinusitis.

•A wide range of internal organ diseases.

•Acute and chronic infections including shingles and herpes.

•Many skin conditions including acne, herpes, hair loss and varicose veins.

•Many aspects of cancer, and when used in combination with other therapies, directly treating challenging cancers.

Likewise, since publicizing this research, I’ve received over two thousand reports from readers who then took it and had almost unbelievable results that precisely match what many reported in the 1960s and 1970s.

This all raises a simple question. How is it that no one knows about DMSO or that an agent that could dramatically reduce the need for opioids or prevent millions with stroke and spinal cord injury from having a life of disability never saw the light of day?

That’s because as DMSO rapidly spread across America in the 1960s, the FDA reversed its initial positive stance, declaring DMSO dangerous without evidence. This pivot was initially prompted by the FDA not wanting to have to process a flood of new drug applications, and then evolved into being done to protect the status quo and to justify the FDA’s newfound police powers. Despite extensive safety studies showing DMSO posed no risk to humans and numerous Congressional hearing being held to legalize DMSO, for decades, the FDA continued to demonize it, claiming a lack of evidence for efficacy (as DMSO’s characteristic effects make blinded trials with it impossible). Because of this, DMSO only became available decades later after the public got fed up with the FDA targeting natural medicines and the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act was enacted (which removed the FDA’s ability to regulate natural medicines).

Read the Whole Article

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Thoughts From the Great Economist

Lew Rockwell Institute - Sab, 19/04/2025 - 05:01

Like everyone else I met on an overnight meeting in the Bahamas, I am worried about a recession. The world’s largest economy could dip into one, and very quickly, said a multibillionaire attending the same party as me. Personally, I have never understood much about economics. I have always left such matters to people who can tell the difference between a hedge fund and a mutual fund, duties and tariffs, and so on.

So, let those of us who regularly read this column and know as little as I do about economics try to figure out what The Donald is doing: Is he taking us down a black hole, or is he making those of us living in America better off? All I am certain of is that good faith in the U.S. dollar is what the government runs on, which in turn is based on “business as usual.” Where change must be introduced, it need be in slow increments. When upended, there’s a danger of recession. The tariff plan includes duties on many countries, but the planned start dates for many of those changed abruptly last week, with a ninety-day pause for goods from many places except China. This is very disruptive and roils global markets. U.S. debt and U.S. budget deficit are also big—in fact, enormous—worries. The reason I am worried is that I’m not at all the type who worries. Still, the naysayers can get to one, especially when reading an old bag like the Dowd woman, whose proof that Trump doesn’t get math was by recalling The Donald’s appearance on Howard Stern’s show and when asked what’s 17 times 6 answered 112. I’m pretty certain if Einstein were asked the same question and had to answer in a jiffy he might well have also missed the mark. Such are the joys of reading old hags like la Dowd about The Donald.

“Is The Donald taking us down a black hole, or is he making those of us living in America better off?”

Now let’s get back to economics, or finance, or the stock market, or even tariffs. Nobody knows “nuttin’,” as far as I’m concerned, and the so-called experts are always getting it wrong. The only thing I am sure of is that Trump is imposing tariffs on certain goods that Uncle Sam does not and cannot produce. Such as manganese from Gabon that American companies need to make steel. On the other hand, I am sure that once this is pointed out, Gabon will be excluded from the tariff burden. Or so the great economist Taki believes. Also making the great economist lose sleep are higher interest rates, because higher interest rates make the federal debt harder to repay. Oy vey, as Einstein would say. Uncle Sam owes trillions—37, to be close to exact—and the plunging dollar is not helping. What happens if the almighty buck suddenly goes the way of the Mexican peso or Bolivian Bolivar, if that’s the currency of that faraway and very “high” country. Americans will have to start growing their own drugs because they will not be able to afford buying them from those nice guys down south. Sure, reviving domestic manufacturing is my dream—Pat Buchanan and I wrote at length about it when Clinton and Obama and the idiotic W. were going globalist—but factories take years to build, and not many people are ready to plunge their money into projects when The Donald’s successors might not maintain his policies.

See why I’m worried, jelly bean? Tariffs are like guns—they can make you win big and lose even bigger. In the meantime the stock market is going up and down like a drunken sailor who is being refused entry to an upstairs whorehouse. A 10 percent loss in the market is enormous when felt by 60 percent of American adults who own stocks or mutual funds. The only ones benefiting from this chaos are the Democrats, who got a shellacking last November and now have been given a reprieve on a golden platter. What I think The Donald should do is keep the screws on China and take it easy on the rest of the world. China is a hostile global power but one that can be tamed easily because the Chinese are intelligent people who simply dislike the West because of what the West did to China for a couple hundred years.

And now for a happy ending: Lift the tariffs for everyone except China, force Israel to stop the genocide or else, and watch the stock market reach 50,000 and The Donald proclaimed the greatest president since my favorite, Warren Harding. Yippee!

This originally appeared on Taki’s Magazine.

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Them Chinese Ain’t My Enemy

Lew Rockwell Institute - Sab, 19/04/2025 - 05:01

One of the most fascinating aspects of President Trump’s tariff attack on China has been the acceptance among so many Americans that China is now our official enemy or, if you prefer more benign imperialist terms, our “opponent,” “adversary,” “rival,” or “competitor.”

After all, wasn’t it just recently that our official enemy was Russia? Even when Trump was president the first time and through the Biden administration, the standard mindset of the American people was that it was Russia and Vladimir Putin who were coming to get us. The Russians were influencing the way Americans voted. They were conquering Ukraine on their way to worldwide conquest. “The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!” It all brought to mind the Cold War decades when the Reds, including the Russian Reds, were our official enemy and coming to get us.

After the 9/11 attacks, our official enemy became the “terrorists” or the Muslims. “The terrorists are coming!” replaced “The Russians are coming!” That’s what generated the perpetual “war on terrorism,” the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, USA Patriot Act, the illegal telecom surveillance scandal, the illegal mass surveillance schemes, the TSA, official state-sponsored assassinations, torture, indefinite detention, and all the rest of the anti-terrorism measures to keep us “safe.”

Heck, I remember when Saddam Hussein was our official enemy. For eleven years, I had to hear every day, “Saddam! Saddam! Saddam!” Many American was convinced that Saddam was going to unleash mushroom clouds across America.

But today under Trump, China has been named as the new official bugaboo. And the mindsets of many Americans, especially Trumpsters, have seamlessly and effortlessly now replaced Russia with China as America’s newest official enemy. That helps these people feel okay about the economic devastation that Trump’s tariffs will inflict on the Chinese people. The idea is that we don’t need to care about them because they are the new big, bad enemy of the United States.

Permit me to issue a personal public declaration: While China might well be the new official enemy of Trump and his Trumpsters, along with the State Department and the U.S. national-security establishment, China is not my enemy.

In fact, I feel pretty much the way Mohammad Ali felt when he declared, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong. No Vietcong ever called me nigger.”

Oh boy, did that make U.S. officials angry. Not only was it considered “treason” for an American to not accept an U.S.-designated official enemy as his enemy, the fact that it was a black man saying this compounded the problem a hundred-fold. They went after Ali with a vengeance, trying everything they could to incarcerate him and destroy his boxing career.

Oh yes, I fully realize that China is governed by a communist regime. As a libertarian, I dislike communism immensely. But that still doesn’t make China my enemy. I’m with President John F. Kennedy, who declared in his Peace Speech at American University in June 1963 that Americans and communist nations could exist in mutual harmony despite their ideological differences. Of course, it was that mindset that got him killed.

Moreover, it’s worth noting that the officials in the Chinese Communist Party are as unlikely to be adversely impacted by Trump’s tariffs as Trump will be by China’s retaliatory tariffs. The rich and the political elites don’t have anything to worry about when it comes to tariffs and trade wars. It’s the regular, ordinary citizens of both countries who will pay the price of the tariffs. It is regular, ordinary Chinese people who will be impoverished and bankrupted. I feel very bad for those people — as bad as I feel for the regular, ordinary Americans who will be impoverished and bankrupted by Trump’s tariffs.

Why do Americans so readily adopt the new official enemies that are declared by U.S officials? That’s where the success of America’s public (i.e., government) school systems comes into play. For twelve long years, the minds of American children are shaped and molded by an environment of conformity, regimentation, obedience, and fear. By the time they graduate high school, most Americans have no conception of what was done to them through the power of state indoctrination. Thus, when a new official enemy is decreed, they don’t think it is strange that their mind immediately reshapes and conforms by accepting the new official enemy as their enemy as well. This mental phenomenon brings to mind the constant array of shifting enemies in George Orwell’s novel 1984. Like the citizens in Orwell’s fictional nation of Oceania, many Americans are also scared to death to question or challenge what the Trump administration is doing for fear of what it might to do them.

Color me treasonous, but the fact is that I ain’t got no quarrel with them Chinese. They’ve never done anything bad to me. I wish I could say the same thing about the U.S. government. It has done lots of bad things to me, including destroying my freedom and privacy with its income tax, IRS, welfare state, monetary debasement, mass secret surveillance, conscription, out-of-control federal spending and debt, managed/regulated economy, drug war, national-security state, denial of due process of law, denial of trial by jury, foreign invasions and occupations, attacks on freedom of speech, tariffs, trade wars, sanctions, embargoes, travel restrictions, immigration police state, and much, much more. In fact, if truth be told, the U.S. government has proven itself to be the real enemy of American liberty and privacy.

Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

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Toxic Agribusiness’s Genetically Mutilated Greenwash

Lew Rockwell Institute - Sab, 19/04/2025 - 05:01

In recent years, the global movement toward regenerative and organic agriculture has gained significant momentum. These approaches promise to restore soil health, enhance biodiversity, reduce reliance on synthetic chemicals and create more sustainable and resilient food systems. Rooted in ecological principles and farmer autonomy, these practices have become vital alternatives to the destructive patterns of industrial agriculture, which has long prioritised short-term yields and profit over environmental integrity and public health.

However, despite their promising potential, these movements face a formidable challenge: the encroachment of big agribusiness corporations seeking to co-opt and distort their core principles. Through aggressive marketing and lobbying and strategic rebranding, corporations are attempting to position genetically modified (GM) soil microbes and other biotech biologicals as sustainable or regenerative solutions.

This effort, cloaked in greenwashing rhetoric, aims to maintain corporate dominance, control over agricultural inputs and influence over public perception and policy.

Adding a layer of complexity and concern is the potential targeting of influential advocates such as Robert F Kennedy Jr (RFK Jr), a prominent voice championing organic and regenerative farming. Critics like Claire Robinson of GMWatch warn that these corporations may seek to co-opt RFK Jr and other respected figures to lend legitimacy to biotech products that fundamentally conflict with the principles of true sustainability.

At their core, regenerative and organic agriculture emphasise working with natural systems rather than against them. These approaches prioritise soil health, water conservation and ecological balance by adhering to agroecological principles. Practices such as cover cropping, crop rotation, reduced tillage, composting and integrated pest management aim to rebuild degraded soils, sequester carbon and foster resilient ecosystems.

Organic agriculture, as defined by certification standards, explicitly prohibits synthetic pesticides, fertilisers, GM organisms and artificial additives. It promotes natural nutrient cycles, biodiversity and animal welfare. Both movements are driven by the recognition that sustainable food systems must prioritise ecological integrity, social equity and long-term resilience.

The rise of these movements reflects growing public concern about the health impacts of chemical-laden foods and environmental degradation. The public increasingly demand transparency, sustainability and food sovereignty: the right of communities to culturally appropriate food and to determine their own food production, distribution and consumption practices, rejecting corporate-dominated models

Corporate Greenwashing

Despite the noble principles underpinning regenerative and organic agriculture, the reality is that large agribusiness corporations are actively seeking to co-opt or undermine these movements for their own benefit. Their strategy involves promoting biotech innovations—particularly GM soil microbes and biologicals—as part of a narrative of “sustainable” or “regenerative” solutions.

Genetically engineered soil microbes are marketed as biofertilisers, biopesticides or soil conditioners that can enhance nutrient uptake, improve pest resistance or sequester carbon more effectively. These products are often gene-edited or genetically modified to supposedly outperform native microbes, with claims that they can revolutionise farming practices.

However, these biotech products are fundamentally incompatible with the principles of true regenerative and organic farming. They often rely on proprietary genetic technologies that require farmers to depend on corporate-controlled inputs, perpetuating dependency on chemical and biotech giants. Moreover, the ecological risks of releasing GM microbes into soil ecosystems are largely unassessed, and their long-term impacts on native microbial communities and soil health remain uncertain.

This corporate push is often accompanied by aggressive lobbying that frame GM biologicals as “natural”, “sustainable” or “innovative”, even though they are genetically engineered and may involve synthetic chemicals or proprietary technologies. Such messaging blurs the lines between genuine ecological practices and industrial biotech solutions, deliberately designed to confuse the public and undermine the credibility of authentic organic and regenerative systems.

GM biologicals, particularly soil microbes, are engineered microorganisms designed to supposedly enhance agricultural productivity and soil health through genetic modification techniques. Unlike traditional biological inputs, which rely on naturally occurring microbes, GM biologicals are created by altering the genetic material of microbes to perform specific functions or to introduce new capabilities.

GM biologicals are primarily microorganisms—such as bacteria, fungi or other microbes—that have been genetically engineered to serve specific roles in agriculture. These roles include improving nutrient availability, pest and disease resistance, soil remediation and plant growth promotion. The genetic modifications are made using various biotechnology techniques, including gene editing tools like CRISPR, gene guns or agrobacterium-mediated transformation.

The development of GM biologicals involves inserting, deleting or modifying genes within microbial genomes to produce desired traits. For example, nitrogen-fixing bacteria are engineered to ostensively increase nitrogen availability to plants, reducing the need for synthetic fertilisers. Biocontrol agents can be modified with the aim of producing natural insecticides or antifungal compounds, providing pest and disease control. Engineered soil remediators aim to break down pollutants or xenobiotics in contaminated soils. These microbes are then produced at scale and applied to fields as seed coatings, soil amendments or foliar sprays.

Examples of GM soil microbial products include Pivot Bio’s Proven, a gene-edited nitrogen-fixing bacteria used on millions of acres of corn designed to reduce synthetic fertiliser dependence; BASF’s Poncho/VOTiVO, a seed coating containing GM bacteria that aims to protect against nematodes and enhance nutrient breakdown around roots; and Pivot Bio’s Microbial Inoculants, engineered microbes designed to break down organic matter to release nutrients more efficiently.

Proponents argue that GM biologicals can increase crop yields, reduce chemical fertiliser and pesticide use, improve soil health and resilience and enable more sustainable farming practices.

However, there are significant risks. These include ecological disruption as GM microbes can share genetic material with native microbes, potentially creating invasive or unintended species. Moreover, the unpredictable spread of these microbes, because they can travel great distances via wind or water, makes containment challenging. And unknown long-term effects on soil ecosystems raise concerns about potential damage to soil biodiversity and ecosystem functions.

The potential for horizontal gene transfer also exists, raising the risk that engineered genes could transfer to non-target organisms, including pathogens or other beneficial microbes. The deployment of GM microbes at scale raises profound ecological concerns. Unlike traditional biological inputs, these engineered organisms can reproduce, spread and potentially disrupt native microbial communities. Once released into the environment, their ecological fate becomes difficult to control or reverse.

There may also be unintended effects on non-target organisms, including beneficial insects, plants and animals and soil health degradation if engineered microbes outcompete or displace native, ecologically balanced microbial populations.

Currently, at least two GM microbial products are used across US farmland, mainly in monoculture corn production. These include nitrogen-fixing bacteria and microbes that aid in nutrient breakdown. Despite their widespread use, there is ongoing debate about their safety, ecological impact and regulation.

Claire Robinson has discussed research indicating that GM biologicals, such as engineered soil microbes, often do not outperform existing natural or conventional microbial models in agricultural contexts. She highlights that despite aggressive corporate claims, many of these GM biological products fail to deliver superior benefits compared to native microbial communities or traditional biological inputs.

Robinson points out that studies and field trials frequently show that these engineered microbes do not consistently improve soil health, nutrient cycling or crop yields beyond what existing, naturally occurring microbes achieve. This challenges the narrative pushed by big agribusiness that GM biologicals are revolutionary solutions for regenerative agriculture. Instead, their efficacy is often overstated, and their ecological risks remain poorly understood.

Her critique emphasises that the promotion of GM biologicals as superior or essential components of regenerative farming is part of a broader corporate strategy to greenwash industrial agriculture and maintain control over farming inputs. By pushing GM microbes, companies attempt to rebrand their products as “natural” or “organic”, despite lacking evidence of clear advantages and raising concerns about ecological disruption.

Robinson’s perspective aligns with a broader critique of how big agribusiness attempts to hijack regenerative and organic agriculture through misleading claims about genetically engineered products.

Despite the risks, regulatory frameworks often lag behind technological developments, allowing biotech companies to release GM microbes with minimal oversight. This regulatory gap exacerbates fears that ecological integrity and public health could be compromised.

Robert F Kennedy Jr has emerged as a prominent advocate for organic and regenerative agriculture, emphasising the importance of reducing chemical inputs, supporting small farmers and restoring ecological balance. Robinson has expressed concern that big agribusiness interests may target RFK Jr as a potential figure to endorse or promote biotech solutions, including GM soil microbes.

The strategy would involve co-opting his reputation to lend legitimacy to products that are fundamentally at odds with organic principles.

This potential targeting is part of a broader pattern where corporations seek to influence or manipulate influential advocates to serve their commercial interests. By framing biotech innovations as essential to “feeding the world”, climate mitigation or soil health, they aim to position themselves as allies of sustainable agriculture, even as their products undermine ecological and social values.

History of Deception and Disregard

The question of whether big agribusiness corporations can be trusted with the future of agriculture is central here and is not merely a matter of speculation; it is a question steeped in a history of documented transgressions. Reports of creating “hit lists” targeting critics, manipulating scientific research and employing PR companies to discredit dissenting voices are not isolated incidents, but rather indicative of a systemic willingness to prioritise profit and control over transparency, public health and ecological concerns.

These actions have been well-documented over the years, and far from being aberrations, they reveal a calculated strategy to maintain dominance in the face of mounting evidence against their practices.

Historically, some of these corporations have faced persistent accusations of suppressing or distorting scientific findings that contradicted their commercial interests. This manipulation of science, often achieved through funding biased research or discrediting independent studies, has had far-reaching consequences. It undermines evidence-based policymaking, endangers public health and silences those who dare to challenge the prevailing corporate narrative.

The consequences are particularly dire in the context of agriculture, where decisions about pesticide use, GM organisms and farming practices have directly and adversely impacted human health and environmental sustainability.

The vision of global agriculture being advanced by these corporations is one where genetically engineered seeds, soil microbes, data harvesting and drone technology are all employed to entrench corporate control and dependency. This vision actively displaces smallholder farmers and undermines agroecological practices that are essential for food sovereignty and ecological resilience.

The use of PR firms to attack critics and spread misinformation further erodes trust, creating a climate of fear and discouraging open debate about the risks and benefits of agricultural technologies. These tactics often involve character assassination, the spreading of disinformation and the creation of astroturf organisations designed to mimic grassroots movements while actually serving corporate interests (all of this and more is documented at length on the GMWatch website).

Deregulation efforts surrounding new genetic modification techniques are paving the way for the unchecked proliferation of gene-edited GM organisms and engineered microbes, further increasing risks to health, the environment and farmer livelihoods.

Given this well-documented history of deception, manipulation and disregard for public welfare, it is not only reasonable but imperative to approach any claims made by these corporations with a high degree of scepticism. Their involvement in regenerative and organic agriculture should be viewed through a lens of intense scrutiny, with careful attention paid to the potential for greenwashing, the co-optation of sustainable practices and the further entrenchment of corporate control over the global food system.

It is essential to increase transparency and public awareness about the ecological and health risks of GM biologicals while supporting farmer-led, ecologically based practices that prioritise soil health, biodiversity and community resilience without reliance on proprietary biotech.

The original source of this article is Global Research.

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A Rothbardian Analysis of the South Korean Constitutional Crisis

Lew Rockwell Institute - Sab, 19/04/2025 - 05:01

On April 4, 2025, South Korean President Yoon Seok-yeol was formally removed from office after the Constitutional Court found him guilty of leading an illegal pro-government coup on December 3, 2024. Having lost the presidency, Yoon will now be tried for treason in a regular criminal court—a separate institution from the Constitutional Court—where he faces either the death penalty or life imprisonment. Western liberal media outlets have praised these developments as a testament to the strength and maturity of South Korea’s democratic system. They argue that South Korea is a politically advanced nation, capable of dealing with any wrongdoing or abnormality through constitutional procedures and democratic deliberation, serving as a model for Western democracies.

Indeed, since the 1990s, South Korea has widely been regarded as a leading example of democracy, highly respected by Western nations. Yet I argue that this case reveals not a robust demonstration of constitutionalism but rather its deep fragility. Far from celebrating a “victory” for constitutional democracy, this situation in South Korea actually underscores a nightmare scenario for constitutionalism.

The Constitutional Crisis in South Korea: A Brief Summary

Throughout the 20th century, the South Korean people waged a pro-democracy movement against a succession of illegal military regimes armed with tanks and guns. By the late 1980s, they successfully toppled the military government and amended the constitution. Unlike numerous non-Western nations that descended into perpetual political upheaval after ousting authoritarian regimes, South Korea managed to establish a lasting democratic order. The Economist Democracy Index and the V-Dem Democracy Index—today’s most trusted measures of democracy—have consistently ranked South Korea as one of the most democratic countries in Asia for the past decade, placing it in the global top 15–20. At one point, it rivaled established democracies in Europe and North America, even surpassing some, like Italy, Australia, Canada, and the United States. South Koreans refer to the post-1987 constitution—which introduced direct presidential elections—as the “1987 System,” and many take pride in how this system emerged from their struggle against a military regime.

The high level of constitutional democracy attained by a non-Western nation has often been used to show that constitutionalism and democracy are universal, ideal systems for humanity. However, South Korea’s events last year demonstrated how constitutionalism can fail when President Yoon Seok-yeol, who professed to follow Ludwig von Mises, declared a state of emergency to “eliminate communists and defend freedom,” invoking the very powers that the constitution grants. I do not highlight President Yoon’s coup attempt simply to show the failure of constitutionalism: it can be written off as the act of a historically rare “madman.” No system may be able to respond well to such a crazy person. Moreover, his coup, under the guise of constitutional authority, was thwarted within two hours by a constitutionally empowered National Assembly that nullified martial law. Indeed, one could say the same constitution that triggered the crisis ended it. Where is the problem, then?

The real trouble emerged in the aftermath: the series of severe and repeated failures by South Korea’s constitutional and political apparatus. These failures laid bare the brittleness of a constitutional system. Here are the key events in the three months following the state of emergency:

An impeachment motion against President Yoon passed, removing him from office, and elevating the Prime Minister—akin to the U.S. Vice President’s succession—to Acting President.
Under South Korea’s constitution, a specialized Constitutional Court addresses constitutional matters. It comprises nine justices: some appointed by the president, some elected by the National Assembly, and others nominated by the chief justice of the Supreme Court.
Impeached on charges of insurrection, Yoon now faced a trial in the Constitutional Court. However, because three of its justices elected by the National Assembly were vacant due to prior political turbulence, only six justices remained—fewer than required by law to commence proceedings.
As the constitution grants the National Assembly authority to elect those three vacant seats, it attempted to fill them. But formally, the President (or Acting President) must sign off on these appointments. This step is meant to be a ceremonial approval, similar to a constitutional monarchy, rather than a genuine veto.
After Yoon was impeached, the Prime Minister (as Acting President) and his ruling People Power Party, which supported Yoon’s coup and opposed impeachment, refused to appoint the three new justices chosen by the National Assembly—an overtly unconstitutional move.
The Democratic Party, which holds a majority in the Assembly, responded by impeaching the Prime Minister as well. The next in the line of succession, the Finance Minister, did appoint certain judges(recommended by Yoon’s party), but again refused to seat those nominated by the opposition, prompting yet another impeachment.
The Constitutional Court, not yet fully functional, attempted to resolve the political chaos by ruling on the Prime Minister’s impeachment. While the Court declared the Prime Minister’s refusal to appoint justices was unconstitutional, it deemed it insufficient grounds for removal, ultimately reinstating him.
Once back in office, the Prime Minister continued to withhold appointments for the opposition’s chosen justices, deliberately delaying President Yoon’s impeachment proceedings. The apparent plan was to hold out until 2027, when Yoon’s term would end, effectively usurping power unconstitutionally.
In a final attempt to break the deadlock, the opposition-led National Assembly threatened to abolish the entire executive branch by impeaching all its members, thereby establishing legislative rule.
Facing mounting pressure, the undermanned Constitutional Court finally held a hearing with only eight judges, ultimately voting unanimously to remove President Yoon Seok-yeol from office.

Though it sounds like a contrived plot, this strange series of events is not an exaggerated worst-case hypothetical but a real situation unfolding in South Korea (with minor abstractions and omissions).

To summarize:

Using constitutionally sanctioned powers, the regime’s leader launched a pro-government coup.
Opponents of the regime countered the coup, also relying on constitutional powers.
Yet afterward, the president’s supporters openly flouted the constitution, seizing power illegally.

At first, both sides followed “the rules,” but once one side decided to ignore them, the constitutional structure offered no further mechanism. The only remaining path was a raw power struggle.

The Constitution Is Not an Automaton—It Is Enforced by People

Statists often argue that government is necessary to prevent criminal wrongdoing by individuals and private groups. But who, then, watches the government? The leading mainstream answer has been “the constitution,” which supposedly limits government power. Yet the constitution is ultimately written and enforced by the government itself. If a private individual announced they would draft their own murder or robbery statutes and then monitor themselves to ensure compliance, we would laugh at the absurdity. Why should we treat governments any differently?

Many libertarians reject giving the state any such privileged exemption. As Murray Rothbard famously observed in Anatomy of the State, it is self-defeating to entrust one agency with not only the authority to govern but also the ultimate power to interpret its own constitutional limits. He Says,

This danger is averted by the State’s propounding the doctrine that one agency must have the ultimate decision on constitutionality and that this agency, in the last analysis, must be part of the federal government. For while the seeming independence of the federal judiciary has played a vital part in making its actions virtual Holy Writ for the bulk of the people, it is also and ever true that the judiciary is part and parcel of the government apparatus and appointed by the executive and legislative branches. Black admits that this means that the State has set itself up as a judge in its own cause, thus violating a basic juridical principle for aiming at just decisions.

and,

Smith noted that the Constitution was designed with checks and balances to limit any one governmental power and yet had then developed a Supreme Court with the monopoly of ultimate interpreting power. If the Federal Government was created to check invasions of individual liberty by the separate states, who was to check the Federal power? Smith maintained that implicit in the check-and-balance idea of the Constitution was the concomitant view that no one branch of government may be conceded the ultimate power of interpretation: “It was assumed by the people that the new government could not be permitted to determine the limits of its own authority, since this would make it, and not the Constitution, supreme.”

The moment government monitors go astray, there is no recourse through ordinary rules. The constitution, far from ensuring our protection, merely subjects us to the will of those who enforce it. When that small group wields all legislative, executive, and judicial power, they inevitably oversee themselves. Once they abandon adherence to the constitution, legal forms of resistance are powerless. In this sense, the constitution fails as a safety mechanism and ends up as a fragile construct that functions only so long as “luck” and “good faith” last.

How might a constitutionalist respond? One counterargument is that South Korea’s case is “extreme” or “abnormal” and therefore no basis for broader critique. This is reminiscent of leftist attempts to dismiss North Korea as irrelevant to discussions of socialism. Singling out inconvenient examples as aberrations merely “immunizes” a favored theory from contradiction—a hallmark of pseudoscience in traditional philosophy of science.

Another tactic is to propose more stringent constitutional constraints that reduce government power to forestall such crises in the future. Yet history suggests otherwise. The expansion of government power has typically proceeded by transforming once-unconstitutional measures into legitimate functions of the state. According to Rothbard,

All Americans are familiar with the process by which the construction of limits in the Constitution has been inexorably broadened over the last century. But few have been as keen as Professor Charles Black to see that the State has, in the process, largely transformed judicial review itself from a limiting device to yet another instrument for furnishing ideological legitimacy to the government’s actions. For if a judicial decree of “unconstitutional” is a mighty check to government power, an implicit or explicit verdict of “constitutional” is a mighty weapon for fostering public acceptance of ever-greater government power.

Even Friedrich Hayek, the intellectual giant of the Austrian School, ended up endorsing conscription and certain forms of welfare within a constitutionally limited government. Such expansions demonstrate that tightening a constitution cannot ward off every eventuality; new loopholes, fueled by human creativity, invariably appear. We are left with an endless cycle of amending the constitution after each new breakdown—slamming the stable door after the horse has already bolted.

Ultimately, what is needed is not a patchwork fix but a wholesale transformation. As Rothbard insisted, the constitution is the greatest illusion of our supposed freedom. We must recognize its impotence in restraining the state and abandon the tyranny it facilitates. If there is a lesson to be drawn from the South Korean crisis, it is that constitutionalism’s vaunted safeguards are neither automatic nor fail-proof. The time has come to consider bolder alternatives that do not hinge on the goodwill of those who wield power, but which are rooted in genuine liberty for all.

The post A Rothbardian Analysis of the South Korean Constitutional Crisis appeared first on LewRockwell.

War With Iran Would Be Trump’s Waterloo

Lew Rockwell Institute - Sab, 19/04/2025 - 05:01

For decades, U.S. foreign policy wonks such as Paul Wolfowitz, Raymond Tanter, Douglas Feith, and Richard Perle, argued that U.S. military power could reshape the Middle East, somehow transforming it from the tribal and religious mess that it is into an American-style liberal democracy.

The primary beneficiary of this miraculous transformation would—they claimed—be Israel. Both Tanter and Wolfowitz grew fond of the notion that “the road to Damascus leads through Baghdad,” meaning that getting rid of Saddam Hussein was the first step to getting rid of the Assad regime in Syria, thereby eliminating Israel’s troubles with its two of its most bloody minded rivals.

It’s been obvious to anyone with eyes to see that none of the Neocons’ childish scheming has worked. They finally succeeded in getting rid of Assad, but he has been replaced by former Al Qaeda gangsters.

The primary intellectual deficiency of the Neocon clique is that all of their mental energy is directed at getting rid of bad guys, with apparently zero thought given to who will replace them. This is especially evident in the case of Russia. If these schemers and their friends in the CIA succeed in getting rid of Vladimir Putin, who do they believe will replace him?

It was precisely this kind of scheming that led the British and the French to believe it would be a good thing to get rid of Ottoman rule in the Middle East. In 1916, the British and French essentially redrew the map of the entire region with their Sykes–Picot Agreement.

One could easily make the argument that all the bloody tribal and religious conflict in the region that has happened ever since probably wouldn’t have happened if the Ottomans had remained in charge.

Neocon policy wonks are—like millions of Americans—given to the comic book concept that humanity can be neatly divided into good guys and bad guys, and that improving humanity is always just a matter of getting rid of the bad guys. This overlooks this essential fact that is expressed (literally or metaphorically, take your pick) in the Book of Genesis—namely, that man is a fallen and fractured created who must constantly contend with his own depravity.

After making a mess of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, the same gang—suffering from incurable learning disabilities—wants to drag the Trump administration into war with Iran. This would be a total disaster for the American people and almost certainly for the Israeli people as well.

Here it is worth recalling that President Kennedy expressly warned Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and his successor, Levi Eshkol, that if Israel succeeded in developing a nuclear bomb, everyone else in the neighborhood would want one. They didn’t listen to President Kennedy, despite the fact that he was obviously right about this.

War with Iran would be President Trump’s Waterloo. Iran is a huge country with mountainous terrain and a population of 80 million people. All the problems the U.S. military operation in Iraq encountered would be amplified manyfold.

Going to war with Iran would certainly result in an array of terrible consequences—many unforeseen— for the United States and the entire region, as well as for world trade. The Strait of Hormuz—with most of Middle East oil running through it—would be closed, as would the southern end of the Suez Canal.

The world economy and financial system is already in a precarious state, and the U.S. is already trapped in a debt sink, with annual interest payments now over a trillion dollars. The U.S. simply cannot afford war with Iran.

In other words, regarding Iran, President Trump should tell the obtuse Neocons to go jump in a lake. He should also be very wary of Benjamin Netanyahu doing something foolish to draw the U.S. into war with Iran.

Every great power in history was ultimately been sunk by foolish people who refused to accept the limits of their financial and military power. President Trump should stick with his instinct to negotiate with people instead of trying to get rid of them.

This originally appeared on Courageous Discourse.

The post War With Iran Would Be Trump’s Waterloo appeared first on LewRockwell.

We All Killed Him

Lew Rockwell Institute - Sab, 19/04/2025 - 05:01

Have you heard? The world is going to Hell in a handbasket. Our politicians are devils, our hierarchs are often devils themselves, and Catholics are leaving the Church in droves. The media lies to us, and our institutions turn our children into post-modern pill-addicted zombies who can’t be happy in a society where they lack no creature comfort.

Marriages are failing, and a lot of men are addicted to vile images of perversion that they sneakily watch on their phones while standing in a corner on the metro on their way home to their families.

And who is at fault?

Why, it is the media, it is the bankers, the Hollywood elite, and the Democrats; the public schools are to blame, and the bad priests and bishops; if we look a little deeper, it is also the Freemasons and the Zionists; and, somehow, it is also Jeffrey Epstein and Diddy. The forces of evil have been unleashed against us and the real reason that the world is on the brink of implosion is because the bad guys have done bad things, and they need to be exposed!

Granted, there are many wicked and vile men in this world, and they do wicked and vile things. There is no excusing the behavior of the lizard people who rig our economies, rig our elections, and kill our kings.

But we must admit, no matter how painful, that those lizard people are us.

God is All Good; man is a sinner.

One venial sin makes us more like Epstein than Christ, and one mortal sin makes us more like the devil than St. Michael.

The reason why our world is going so rotten is because we are rotten, and we have the world we deserve. We do not deserve peace—because peace can only come with the peace of Christ, but we don’t want that; no, we want religious liberty and the freedom of speech, where Satan and the Son of God are equals in the public square.

We scream and shout about our national debts which cause inflation, and then we spend money we don’t have, to buy something we don’t need, and post on social media how the bankers are controlling civilization!

The food companies and big pharma are to blame for our obesity rates and heart disease because they keep us dependent on Twinkies and pills, so we need RFK to make us healthy again. Well, RFK isn’t going to stop us from putting too much KFC in our gullets, is he?

In reality, we are to blame for our societal ills and the ills in our personal lives because we are sinners and the wages of sin is death.

Worse than the death of our nations or even the death of civilization is the death of God, which we also caused, and continue to cause in some mystical way.

When Christ prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane while awaiting betrayal, he sweated blood in anticipation of what was to befall Him.

He saw the Passion in all its detail. He saw the blood, He saw the scourge, and He saw each and every splinter wedged into His shoulder from the rough wood of that Tree of Death. In a sense, He lived the Passion while awaiting the Passion in an interior way, thereby experiencing pain and suffering that none of us could ever understand.

He saw from Adam and Eve, right until the end of time; and sees every sin that men and women will commit and have committed. He saw your sins; He saw my sins; He saw each and every sin you or I will ever commit in gruesome and graphic detail. This means that while He was sweating blood, He saw just what vile creatures we all are.

Perhaps more painful than all this, Christ saw that so many souls would still go to Hell, despite all the merits and satisfaction earned by the Crucifixion. Innumerable souls have rejected Christ, knowing full well what He did.

You and I have rejected Christ with every sin and caused Him unspeakable pain. We may still go to Heaven, but we may not; we may be one of those souls who caused Him the greatest pain.

Keeping this in mind, perhaps we can look at the state of the world differently and with an eternal perspective. Yes, things are bad, and maybe some things will get worse; yes, there are bad actors who make things worse when they needn’t be. But, none of those things that they do to economies or governments are as bad as the things that we all do to Christ when we sin.

If the world is dying and the forces of evil are winning, it is because we have all contributed to deicide; we all killed Him.

May God have mercy on us all.

This originally appeared on Crisis Magazine.

The post We All Killed Him appeared first on LewRockwell.

America’s Untold Stories – Trump Drops 10,000 RFK Files—What’s Inside?

Lew Rockwell Institute - Ven, 18/04/2025 - 21:02

Trump just released over 10,000 previously classified RFK assassination files—and America is buzzing. In this Free-form Friday episode of America’s Untold Stories, Mark Groubert and Eric Hunley break down what’s inside the documents, why the MLK Jr. family opposes further releases, and whether these revelations challenge the official narrative.

From secret records to modern power plays, we cover:

• MLK Jr. family backlash over declassification

• Harvard’s war with Trump on foreign student visas

• Letitia James’ mortgage fraud probe

• Silicon Valley drone companies stuck using Chinese parts

• CNN reveals most Americans now support mass deportations

• Tulsi Gabbard’s voting record sparks new controversy

• Grieving mother Patty Morin’s plea from the White House press room

Buckle up—this episode peels back layers of politics, history, and power

The post America’s Untold Stories – Trump Drops 10,000 RFK Files—What’s Inside? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Explore The History of Blacks and Reds

Lew Rockwell Institute - Ven, 18/04/2025 - 13:05

In our perilous, chaotic times of Black Lives Matter and George Floyd, it is essential to know the deep background story of the history of Communist apparats/fronts and African-Americans, from the beginning of the Communist Party (and other Marxist-Leninist ideological instrumentalities) attempts to capture and engage the allegiance of Black Americans from 1919 to the present. Black Lives Matter, Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA)

Here are several items below to explore:

“ANARCHY U.S.A.” –– 1966 John Birch Society Film.

This is a C-SPAN 3 re-broadcast of an anti-communism film, produced in 1966 by the John Birch Society, which uses narration and news footage to detail the methods of communist revolutionaries in China, Algeria, and Cuba, then argues that U.S. Civil Rights leaders are also Communists using the same methods. The film condemns several U.S. Presidents and the 1964 Civil Rights and 1965 Voting Rights Acts.

The Communist Position on the Negro Question (pdf)

For decades this was the official statement of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA)

“Even as the Great Migration witnessed a major shift of African Americans from the rural South to Northern cities and urban centers, during the Depression decade the majority of blacks were still scratching out a meagre living as sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and migrant laborers tied by debt and KKK terrorism to peonage in the South. In the 1930s, the Communist Party U.S.A. dedicated itself to fighting the “defenders of white chauvinism,” educating and liberating oppressed African Americans, and advocating for “Self-Determination for the Black Belt.”

Here is the formal FBI analysis of this document.

Communist Revolution in the Streets, by Gary Allen

This seminal volume has been actively suppressed and surviving copies are extremely rare. Here are excerpts from this prophetic work — One, Two, Three, Four, Five, and Six

The Whole of Their Lives: Communism in America – A Personal History and Intimate Portrayal of Its Leaders, by Benjamin Gitlow

Gitlow was American Communist Party General Secretary, Communist International executive committee member who courageously revealed the true nature of subversion, infiltration & Stalinist control of the CPUSA.

I own a signed edition of this rare book.

The Red Decade: The Stalinist Penetration of America, by Eugene Lyons

Amazon Review:

As the author points out the “decade” of penetration by the communists in America never really ended. Those fanatical comrades wound up in places of influence and with each generation that influence has remained and become magnified. When you read this book you will recognize many tactics, ideas, and strategies that are visible today. This book should be read alongside the books by Diana West wherein she describes this country’s attack from within and how we have never really come to grips with nor denounced the communist takeover of our culture and society. That was a triumph of the reds: to operate in this country and to be able to simultaneously inoculate themselves from the blowback of condemnation. Much of what we are living with today, the political correctness and the rest of the insanity stems from the left’s desire to destroy from within.

Color, Communism And Common Sense, by Manning Johnson

This book by former Communist apparatchik Manning Johnson is a must read. As the current chaotic political environment swells, remnants of the past are ignored. This powerful book gives incredible insight into the tricks and the trade of the Communist Party, and their manipulation of minorities here in the USA. This been going on for a long period and the contemporary leaders of the BLM movement have claimed they are trained Marxists. In 1932, Johnson studied for three months under J. Peters, William Z. Foster, Jack Stachel, Alexander Bittelman, Max Bedacht, Israel Amter, Gil Green, Harry Haywood, and James S. Allen among others at the “National Training School,” part of the New Workers School, a “secret school” devoted to training “development of professional revolutionists, professional revolutionaries, or active functionaries of the Communist Party.” He served as a national organizer for the Trade Union Unity League. From 1931 to 1932, he served as a District agitation propaganda director for Buffalo, New York. From 1932 to 1934, he was district organizer for Buffalo. In 1935, Manning Johnson ran as a Communist Party candidate for New York’s 22nd Congressional District for the United States House of Representatives. From 1936 to 1939, he served on the Party’s National Committee, National Trade Union Commission, and Negro Commission. Fellow members of the Party’s National Negro Commission were: James S. Allen, Elizabeth Lawson, Robert Minor, and George Blake Charney. The infiltration of other parties started long before the Communist Control Act of 1954. Communists predominantly hide behind and operate under other party names, primarily the Democrats. They also do their work via many front organizations that indoctrinate, stir, and agitate their pawns.

In Hearings Regarding Communist Infiltration of Minority Groups: Hearings Before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Eighty-first Congress, First Session, Parts 1-3, Manning Johnson produced a list of Communist-front organizations that included: African Blood Brotherhood (headed by Richard B. Moore and Cyril Briggs), All Harlem Youth Conference, American Negro Labor Congress, Artists Committee for Protection of Negro Rights, Citizens Committee for the Appointment of a Negro to the Board of Education, Civil Rights Congress, Committee Against Jim Crow in Military Service and Training, Committee for the Negro in the Arts, Committee to Abolish Peonage, Committee to Aid the Fighting South, Committee to Defend Angelo Herndon, League of Young Southerners, Council on African Affairs, Defense Committee for Claudia Jones, George Washington Carver School, Harlem Committee to End Police Brutality, Harlem Council on Education, International Committee of Negro Workers, International Committee on African Affairs, International Trade Union Committee for Negro Workers, International Workers Order, League for Protection of Minority Rights, League of Struggle for Negro Rights, National Conference of Negro Youth, National Emergency Committee to Stop Lynching, National Negro Congress, National Student Committee for Negro Problems, Negro Cultural Committee, Negro Labor Victory Committee, Negro People’s Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy, Scottsboro Defense Committee, Southern Negro Youth Congress, Southern Youth Legislature, United Aid for Peoples of African Descent, United Front for Herndon, United Harlem Tenants and Consumers Organization, and United Negro and Allied Veterans of America among others.

Black and Conservative: The autobiography of George S. Schuyler, by George S. Schuyler

Amazon Review

Don’t Believe the Hype!!: The Incredible History of Communist Subversion in America’s Black Community, by C Brian Madden

Amazon Book Description

Have you ever wondered why, today’s American culture has took a dramatic change for the worse? Have you ever wondered by our youth are no longer interested in pursuing the “American Dream” anymore? Ever wonder why, a certain culture of people, have no longer cared about whether they live or die or not, say “blank the police” and are always hostile towards those holding authority? The answer to these questions will shock you; and they are being done on purpose!! This book will show you how we got to this point in today’s society, especially when it comes to the African-American Community.

Black Revolutionaries in the United States: Communist Interventions, Volume II, by Communist Research Cluster

Blacks and Reds: Race and Class in Conflict, 1919-1990, by Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Amazon Book Description:

In this important study, Earl Ofari Hutchinson examines in detail the American Communist Party’s efforts to win the allegiance of black Americans and the various responses to this from the black community. Beginning with events of the 1920s, Hutchinson discusses at length the historical forces that encouraged alliances between African Americans and the predominately white American Communist Party. He also takes an in-depth look at why, and how, issues of class, party ideology, and racial identity stood in the way of a partnership of black leaders and communists in the United States. Blacks and Reds addresses landmark events surrounding associations between communists and black activists. Hutchinson examines, among other things, how Paul Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois’s support of party activities affected their lives and how the Communist Party used the trial of Angela Davis to promote its own interests. His scope ranges from oft forgotten signs of misdirection, such as how communists’ efforts to express racial sympathy in the early 1950s contributed to their own near destruction during the McCarthy era, to a thorough discussion of how the Party’s effort to gain a foothold in Stokely Carmichael’s SNCC, Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam, Martin Luther King’s SCLC, and Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver’s Black Panthers shook up the civil rights movement by triggering the FBI’s secret war against King, Malcolm X, and others considered to be black radicals.

How Communists Became a Scapegoat for the Red Summer ‘Race Riots’ of 1919, article by Becky Little

Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist, by Harry Haywood

Amazon review

A Black Communist in the Freedom Struggle, by Harry Haywood

Amazon Book Description:

Mustering out of the U.S. army in 1919, Harry Haywood stepped into a battle that was to last the rest of his life. Within months, he found himself in the middle of one of the bloodiest race riots in U.S. history and realized that he’d been fighting the wrong war—the real enemy was right here at home. This book is Haywood’s eloquent account of coming of age as a black man in twentieth-century America and of his political awakening in the Communist Party.

For all its cultural and historical interest, Harry Haywood’s story is also noteworthy for its considerable narrative drama. The son of parents born into slavery, Haywood tells how he grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, found his first job as a shoeshine boy in Minneapolis, then went on to work as a waiter on trains and in restaurants in Chicago. After fighting in France during the war, he studied how to make revolutions in Moscow during the 1920s, led the Communist Party’s move into the Deep South in 1931, helped to organize the campaign to free the Scottsboro Boys, worked with the Sharecroppers’ Union, supported protests in Chicago against Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia, fought with the International Brigades in Spain, served in the Merchant Marines during World War II, and continued to fight for the right of self-determination for the Afro-American nation in the United States until his death in 1985.

This new edition of his classic autobiography, Black Bolshevik, introduces American readers to the little-known story of a brilliant thinker, writer, and activist whose life encapsulates the struggle for freedom against all odds of the New Negro generation that came of age during and after World War I.

Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950, by Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore

Amazon Review:

Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950 by Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore redefines the standard chronology of the Civil Rights movement, popularly known for its post-WWII activity. Post-WWII civil rights action would culminate in achievement with Brown v. Board of Education and the 1964 and 1965 Acts of President Johnson. As the title of the book indicates, and according to Gilmore, civil rights in fact had far earlier and far more radical origins in Communism, labor, Fascism and anti-Fascism, and the Popular Front. She substantiates her thesis by tracing the activity of these movements, and by placing within them the African Americans and whites involved who both worked together and in opposition to one another to end or continue Jim Crow. The issue of black civil rights is typically isolated to the United States and is considered to be historically a distinct American problem. By highlighting the involvement of radical movements that found their roots in Europe, Gilmore places African American civil rights on an international stage and redefines it within the context of what the world was experiencing and how this weaved into American culture. Gilmore shows that in America there was an active Communist Party that was focused on illuminating how racism created class differences, and had a purpose to overcome this class inequality by organizing Southern black laborers into a force white supremacists could not reckon with. The CPUSA would become a major player in calling for an end to Jim Crow and white supremacy, and would operate at the same time of the NAACP, whom the communists considered too conservative and bourgeois. The distinction between the two is one where the Communist Party favored direct action and the NAACP preferred legal means to solve issues, and Gilmore states that when placed alongside Communism, the conservative nature of the NAACP is stark (7). In emphasizing this simplistic distinction between the two, Gilmore slights the NAACP of some of its own influence and early contribution. Though less radical in comparison to a system like Communism, the NAACP nevertheless operated within a legal system that was hostile to them. When placed within the cultural context of America in the early 20th century, the NAACP was also radical in its own way because it defied the “place” of the African American, and the organization enjoyed many successes of its own. For example, the NAACP played a major role in the 1923 Moore v. Dempsey decision that strengthened due process and African American’s Constitutional rights. It was not only the Communist Party that took an interest in labor either, though Gilmore makes it seem as if labor was a CPUSA concern only and does not mention that the NAACP was involved in the creation of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first African American labor union (52). Though these successes are certainly not as radical as labor marches through the streets of Gastonia, they are still significant to early civil rights radicalism. In keeping with the international scope of civil rights and the importance of the Communist Party, Gilmore brings to light that Africa Americans even went to Russia, had audience with Stalin himself, and many even let out sighs of relief to be in a country where they could, for the first time, enjoy life without fear. African American civil rights and Communism are two movements not typically linked together. In placing them together, Gilmore effectively rewrites civil rights history to include world wide involvement. She does similarly with Fascism in the United States. Gilmore reveals that Fascist ideology was intertwined with white supremacy (106), yet Gilmore does not adequately make the connection between the ideologies of Fascism and white supremacy to explain how white supremacists co-opted Fascism into their beliefs. Additionally, Gilmore splits up the influence of Fascism into two different sections, one in which she describes how some Americans embraced it early on, and then how later Fascism became linked with Communism and Nazi policy, and was thereafter largely rejected within America. Gilmore skips from one to the other without describing the intermediate years and how white supremacists that were once Fascist came to reject the ideology. Gilmore makes it clear why they did, but does not trace how or what happened to the former Black Shirt white supremacist American Fascists. Gilmore focuses her narrative on select people and groups, which allows her to make her points without filling pages with names and events that would have made the monograph dense and less fluid. Through the experiences of her select characters, Gilmore documents the progress of movements and is then allowed to move on with her point made by their examples. As she admits in her introduction, she leaves out a significant portion of people in the South who played major roles in the Civil Rights movement (11). As reviewer Michael Dennis points out, the people ignored precisely the kind of political linkages that defined the popular front and did a good deal more grass roots organizing in the South than Fort-Whiteman. While leaving out these groups of people and their contributions does not weaken the argument Gilmore is trying to make, adding them would have strengthened her narrative by illustrating the scope of the work the Popular Front involved itself in. While she leaves out some groups and people, she includes other often overlooked players such as Truman’s committee on civil rights, adding another layer to the retelling of conventional civil rights history (409). Gilmore’s limited focus allows her to incorporate an element of familiarity that makes her story easier and more enjoyable to read. The people involved in the movements she writes about become more than just names, but people with personalities. The emotional connection forged with these people give the book a sense of intimacy. Much like in her previous book, Gender & Jim Crow, Gilmore uses this feeling of familiarity to make assumptions about people’s feelings and motivations that cannot be supported by evidence. For instance, Gilmore assumes that Louise Thompson must have been hiding something about her feelings for African American Communist Lovett Fort-Whiteman (143). She does the same when she attempts to psychoanalyze the reticence of Alain Locke and attributes it to an attraction to the charismatic Langston Hughes (137). These are things that Gilmore herself simply cannot know without personal testimony. In some cases, Gilmore is able to more successfully pull off her personal narratives. When she describes the death of Fort-Whiteman, she adds a touching reflection of his last moments that closes up the extraordinary life of this very unique man (154). It is in moments like those that Gilmore fosters a true emotional connection between her book and the reader. The combination of humanization and the personalization of events with a unique historical interpretation make Defying Dixie an essential book on the civil rights movement. Defying Dixie adds a new layer to the understanding of how the civil rights movement progressed, and what influenced the later movement. While it does not rewrite the entirety of the movement, it inserts a new level that should not be overlooked.

Red Chicago: American Communism at Its Grassroots, 1928-35, by Randi Storch

Amazon Book Description:

Red Chicago is a social history of American Communism set within the context of Chicago’s neighborhoods, industries, and radical traditions. Using local party records, oral histories, union records, party newspapers, and government documents, Randi Storch fills the gap between Leninist principles and the day-to-day activities of Chicago’s rank-and-file Communists.

Uncovering rich new evidence from Moscow’s former party archive, Storch argues that although the American Communist Party was an international organization strongly influenced by the Soviet Union, at the city level it was a more vibrant and flexible organization responsible to local needs and concerns. Thus, while working for a better welfare system, fairer unions, and racial equality, Chicago’s Communists created a movement that at times departed from international party leaders’ intentions. By focusing on the experience of Chicago’s Communists, who included a large working-class, African American, and ethnic population, this study reexamines party members’ actions as an integral part of the communities and industries in which they lived and worked.

Communists in Harlem During the Depression, by Mark Naison

Amazon Book Description:

No socialist organization has ever had a more profound effect on black life than the Communist Party did in Harlem during the Depression. Mark Naison describes how the party won the early endorsement of such people as Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and how its support of racial equality and integration impressed black intellectuals, including Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, and Paul Robeson.

This meticulously researched work, largely based on primary materials and interviews with leading black Communists from the 1930s, is the first to fully explore this provocative encounter between whites and blacks. It provides a detailed look at an exciting period of reform, as well as an intimate portrait of Harlem in the 1920s and 30s, at the high point of its influence and pride.

Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression, by Robin D. G. Kelley

Amazon Book Description:

A groundbreaking contribution to the history of the “long Civil Rights movement,” Hammer and Hoe tells the story of how, during the 1930s and 40s, Communists took on Alabama’s repressive, racist police state to fight for economic justice, civil and political rights, and racial equality.

The Alabama Communist Party was made up of working people without a Euro-American radical political tradition: devoutly religious and semiliterate black laborers and sharecroppers, and a handful of whites, including unemployed industrial workers, housewives, youth, and renegade liberals. In this book, Robin D. G. Kelley reveals how the experiences and identities of these people from Alabama’s farms, factories, mines, kitchens, and city streets shaped the Party’s tactics and unique political culture. The result was a remarkably resilient movement forged in a racist world that had little tolerance for radicals.

After discussing the book’s origins and impact in a new preface written for this twenty-fifth-anniversary edition, Kelley reflects on what a militantly antiracist, radical movement in the heart of Dixie might teach contemporary social movements confronting rampant inequality, police violence, mass incarceration, and neoliberalism.

How ‘Communism’ Brought Racial Equality To The South

National Public Radio (NPR Broadcast ) State-sponsored media interview:

Tell Me More continues its Black History Month series of conversations with a discussion about the role of the Communist Party. It was prominent in the fight for racial equality in the south, specifically Alabama, where segregation was most oppressive. Many courageous activists were communists. Host Michel Martin speaks with historian Robin Kelley about his book Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression about how the communist party tried to secure racial, economic, and political reforms.

Red, Black, White: The Alabama Communist Party, 1930–1950, by Mary Stanton

Amazon Book Description:

Red, Black, White is the first narrative history of the American communist movement in the South since Robin D. G. Kelley’s groundbreaking Hammer and Hoe and the first to explore its key figures and actions beyond the 1930s. Written from the perspective of the district 17 (CPUSA) Reds who worked primarily in Alabama, it acquaints a new generation with the impact of the Great Depression on postwar black and white, young and old, urban and rural Americans.

After the Scottsboro story broke on March 25, 1931, it was open season for old-fashioned lynchings, legal (courtroom) lynchings, and mob murder. In Alabama alone, twenty black men were known to have been murdered, and countless others, women included, were beaten, disabled, jailed, “disappeared,” or had their lives otherwise ruined between March 1931 and September 1935. In this collective biography, Mary Stanton―a noted chronicler of the left and of social justice movements in the South―explores the resources available to Depression-era Reds before the advent of the New Deal or the modern civil rights movement. What emerges from this narrative is a meaningful criterion by which to evaluate the Reds’ accomplishments.

Through seven cases of the CPUSA (district 17) activity in the South, Stanton covers tortured notions of loyalty and betrayal, the cult of white southern womanhood, Christianity in all its iterations, and the scapegoating of African Americans, Jews, and communists. Yet this still is a story of how these groups fought back, and fought together, for social justice and change in a fractured region.

Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, by Cedric Robinson

Amazon Book Description:

In this ambitious work, first published in 1983, Cedric Robinson demonstrates that efforts to understand Black people’s history of resistance solely through the prism of Marxist theory are incomplete and inaccurate. Marxist analyses tend to presuppose European models of history and experience that downplay the significance of Black people and Black communities as agents of change and resistance. Black radicalism, Robinson argues, must be linked to the traditions of Africa and the unique experiences of Blacks on Western continents, and any analyses of African American history need to acknowledge this.

To illustrate his argument, Robinson traces the emergence of Marxist ideology in Europe, the resistance by Blacks in historically oppressive environments, and the influence of both of these traditions on such important twentieth-century Black radical thinkers as W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, and Richard Wright. This revised and updated third edition includes a new preface by Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, and a new foreword by Robin D. G. Kelley.

Marxist-Leninist Perspectives on Black Liberation and Socialism, by Frank Chapman

Amazon Review.

Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism, by Erik S. McDuffie

Amazon Book Description:

Sojourning for Freedom portrays pioneering black women activists from the early twentieth century through the 1970s, focusing on their participation in the U.S. Communist Party (CPUSA) between 1919 and 1956. Erik S. McDuffie considers how women from diverse locales and backgrounds became radicalized, joined the CPUSA, and advocated a pathbreaking politics committed to black liberation, women’s rights, decolonization, economic justice, peace, and international solidarity. McDuffie explores the lives of black left feminists, including the bohemian world traveler Louise Thompson Patterson, who wrote about the “triple exploitation” of race, gender, and class; Esther Cooper Jackson, an Alabama-based civil rights activist who chronicled the experiences of black female domestic workers; and Claudia Jones, the Trinidad-born activist who emerged as one of the Communist Party’s leading theorists of black women’s exploitation. Drawing on more than forty oral histories collected from veteran black women radicals and their family members, McDuffie examines how these women negotiated race, gender, class, sexuality, and politics within the CPUSA. In Sojourning for Freedom, he depicts a community of radical black women activist intellectuals who helped to lay the foundation for a transnational modern black feminism.

Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones, by Carole Boyce Davies

Amazon Book Description:

In Left of Karl Marx, Carole Boyce Davies assesses the activism, writing, and legacy of Claudia Jones (1915–1964), a pioneering Afro-Caribbean radical intellectual, dedicated communist, and feminist. Jones is buried in London’s Highgate Cemetery, to the left of Karl Marx—a location that Boyce Davies finds fitting given how Jones expanded Marxism-Leninism to incorporate gender and race in her political critique and activism.

Claudia Cumberbatch Jones was born in Trinidad. In 1924, she moved to New York, where she lived for the next thirty years. She was active in the Communist Party from her early twenties onward. A talented writer and speaker, she traveled throughout the United States lecturing and organizing. In the early 1950s, she wrote a well-known column, “Half the World,” for the Daily Worker. As the U.S. government intensified its efforts to prosecute communists, Jones was arrested several times. She served nearly a year in a U.S. prison before being deported and given asylum by Great Britain in 1955. There she founded The West Indian Gazette and Afro-Asian Caribbean News and the Caribbean Carnival, an annual London festival that continues today as the Notting Hill Carnival. Boyce Davies examines Jones’s thought and journalism, her political and community organizing, and poetry that the activist wrote while she was imprisoned. Looking at the contents of the FBI file on Jones, Boyce Davies contrasts Jones’s own narration of her life with the federal government’s. Left of Karl Marx establishes Jones as a significant figure within Caribbean intellectual traditions, black U.S. feminism, and the history of communism.

Black on Red: My 44 Years Inside the Soviet Union: An Autobiography, by Robert Robinson

John Alt Review:

Some years ago, I read Black On Red: My 44 Years Inside The Soviet Union, a book by Robert Robinson, An African-American who lived in Detroit during the Depression. I had to read it again, for it is about as gripping an autobiography as one can find. Hired in 1927 as a floor sweeper by Ford Motor Company, he became a toolmaker there. In April 1930, through Amtorg, a Soviet trade agency based in New York, a Russian delegation toured the plant. A Russian asked if he would like to work in the Soviet Union. At Ford he earned $140 a month–good wages–but was offered $250 a month, free living quarters, maid service, 30 days vacation a year and a car. All of this for a one year contract. At 23 and recently from Cuba, where he grew up, he was ready for some adventure. Like most things Soviet, the promises were eventually to mark a tragic life, his.

So in 1930 Robinson went, and thereon hangs his tale. He describes various discrimination against blacks while the Soviet government painted itself as an ethnically tolerant utopia.

Robert Robinson was a highly talented, even gifted toolmaker and mechanical engineer. (He graduated from The Moscow Evening Institute of Mechanical Engineering. Despite its clumsy name, its training was excellent.) He received numerous Soviet medals, citations, and awards. As one instance of his ability, managers didn’t think he could quickly design, develop, and fabricate 13 indicators used for checking precision gauges, but he did in three and one half months. This increased production seventy-two fold. All the time, a jealous colleague was undermining his efforts by stealing pieces or sabotaging machines.

Despite his education, training, and ability, he was repeatedly passed over. Through the years he witnessed many less able men move up the ladder to become plant director or branch manager, but he did not get a promotion or pay raise.

During the 1930s Moscow purges, he never undressed until 4 AM, nervously awaiting a Secret Police knock at his door. Next day, he and others would silently take note of fellow employees who did not show up for work. He was aware of the foreigners who disappeared from the First State Ball Bearing Factory. When he started there, he found 362 foreigners. By 1939 only he and a Hungarian were left. Because he was a foreigner, friends begged him not to visit them.

Informers lurked everywhere. If a Russian was asked to spy on neighbors he dared not refuse else he became a suspect. Informants watched a neighbor’s comings and goings from his apartment, as well as who visited him, or what he bought at the store.

Late one night in 1943, Robinson did hear a knock on his door. He thought his time had finally come, his hand shaking as he opened it. Two agents were startled to see his face, then mumbled “Excuse us. There was some mistake.”

As I read the book, I could only feel immense sadness for this man, who lost the best years of his life in a dull, dreary, police state. He learned to control his feelings, to confide in nobody. Many times he would be sounded out–perhaps innocently–over his views on this or that, and always he responded with neutrality or political correctness. He could not afford to trust anybody. That was how he survived finally to leave the Workers’ Paradise.

Born in Jamaica about 1907, he became acclimated to bitter Moscow winters. He was there when Hitler’s wermacht and luftwaffe invaded Russia, the German army 44 miles from Moscow. The Russian government recruited every able-bodied man to age 60. In 1941 he was called for his draft physical, but was not inducted because of a bad left eye. Under fierce aerial bombardment, the streets of Moscow were barricaded against the coming onslaught as he and others were told that the factory would be moved to Kuybyshev. On the train, he beheld thousands upon thousands of people fleeing Moscow–men, women, and children, young and old–shivering while trudging icy roads carrying suitcases tied with cord. In Kuybyshev whole families shared horse stalls, with over 70 people using one toilet and one wash basin.

During the war with Germany, black bread was rationed at 600 grams (21.1 oz) a day. A sack of potatoes cost 900 rubles ($180). Robert Robinson made 1100 rubles month. He ate 7 or 8 cabbage leaves soaked in lukewarm water. Others at the factory became so weak that they could not control their bladders and urinated in their pants. Some died, collapsing on the floor in front of their machines. Every passing moment the men thought of food, its smell, its taste. After months of hunger, he began losing all energy, felt listless, and went to a doctor. As he took his shirt off, she went behind a screen and cried. He at first thought she was shocked to see his skin color, but she wept because his arms were toothpicks, his stomach stretched tight against corrugated ribs. He had not looked in a mirror for months. She told him he was at death’s doorway. She invited him to her house to dine each Sunday with her, her husband, and daughter.

He never joined the communist party because of his religious faith. He could not accept atheist doctrine. He saw through a racist, repressive system, and was watchful that he not suggest even a nuance of deviant political behavior. He was made to act in a Mosfilm propaganda movie, Deep Are The Roots, then considered a classic in Russia, about racism in the United States. When asked as an “expert,” Robinson told the director that the movie was over-the-top, extremely overdone, but the director had his own career at stake and probably could not listen.

During 44 years in Soviet society, Robert Robinson found that the deepest discrimination was against blacks and orientals. In his book he notes that in the USA people may or may not condone institutional and racial discrimination but they do recognize that it exists. In the USSR, officially and socially, such discrimination did not occur. To admit the contrary would have been to violate the Soviet agenda of equality and brotherly love. He states that he “could never get used to Russian racism. They prided themselves on freedom from prejudice, so racism was especially virulent.”

During the 1930s he met and chatted on a park bench with black American poet Langston Hughes. He met and spent evenings with the hugely talented and internationally famous American Paul Robeson (athlete, actor, orator, concert singer, lawyer, social activist), and his wife Eslanda each time they visited Moscow. He asked Robeson as a fellow black man to intervene for him so he could escape Russia. Robeson avoided him on the issue. Eventually Robert Robinson learned from Eslanda that Paul did not want to do it because that would sour his relationship with the Soviet leadership.

After many years of trying, and through the extended efforts of Ugandan ambassadors Mathias Lubega, and Michael Ondoga, Robert Robinson was granted a visa for a vacation in Uganda. He was careful. He bought an Aeroflot round trip ticket although he never wanted to return. To reduce suspicion he took just a few rubles, packed few clothes.

From the airport gate to the aircraft he took a bus. Then it happened. In freezing cold, a coatless woman ran after the bus shouting his name. He dared not turn around. But the bus stopped and the driver called back for him. He got off. She told him he could not go because he had no vaccination papers. This was false; he had shown them and had been vaccinated. He trembled, wept inwardly, was totally devastated, but he repeated the process, the doctor this time simply signing the form without using a needle. Again he waited months and finally got approval.

The day came, and he climbed on the bus, praying silently as it neared the airplane. He boarded and feared that somebody would again call his name before the plane began taxiing. Or the pilot would be ordered to turn the aircraft around. It did not happen. He landed in Uganda. We are left to imagine the feelings that must have overwhelmed him as he stepped off, out of a police state and into the warm African sun.

This was 1974 and he found himself at the hotel feted as personal guest of Idi Amin, Ugandan President For Life. When Robinson visited Amin the President offered him Ugandan citizenship, but Robinson declined, fearing that it would bring violent wrath of the KGB down on him in this relatively unprotected country. For several years he taught at Uganda Technical College outside Kampala. In Uganda he met Zylpha Mapp, an African-American lecturer at the Teacher College. They married in 1976. Tensions and suppression grew in Uganda as Idi Amin became mentally unstable. Through the unrelenting efforts of an African-American US Information Service Officer, William B. Davis, in 1980 he and Zylpha were able to fly to the United States, where he was declared a legal U.S. resident, as he had to forfeit his U.S. citizenship many years before. On December 6, 1986, they became U.S. citizens. living in Washington, DC. He died in 1994 of cancer. Zylpha Mapp-Robinson died in 2001, age 87. (She was born August 25, 1914.)

Even in the United States he could not rid himself of a life lived in fear, caution, and suspicion. Robinson hoped that his book would reveal the USSR for the oppressive society it was. “Even now,” he said, “I have to be careful because so many people do not understand the Russian psychology, that once you have offended the Russians, you are never forgiven. Never forgiven.”

He did not intend that statement to detract from the countless ordinary Russians who befriended and helped him. He understood them as victims of the same system. He had fond memories of people such as the lady doctor who invited him to her house to dine during the Great Patriotic War against Germany.

He was aware of the immense suffering of his Russian friends. He tells the story of a lovely sixteen year old girl on her way to school. She was stopped by an aide of Lavrentiy Beria, head of MVD, Soviet Secret Police. The aide wanted her to climb in his car, but she refused. At the end of the school day, she looked out the window. The aide was still there. She knew she couldn’t call her parents, else they would be visited and probably sent to a labor camp. She had no choice. For two years she was raped by Beria, her parents in despair and anguish. After Beria tired of her, he forced the family to give up their belongings and move to Lithuania.

If you want to know about the Stalinist purges, and about the horrible sacrifices Russians made during WWII, read this book. Robinson was there. Spending most of his life in the Soviet Union, he suffered, struggled, silently wept, but endured. He lived through it all, an eye witness to history from the purges to Hitler’s invasion to Sputnik and the Cold War.

Blacks, Reds, and Russians: Sojourners in Search of the Soviet Promise, by Joy Gleason Carew

Amazon Book Description:

One of the most compelling, yet little known stories of race relations in the twentieth century is the account of blacks who chose to leave the United States to be involved in the Soviet Experiment in the 1920s and 1930s. Frustrated by the limitations imposed by racism in their home country, African Americans were lured by the promise of opportunity abroad. A number of them settled there, raised families, and became integrated into society. The Soviet economy likewise reaped enormous benefits from the talent and expertise that these individuals brought, and the all around success story became a platform for political leaders to boast their party goals of creating a society where all members were equal.

In Blacks, Reds, and Russians, Joy Gleason Carew offers insight into the political strategies that often underlie relationships between different peoples and countries. She draws on the autobiographies of key sojourners, including Harry Haywood and Robert Robinson, in addition to the writings of Claude McKay, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Langston Hughes. Interviews with the descendants of figures such as Paul Robeson and Oliver Golden offer rare personal insights into the story of a group of emigrants who, confronted by the daunting challenges of making a life for themselves in a racist United States, found unprecedented opportunities in communist Russia.

The post Explore The History of Blacks and Reds appeared first on LewRockwell.

Pandemonio sui dazi... facciamo chiarezza su cosa conta davvero

Freedonia - Ven, 18/04/2025 - 10:02

di Francesco Simoncelli

(Versione audio dell'articolo disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/pandemonio-sui-dazi-facciamo-chiarezza)

Molto è stato detto nelle ultime settimane riguardo i dazi, ma senza un quadro generale coerente di quello che sta succedendo si perde il motivo per cui stanno accadendo determinate cose. Non si tratta di irrazionalità, perché secondo alcuni analisti tutto quello che conta sarebbe la teoria. No, non è un mondo prefetto questo, così come non è possibile seguire alla lettera un qualsiasi manuale teorico. Che sia di libero mercato o meno. Questa è la natura dell'essere umano in fin dei conti, dell'imprevedibilità dell'azione umana. Ci avvicineremo sempre alla teoria, quanto più possibile, ma non avremo mai un percorso “da manuale”. Sottolineo, a scanso di equivoci, che la teoria deve essere un punto di partenza per tutti, allo stesso modo. L'efficienza del libero mercato non si discute, il relativo meccanismo di allocazione delle risorse economiche scarse può avvenire con efficienza e precisione in un ecosistema in cui gli imprenditori hanno accesso libero e non fuorviato alle informazioni economiche necessarie. Nessuno mette in discussione la distorsione dei prezzi come fattore scatenante degli errori economici e, di conseguenza, di una misallocation di capitale. Qual è il problema con questo impianto teorico? Perché sulla carta è vero, ma non è riflesso completamente nella realtà? Nel momento in cui si ha una nazione che mette sul piatto, volente o nolente, il proprio bacino della ricchezza reale e permette agli altri attori economici di sfruttarlo a proprio vantaggio, è possibile emendare a suddette regole. Sia chiaro: per quanto apodittiche le leggi dell'economia non possono essere violate, questo a sua volta significa che l'aggiramento di suddette leggi è temporaneo e strettamente correlato all'erosione del sopraccitato bacino.

Finché va avanti sembra che ci sia un'eccezione alle regole e che possa andare avanti per sempre; poi arriva un momento critico che ricorda di come il nostro mondo è finito e non esiste alcun albero di Cuccagna a cui attingere sempre. Questa verità è stata chiara agli USA nel momento in cui hanno compreso le profonde implicazioni del sistema del dollaro offshore. Perché pensate che la Cina fosse uno dei maggiori detentori di titoli sovrani americani altrimenti? Uno dei centri famoso per l'intermediazione degli eurodollari è Hong Kong. E di quale colonia ha fatto parte (e fa ancora parte)? Regno Unito. Tutte le strade portano a Londra, soprattutto quella degli eurodollari. Di conseguenza non possiamo nascondere la testa sotto la sabbia e guardare ai mercati come la massima espressione di un consenso libero delle azioni coordinate degli individui: c'è sempre stato un recinto all'interno del quale si è agito, o che è stato accuratamente manipolato. L'ambiente di mercato può essere più o meno libero, ma non esiste un estremo.... in entrambe le direzioni. In fin dei conti, è la natura umana; l'essenza dell'azione stessa degli individui. Se non fosse così, tutte le nazioni avrebbero condizioni di partenza identiche e non ci sarebbero mercati del lavoro in cui la manodopera è pagata una miseria mentre il prodotto finito, passando per le varie filiere industriali, subisce ricarichi sproporzionati.

Mi rendo conto che quest'ultimo punto porta con sé un certo grado di etica al suo interno, quindi rivolgiamoci direttamente ai rapporti di potere tra nazioni: esistono le banche centrali e l'evoluzione economica ci ha portati a vivere in un mondo manipolato ad hoc in cui addirittura i Paesi cercano di sfruttare un vantaggio competitivo per “fregare il vicino” (beggar thy neighbour). I carry trade sono essenzialmente questo. La Cina e il Sud-est asiatico l'ha fatto tramite il mercato del lavoro; i grandi centri finanziari, come la City di Londra, l'hanno fatto tramite l'ingegneria finanziaria e l'eurodollaro. Non è affatto un caso che il picco della cosiddetta globalizzazione sia coinciso con l'inizio dei lavori del SOFR americano. Il colonialismo non è mai finito e i colonizzatori, Europa e Inghilterra, non hanno mai smesso di esercitare la loro influenza sulle proprie colonie storiche. Per quanto possano essersi ritirati a livello di facciata, sono diventati “partner commerciali”, “alleati strategici”, ecc. La Cina è stata lasciata “sorgere” per fungere da strumento, di ricatto anche talvolta. I salari sono bassi in Europa perché essa si arricchisce principalmente con l’export e quindi non si interessa al mercato interno e di conseguenza della capacità di spesa dei lavoratori. In Italia i salari sono al palo per un basso tasso di capitalizzazione delle imprese e la maggior parte della ricchezza prodotta la divora lo stato, quindi le imprese hanno poche risorse da investire in innovazione e attrezzature. I salari sono bassi anche per la concorrenza asiatica che costringe i lavoratori a condizioni poco umane.

Gli Stati Uniti hanno detto “Basta!”. I fattori “correttivi” implementati dall'amministrazione Trump nei confronti del resto mondo sono una manovra per emanciparsi dal giogo finanziario che rendeva gli USA i “salvatori” del mondo. Così come rendeva la FED il prestotre di ultima istanza del mondo. I colonialisti, così facendo, si sono garantiti un lasso di tempo in cui hanno governato senza patemi d'animo tenendo ben pasciuta e senza pensieri la popolazione sottostante. C'è dell'ironia qui: la mano invisibile del mercato di “smithiana” memoria, agendo tramite gli USA che fanno i loro affari e pensano principalmente al benessere della nazione, “aiuteranno” anche le altre di nazioni a migliorare le proprie condizioni smantellando tutte quelle architetture che erano considerate assodate nel mondo globalizzato di ieri. Il passo finale spetterà a loro, ovviamente, perché anche la “non azione” è una scelta.

È sacrosanto mirare ad avere un interventismo minore sui mercati, o addirittura nullo... ciò non vuole dire ignorare le meccaniche di sudditanza coloniale che ancora operano nel mondo. Se la Cina non ha preso ancora Taiwan è perché non gli è stato dato il permesso di farlo; sviluppare la propria industria dei chip è stato un modo per ovviare a questo “inconveniente” e crearsi una alternativa per tempi peggiori. Nessuno vuole essere una vittima sacrificale. A differenza di altri, loro l'hanno letto (e capito) Sun Tzu e sanno che, oltre a sfruttare la debolezza del nemico, ciò significa non sfoggiare le proprie attraverso la retorica magniloquente sui successi.

Ma, anche così, non è la Cina l'obiettivo finale dei dazi. Il piano generale degli USA è quello di isolarsi finanziariamente da un sistema che per decenni ha sfruttato la sua di forza per “regalarla” al resto del mondo. L'ordine monetario e finanziario uscito fuori dalla Seconda guerra monidale ha reso ipertrofico il mercato dei dollari offshore e sin dal 2008 non si è più ripreso. O per meglio dire, la Legge dei rendimenti decrescenti ha fatto il suo corso. Come accaduto nel 1985 con gli Accordi del Plaza, c'è bisogno di un nuovo reset solo che stavolta è necessario eliminare la fonte di azzardo morale alla radice: la FED si riprende in casa la sua politica monetaria e sfrutta per davvero adesso il “privilegio esorbitante” del dollaro. Un cambiamento epocale che non si pensava fosse possibile si sta dipanando sotto i nostri occhi.

Oggi vi permetterò di avere le idee chiare, quindi.

L'OBIETTIVO OLTREOCEANO

L'obiettivo oltreoceano è quello di continuare ad avere quante più fonti aperte da cui fluiscono gli eurodollari affinché la City di Londra possa sottoporli a leva e controllare di conseguenza il flusso di dollari al margine che circolano all'estero. Il sistema finanziario estero, che ha piramidato la sua esistenza su questo meccanismo per decenni, ne ha bisogno disperatamente soprattutto ora che l'amministrazione Trump ha iniziato a mettere ordine nei conti fiscali della nazione (mentre la FED ha iniziato a farlo nel 2022 nella componente monetaria). Non importa lo stock di dollari, quello che davvero è importante è il flusso di dollari al margine. E questo lo sappiamo dalla classica ABC dell'economia ed è stata una verità sin dalla rivoluzione marginalista di Menger: il prezzo di ogni cosa è impostato al margine. Di conseguenza se questo flusso viene prosciugato, è necessario, per chi ne trae la propria sopravvivenza economica/finanziaria, trovare nuovi modi affinché continui a scorrere. L'essenza dei vari surplus commerciali, Cina in primis, nei confronti degli USA non sono stati altro che un modo per far continuare a scorrere il flusso di dollari all'estero. È attraverso di essi che possono essere pagate le cedole di titoli denominati in dollari emessi all'estero.

Guardate adesso alla curva dei rendimenti statunitense. C'è un pesante avvallamento tra i titoli a brevissimo e a medio termine, mentre il back-end è schizzato in alto. La seguente ipotesi non sarà verificata fino a quando non usciranno i prossimi dati del TIC, però di fronte a un'amministrazione Trump che prosciuga la fonte principale dei tuoi finanziamenti “gratis” vendi titoli sovrani americani, specialmente quelli a più lunga scadenza (trentennali), e compri quelli sul front-end. In questo modo la stampa ha magicamente un parametro per gridare “recessione!”. Chi, sin da quando Powell ha iniziato il suo ciclo di rialzo dei tassi, ha comprato più titoli sovrani americani? Secondo gli ultimi dati disponibili, dal 2021 al dicembre 2024 le banche che si possono associare a Europa e Inghilterra hanno comprato ogni anno $1.100 miliardi netti in titoli di stato americani. Perché l'hanno fatto? In modo da tenere un tetto ai rendimenti obbligazionari oltreoceano. La percezione di stabilità viene data dal tenere tali rendimenti in certe fasce di prezzo e al di fuori di esse i derivati sui tassi d'interesse iniziano a segnalare “pericolo” con tutti i relativi rischi di vendite al margine che ne conseguono. Queste “linee di demarcazione” si possono vedere negli 83 centesimi “difesi” nel cambio EUR/GBP, per tre anni è stato “difeso” il rendimento del 2,5% sul decennale tedesco, il 3% sul decennale francese, ecc.

Per tutto il tempo che la Yellen è stata in carica del Dipartimento del Tesoro ha condotto una yield curve control in concomitanza con la Lagarde, ma adesso che la prima non è più lì ecco che le cose sono diventate preoccupanti oltreoceano: la seconda deve impedire che i rendimenti sovrani europei schizzino in alto, o accelerare il crollo del mercato obbligazionario europeo tramite spesa pubblica incontrollata ed euro digitale. Se torniamo per un momento all'agosto dell'anno scorso, quando il Ministro delle finanze giapponese ha venduto dollari per comprare yen portando l'indice di quest'ultimo da 161 a 140 e causando una serie di default, sin da allora è stato abbattuto il cartry trade sullo yen e gli europei si sono ritrovati una nuova gatta da pelare nel difendere il livello 155 nel cambio EUR/YEN (e non andasse più in basso).

E questo spiega anche come mai il cambio EUR/USD sia salito oltre 1.10 più recente. Se hai già un cambio basso, come fai poi a permetterti di stampare vagonate di soldi, svalutare la divisa e portare amenità con il “piano di riarmo”?

Sin da quando Powell ha iniziato una sorta di restringimento della politica monetaria “sotto traccia” nel giugno 2021, ho iniziato a riflettere su quale potesse essere il motivo e le relative implicazioni di una mossa del genere in opposizione a quanto accadesse nel resto del mondo. Allora le politiche monetarie delle varie banche centrali erano ancora coordinate e una rottura di quel cartello era a dir poco inverosimile. La separazione tra i mercati europei e quelli americani avrebbe significato una determinazione del prezzo del dollaro negli Stati Uniti, non più in Europa o a Londra. Washington non è mai stato in grado di fare una cosa del genere in tutto il suo passato. La mia conclusione: è questa la “seconda” dichiarazione d'indipendenza americana? Tutti gli indizi raccolti finora puntano in tale direzione. Questo a sua volta significa che mettere in ordine i conti della nazione vuol dire anche mandare in bancarotta la cricca di Davos. Come? Mettendo sotto pressione i globablisti che governano il Canada, mettendo sotto pressione Starmer, mettendo sotto pressione la NATO, mettendo sotto pressione i Five Eyes, ecc.

Tutto si riduce al flusso di dollari all'estero e i dazi sono uno strumento a tal proposito.

L'OCCASIONALITÀ DEI CRASH DEI MERCATI

Ovviamente sarebbe miope affermare che tutto questo sia stato messo in piedi dall'amministrazione Trump o da lui stesso. Dietro c'è un consorzio di grandi banche della East coast che fin dal 2019 hanno lavorato per arrivare a questi risultati. Dopo il 2008 era chiaro a tutti che fosse necessario un reset del sistema post-Seconda guerra mondiale... il problema era: sotto l'egida di chi sarebbe stato governato il mondo? Se le CBDC erano un segnale, questo avrebbe significato che il comparto bancario commerciale statunitense sarebbe stato spazzato via. La spinta principale degli USA a mettersi di traverso alla cricca di Davos è stato sostanzialmente questo, perché significava altresì che non avrebbero più fatto parte della classe dirigente. Lo slogan “bonificare la palude” significava rimuovere le incrostazioni dello Stato profondo e sopratutto tutti quegli agenti “infiltrati” che non facevano il “bene” della nazione.

L'innesco fu acceso da JP Morgan quando a settembre del 2019 alimentò la crisi dei pronti contro termine rifiutandosi di accettare come garanzia collaterale titoli europei. Jamie Dimon diede il via al distaccamento tra il sistema bancario europeo e quello americano in attesa che il SOFR sarebbe entrato a pieno regime successivamente. Allarmata da quell'evento monumentale la cricca di Davos ha scatenato letteralmente l'inferno, sia a livello economico che sociale, e la guerra contro gli USA venne scatenata allora. L'attesa della riconferma di Powell durata più di 6 mesi e i piani di stimolo fiscale furono tentativi per forzare la mano alla FED e rompere il consorzio di suddette banche. Fortunatamente per queste ultime la loro capillarità a livello territoriale ha resistito e sono riuscite a reggere il colpo fino al 2022. Se Powell ha agito come ha fatto era perché sapeva di “avere le spalle coperte”.

Il crash del 2019 poteva sembrare l'ennesima Bear Stearns, così come quello del 2023 con le banche di San Francisco, invece faceva parte di un disegno molto più grande che per forza di cose richiedeva dolore economico. Così come nel 1934 vennero lasciate fallire migliaia di piccole banche per avere la giustificazione e istituire la FDIC. Lo stesso vale per il crash più recente sui mercati azionari. Un'intera generazione di trader è stata cresciuta secondo il credo fasullo che i mercati sarebbero sempre saliti, che ogni correzione sarebbe stata assorbita dalla stampante monetaria della banca centrale. La storia del DOGE ci sta insegnando che il pompaggio monetario principale scaturiva dal Dipartimento del Tesoro che a sua volta costringeva la FED a intervenire e di conseguenza tenere liquido il flusso di dollari che scorreva all'estero, alimentando di conseguenza livelli di leva finanziaria esorbitanti. Una volta che questo flusso è stato interrotto, o per meglio dire, viene gestito dal tasso deciso dalla Federal Reserve e non più dal tasso deciso al di fuori di essa, il panico risultate è tutto all'estero. La prova? Tutte le altre banche centrali hanno tagliato i tassi più rapidamente rispetto alla FED. Infatti finché il mercato obbligazionario statunitense non diventerà bidless, la FED resterà a bordo campo. Per quanto la stampa voglia farlo credere invece, in realtà le cose stanno all'opposto soprattutto se si guarda l'ultima asta dei trentennali.

Inoltre se si vuole avere un proxy per capire quando la FED abbasserà i tassi, il seguente grafico è tutto ciò di cui avete bisogno.

Il range di riferimento sarà tra 3-3,5%. Non tornerà più allo 0%. I tassi reali inoltre saranno influenzati dalla retorica ottimista negli USA (“andremo su Marte!” ad esempio), cosa che li sta pian piano abbassando. Un termometro di ciò è la popolarità di Trump negli USA.

Guardate a quello che fanno, non quello che dicono. E con ciò mi riferisco al fatto che per quanto possa sembrare che ci sia maretta tra l'amministrazione Trump e la FED, in realtà non c'è. C'è coordinamento (anche perché sappiamo che dietro Trump c'è il consorzio delle banche della East coast). Questo significa che molto probabilmente a giugno la FED taglierà nuovamente i tassi. La cosa davvero unica di questo periodo, comunque, sarà la scissione tra il dollaro che circolerà internamente e quello che circolerà esternamente, a livello internazionale. Di questo a Trump non importa niente ed è quello la cui offerta si sta restringendo e per cui Bruxelles e la City si stanno stracciando le vesti.

La pianificazione centrale è fallimentare, ovvio. Ma qui la domanda è una: gli americani credono davvero che la linea di politica di Trump sia fallimentare?

E dopo Argentina e Vietnam, le prime nazioni a presentarsi alle porte dell'amministrazione Trump, è arrivata la Francia. E l'elenco si è subito allungato. Questa storia mi ha ricordato il primo episodio della prima stagione di Black Mirror: prima nessuno avrebbe voluto cedere le armi (commerciali) agli USA... una volta che l'orologio ha iniziato a correre e si vedeva che Trump faceva sul serio ci si è adeguati. Avevate dubbi? Stesso copione già visto con Powell nel 2022 quando ha iniziato il ciclo di rialzo dei tassi. Allora ci mise diversi mesi a “convincere” i mercati che faceva sul serio, adesso hanno imparato la lezione. Ricordate, Power policy.

LA PRIORITÀ

Seguendo tale linea di politica, le turbolenze vengono affrontate a testa alta. Infatti Bessent è stato chiaro nella sua ultima intgervista da Carlson: parafrasando le sue parole, ciò che conta per l'amministrazione Trump è il mercato obbligazionario e la gestibilità dell'enorme debito pubblico. Sia la FED che l'attuale classe politica non si faranno spaventare da correzioni nei mercati azionari. A tal proposito i rapporti P/E sono ancora fuori scala, quindi aspettarsi un altro bel crash nel comparto azionario non solo è necessario ma anche fisiologico. Senza farsi spaventare neanche da nuove buzzword come col “basis trade”. Prima di tutto uno dovrebbe domandarsi dove gli hedge fund hanno preso gli asset necessari per poi sottoporre a una leva più alta di quella media i propri bilanci in un momento storico incerto come quello di oggi (la risposta è che i loro bilanci fanno parte del cosiddetto “sistema bancario ombra” nutrito ad hoc da leggi come la Dodd-Frank... approvata, guarda “il caso”, dall'amministrazione Obama). Inoltre, come ho scritto sopra, l'avvallamento nella curva dei rendimenti che ci presenta un'inversione (artificiale) tra il front-end e il medio termine (biennale) non è motivo di panico perché i tassi nei mercati dei pronti contro termine non sono stressati.

Lo ripeto, sono stati venduti titoli sul back-end della curva, preso dollari e, per non far salire quest'ultimo rispetto all'euro, sono stati comprati i titoli sovrani a breve-medio termine. In un anno in cui giungono a maturazione $7.000 miliardi in obbligazioni da rinovare, eventualmente, trovarsi per le mani la percezione di recessione tra il pubblico (come se non ce ne fosse stata una sin dal 2008 e che solo adesso ne vengono affrontate le conseguenze) è un ostacolo non indifferente da superare. La cricca di Davos, sebbene abbia come obiettivo finale il flusso di dollari all'estero, deve adesso screditare l'attuale amministrazione Trump dato che le sue azioni sono risultate la giusta medicina per il ritorno al benessere interno e di conseguenza una sobrietà finanziaria all'estero. È questo che rappresenta la fine della “globalizzazione”: la fine dell'interconnessione finanziaria dove gli Stati Uniti rappresentano il prestatore/creditore di ultima istanza del mondo intero... senza conseguenze derivanti da una corretta ponderazione del rischio.

Paradossalmente, quindi, essa è la prima a volere tassi di riferimento alti negli USA: è consapevole che ora esistono barriere al flusso di dollari che scorrono all'estero, quindi deve fare affidamento sulle banche centrali che controlla, come la BCE e la BoE. Facedo apparire queste ultime proattive e “responsabili”, si conferisce la percezione (errata ovviamente) che la FED, rialzando o tenendo i tassi dove sono ora, sia invece irresponsabile e inaffidabile. Visto che ci troviamo in un ambiente economico in cui l'inflazione è commodity driven (vi basta guardare la correlazione tra l'IPC e i futures sulla benzina), e non credit driven (almeno non attualmente), Powell sarà in grado di tagliare di 25 punti base.

Il copione è quello già visto durante la presidenza Reagan, dove anch'egli agì velocemente nei primi mesi della sua carica per sistemare l'equazione fiscale e portare dalla sua la Federal Reserve di Volcker. Le azioni del DOGE, gli sprechi scoperti da quest'ultimo, vanno nella stessa direzione per avere successivamente carte da giocare durante le elezioni del prossimo anno. Uno degli aspetti su cui l'amministrazione Trump ha avuto maggiore successo è stato quello di smascherare i veri nemici dell'America: la classe dirigente canadese, la classe dirigente europea e la classe dirigente inglese. Uno degli aspetti su cui ha avuto minore successo è stato il mancato arresto eclatante di qualche pezzo grosso all'interno dello Stato profondo americano.

Questa è una guerra e non tutte le battaglie possono essere vinte; a volte bisogna anche tirarsi un attimo indietro e far fare la mossa successiva all'avversario. La guerra verrà vinta una volta che la cricca di Davos sarà mandata in bancarotta e verrà fortemente ridimensionato il potere che dispone, e quest'ultimo dipende da come può utilizzare a suo vantaggio l'arbitraggio tra valute. Non è un caso che il Forex sia il mercato più grande di tutti, data la leva presente, e che sia intermediato in gran parte a Londra. L'amministrazione Trump, finora, non ha fatto altro che smascherare il modo in cui la cricca di Davos acquista consensi nel sottobosco degli stati, nelle incrostazioni burocratiche che alimenta, ed è così che può agire liberamente. Ecco perché in politica circolano le stesse facce da anni e la gente si chiede chi mai li possa votare. Una volta, però, che si ferma il flusso di denaro che può essere sequestrato da agenti malevoli e si prosciugano quei bacini attraverso i quali si indirizzavano artificialmente le linee di politica di una nazione, Stati Uniti in particolare, il risultato è quanto di più auspicabile ci si possa aspettare.

Se questa gente non verrà fermata, qui e ora, saranno guai per tutti. E i mercati dei capitali sono la chiave.

CONCLUSIONE

Non esiste il mondo perfetto. La teoria è un'indicazione della giusta direzione, ma poi c'è l'azione umana. Questo passaggio pare sfuggire a molti. Questo per dire che ultimamente leggo molti analisti e commentatori che rimangono fermi sulla teoria senza voler affrontare la realtà pratica delle cose. Allora facciamo così, andiamo fino in fondo alla teoria.

I dazi, nessuno può negarlo, sono tasse e deviano artificialmente il corso dei mercati. Ora, torniamo all'epoca degli economisti che per primi hanno messo giù le tesi riguardo questo argomento (Smith, Ricardo). In un gold standard se l'oro è trattato $40 più in alto a Pechino rispetto a Londra, gli arbitraggisti si muoveranno per comprare oro in quest'ultima città e spedirlo in Cina. In questo modo l'ampiezza dell'arbitraggio che s'è venuto a creare man mano si riduce fino a scomparire. Se suddetti analisti credono nei mercati e nel loro dinamismo non possono negare questo fenomeno. Il libero mercato fa una cosa meglio di tutti gli altri sistemi: permette di trarre vantaggio dagli arbitraggi. Volete un esempio più recente: l'evoluzione di Bitcoin. Quando iniziarono a spuntare fuori i primi exchange, si vennero a creare anche grandi possibilità di arbitraggio tra di essi data la differenza di prezzo che proponevano. È la chiusura degli arbitraggi tra di essi, attraverso gli “speculatori”, che ha aiutato a stabilizzarne il prezzo nel tempo.

Quando esiste un arbitraggio che “si rifiuta” di chiudersi, e che dovrebbe chiudersi, c'è qualcosa che impedisce che accada. Inutile dire che bisogna liberarsene di quel qualcosa. Il surplus commerciale subito dagli USA a vantaggio delle grandi economie del primo mondo (Cina, Europa, Inghilterra) s'è rivelato un arbitraggio che “s'è rifiutato” di chiudersi. Cosa gli impediva di chiudersi: normative, multe mascherate da dazi, costo del lavoro, costo degli input, ecc. Come si cerca di risolvere tutte queste cose in un colpo solo? Imponendo reciprocità nei trattamenti commerciali. È il miglior modo per affrontare la cose? Non lo so. Ma questa è la “Power policy” e bisogna farsene una ragione perché il mondo è mutato sin dal 2022.

Infatti la cosa meno compresa di tutte, e che fino al 2022 ho faticato anche io a comprendere, è il sistema degli eurodollari: il principale ostacolo alla chiusura del sopraccitato arbitraggio. Ecco perché il mio ultimo libro, Il Grande Default, verte su questo tema e grazie a questo esercizio diventa più facile mettere insieme tutti i puntini. Avendolo scritto io questo libro, è ovvio che cerchi di pubblicizzarlo quanto più possibile. Ma al di là di ciò rappresenta un manuale che permette di diradare quella nebbia di inconsapevolezza che ancora aleggia tra i commentatori comuni. Lasciamo stare la stampa. Per quanto si possa “attaccare” l'amministrazione Trump per certe linee di politica, qui non si tratta di “ciò che si vede”. Già dal mio secondo manoscritto pubblicato, La fine delle fallacie economiche, vi ho insegnato a vedere “ciò che non si vede”. Infatti si tratta del consorzio delle banche della East coast che infine hanno individuato la causa principale del continuo sprofondare degli USA in crisi. Uno dei punti cardine che leggerete nel libro è la differenza tra LIBOR (tasso a cui veniva determinato il prezzo del dollaro offshore secondo il “giudizio” della City di Londra) e il SOFR (tasso a cui viene determinato il prezzo del dollaro in base a fattori interni). È un caso secondo voi che i dazi sono entrati in vigore all'inizio di aprile e l'ultimo contratto intermediato dal LIBOR è scaduto il 30 marzo? La portata della guerra commerciale è più ampia di quanto leggete sulla stampa.

Riuscire a manipolare la domanda di dollari all'estero rappresentava uno strumento di potere non indifferente per la City. Ora invece ciò che accade negli USA rimane negli USA: non sono più le banche europee e inglesi a impostare il prezzo del dollaro all'estero, ma quelle statunitensi e la FED. Inutile dire che la City e Bruxelles sono i perdenti forti, dato che non possono più accedere, come prima, a un dollaro più economico. Questo a sua volta significa che, internamente, il dollaro potrà essere indebolito, mentre all'estero potrà essere lasciato salire per fungere da meccanismo di “persuasione” (e a tal proposito entrano in gioco i dazi). Sobrietà finanziaria, ponderazione reale del rischio e correzioni violente se necessario... ma soprattutto non più gli USA a salvaguardare tutte le operazioni finanziarie del mondo e pagarne il prezzo (in termini di ricchezza reale risucchiata all'estero) in caso di fallimento.

È questo il cambiamento gigantesco nella “globalizzazione” che sta avvenendo nel sottobosco e non notato; è questo “mondo” che gli USA stanno abbandonando e riformando. L'interconnessione finanziaria degli anni pre-2022 era una certezza di importare le debolezze economiche altrui e “pagare di tasca propria” per risolverle. Sono queste connessioni che vengono tagliate, come sta accadendo nel mercato dell'oro ad esempio: il metallo giallo estratto negli USA rimane lì e non viene più spedito in Svizzera o a Londra attraverso il COMEX.

Dopo la contrazione dell'offerta di eurodollari da parte della FED con l'avvio del SOFR, per tutte quelle nazioni che usavano tale mercato come volano attraverso il quale accedere a dollari facili e nascondere sotto il tappeto (degli USA però) i loro problemi, era fondamentale mantenere un avanzo commerciale nei confronti degli USA. Questo permetteva ai dollari di fluire all'estero attraverso di esso, impedendo agli arbitraggisti di chiudere questo divario (es. imposizioni commerciali non reciproche europee, armonizzazione fiscale col resto del mondo, ecc.). Era vero per l'Europa ed è ancor più vero per il Canada.

A livello teorico non c'è niente di male nell'emettere titoli denominati in dollari (all'estero), dopo tutto il biglietto verde è l'asset più affidabile e liquido rispetto a tutti gli altri della sua categoria. Il problema è quando si “strumentalizza” un asset e l'eurodollaro è uno di quelli più strumentalizzati. Affinché questo pasto gratis possa continuare a fluire nella City di Londra e a Bruxelles è vitale che gli USA continuino ad avere un deficit commerciale col resto del mondo, in modo che quest'ultimo possa essere usato per avere il flusso necessario di dollari con cui pagare le cedole dei titoli denominati in dollari. Il Canada diventa un proxy attraverso il quale si instaura un carry trade tra il dollaro canadese e quello statunitense (si prende in prestito nel primo a tassi inferiori e si investe nel secondo che ha rendimenti superiori).

Il Canada in questo frangente sta diventando esso stesso un “sistema bancario ombra” offrendo i propri bilanci tramite i quali la cricca di Davos possa continuare a ricevere finanziamenti a basso costo.

Il rally recente dell'euro e la vendita di T-bond americani da parte degli europei (in modo da creare un avvallamento tra il front-end della curva e il back-end e permettere alla stampa di gridare “recessione negli USA!”) è uno step in questo percorso, in questa guerra. La pistola fumante nell'attesa dei dati TIC? I tassi europei sono scesi, l'euro è salito e lo yuan è sceso. L'Eurozona (esclusa la Svizzera) + Regno Unito controllano $3.400 miliardi in titoli sovrani americani; la Cina circa $750 miliardi. L'obiettivo dei dazi è fondamentalmente uno: ridurre l'avanzo commerciale PERENNE da parte degli altri Paesi, Europa in particolar modo (ecco perché il 20% sui beni europei). Chi è davvero nei guai è l'UE. Perché? Perché in questa guerra c'è bisogno di collaterale e non ce l'ha. I capitali finanziari scorrono a ovest, negli USA; non c'è accesso a una fonte d'energia a basso costo. Senza questi elementi l'UE non può procedere alla liquidazione. L'unica cosa che può fare è appoggiarsi all'intermediazione dei cambi, uno dei più grandi mercati al mondo (e più sottoposto a leva), per cambiare la percezione di investitori e risparmiatori.

In questo contesto la Cina cercherà di scendere a patti con gli USA, Xi non è in una posizione politica confortevole. Non credo ci sarà un avvicinamento con l'UE, per quanto la classe dirigente europea possa volerlo. Se ciò fosse possibile i cinesi avrebbero aperto e aprirebbero il proprio mercato dei capitali. Ricordate, i mercati dei capitali sono un buon “predittore” dei movimenti politici.

Supporta Francesco Simoncelli's Freedonia lasciando una “mancia” in satoshi di bitcoin scannerizzando il QR seguente.