You know and I know that there are certain things you are not allowed to say in these United States. Especially about World War II and the Holocaust. Because the Narrative.
Right now, I’d say we are trending towards a Narrative that you are not allowed to doubt the genocide in Gaza. Why? Because genocide.
Back in March 2024, Willis Eschenbach, a noted “climate denier,” came up with an analysis of “genocide.” The word was invented by Rafael Lemkin in 1944, he says, when “Lemkin was employed by the US War Department to write a book on Nazi atrocities called Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.”
Lemkin went on to fight tirelessly to get the word enshrined in international law. His efforts finally bore fruit in the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 9 December 1948.
According to Eschenbach, the definition of genocide is “so vague as to be totally meaningless.” But when you think about it, a vague definition is a good thing from the point of view of the powerful, because it makes it easier to declare that anyone that disagrees with you is a baddie and ought to be banned from social media. Because the Narrative.
When you are the ruling class, you really don’t want to make it easy for the peasants to challenge your Narrative. Anthropologists can tell us why. If a tribe is threatened by the tribe next door, then once the decision has been made to send the men to defend the border there is no room for debate until after the glorious victory.
In our modern era we have Narratives on Racism and Genocide defined vaguely enough to make it hard for the peasants to disagree with their betters.
For instance, I was waiting outside of a retirement community for senior retired university faculty in downtown Seattle on Friday as the residents were returning from their Friday noon protest, happily bearing signs advertising “Black Lives Matter” and “My Democracy.” You can see the point of these signs. If you disagree with “Black Lives Matter” you are a racist, and if you disagree with “My Democracy” you are an authoritarian.
But ruling classes and their Narratives don’t last forever. I wonder when the day will dawn when we can safely challenge the Narrative on World War II. It is still Not Allowed to suggest that Churchill was pushing for war and encouraging the Poles to challenge Hitler. But Tucker Carlson and Darryl Cooper recently got sent to the principal’s office for challenging the WWII Narrative, yet lived to tell the tale.
Last week I read a piece by James Delingpole on his Substack about the World Wars Narrative. He’s been reading Two World Wars and Hitler: Who Was Responsible? by Jim Macgregor and John O’Dowd. The book argues that the World Wars were set up by a cabal:
No, they weren’t started by nasty Germans with silly moustaches. They were orchestrated by a cabal of English and American financiers, aristocrats, businessmen and politicians who weren’t remotely bothered by the millions of lives that would be lost or the lasting damage that would be done.
Then Delingpole argues against the maxim “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
If only. After watching RFK Jr. get attacked by a cabal of senators last week, I think that politicians and their backers are both stupid and malicious and have little idea about even the medium-term consequences of their policies. The politicians want to stay in power and the cabaliers want access to power. In 1914 their idea of a war was the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The idea that World War I would cost an “estimated 15 to 22 million lives” would have been “inconceivable” to them.
Take George Soros. He was an amazing speculator, that made a fortune in the sterling crisis of 1992. He studied under Karl Popper, the political philosopher who wrote The Open Society and its Enemies, so he called his foundation the Open Society Foundation. And I understand he mucks around with our beloved Intelligence Community. But does he have an idea what he is doing with his Soros prosecutors? I doubt it, but he certainly knows how to be in with the In Crowd, and so does his son Alex.
Whatabout the other Narratives? The Sacred Negro Narrative looks a bit rocky, and so does the GirlBoss Narrative. And the Climate Change Narrative is bound to blow up sooner or later, because physics. J.K. Rowling seems to have nuked the Trans Narrative. Personally, I’d like to see the Expert Narrative blown up.
Maybe there will be a song about The Day The Narrative Died.
But then the question is: what kind of Narratives will the new rulers impose on us? You’d think they couldn’t be worse than our various Woke Narratives, but you never know.
Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill blogs at The Commoner Manifesto and runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.
Image: Public Domain