Anarko-caudillo

 

Har inte orkat gräva i den historiska sanningen om "Shinmin", men att området skulle ha styrts enligt "frihetligt socialistiska principer" är ju inte särskilt troligt. Sjävklart var General (!) Kim något slags populistisk caudillo. Jag menar, vad skulle han annars ha varit? Detsamma gäller förresten Nestor Makhno i Ukraina. Observera också påståendet att den frihetliga socialismen bara varade i ett års tid.

Den andra länken går till min recension (på engelska) av en bok om den koreanska anarkismens historia, som förresten också nämndes på Hübinettes blogg för x antal år sedan. 

Om den koreanska anarkistiska autonoma zonen Shinmin

Anarchism in Korea: From revolution to reaction?

The deep roots of nationalism

 

Keith Woods is a Traditionalist who sometimes posts interesting content on his YouTube channel. In this long presentation (one hour and a half), he summarizes a book by Azar Gat, "Nations", which I unfortunately haven´t read. He also mentions a number of other writers. 

The main thesis is that nations aren´t a product of modernity or an "imaginary community", but have much deeper roots. This isn´t just a matter of definition, since Woods argues that something we moderns would recognize as nations existed already in pre-modern times. A nation is essentially an ethnic group with a strong sense of political community, cultural identity and historical continuity, often expressed in the form of statehood. Ethnic groups in their turn have even deeper roots, which go all the way back to our evolutionary beginnings. Woods seem to believe that sociobiology in its Wilsonian form (group selection) is largely true, and that this constitutes the ultimate origins of nations and nationalism.

The rest of the presentation is an extended argument against the idea that "nations" didn´t exist before circa 1800. Multi-ethnic empires did of course exist, but they were usually dominated by one specific ethnic group, around which the others tended to cluster. The Habsburg empire (which wasn´t) isn´t the historical norm. One common argument against pre-modern nationalism is that nationalist ideology emerged among the elites, and wasn´t diffused in the general population until modern times. The common people in pre-modern society had, at best, a purely local identity. 

Woods points out that this is simply hogwash: there were mechanisms for spreading elite national culture even in pre-literate societies in the form of myths and stories (the wandering Norse bards come to mind here). National and international religions also show that all loyalty or identity can´t have been local. (Once again, I´m reminded of a Scandinavian example: the medieval churches were often financed, controlled and defended by the peasants.) 

It´s also interesting to note that the Icelandic sagas, with their all-Icelandic ethnic or "national" identity, were written at an island marked by constant feuds and political instability, yet Icelandic-ness was taken for granted even in this chaotic situation (the opposite of what you except if all identities are local or clan-based). And why do common people react more negatively to foreign conquerors than to native elites? The theory that nationalism didn´t exist during, say, the Middle Ages seem to suggest that the peasantry should hate both elite groups equally. 

Woods then points to ancient Greece, Egypt and China as examples of early nationalism. The Egyptian case is interesting, since Egyptian identity remaind firmly in place even when the Pharaonic state had collapsed, suggesting that it wasn´t a purely elite phenomenon entirely dependent on a strong political structure. The common people in Egypt must have had a strong feeling of Egyptian-ness and counterposed it to Semitic, Nubian or Persian identities. 

Another obvious example are the Jews - ironically so, since secularized modern Jews often oppose nationalism, fearing its anti-Semitic potential. I agree that there are indeed strong "nationalist" sentiments in the "Old Testament" and the "Apocrypha", certainly from the time of Ezra onwards, including the Maccabean Wars and the forced conversion of the Idumeans. 

This is just some of the highlights. Recommended. Then, reflect over what this could mean for the near and far future of humankind...  

Med rakad skalle i Korea

Plottrigt, kort men ändå rätt intressant blogginlägg om den koreanska extremhögern c/o Tobias Hübinette. Observera att Sydkoreas nationalsång tydligen skrevs av en gammal fascist! Notera också det bloggaren skriver om Nordkorea. 

Den koreanska extremhögern

Anarchism in Korea: From revolution to reaction?

"Anarchism in Korea: Independence, Transnationalism, and the Question of National Development 1919-1984" is a book published in 2016, authored by Dongyoun Hwang. I can´t say I like it: English clearly isn´t the author´s first language, his "dialectical understanding" of anarchism is just pseudo-erudition, and he is extremely talkative. The book is really an attempted narrative history of Korean anarchism, made extra difficult by the paucity of sources, rather than an "analysis" in the usual sense of that term. And while the author emphasizes the "transnational" character of Korean anarchism, he gives relatively little background on the Chinese and Japanese anarchists the Korean ones were transnationally cooperating with. 

Apparently, the Korean anarchists are usually depicted as "nationalist" in Korean historiography, which explains why the author (as already indicated) rather emphasizes its cosmopolitan aspects. Anarchist and other socialist ideas entered East Asia through Tokyo and Shanghai, two international metropoles. On the anarchist side, the ideas of Kropotkin were particularly popular. Another staple was Esperanto! The Korean anarchists were largely active in Japan and China. A Korean diaspora existed in both nations. In Korea itself, anarchist activity was ruthlessly suppressed by the Japanese colonial police. Somewhat ironically, there was less repression in Japan itself (until that nation became a militarist dictatorship). One group of Korean anarchists was active at the universities in Tokyo, another among Korean immigrant workers in Osaka. The author´s description of the Osaka group in particular is contradictory: was it anti-nationalist, nationalist, syndicalist, individualist, or what? 

In China, most Korean anarchists do strike me as nationalist. At the very least, most of them were closer to the KMT and the left-KMT than to the Communist Party. That is, they cooperated with the Chinese nationalists. During the 1930´s, in response to Japan´s invasion of China, the China-based Korean anarchists adopted a kind of popular front policy, calling for broadest possible anti-Japanese unity between the KMT, CCP, and (later) the Allies in World War II. However, even now, they were closer to the KMT and the so-called Provisional Government of Korea, than to the Communists. 

After World War II, many Korean anarchists returned to Korea - or rather South Korea - and begun a period of more fundamental reorientation. The author points out that while the anarchists singled out Communism as an enemy to be thrown out of the Korean peninsula, they never explicitly opposed capitalism or imperialism in South Korea, instead attacking "feudal remnants". The anarchists formed several short-lived political parties, one of them claiming loyalty to the Socialist International! (That is, the international organization of mostly Social Democratic parties.) Another faction concentrated on rural reform. Dongyoun Hwang may be right that the Korean anarchist movement de facto supported South Korea against North Korea, or at the very least went into a kind of political hibernation, perhaps waiting for the ROK to become democratic. 

The trajectory of the Korean anarchists is interesting, and was traversed by anarchists in other parts of the world, too, not least the Swedish SAC (the independent syndicalist labor union) which abjured revolution after World War II, called for piecemeal reforms of democratic polities through producer cooperatives, and actually supported South Korea during the Korean War! (In 1976, SAC became more leftist again.) Had I been a Communist, I would have considerable fun with "Anarchism in Korea"! 

I´m not sure who could possibly be interested in this narrow topic, but as you know, the Ashtar Command reviews everything... 

Cold War triangle

The link above goes to a documentary on YouTube, titled "Mao´s Cold War: China vs the Soviet Union". It´s available at the Timeline channel. It tells the story of the "cold war within the cold war" between the two leading Communist powers, the Soviet Union and the People´s Republic of China. A large portion deals with the 1969 clashes between Soviet and Chinese troops at Zhenbao Island in the Ussuri River. Several Chinese veterans from that particular conflict are interviewed. The entire production has a strong Sino-centric tendency. 

According to the documentary, Stalin´s Soviet Union treated Mao´s China as a semi-colony, forcing the Chinese "comrades" to grant economic concessions in disputed border regions and use Soviet loans to buy Soviet weapons (while refusing to sell the most advanced weapon systems to the Chinese side). During the Korean War, Stalin used Mao´s army as a proxy (some would perhaps say cannon fodder). Still, China and the USSR remained allies. 

While Mao may have had a few problems with Joe Stalin, he liked Stalin´s successors even less. I don´t think Khrushchev´s "condemnation of the personality cult of Stalin", per se, had anything to do with it, however, as suggested by the documentary. Rather, it was the Khrushchev thaw and the attempts at "peaceful co-existence" with the United States (the latter is mentioned) that worried Mao. For instance, the anti-Soviet Hungarian uprising of 1956 would have been impossible under Stalin. Mao was quite simply worried that Khrushchev´s policy risked weakening the entire Communist bloc. Khrushchev, for his part, wasn´t amused and recalled all Soviet advisors from China, also stopping Soviet aid. 

When Khrushchev was unseated and replaced by Brezhnev, the Chinese made an abortive attempt to restore the Sino-Soviet relations. This failed due to strong suspicions that the Soviets wanted to saw discord within China and perhaps stage a coup to overthrow Mao. 

The documentary mentions both major disasters during Mao´s tenure: the Great Leap Forward (38 million dead from famine) and the Cultural Revolution. Interestingly, it almost entirely skips over Mao´s developing alliance with the United States, instead claiming that the Cold War bi-polar world became a "triangle". This shows the Sino-centricity of "Mao´s Cold War". In reality, of course, China allied itself with the United States bi-pole, but apparently that´s not politic to say in Beijing these days. 

As already mentioned, a large portion of "Mao´s Cold War" deals with the clashes at Zhenbao Island, when the cold war between the Communist giganti turned red hot. 

One thing that struck me was that the war veterans still sound very "Maoist". They quote Mao Zedong´s commonplaces as if it was the highest wisdom, and even deny that the famine under the Great Leap Forward was Mao´s responsibility. Instead, they blame the Soviets! "We had to pay back the loans to the Soviets even during the famine, so therefore we couldn´t eat apples, the debt was paid in apples" (presumably, apples are a staple food during famines in China). 

The documentary also claims that the Soviets wanted to literally nuke China during the border clashes, but were forced to back down due to Richard Nixon´s threat that America would look *very* negatively on such a move. In plain English, Nixon would retaliate by a nuclear strike on the Soviets. Is this true? Nixon was notoriously trigger-happy, so who knows? Of course, this means that Tricky Dick was positive towards improved relations with Red China already before Kissinger started playing table tennis... 

Relatively interesting. Worth watching. 

Russians who stare at goats

"Red Shambhala" is an entertaining, but also somewhat sloppy book about a couple of almost unknown episodes in Soviet history. Believe it or not, there was an "occult underground" in the early Soviet Union. With or without Communist aid, this underground reached out to Buddhists in Mongolia and Tibet, or to remaining shamans and other spiritual practitioners in the Soviet Union itself. Znamenski's work (published by Quest Books, the publishing house of the Theosophists) seems to be the first book-length treatment of this truly esoteric subject in English.

About half the book deals with Nicholas Roerich, who is relatively well known due to his career as a painter, his connections to U.S. vice president Henry Wallace, and Elizabeth Clare Prophet's book "The Lost Years of Jesus". Roerich's wife Helena founded a new religious movement, Agni Yoga, based on Theosophy and chanelled messages from "Master Morya". Znamenski fills in the blanks of the story. It turns out that Roerich was an adventurer and opportunist who worked closely with the Communist regimes in Moscow and Mongolia (despite himself being a White émigré) to further his plans to create a Central Asian Buddhist theocracy. The man clearly had delusions of grandeur, since he claimed to be a reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and wanted the future theocracy to be headed by none other than himself! Meanwhile, the Communists used Roerich (a resident of the United States) as a convenient cover to penetrate Tibet.

When Roerich's expedition failed to reach Lhasa, the disgruntled occultist broke with the Soviet Communists, instead throwing in his lot with the United States, Japan, Mongol anti-Communist rebels, and Russian White Guards in Manchuria! And then, maybe he didn't. Znamenski suspects that Roerich might have been a Soviet spy, perhaps an involuntary one (his brother was imprisoned in the Soviet Union). Roerich's second expedition, nominally sponsored by Wallace to gather drought-resistant herbs for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, took him to Japanese-occupied Manchuria and the Manchukuo-Mongolian border, giving the erratic cultist ample opportunity to spy on the Japanese on Soviet behalf. In the end, Roerich was one of the few Soviet-entangled occultists to get out of the web alive - he died a natural death in Indian retirement.

The fate of most other colourful characters mentioned in "Red Shambala" was almost invariably to be shot by Stalin. Alexander Barchenko was a self-taught occultist obsessed with finding the secret land of Shambhala-Agartha, where he believed he could find advanced scientific knowledge, including techniques for mind-reading. Barchenko's ideas caught the attention of a number of excentric individuals working for the Soviet secret police (sic), chief among them Gleb Bokii. Believe it or not, but Barchenko and Bokii came close to convincing the Soviet leadership to sponsor an expedition to Tibet to search for Shambhala. The plans were eventually quashed by Soviet foreign commissar Chicherin (but note that Roerich's equally occult expedition was approved). Barchenko and Bokii carried out parapsychological experiments in the very offices of the secret police, contacted Buddhist lamas living in Petrograd, dabbled in the Kalachakra Tantra, and did research on shamanism. They also created a spiritual commune, practicing nudism and group sex!

While most of this sounds nuts, like something from "The Men Who Stare At Goats", the Bolshevik-occult interface did take place in a rational political context. The Bolsheviks attempted to use Buddhist apocalyptic prophecies to further the Soviet cause in Siberia and Mongolia. According to these prophecies, the land of Shambhala was situated in the far north (i.e. in Russia). Its king would appear at the end of days to drive out the enemies of the Buddhists or the Mongols. Just as the Bolsheviks cultivated relations with Muslim reformers of varied quality, they decided to attract disgruntled Buddhist reformers, usually educated middle monks in the Lamaist hierarchy. The Mongolian capital of Urga was taken by Bolshevik troops carrying Buddhist flags! Mongolia had been liberated by "Red Shambhala", after a fashion. In Tibet, the Bolsheviks rather bargained on the *traditionalist* faction around Panchen Lama, since the modernizing faction had pro-British sympathies. This seemingly positive orientation to religion was coupled with an orientation to anti-colonial, nationalist movements and to "affirmative action" for non-Russian nationalities in the Soviet Union itself, all to smooth the path to an Asian revolution.

Thus, when Nicholas Roerich stepped onto the scene with a scheme to create a Communist-Buddhist theocracy in Central Asia based on appeals to Shambhala legends, he wasn't saying anything the Bolsheviks hadn't heard before. Nor was Barchenko completely out of step with his times when he contacted Tibetan Buddhist dignitaries in Petrograd, who hoped that the Communists would further their cause in the East. "Red Shambhala" also points out that the 1920's were a time of social experiments in Soviet Russia, making Barchenko's and Bokii's free love commune seem less extreme. To this can be added that many secret services have been conducting parapsychological research, and that bizarre cultish practices thrive in the dark... It wouldn't surprise me at all if Stalin ordered parapsychology to continue, even after the occultists mentioned in this book had all been shot!

While "Red Shambhala" is an interesting and captivating read, it's also frequently annoying due to Quest Book's sloppy editing. English clearly isn't Znamenski first language, and it shows. More curious is the author's equally sloppy approach to the Russian revolution - I assume that Znamenski is a Russian national? For instance, he wrongly claims that Lenin abolished money and markets immidiately after the October revolution, confuses the Petrograd soviet with its Military Revolutionary Committee, and seems oblivious to the fact that Chicherin's homosexuality was well known even internationally. This might not be a big deal to Theosophists perennially uninterested in the Russian revolution, but it *is* irritating to us history buffs.

Due to this bad editing, I will give "Red Shambhala" four stars rather than five. That being said, I nevertheless recommend this study of Russians who stare at goats to both spiritual seekers and, yes, history buffs...