Anarcho-capitalism, come and meet reality

Salvadoran president Bukele
together with Donald Trump

Digital currency was once seen as a tool to create a libertarian utopia. It was supposed to decentralize the world, or whatever. 

Did it? Of course not. 

Palladium magazine has the story of how Bitcoin was taken over by centralized state actors such as Russia or the peculiar administration currently governing El Salvador. Even the Taliban, of all people, have discovered Bitcoin. 

The cryptocurrency is being used to monitor and control the financial transactions of individual citizens, while strengthening the power of nationalist regimes and/or circumvent international sanctions. 

The next logical step is for governments to issue their very own digital currencies, thereby getting complete control of the citizens´ buying and selling... 

Enjoy the ride, LOL-bertarians! 

How Bitcoin strengthens the state

Northites: From provocation to parody

I didn´t realize David North´s dwindling band of faithless fighters were *so* pro-Russian and pro-Chinese. The logic of their position seems to dictate "military support" to Russia and the PRC in the event of a shooting war with the US. Here, the Northites sound almost like the Spartacist League circa 1984, those peddlers of parody Soviet propaganda! 

"The vicious US media campaign against Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva"

Russian chimera

“The Gumilev Mystique: Biopolitics, Eurasianism, and the Construction of Community in Modern Russia” by Mark Bassin is a scholarly summary of the life, ideas and contemporary influence of Lev Gumilyov (1912-1992). Or perhaps attempted summary since Gumilyov´s ideas were incredibly complex, eclectic and contradictory. So is his influence on the political discourse in the ex-Soviet Union. First, an admission: I never even heard of Gumilyov (whose name is spelled Gumilev in the book) until a few months ago, yet he has been a towering intellectual presence in Russia since the 1970´s. Bassin´s book popped up in a search engine when I was looking for material by Nikolai Trubetzkoy in English…

Lev Gumilyov was the son of two prominent Russian poets, Nikolai Gumilyov and Anna Akhmatova. Nikolai was executed by the Communist Cheka in 1921, while Lev spent a total of 15 years in Stalin´s labor camps. He enjoyed a kind of quasi-approval during the post-Stalin decades, but it wasn´t until the advent of the perestroika and the collapse of the Communist regime that Gumilyov´s ideas became more widely known. Gumilyov is regarded as a historian and ethnologist, but I think it´s more useful to see him as a philosopher in the broad Russian sense. Indeed, I get the impression that Gumilyov was a mercurial intellectual and “mad genius” with the usual persecution complex and delusions of grandeur. Somehow, I consider this particular type of person to be very Russian!

Gumilyov´s ideas are difficult to describe in a short review. They are a bewildering blend of vitalism, biologism, geographic determinism, anti-Semitism, anti-Communism, anti-modernism and Russian nationalism, but also Turkophilia and Mongolophilia. I agree with Bassin that the various strands don´t always combine very well. There are certain similarities to the ideas developed by Spengler and Toynbee, but the differences are more striking. Gumilyov had an essentialist view of ethnic groups, viewing them as more or less self-contained units of a biological and psychological character. In some writings, he described the origins of an ethnos in geographical and ecological terms. Each ethnos was molded by its natural living environment and could even be seen as part of nature itself (note the strong biologism). In other writings he claimed that the “ethnies” (plural of ethnos) were products of cosmic radiation (!). Somehow, this solar radiation gives rise to new ethnies by mutations affecting the psychological make-up of certain persons. These founding fathers are also given an energy impetus (which thus comes at least indirectly from the sun), giving rise to what Gumilyov called “passionarnost” – a central term in his writings. My interpretation is that passionarnost is really the élan vital and that its bearers roughly correspond to the “creative minority” in Toynbee´s writings. A new ethnos is *not* dependent on its living environment, to the contrary, it rebels against it, perhaps by moving out to new territories. Each ethnos follows a life cycle of roughly 1,500 years during which it rises, reaches maturity and then loses the energetic impetus due to entropy. Eventually the ethnos disappears or becomes a relict population. (Curiously, the Russians – uniquely – have experienced two ethnic cycles, rather than just one.) Gumilyov believed that his ideas were scientific in the strict sense of that term, but critics see them as sheer fantasy. Another central concept for Gumilyov is “chimera”. Apparently, there is one way in which an ethnos could artificially prolong its existence almost indefinitely: by turning into a parasite on other ethnies, sucking their solar energy. This kind of parasitical ethnos is what Gumilyov called a chimera. Unsurprisingly for a Russian nationalist, his prime example of such was the Jewish people…

More surprising are Gumilyov´s pro-Turkic and pro-Mongol positions. Bassin never really explains where they come from, except that some Russians romanticized the life and culture of the steppe nomads, both that of ancient peoples such as the Scythians and that of later Tatars and Mongols. Gumilyov´s parents were influenced by this romanticism in their poetry, and his mother´s last name Akhmatova is really a pseudonym – she claimed to be a literal descendant of Khan Ahmed (Akhmat) of the Golden Horde! Gumilyov claimed that the Tatar yoke never existed, calling it a “black legend”. Russians and Mongols/Tatars cooperated peacefully. The battle of Kulikovo in 1380, when Prince Dmitri of Moscow defeated the Horde, wasn´t a Russian liberation struggle against the evil Tatars, but rather a joint Russian-Tatar effort to repulse a dissident Tatar faction backed by Lithuania (a hostile “Western” nation). Today, Gumilyov´s legacy is cherished in Kazakhstan, Tatarstan and Sakha (Yakutia). A university in Kazakhstan´s capital Astana is named after Gumilyov and a monument in Tatarstan´s capital Kazan – the monument was dedicated in the presence of Vladimir Putin himself – shows a statue of the man.

One thing that immediately struck me when reading “The Gumilev Mystique” is the strongly anachronistic character of Gumilyov´s writings. Thus, he claims that Khazaria and the Vikings cooperated in a genocidal war against Kievan Rus. Translation: Jews and Nazis are equally dangerous to modern Russia. Another possible translation: Bolsheviks and Nazis! Gumilyov believed that some ethnies were closer than others. They could be grouped into “super-ethnies” based on “complementarity” (another essentialist psychological term). This is strikingly similar to the Soviet concept of “the brotherhood of nations”. Gumilyov also made a distinction between ethnos, which is natural, and society, which is a social construct by man. This notion also has an affinity with the Soviet idea that the Communist state, of course, transcends all ethnic identities. It may seem strange that a man who spent most of his youth in Soviet labor camps would nevertheless have certain similarities to the regime which put him away, but the relation between Russian nationalism and Communism is a complex issue in itself. Gumilyov was no liberal democrat, usually avoided the pro-Western dissidents, supported the Soviet Cold War confrontation with the West, and opposed Gorbachev´s perestroika. He enjoyed a certain amount of support in the party hierarchy from the Brezhnev years onwards.

Due to their highly eclectic nature, Gumilyov´s ideas have inspired a wide range of people, from more strictly scholarly types interested in sociobiology or geography to decidedly less scholarly people such as Eurasianist philosopher Alexander Dugin, often cast in the role of Putin´s Rasputin (at least by the Western media). Russian ethno-nationalists, Russian imperial or state “nationalists”, Kazakh pro-Russian Eurasianists and Kazakh anti-Russian ethno-nationalists have all claimed Gumilyov´s legacy. Ziuganov, Zhirinovsky and Putin himself have name-dropped him on many occasions. The Green movement in the Soviet Union was inspired by Gumilyov, but also by Russian nationalism. At least two of his “scientific” terms have become virtual household words in Russia: passionarnost and chimera. The national question is just as vexing in Putin´s Russia as it was in Communist or Czarist ditto. Should loyalty primarily be to the state or to the Russian ethnos? And should the state be seen as multi-ethnic, non-ethnic or specifically Russian? Similar problems exist in Kazakhstan, where Russians form a substantial minority and the total number of nationalities is about 150. Should Kazakhstan be “Kazakh” or “Kazakhstani”? One possible interpretation of Gumilyov´s ideas is that Russians shouldn´t be “primus inter pares” in Russia or the Russosphere, rather this role should belong to a coalition of Russians and various Central Asian peoples! Bassin also mentions that some admirers of Gumilyov, including outright neo-Nazis, have drawn the conclusion that Jews could form a natural ethnos by moving to Israel, since the Israeli nation isn´t a chimera. Is this where the bizarre blend of neo-Nazism and Zionism of the National Bolshevik Party comes from?

My overall impression after reading “The Gumilev Mystique” is that Gumilyov, in his own kind of way, actually was right. A discourse of his type is surely impossible in Western nations, or even in “Eastern” Europe. What other European nation has spawned an intelligentsia seriously debating whether or not their historical legacy is somehow identical to or intertwined with that of Genghis Khan? Maybe the Russian ethnos really is fundamentally different. If that´s a good thing, is perhaps an entirely different question.

From heresy to fascism: the sad story of the Karaites

"Karaites and Dejudaization" is a scholarly overview of the history of the Karaites, written by a writer based in Sweden. Unfortunately, all quotations from German, French and Latin sources are untranslated, making the book somewhat hard to read for people who lack a traditional scholarly education (the few Swedish quotes are translated, though). As behoves an "Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis", the work is also preoccupied with intramural polemics. But then, almost anything pertaining to the Karaites is bound to be controversial!

The Karaites or Karaite Jews are a dissident movement within Judaism, with obscure origins. It seems to have emerged in the Middle East at some point before the 8th century. Apparently, some of the Massoretes were Karaites. The Karaites rejected the Oral Law and the Talmud, upholding the Tanakh ("Old Testament") as the sole authority. For this reason, their movement was branded heretical by the Rabbinical Jews. Since Judaism has a dual character (both religion and ethnicity), this rejection of Karaism effectively isolated them from the rest of the Jewish community.

Freund describes how the Karaites became progressively more "dejudaized". The dejudaization was most pronounced among the Crimean Karaites and their brethren in other parts of Eastern Europe. In order to escape both Rabbinic discrimination and Gentile anti-Semitism, the branch of Karaism residing in Europe began to deny its Jewish roots. Since Christian anti-Semites loathed the Talmud, the Karaites often emphasized that they, too, rejected it. Their emphasis on the Hebrew Bible could be squared with Lutheran ideas about "sola scriptura", thus painting the Karaites as some kind of Jewish Protestants. Freund points out that Karaites in Eastern Europe didn't practice usury, although it's not clear whether this was a clever tactic or an effect of the leniency shown to the dissidents by the Christian rulers.

The Karaites also claimed to have different ethnic origins than the Rabbinical Jews. Since the Crimean Karaites spoke a language similar to Tatar, it was easy to claim that they *were* Tatars. Indeed, the relations between the Muslim Tatars and the Karaites in the Crimea have always been amicable. Armenians or Khazars were two other choices for an alternative ethnic origin. The most original proposal was that the Karaites were one of the lost tribes of Israel, had emigrated to the Crimea already in Biblical times, and hence weren't present in the Holy Land when the Rabbinical Jews killed Jesus! The East European Karaite dejudaization wasn't simply a ruse to fool the Gentiles. Freund mentions that this branch of Karaism was partially dejudaized even internally, for instance by adapting Catholic psalms for use in their synagogue liturgy. However, since Freund's book isn't a cultural study, he says very little about these developments. Instead, the author spends considerable time polemicizing against East European Karaite or pro-Karaite scholars. Freund believes that the East European Karaites were of Hebrew origins, and adopted a Turkic language due to their cultural environment. As evidence, he points out that the Rabbinical Jews in the Crimea (the Krimchaks) spoke the same Turkic language as their Karaite neighbours - yet, nobody denies *their* Hebrew roots. (Of course, the argument works both ways. One could equally well argue that both Crimean Karaites and Krimchaks were Tatars who had adopted the Jewish religion.)

The conflict between Rabbinical Jews and "heretical" Karaites turned into tragedy during World War II, when the Nazis (for various tactical reasons) decided to uphold the Karaite-Jewish distinction. One ideological argument "in favour" of the Karaites was precisely their non-Hebrew origins. They weren't "racially" Jewish or even Semites. A more pragmatic argument was the need for a Nazi-Turkish alliance in the East, which prompted some Nazis to favour a quasi-independent "Turkish" (Tatar) state in the Crimea. There was also a pragmatic need to recruit collaborators in the occupied territories. Tatars and other Muslim peoples were a natural choice for such recruitment efforts, since they were anti-Russian and anti-Communist. The Crimean Karaites, with their good relations to the Muslim Tatars, were caught up in this vortex. They started collaborating with the Nazis, some even serving in the Waffen-SS! Thus, the Karaites - rejected by the Rabbinical authorities - ended up as the only Jewish group embraced by the Third Reich...

Meanwhile, another branch of the Karaite community had firmly established itself in the Muslim Arab world. This group is known as Oriental Karaites. Most of them lived in Egypt. Their political sympathies are unclear, but they came under suspicion after the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948. The Oriental Karaites were gradually expelled from Egypt, the expulsions culminating after the Suez crisis in 1956. Most of them did go to Israel, where the secular authorities granted them asylum under the Law of Return. However, the Rabbinical authorities (of course) refused to recognize the Karaites as Jews in good standing. The Oriental Karaites thus found themselves in a curious legal grey zone, somewhat similar to that of Reform Jews, with the usual problems in cases of divorce, purported illegitimacy, etc.

I'm not sure how to rate "Karaites and Dejudaization". It's probably not a very good introduction to the Karaite problem, due to its super-scholarly character. On the other hand, I got the impression from Freund's book that virtually everything concerning this dissident group is controversial, so anyone reading a seemingly less controversialist book on the matter might do well to complement it with this study! Another problem with Freund's study is that the author has a tendency to talk about pretty much everything, from the Khazars to the Ultra-Orthodox in modern Israel. Finally, I have to commend the author for his sense of humour. At one point, he exclaims: "Except for examiners, who are paid for it, no one needs to read Ph.D. dissertations"!

In the end, I give "Karaites and Dejudaization" three stars.

Uphold Sultan-Galiev and the People's Democratic Dictatorship of Oppressed Proletarian Nations (PDDOPN)

A review of the book "Muslim National Communism in the Soviet Union: A Revolutionary Strategy for the Colonial World" by Alexandre Bennigsen and S Enders Wimbush.

"Muslim National Communism in the Soviet Union" is a book about Muslim Communist leaders who found themselves in opposition to Lenin and Stalin. Foremost of those was Mir-Said Sultan Galiev, a Tartar Communist who was arrested several times by the Soviet authorities and eventually purged by Stalin.

Sultan Galiev and others of his persuasion argued for a more nationalist and Islamic version of Bolshevism and Communism. Rather than class struggle, they emphasized the struggle of "proletarian nations" against the Western nations. They also believed that the working classes of the Western world were non-revolutionary, having been bought off by capitalism and imperialism. Instead, the revolution would break out in Asia, among oppressed nations. To that end, the Muslim Communists called for a permanent alliance with the national bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations. They also spun theories according to which "communism" was actually a Muslim or Tartar concept, even going so far as to claim that Genghis Khan and Tamberlane were communists.

Sultan Galiev and his followers attempted to establish an independent and exclusively Muslim Communist party or organization, influence the Muslim divisions of the Red Army, and create a "Republic of Turan", which would encompass all of Central Asia and the Caucasus. Although secularists and atheists, their philosophy nevertheless had similarities with pan-Islamism. In effect, they wanted to set up a kind of reformed Islamic state. Pan-Turkism is another obvious influence. Sultan Galiev also called for a Colonial International, presumably as a counterweight to the Communist International.

Naturally, the course advocated by Sultan Galiev created friction and later outright conflicts with the Bolshevik leadership in Moscow, especially Stalin, who was people's commissar for nationalities (and even made himself leader of the Muslim section of the Communist Party). Sultan Galiev was arrested already in 1923 and expelled from the Communist Party, ironically at the same time that the party adopted its politics of "korenizatsiia", which gave more latitude to non-Russian nationalities (but, of course, within the strict confines of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party). In this context, it should be noted that Sultan Galiev had the pan-Muslim idea that all Muslims should be counted as a single nationality, while the Communist leadership divided the Muslim areas of the Soviet Union into many different soviet republics and regions, based on their real nationalities.

The authors claim that the Muslim Communists on some issues were "to the left" of an increasingly moderate Soviet leadership. Sultan Galiev and his collaborators supported the Red Army intervention in Persia and the creation of a Soviet satellite state, the republic of Ghilan. They also wanted to foment a revolution in Turkey. The Soviet leadership eventually decided on a more moderate line, supporting Kemal Atatürk and Reza Shah, since they were at least anti-British. The Iranian revolutionaries at Ghilan and elsewhere in Persia were abandoned as the Red Army withdrew its troops. It's interesting to note that the short-lived Ghilan "soviet" republic was an alliance between Communists and religious nationalists.

One problem with this book is that some of the sources used by the authors are Stalinist, and accuse Sultan Galiev and his associates of conspiring against the Soviet authorities, a claim the authors take at face value. They consider it a good thing that the Muslim Communists formed clandestine organizations to fight Stalin. Maybe so, but how do we know that the accusations are genuine?

The last chapter of "Muslim National Communism in the Soviet Union" compares Sultan Galiev's ideas to those of Mao, Mariategui, Ben Bella, Boumedienne and even Gaddafi. Bennigsen claims that *he* is responsible for Ben Bella's explicit interest in Sultan Galiev. Apparently, Ben Bella read an earlier work by Bennigsen while imprisoned by the French.

Finally, the book contains appendices, including translations of some key texts by Sultan Galiev and other Muslim Communists.

Since there don't seem to be any other books on this subject in English, "Muslim National Communism" does fill a gap.

And yes, the title of my review is a joke... ;-)