Emmanuel Todd, historian, demographer, anthropologist, sociologist and political analyst, is a part of a dying breed: one of many only a few remaining exponents of old fashioned French intelligentzia – a inheritor to these like Braudel, Sartre, Deleuze and Foucault who dazzled successive younger Chilly Warfare generations from the West all the way down to the East.
The primary nugget regarding his newest ebook, La Défaite de L’Occident (“The Defeat of the West”) is the minor miracle of truly being revealed final week in France, proper throughout the NATO sphere: a hand grenade of a ebook, by an impartial thinker, primarily based on information and verified information, blowing up the entire Russophobia edifice erected across the “aggression” by “Tsar” Putin.
At the very least some sectors of strictly oligarch-controlled company media in France merely couldn’t ignore Todd this time round for a number of causes. Most of all as a result of he was the primary Western mental, already in 1976, to have predicted the autumn of the USSR in his ebook La Chute Finale, along with his analysis primarily based on Soviet toddler mortality charges.
One other key purpose was his 2002 ebook Apres L’Empire, a form of preview of the Empire’s Decline and Fall revealed a couple of months earlier than Shock & Awe in Iraq.
Now Todd, in what he has outlined as his final ebook (“I closed the circle”) permits himself to go for broke and meticulously depict the defeat not solely of the US however of the West as an entire – along with his analysis focusing in and across the battle in Ukraine.
Contemplating the poisonous NATOstan setting the place Russophobia and cancel tradition reign supreme, and each deviation is punishable, Todd has been very cautious to not body the present course of as a Russian victory in Ukraine (though that’s implied in every part he describes, starting from a number of indicators of social peace to the general stability of the “Putin system”, which is “a product of the historical past of Russia, and never the work of 1 man”).
Moderately, he focuses on the important thing causes which have led to the West’s downfall. Amongst them: the top of the nation-state; de-industrialization (which explains NATO’s deficit in producing weapons for Ukraine); the “diploma zero” of the West’s spiritual matrix, Protestantism; the sharp enhance of mortality charges within the US (a lot greater than in Russia), together with suicides and homicides; and the supremacy of an imperial nihilism expressed by the obsession with Perpetually Wars.
The Collapse of Protestantism
Todd methodically analyses, in sequence, Russia, Ukraine, Japanese Europe, Germany, Britain, Scandinavia and eventually The Empire. Let’s give attention to what could be the 12 Best Hits of his outstanding train.
1. At first of the Special Military Operation (SMO) in February 2022, the mixed GDP of Russia and Belarus was solely 3.3% of the mixed West (on this case the NATO sphere plus Japan and South Korea). Todd is amazed how these 3.3% able to producing extra weapons than the entire Western colossus not solely are profitable the battle however decreasing dominant notions of the “neoliberal political economic system” (GDP charges) to shambles.
2. The “ideological solitude” and “ideological narcissism” of the West – incapable of understanding, for example, how “the entire Muslim world appears to contemplate Russia as a associate fairly than an adversary”.
3. Todd eschews the notion of “Weberian states” – evoking a scrumptious compatibility of imaginative and prescient between Putin and US realpolitik practitioner John Mearsheimer. As a result of they’re pressured to outlive in an setting the place solely energy relations issues, states are actually performing as “Hobbesian brokers.” And that brings us to the Russian notion of a nation-state, centered on “sovereignty”: the capability of a state to independently outline its inside and exterior insurance policies, with no international interference in anyway.
4. The implosion, step-by-step, of WASP tradition, which led, “because the Sixties”, to “an empire disadvantaged of a middle and a venture, an basically navy organism managed by a gaggle with out tradition (within the anthropological sense)”. That is Todd defining the US neocons.
5. The US as a “post-imperial” entity: only a shell of navy equipment disadvantaged of an intelligence-driven tradition, resulting in “accentuated navy growth in a part of large contraction of its industrial base”. As Todd stresses, “trendy battle with out business is an oxymoron”.
6. The demographic lure: Todd reveals how Washington strategists “forgot {that a} state whose inhabitants enjoys a excessive academic and technological degree, even whether it is reducing, doesn’t lose its navy energy”. That’s precisely the case of Russia through the Putin years.
7. Right here we attain the crux of Todd’s argument: his post-Max Weber reinterpretation of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, revealed a bit over a century in the past, in 1904/1905: “If Protestantism was the matrix for the ascension of the West, its demise, in the present day, is the reason for the disintegration and defeat.”
Todd clearly defines how the 1688 English “Wonderful Revolution”, the 1776 American Declaration of Independence and the 1789 French Revolution have been the true pillars of the liberal West. Consequently, an expanded “West” just isn’t traditionally “liberal”, as a result of it additionally engineered “Italian fascism, German Nazism and Japanese militarism”.
In a nutshell, Todd reveals how Protestantism imposed common literacy on the populations it managed, “as a result of all trustworthy should immediately entry the Holy Scriptures. A literate inhabitants is able to financial and technological growth. The Protestant faith modeled, accidentally, a superior, environment friendly workforce.” And it’s on this sense that Germany was “on the coronary heart of Western growth”, even when the Industrial Revolution passed off in England.
Todd’s key formulation is undisputable: “The essential issue of the ascension of the West was Protestantism’s attachment to alphabetization.”
Furthermore Protestantism, Todd stresses, is twice on the coronary heart of the historical past of the West: by way of the tutorial and financial drive – with concern of damnation and the necessity to really feel chosen by God engendering a piece ethic and a powerful, collective morality – and by way of the concept that Males are unequal (keep in mind the White Man’s Burden).
The collapse of Protestantism couldn’t however destroy the work ethic to the good thing about mass greed: that’s, neoliberalism.
Transgenderism and the Cult of the Faux
8. Todd’s sharp critique of the spirit of 1968 would advantage an entire new ebook. He refers to “one of many nice illusions of the Sixties – between Anglo-American sexual revolution and Could 68 in France”; “to consider that the person could be higher if free of the collective”. That led to an inevitable debacle: “Now that we’re free, en masse, from metaphysical beliefs, foundational and derived, communist, socialist or nationalist, we reside the expertise of the void.” And that’s how we turned “a mess of mimetic midgets who don’t dare to assume by themselves – however reveal themselves as able to intolerance because the believers of historical occasions.”
9. Todd’s temporary evaluation of the deeper which means of transgenderism utterly shatters the Church of Woke – from New York to the EU sphere, and can provoke serial suits of rage. He reveals how transgenderism is “one of many flags of this nihilism that now defines the West, this drive to destroy, not simply issues and people however actuality.”
And there’s an added analytical bonus: “The transgender ideology says {that a} man might change into a girl, and a girl might change into a person. This can be a false affirmation, and on this sense, near the theoretical coronary heart of Western nihilism.” It will get worse, in the case of the geopolitical ramifications. Todd establishes a playful psychological and social connection between this cult of the faux and the Hegemon’s wobbly conduct in worldwide relations. Instance: the Iranian nuclear expensive clinched below Obama turning into a hardcore sanctions regime below Trump. Todd: “American international coverage is, in its personal method, gender fluid.”
10. Europe’s “assisted suicide”. Todd reminds us how Europe in the beginning was the Franco-German couple. Then after the 2007/2008 monetary disaster, that changed into “a patriarchic marriage, with Germany as a dominant partner not listening to his companion anymore”. The EU deserted any pretention of defending Europe’s pursuits – reducing itself off from vitality and commerce with its associate Russia and sanctioning itself. Todd identifies, appropriately, the Paris-Berlin axis changed by the London-Warsaw-Kiev axis: that was “the top of Europe as an autonomous geopolitical actor”. And that occurred solely 20 years after the joint opposition by France-Germany to the neocon battle on Iraq.
11. Todd appropriately defines NATO by plunging into “their unconscious”: “We be aware that that its navy, ideological and psychological mechanism doesn’t exist to guard Western Europe, however to manage it.”
12. In tandem with a number of analysts in Russia, China, Iran and amongst independents in Europe, Todd is bound that the US obsession – because the Nineties – to chop off Germany from Russia will result in failure: “Eventually, they may collaborate, as “their financial specializations outline them as complementary”. The defeat in Ukraine will open the trail, as a “gravitational drive” reciprocally seduces Germany and Russia.
Earlier than that, and in contrast to just about any Western “analyst” throughout the mainstream NATOstan sphere, Todd understands that Moscow is about to win in opposition to the entire of NATO, not merely Ukraine, cashing in on a window of alternative recognized by Putin in early 2022. Todd bets on a window of 5 years, that’s, an endgame by 2027. It’s enlightening to check with Protection Minister Shoigu, on the file, final yr: the SMO will finish by 2025.
Regardless of the deadline, inbuilt in all it is a complete Russia victory – with the winner dictating all phrases. No negotiations, no ceasefire, no frozen battle – because the Hegemon is now determined spinning.
Davos enacts The Triumph of the West
Todd’s ample advantage, so evident within the ebook, is to make use of historical past and anthropology to take Western society’s false consciousness to the divan. And that’s how, focusing for example within the examine of very particular household constructions in Europe, he manages to clarify actuality in a method that absolutely escapes the brainwashed collective West lots lingering below turbo-neoliberalism.
It goes with out saying that Todd’s reality-based ebook is not going to be successful among the many Davos elites. What’s taking place this week in Davos has been immensely enlightening. All the things is out within the open.
From all the same old suspects – the poisonous EU Medusa von der Leyen; NATO’s warmongering Stoltenberg; BlackRock, JP Morgan and diverse honchos shaking arms with their sweaty sweatshirt toy in Kiev – the “Triumph of the West” message is monolithic.
Warfare is Peace. Ukraine is not (italics mine) dropping and Russia just isn’t profitable. When you disagree with us – on something – you can be censored for “hate speech”. We would like the New World Order – no matter you lowly peasants assume – and we wish it now.
And if all else fails, a pre-fabricated Illness X is comin’ to get you.
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