Reading American books that purport to reveal some kind of profound truth, is like assessing a written project produced by an individual suffering from a mental disorder, who is attempting to describe the world as they see it or believe it to be. There is usually a solid core of apparent logic where all the constituent parts fit neatly together – supported on both sides by a structure comprised of deception, lies, anti-intellectualism, omissions and misinformation. This analogy fits-in with my description of bourgeois academia in general when it comes to the assessment of the USSR, Communist China, North Korea, Cuba and Marxist-Leninism in general – which is invariably comprised of one fact supported (either-side) by two lies! This book is no different and joins countless others in this genre. It should also be a sobering read for those leftists who think that the likes of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange have in anyway been motivated by ‘Socialist’ or ‘Marxist-Leninist’ principles – they most certainly have not! Their motivation is to empower the masses whilst still firmly living within the predatory capitalist system following the age old (Trotskyite) trope that ‘capitalism’ can be ‘reformed’ despite reality telling them a completely different story!
Yes – these books do contain interesting facts that are well researched and referenced. Nixon’s intention to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam because the most advanced ‘capitalist’ army in the world was having trouble beating a peasant army motivated by Maoist ideology whilst living in holes in the ground – is one example! The ogre of the right-wing Catholic Church working in the shadows and behind many significant key players in the US government is frightening – as is Barack Obama initiating fascistic policies behind the scenes whilst courting a media concocted imaged of ‘liberalism’ in public. The US ‘Patriot Act’ – a piece of openly fascistic legislation that allows the US government not only to monitor every US citizen’s communications – but to ‘store’ this data forever in case the content is ever needed to build (or ‘fabricate’) a case against an individual at any point in their lives. If this is not scary enough, evidence suggests that the EU governments allow this US policy to operate unhindered throughout Europe so that every European citizen is also being monitored by national intelligence agencies all acting in subordination to the US. This is exactly how the anti-Socialist ‘United States of Europe’ was intended to function through US foreign policy in Europe in the post-1945 era – when America had a free-hand throughout a reconstructing ‘capitalist’ Western Europe (perceiving itself as acting in opposition to the ‘threat’ of the USSR and the Eastern Europe Communist Bloc).
Whistle-blowers – or so the author tells us – act as important ‘correctives’ to the control of the flow of information which defines, controls and directs a society. The problem is that all of this assessment is beginning to sound very much like the ‘great re-start’ ideology prevalent within QAnon ideology. As people like Snowden and Assange are not ‘Socialists’ and are not acting out of any Revolutionary purpose – are they not falling into the camp of QAnon thinking? What this book does do is tell the stories of the whistle-blowers who came before Edward Snowden, people such as Daniel Ellsberg (whose disclosure of the Pentagon Papers contributed to the ending of the Vietnam War), and Thomas A Drake – a senior executive working with the National Security Agency (NSA) who went public about NSA intelligence failures and subsequent attempts to cover-up these failings. Drake was persecuted and prosecuted by the US government – accused of ‘spying’ in 2010 – but with all but a minor charge being dropped. The point is that Thomas Drake is a nasty piece of work and he also happens to be the ‘hero’ that inspired Edward Snowden. Thomas Drake was stationed in West Germany during the late 1970s – listening into East German radio and telephone conversations (in other words, as a US ‘spy’, Drake ‘violated’ the privacy of East German citizens as a form of ‘terrorism’ and with the intent of ‘bring-down’ the East German State)! .
He claims that he was so shocked and upset by how the ‘Stasi’ (East German Revolutionary Police) behaved that he was disgusted by the totalitarian and fascistic ‘Socialist’ State and did not want the US to become anything similar! This is the man Edward Snowden admires. The ‘Stasi’ had the task of de-nazifying East German and their job was to locate, arrest, try and imprison all those Germans who still supported the ideology of Adolf Hitler – a process any sane person would support. This book omits all this and just passively accepts Thomas Drake as being ‘correct’ in all his ‘fascistic’ assumptions. Meanwhile, the US Establishment, US allies, Amnesty International and numerous other ‘human rights’ organisations – all claimed that these imprisoned ‘Nazis’ were in fact ‘victims’ of Socialist oppression and called for their immediate release! Following the collapse of the USSR in 1991, thousands of these individuals were released to a great fanfare – and immediately conspired to reform various far-right and neo-Nazi organisations! The West viewed this as their ‘democratic right’ and people like Drake and Snowden applauded this development! The shocking thing this book reveals is not what the author intends (that our bourgeois governments ‘lie’ to us) – but rather the connection between Edward Snowden and right-wing supporters of fascism such as Thomas Drake! Like the rhetoric that permeated the Trump Administration – fascism in this instance is associated in America with ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ (two defining components of bourgeois whistle-blowing) – hence the mental illness I mentioned at the start of this article!
THE SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 