To be is to be contingent: nothing of which it can be said that "it is" can be alone and independent. But being is a member of paticca-samuppada as arising which contains ignorance. Being is only invertible by ignorance.

Destruction of ignorance destroys the illusion of being. When ignorance is no more, than consciousness no longer can attribute being (pahoti) at all. But that is not all for when consciousness is predicated of one who has no ignorance than it is no more indicatable (as it was indicated in M Sutta 22)

Nanamoli Thera
Showing posts with label Greg Johnson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Greg Johnson. Show all posts

Thursday, March 19, 2026

Birth of a Nation: H. A. Covington’s Northwest Quartet

 

This review was written before the appearance of the fifth Northwest novel, H. A. Covington, Freedom’s Sons (Bloomington, Ind.: Authorhouse, 2013).


H. A. Covington


The Hill of the Ravens


Lincoln, Nebr.: 1stBooks Library, 2003


H. A. Covington


A Distant Thunder


Bloomington, Ind.: Authorhouse, 2004


H. A. Covington


A Mighty Fortress


Bloomington, Ind.: Authorhouse, 2005


H. A. Covington


The Brigade


Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2008


Every time a friend adds another weapon to his arsenal, he says, “I hope to God I never have to use this.” But he keeps buying them, because they may come in handy. I say the same thing every time I pick up a Harold Covington novel. But I keep reading them. Someday, they may come in handy.

The four novels under review, collectively called the Northwest Quartet, tell the story of the creation of a sovereign White Nationalist state, the Northwest American Republic, out of the territory of the United States sometime in the second or third decade of the twenty-first century—right around the corner, historically speaking. The NAR comprises the present US states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, plus parts of Northern California, Montana, and Wyoming. These states secede from the United States through a bitter five-year guerrilla war fought by the Northwest Volunteer Army. The NVA is an armed political party. Its ideology owes much to German National Socialism, but its tactics are modeled on the Irish Republican Army and the mafia, as well as Muslim organizations like Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the insurgents who have stymied the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These novels are war stories, and frankly that makes me squeamish. I know that war is an integral part of human history; that it decides the destiny of nations, races, and the world; that it forms a large part of the data of world history and the backdrop of world literature; that one cannot write about men without writing eventually about war. I know that war is an occasion for edifying extremes of human greatness and depravity. I know that one can also derive personal inspiration and useful information from war stories. But I just don’t find representations of hatred and violence particularly enjoyable. And the better the writer, the more seductive such representations become, resulting in a kind of sadistic pornography of violence.

Covington is a very good writer, and these novels are very entertaining. Yet they are not war porn. Covington shows war as horrible. It is mostly like a camping trip that drags on way too long: boring, sleepless, nerve-wracking, dirty, and grindingly uncomfortable and inconvenient. But occasionally it is livened up by moments of exhilaration and sheer terror. It is just that he thinks the alternative to war is even worse, for peace with the present system means the oppression, degradation, and eventual extinction of our race. Beyond that, these novels are not meant to be mere entertainment. They are meant to be self-fulfilling prophecies. The author wishes to inspire the creation of a real Northwest American Republic, and his novels are filled with a great deal of sound practical advice about how to do it.

These are not just ordinary war novels, moreover. They belong to a new genre: White Nationalist revolutionary fiction, a genre that was pretty much created by William Pierce’s The Turner Diaries, written under the pen name Andrew MacDonald. Fans of The Turner Diaries will find the Northwest Quartet to their liking. Furthermore, Covington’s vision of political change is much more practical and detailed than Pierce’s, and although Pierce was a graceful, precise, and often powerful writer, he was not a born storyteller, while Covington is.


Covington calls himself a “hack,” but this is false modesty. He is a highly talented novelist, capable of creating vivid three-dimensional characters. He is particularly deft at crafting characters from working-class and Southern backgrounds. Covington also spins complex, gripping plots that move toward deeply moving emotional climaxes. These novels are tear-jerkers. But expect to do a lot of laughing as well, because Covington is also a biting satirist with a wicked sense of humor. He is, moreover, a remarkably versatile stylist—Victor Hugo on one page, Quentin Tarantino on another. In A Distant Thunder, A Mighty Fortress, and The Brigade, Covington’s tales of sassy, wise-cracking teenage terrorists bring to mind Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with its virtuosic fusion of apocalyptic horror, intense dramatic conflict, and teenage frivolity. This is high praise in my book.But the Northwest Quartet is not merely a literary achievement, for these are novels of ideas, and they establish Harold Covington as the most significant American National Socialist thinker since George Lincoln Rockwell. Covington diagnoses what is wrong with America and the current racialist movement, proposes a political solution, and lays out a great deal of sound organizational, strategic, and tactical thinking on how to bring it to fruition. And by communicating these ideas in novels, rather than essays or treatises, Covington assures that they reach a broader popular audience at a deeper emotional and motivational level.


An Overview of the Quartet

The Hill of the Ravens (330 pp.) is the first novel to be published, but it is the last in terms of the internal chronology of the Quartet. It is set sometime after the middle of the twenty-first century, several decades after the establishment of the NAR—close enough to the war of independence for many of the veterans to still be living, yet far enough along in the history of the NAR for the regime to have taken shape and the first generation raised under it to be coming of age. Unlike the rest of the Quartet, The Hill of the Ravens is not a war novel per se, but a detective novel in which the war of Northwest independence is a constant backdrop. Since the novel is set in the future, there are also trappings of science fiction.

A Distant Thunder (364 pp.) is the second novel to be published. In terms of its internal chronology, the frame is set a little later than The Hill of the Ravens. An oral history of Shane Ryan, a very old veteran of the Northwest Volunteer Army, is being recorded for posterity. Shane’s recollections, however, focus on the period immediately before the war of independence and the war itself. The setting is western Washington State, south of Seattle. A Distant Thunder gets off to a rough start, because the literary conceit of an oral history allows Covington to indulge in stream-of-consciousness rambling, which quickly becomes tiresome. But if you stick it out through the first 50 or so pages, you will be glad, for once this book gets you hooked it is a magnificent read.A Mighty Fortress (364 pp.) is the third novel in order of publication. In terms of the internal chronology, it falls near the end of the war of independence. It is set in the Seattle area, and a large portion of the book is devoted to the Longview Conference in which the United States and the Northwest Volunteer Army negotiate an end to the war.

The final novel of the Quartet, The Brigade (735 pp.), is Covington’s finest literary achievement. The plot is gripping, the writing is superb, and the climaxes are shatteringly powerful. It is set in western Oregon, in and around Portland. Its story spans the whole war of independence.

A Mighty Fortress is the first novel of the Quartet that I read, and I lucked out, because I think it is the best place to start. Literarily, it is one of the best written and most moving. In these terms, it is second only to The Brigade, which is my favorite. But The Brigade is 735 pages long, versus 364 pages for A Mighty Fortress, and many potential readers will be intimidated by the page count. So begin with A Mighty Fortress, get hooked, then read The Brigade, followed by A Distant Thunder, and finally The Hill of the Ravens.


Conditions of Secession


White Nationalists agree on the desirability of a white homeland in North America. The question is how to achieve it. Why is the secession of a White Nationalist republic from the United States a better aim than a completely White Nationalist United States? Why should we be satisfied with a part rather than the whole? Secession is preferable because there simply are not enough of us, and too many of them, for us to save the whole country. We cannot hope to defeat the entire US government and 100 million non-whites. But it is more realistic to hope that a predominantly white area of the country could secede. Secession would not require the destruction of the US government, but only the surrender of some of its territory. (It happened with the Panama Canal Zone, and it could happen again.) The secession of a predominantly white area, moreover, would not entail the moral and logistical nightmare of expelling millions of non-whites.

The strategy of the NVA is to make a large area of the United States ungovernable. The NVA also attacks the regime in its power centers: New York, Washington, D.C., and Hollywood. At a certain point, the regime decides to cut its losses and pull out. As Covington frequently reminds us, in such campaigns it is the accountants who surrender, not the generals. Such wars are difficult undertakings, but they are far easier than full-fledged revolutions. A regime will fight harder for its very existence than for some territory, especially territory remote from the centers of power.

Covington’s choice of the Pacific Northwest is logical because it is one of the whitest parts of the country. The Northwest is relatively far from the power centers in New York and Washington, D.C. It is not surrounded by the rest of the United States but has a long Pacific coastline and borders on Canada and (in Covington’s scenario) Aztlan. The region is also large and resource-rich enough to aspire to relative economic self-sufficiency, a necessity for a state that would likely face the same sort of political and economic sanctions as Rhodesia and South Africa before they fell to black rule.

Of course no movement as small and sorry as today’s White Nationalism is going to wrest one square inch from the US government. Thus the movement must change as well. The first indispensable condition for creating a Northwest American Republic is the concentration of racially-conscious whites in the Pacific Northwest. This will make possible a second condition, namely the creation of a real, face-to-face white racialist community and movement, rather than a merely virtual movement. As Covington is fond of saying, no revolution will be made by people who are not within driving distance of one another.

Covington believes that such a racially-conscious community must be organized along Communist lines as a revolutionary Party of Northwest independence. The Party has three functions: education (propaganda), recruitment, and preparation. Initially, the Party will operate above ground, carrying out open as well as underground propaganda and recruitment. Covington is scornful of White Nationalist organizations that allow someone to join simply by mailing in a check. The revolution will not have a post office box. It will not take credit cards. It will not be tax-deductible. As Covington likes to say, “You do not join the Party. The Party joins you.” It identifies potential members, then carefully investigates and tests them. This keeps out informers and kooks. All recruits will be evaluated as potential political soldiers. For, from the moment the Party emerges into the public eye, it is preparing for the day that it is banned. Then it will transform itself into an underground guerrilla army. And while underground, it will be preparing to re-emerge as the government and army of a new society.

Beyond that, no white homeland will emerge unless there are certain moral transformations: Whites as a whole must recover their courage, and movement people need to become much more serious. In the novels, Covington speaks of 50,000 racially-conscious whites migrating to the Pacific Northwest in the years before the war of independence. But why the migrants begin to come, why whites recover their courage, and why the movement becomes more serious is described as a complete mystery. It would be less of a mystery if these novels became widely read.But even if the White Nationalist movement became dramatically larger, better-organized, and more serious, it would still be no match for the United States at full strength. Thus the regime must suffer a crisis, or a convergence of crises, before part of the US could hope to secede. The Irish Republic probably would not have gained its independence had the British Empire not been weakened by World War I. India would not have gained its independence had the Empire not been bled dry by World War II.

Fortunately, we know that the US system is moving full steam toward catastrophes on a number of different tracks. The political system is captive to minority and foreign interests and cannot pursue the common good. Our Israel-first foreign adventurism and profligate welfare spending are economically unsustainable. Multiculturalism and non-white immigration are leading to the ever-intensified degradation and dispossession of whites, which can only lead to increased ethnic conflict. Affirmative action and corruption have filled the government with incompetent employees who are parasites at best and actively throttle productivity and sow social chaos at worst. Education and popular culture continue their descent. The system is dependent on ever-increasing technological sophistication to exploit diminishing natural resources, yet the demographic trends are profoundly dysgenic. Morons are reproducing faster than geniuses, and the political system enfranchises and caters to the morons, with their high time preferences and ignorance of the causes of order and wealth. Furthermore, as Sam Dickson has pointed out, the system apparently has no brakes. For example, even before Social Security was enacted, it was known to be unsustainable, but nothing has been done to solve the problem, only to postpone the final crash by a few election cycles. Of course the system might be able to survive one crisis at a time. But eventually several crises will converge, and the United States will not be able to survive intact.

In a mild crisis, the first impulse is to hold on to everything. In a severe crisis, or a convergence of crises, one is forced to choose to surrender some assets to save the rest. Covington’s hope is to create a White Nationalist movement that is sufficiently strong to carve off a chunk of the United States when that moment arrives. In Covington’s scenario, the US leadership is more concerned about the territorial integrity of Israel than of the United States. This is a reasonable premise, since even today the United States cannot summon the effort and funds to secure its border with Mexico, but it can summon immensely more money and enthusiasm to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the behest of Israel. (In Covington’s scenario, the US is bogged down fighting and occupying practically every Muslim country in the Middle East at Israel’s behest, but that is still not enough to stave off Israel’s eventual disappearance beneath the Muslim world’s rising demographic tide.) Thus, if the regime is forced to choose between supporting Israel and keeping the Pacific Northwest, the Northwest will be allowed to secede.

In Covington’s scenario, another factor conducive to the secession of the Pacific Northwest is the regime’s decision to acquiesce to the de 

facto Mexican re-conquest of California and the Southwest and allow the creation of Aztlan. As a general rule, it seems prudent for white secessionists to uphold the principle of secession for all peoples, including Mexicans and Hawaiians. However, our rulers have never been too concerned with abstract principles and general rules. But they are clearly wedded to the destruction of the white race. The secession of Aztlan forwards that goal. The secession of the Pacific Northwest does not. Furthermore, the secession of Aztlan might actually increase the regime’s ability to hold onto the Pacific Northwest by allowing it to reassign troops and resources to the Northwest.

Other factors that conspire to lay the conditions of secession include: (1) an ever-increasing population of dispossessed whites who no longer have anything to lose in taking up arms against the regime, (2) large numbers of well-trained and deeply embittered white veterans from the regime’s imperial wars, (3) a sufficiently corrupt and incompetent federal government staffed by lunatic ideologues, soulless clock-punchers, and affirmative action drones, and (4) a long process of overt and covert propaganda by the Party designed to increase popular discontent and tensions within the system.

Once these conditions exist, it takes only a galvanizing event, a spark to ignite the conflagration. In Covington’s scenario, it is the Coeur d’Alene Uprising, which is modeled on Ireland’s Easter Rebellion. The professional meddlers of “It Takes a Village,” the federal equivalent of the Department of Family Services, decide to seize the children of a family of apolitical neo-pagans, the Singers, and adopt them out to more suitable parents, who will not read them hateful, racist Norse myths at bedtime. When they resist, they are massacred by federal forces, just like at Waco and Ruby Ridge. But this time, ordinary white people—the Singers’ neighbors—spontaneously take up arms against the feds.

Although the Party played no direct role in the initial resistance, it was prepared to seize the opportunity. Party activists—men and women alike—grabbed their guns and rushed to Coeur d’Alene. They declared themselves the Northwest Volunteer Army, hoisted a tricolor flag, and announced the birth of the Northwest Republic. Federal troops were rushed in, and after 16 days and a great deal of bloodshed, the tricolor was hauled down again. But the rebellion was not extinguished and eventually grew into a war of national liberation.

Conditions of Success

The Northwest Quartet contains a wealth of practical ideas that deserve serious consideration.

(1) Loose, Flexible, and Resilient Organizational Structures. Despite the influence of German National Socialism on Covington’s thinking, the NVA is not a centralized organization run on the Führer principle. Covington is above all a pragmatist, and such an organization would be too vulnerable to destruction by decapitation. Therefore, a loose and resilient organizational model is adopted from the IRA and the Cosa Nostra. The basic unit of the NVA is a three-man cell capable of operating semi-autonomously. Cell-members have only limited knowledge of other cells and the command hierarchy, so that if a cell is infiltrated or a cell member is captured, the potential damage is limited. Cells are parts of brigades, each of which has a commander and a political officer who serves as liaison with the Army Command. The NVA also has “Flying Columns”: mobile independent partisan units of 60 to 100 fighters operating in non-urban settings. There are no uniforms, blood oaths, torchlight rituals, and other such trappings, just an atmosphere of ruthless pragmatism and high seriousness in pursuit of victory.

(2) The Paramount Importance of Character. 

One cannot build an effective revolutionary movement out of defective people. Thus good character is the most important trait the NVA seeks in a member. Character is more important than ideology, skills, social background, financial resources, etc., because without good character, none of these other advantages can be reliably mobilized for the cause. Covington is not just talking about the classical virtues of courage, self-control, and wisdom, but also about traits like maturity and willingness to work with others in the real world, rather than merely in the cyber world of today’s movement. Covington is an admirer of Xenophon, who teaches that the army that is strongest in character has the advantage, other things being equal.

(3) The Revolution Must be Dry. Allied with the character issue is one of Covington’s best proposals, General Order 10: For the duration of the struggle, all NVA forces must not use alcohol or drugs. There are three good reasons for this. First, drink and drugs reduce effectiveness and impair judgment, which can lead to disaster. Second, regardless of the consequences, the demand to give up drink and drugs communicates in a very concrete way that this struggle is serious business. By demanding sacrifices from its members, the NVA commands greater respect and dedication. Third, it weeds out unserious people, those who prefer personal indulgence to racial survival.

(4) Religious Neutrality. Covington is adamant that the White Nationalist movement must be neutral on religious questions. The purpose of White Nationalism is to create a white homeland. This is a concrete political goal that people with widely diverging beliefs can pursue for many different reasons. It is more important that we work together for the same goal than have the same reasons for pursuing it. Religion in particular is not a topic that can be discussed rationally, thus nothing good can come from discussing it. Therefore, the topic should be avoided. Furthermore, the movement must take special care not to be, or to appear to be, opposed to the religion of the majority of whites: Christianity.

(5) Fight Smart and Cheap. It is possible for a 

small guerrilla force to defeat a much larger force by fighting more intelligently. The NVA does not recruit impulsive adrenaline junkies or berserkers with death-wishes. It does not ask people to volunteer for suicide missions and last stands. It does not ask soldiers to die for a white homeland—although they all know the risks. Instead, it asks soldiers to make their enemies die for a white homeland, while preserving their own precious lives to fight another day. The NVA looks for every opportunity to extract large benefits at little or no cost. Phoning in a fake bomb threat costs the NVA nothing, but it costs the enemy dearly in money and manpower. Modern technological society is so complex and interdependent that a small act of sabotage can have enormous and expensive consequences. This is why Covington holds that in such a war, it is not the generals who surrender but the accountants.

(6) Choose One’s Targets Carefully. The goal of the NVA is a white homeland. It cannot achieve this by alienating the white populace. Therefore, the NVA chooses its targets carefully and seeks to make the regime’s work more difficult while minimizing damage to white civilians. Its chief targets are active functionaries and collaborators of the regime. It also seeks to drive out non-whites by drying up their employment and social support networks. The NVA also seeks to avoid causing death or injury to children of any kind, because this elicits sympathy for non-whites and makes the NVA look like monsters. For the same reasons, the NVA also avoids targeting civilian airliners and religious figures and buildings, no matter how odious.

(7) Deliver Concrete Benefits to Whites. The NVA does not just fight the system. It also seeks to deliver tangible benefits to the white populace. By driving out non-whites, the NVA produces job opportunities and rising wages for whites, lower crime rates, and a visibly more homogeneous community. By targeting the regime’s tax collection system, the NVA ensures that white workers have more take-home pay. The goal is to persuade the white populace of the benefits of White Nationalism by actually delivering them during the war itself. This is one way in which the NVA positions itself to emerge at the end of the struggle as the government of a new nation.


(8) Destroy the System’s Credibility. While the NVA works to increase its credibility with the populace, it also works to destroy the system’s credibility by attacking its buildings, personnel, and allies. If the system can no longer protect itself, the people will conclude that it can no longer protect them as well. Again, the NVA is selective, focusing on federal and state rather than local governments. Wherever possible, the NVA seeks a modus vivendi with local law enforcement. If local police look the other way when the NVA is around, the NVA will leave them alone to protect the citizens.

The Republic Realized

The Hill of the Ravens is Covington’s guided tour of the Northwest American Republic several decades after its birth. At the beginning of the novel, the main character, Colonel Donald Redmond of the Bureau of State Security, is called to the office of the President of the Republic, his father-in-law John Corbett Morgan. He is given a secret and highly sensitive mission: to reopen the investigation into the betrayal and massacre of the Olympic Flying Column during the war of independence. Tom Murdock, the commander of the Olympic Flying Column, and his lover Melanie Young are among the greatest heroes of the Republic. Gertrude Greiner, who betrayed them to the US government, is one of its greatest villains. Thus when Trudy Greiner resurfaces after decades of hiding in Aztlan and announces she plans to return to the Republic to clear her name, she threatens to tear a gaping hole in the mythology of the young nation.

Moreover, if she does clear her name, this will necessarily cast the shadow of suspicion on the other eight survivors of the Olympic Flying Column. In the following years, some of these survivors came to number among the Republic’s most distinguished citizens: Admiral David Leach, the Chief of Staff of the Kriegsmarine; SS Major General William Vitale; Frank Palmieri, the NAR’s Minister of Transport; Dr. Joseph Cord, the Republic’s most brilliant scientist (clearly a portrait of William Pierce, a man Covington despises); and Dragutin Saltovic, an internationally-renowned classical pianist. If any of these men were traitors, it would be far worse for the Republic than the mere exoneration of Trudy Greiner.


Redmond’s investigation provides an ideal framework for a guided tour of the Northwest American Republic—touching on the political system, the military, economics, education, science, culture, and religion—which is Covington’s pedagogical purpose. (My only criticism of this book as a novel is that it feels a bit too much like a guided tour.) The NAR is a society of 40 million racially-conscious white people from all over the globe. It borders on Canada to the north, the United States to the east, and Aztlan to the south.

Because it is a relatively small country surrounded by chaotic and hostile neighbors, the NAR is characterized by high levels of military training and preparedness and high levels of spending on defense and research and development, including a space program. The NAR also has a War Prevention Bureau, an organization dedicated to assassinating foreign enemies of the NAR who try to stir up wars against it. If Saddam Hussein had been half the villain he was made out to be, he could have saved countless Iraqi lives—including his own—with such an organization.

The NAR also provides education and health care and guarantees full employment. A ministry of culture ensures that the glories of European high culture are both preserved and accessible to all. In one of Covington’s many amusing touches, the ministry also exerts subtle pressures on dress and has apparently managed to turn back the clock to Edwardian or Victorian fashions—let us hope they stop short of powdered wigs, codpieces, and bearskins—giving the novel an archeofuturistic flavor. (One advantage of fascism is that it does give men more opportunities to dress up.) The NAR is also a “green” society, which prioritizes public transportation, non-polluting technologies, nature preservation, and even uses Jurassic Park technologies to bring back extinct species (another wrinkle on archeofuturism).


Although the government of the NAR is strong and centralized—indeed authoritarian—it is no dictatorship. The NAR is a mixed regime with legislative and executive branches—multiple centers of power that check and balance each other in accordance with the Republic’s constitution. There is also a popular dimension to government. There is universal suffrage. Since women took up arms to fight for the Republic, they also have the vote. But there are different levels of citizenship, and the higher levels come with more votes, ensuring that quality reigns over mere quantity. Although founded as a one-party state, different “tendencies” have emerged within the Party, effectively splintering it into a multiparty system. All this seems decidedly odd for a movement inspired by German National Socialism. But Covington posits that the NVA could succeed only by rejecting the Führer principle and adopting a decentralized, informal cell structure, and the pluralistic regime he describes seems like a natural outgrowth of this organizational strategy.The NAR, like the racialist movement today, is also divided between different religious camps, chief among them Christianity, Christian Identity, neo-paganism, and complete non-believers, who are always on the verge of strife. Because of this, the NAR ensures freedom of religion and the separation of religion and state. Managing the religious situation requires a delicate balancing act among the leadership. One of Covington’s most interesting and wryly ironic ideas is that in such a situation, National Socialism would serve as a force for moderation.

Libertarian-leaning people will rejoice to learn that the government of the NAR, though strong and influential, is also small. There are 

two mains reasons for this. First, when left to their own devices, white people create ordered liberty as surely as blacks create chaos, so there is no need for state control of vast sectors of life. Second, government must be large when it goes against the grain of nature, specifically when it tries to make unequal individuals and races equal. When we abandon the lies of equality and multiracialism and let nature take its course, government does not need to be very big. Taxes are low and money is sound. There is so much privacy and freedom of movement that the secret police (a very small agency, directed mostly at external enemies) have trouble even locating individuals. (Try losing the government in today’s “land of the free.”) There is religious freedom and the right to bear arms. Covington evidently dislikes lawyers and envisions a minimal legal system that any citizen can understand.Far more important, however, is the fact that the Northwest American Republic ensures positive liberty for healthy biological and cultural development. The NAR is a society in which men are free to be men; women are free to be women; and children are free to grow up in a healthy and beautiful environment, free of America’s chaos and violence, drugs and degeneracy, junk food and junk culture. It is a society in which whites are free to act according to their innate sense of decency; to create according to their innate sense of beauty; to apply their genius to discovering the secrets of nature and solving the problems of living; to give free reign to their questing and adventurous spirit.

The worst aspects of Covington’s vision are his “day of the rope” revenge fantasies, which smack more of Old Testament superstition and self-righteousness than of Aryan reason. These can only repulse otherwise sympathetic readers and make our enemies’ work easier. The NAR is no utopia, then. But even with its imperfections, Covington has given us a vision—maybe even a world-transforming myth—that deserves to be taken seriously.

I highly recommend the Northwest Quartet. Besides being enjoyable and informative, these novels deliver another important benefit. White Nationalism is almost entirely a virtual movement of geographically scattered individuals connected by the internet and print publications. There is very little face-to-face community and real-world activism. Because of this, the movement has an overall tone of self-indulgence and frivolity. Whether or not one ultimately accepts Covington’s outlook, nobody can read these books without coming away with a much more serious attitude about White Nationalism and the conviction that we need real community, real activity, real dedication, and self-sacrifice. Perhaps the best compliment I can pay these books is that they are so subversive that someday the government will have to ban them. So get your copies today.

Greg Johnson 

The Occidental Quarterly, vol. 9, no. 1, Spring 2009

Tuesday, March 17, 2026

Satanic Pedophile Elite Theory

 


Years ago, during my brief academic career, one of my students explained to me how the Canadians were taking over Hollywood. At first, I thought that “Canadians” was just a euphemism for Jews. But no, as he continued, it became clear that he earnestly believed that the Canadians were taking over Hollywood, because it was cheaper to shoot movies and TV shows than in Canada.

Around the same time, a friend told me of an encounter with a man who believed that feminism was a lesbian conspiracy. As evidence, he cited Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and even Ayn Rand. What did all these feminists have in common? Obviously, he said, they were lesbians . . .

I had a similar experience when I first heard good people explaining that the West is ruled by Satanic pedophile elites. Surely, I thought, this is just a euphemism for Jews. But no, although some of these people are well-aware of the Jewish Question, they point out that a lot of our elites are not Jewish—Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, for instance.

Yes, but by the same token, many of our elites aren’t actually pedophiles or Satanists, either.

Still, I am quite pleased that large numbers of people believe that the likes of Jeffrey Epstein, John Podesta, and their friends are Satanic pedophiles. It might not be literally true in all cases. But it does capture something about our bizarre rulers.

At the beginning of American Psycho, Brett Easton Ellis argues that Patrick Bateman, though fictional, is true by quoting Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground: “such persons . . . not only exist in our society, but indeed must exist, given the circumstances under which our society has generally been formed.” The same goes for Satanic pedophiles. Call it literary truth, poetic justice.

If you can even be mistaken for a Satanic pedophile, you might be doing something wrong.


You can buy Greg Johnson’s Is America Doomed? here.

Also, is it really unfair to characterize people as “pedophile” when they gave Jeffrey Epstein a very lenient prison sentence for trafficking underage women, then had no difficulty associating with a convicted sex offender once he was out of jail? Obviously, none of these people felt dirty associating with Epstein. If not pedophiles themselves, they were content to give one social validation.

Thus I am content to leave Satanic Pedophile Elite Theory securely in place. I welcome the chilling effect it has on elite networking. Congressional candidates will be less likely to take junkets to Israel and checks from Miriam Adelson if they know that it will be someday taken as evidence that they rape children.

No matter how cocooned our elites are from the real world, they interact with ordinary people all the time. Now they have to wonder if their waiter, parking valet, dental hygienist, anesthesiologist, gardener, coke dealer, or nanny thinks they might be rapists, cannibals, and Devil worshippers. The more “diverse” these people are, the more likely they are to believe such things. It is just a taste of the fear and vulnerability our elites have imposed upon ordinary white people through multiculturalism and open borders.

My main problem with Satanic Pedophile Elite Theory is that it is too naïvely optimistic.

Let’s begin with the “Satanic” part.

Some people seem so evil that it is tempting to believe in supernatural causes. But why the temptation? Is it because you think that no human being could be that evil without supernatural help? Is it because you believe that human nature is somehow innocent? Or do you just think that you are immune to such corruption? That strikes me as naïve optimism. In truth, all human beings by nature are capable of monstrous behavior without any supernatural help. Bill Clinton didn’t need the Devil to make him do it—and neither do you.

Second, if you believe in supernatural causes of evil, presumably you also believe in supernatural solutions. That too strikes me as naïve. If we really are ruled by shockingly evil elites, we don’t have time to wait for supernatural help. We need to overthrow them and bring them to justice. And when we do bring them to justice, we should simply disregard claims of supernatural repentance. If these people have changes of heart, they can demonstrate that by informing on other criminals.

What’s worse than being ruled by Satanists? Being ruled by people who are so evil that demons aren’t required.

Now let’s deal with the “pedophile” part.

Both Epstein and Maxwell were convicted sex traffickers. Pimping is a crime, even with adults, and it is even more a crime with underage victims, who cannot consent to sex, thus every act of prostitution is also an act of rape. Nobody seriously believes that Epstein was the only one having sex with these women. Bill Gates didn’t get VD from the toilet seat on the Lolita Express.

Sex crimes have such a powerful hold on the imagination that most people seem to have lost sight of what Epstein was all about. The whole point of Epstein’s operation was espionage.

At a certain point, Epstein was asking his friends for secrets, and not just trade secrets but state secrets. Revealing state secrets is treason. Rape is a serious crime. But treason is far more serious than rape, because treason does not victimize a single person, it victimizes whole societies.

Thus I was amused when people treated the fact that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested for treason, not sex crimes, as a sign that the Epstein case is a “nothingburger.” No, the Epstein case was never just about sex. It was always about espionage.

Now let’s talk about the blackmail angle.

Many people think that Jeffrey Epstein filmed wealthy and powerful men having sex with underage girls, then used the tapes for blackmail purposes. Now, I am sure that Epstein kept records for blackmail purposes. But it seems charmingly naïve to believe that the likes of Bill Clinton, “randy” Andy Moutbatten-Windsor, Peter Mandelson, etc. would need to be blackmailed into betraying their oaths and nations.

Such people would sell out their nations as a favor to Epstein, who would do them favors in return. One of those favors might have been to supply them with underage girls. But there were probably a lot more important—and incriminating—favors in the offing, including bribes and kickbacks.

Now, if some of these people refused to share secrets with Epstein, I don’t doubt that he was willing and able to go the blackmail route. Moreover, if some of these people became enemies of Epstein, I am sure he was ready and willing to use blackmail as well.

But first of all, Epstein probably would not have needed to be so vulgar as to actually threaten exposure. It would simply be understood.

Second, when you commit a crime with someone like Epstein, only your first crime is purely voluntary, because once you have committed any crime, it can be held over your head to compel you to commit more of them. And it looks like Mandelson and the former prince Andrew committed far worse crimes than sex with underage girls.

What’s worse than Jeffrey Epstein using underage girls to blackmail wealthy and powerful men into betraying their countries? The possibility that blackmail was never even needed.

Greg Johnson
https://counter-currents.com/

Thursday, March 12, 2026

Money for Nothing



Everybody knows you need to work for your money. And if somebody just gives you money, that can only be by the expropriation of somebody else’s labor. Money just doesn’t grow on trees, after all.

But is this really true? Just because you work for your money, did the guy who paid you also work for it? What about the guy who paid him? If you follow the money trail long enough, you are going to find someone who did not work for his money. He simply got it for nothing. He did not even have to go to the trouble of picking it off trees. He just created it out of thin air by bookkeeping. We call this man a banker.

Unlike people who have to produce things of real value before they count them up and enter the number in a book, the banker creates his product simply by bookkeeping operations. The whole panoply of bank services—checking accounts, savings accounts, free toasters, checks with baby ducklings or golden retrievers printed on them—are, arguably, props to disguise the fact that the core of banking is the sheer creation of money out of nothing.

When I was a boy, one of the banks in my hometown gave out free piggy banks to children. Today, that seems a master-stroke of propaganda, fostering the impression that real banks, just like piggy banks, can only give out money that they take in. But banks are not required to keep your deposits on hand. They loan them out. Every dollar in your checking or savings account is loaned out ten times over. This is how bankers simply create money through bookkeeping. And that is just the beginning of how bankers create money. And bankers can do it even if they do not operate in buildings with Grecian columns out front and teller windows inside, even if they do not have checking and savings accounts and all the other props we associate with banking.

But even though the money you borrow was created for nothing, you still have to pay it back, with interest. And when you pay it back, you can’t just create the money. You have to work for it. You have to provide real goods and services. Thus bankers, by loaning out the money they create for nothing, gain a mortgage on future production of real world goods and services.

What is money anyway? Money is a medium of exchange that allows one to covert the fruits of one’s labor into easily portable tokens that one can exchange for the fruits of other people’s labor. What one chooses for tokens does not really matter. Money can be bits of shiny metal, colorful slips of paper, electronic data in computers, or cowrie shells, just as long as they are accepted by the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker.

Money does not need to have any intrinsic value. In fact, it helps if its intrinsic value is next to nothing, otherwise people will hoard it rather than circulate it freely, which would cause an economic hardship known as deflation, in which money is a commodity whose value rises because its supply diminishes. (When money is a commodity whose supply rises and its value decreases, that is called inflation. It is worth asking: Can one avoid both evils if money has no value in itself, i.e., if it is not a commodity that can be bought and sold alongside bricks and butter?)

If the best money has no intrinsic value, then the worst sort of money would be precious metals. The best sort of money would be entirely intangible, just data in a computer. Even paper money can be hoarded, for instance, when the price of toilet paper gets too high. (Perhaps the best way to ensure that money is not hoarded is simply to print an expiration date on it.)

Ideally money should be a self-effacing servant of the real economy, which produces actual goods and services. But money has grown into a jealous tyrant that interferes with the real economy. The simplest example is your average economic crisis. In an economic depression, the land does not suddenly go sterile. The udders of cows do not go dry. Men do not suddenly become stupid and lazy. The sun keeps shining; the crops keep growing; the chickens keep laying; people keep working. Goods pile up in warehouses and stores. And on the demand side, people still need to eat. But silos are bursting and people are starving because, for some mysterious reason, there is suddenly “not enough money.”

People have no money to spend, or they are afraid to part with the money they do have, because of a climate of uncertainty. After all, half way around the world, a massive swindle has been discovered; a bank has collapsed; a speculative bubble has burst. So, naturally, back in Hooterville, stores are filled with sour milk and rotting vegetables and children are going to bed hungry.

If an able-bodied man were shipwrecked on a fertile island, he would not starve for lack of money. But on this vast and fertile island we call Earth, people starve amidst plenty because we have accepted the dominion of a monetary economy that disrupts the real economy. That is no way to run a planet.

The obvious solution is simply to increase the money supply. One must make consumer demand effective so the market clears and life can go on. And the simplest way to do that is for the government to print money and give it to people. Remember George W. Bush’s 2008 “stimulus checks”? That was money for nothing, handed to people to stimulate economic activity. The effect, of course, was negligible. But it was morally and economically far preferable to the massive “bailouts” and the Obama stimulus plan that followed.

Whereas the Bush stimulus checks went directly to millions of consumers, who injected the money directly into the economy when they purchased goods and services, the bailouts and stimulus spending went to a relative handful of politically connected insiders. It turns out, furthermore, that very little of the money went to stimulate the US economy. Instead, a lot of it was invested overseas. Other recipients of bailouts held onto their cash, hoping that they could buy up real assets for cheap if the economy continued to slide deeper into depression. Moreover, whatever money did go into the US economy came with strings attached: the necessity to repay principal and interest. At least with the Bush stimulus checks, the money went directly into the economy with no strings attached in straight up purchases of goods and services.

But, as we have seen, money for nothing is not merely part of an occasional emergency stimulus measure. It is business as usual for banks.

But if money is being created out of nothing all the time, then we have to ask: Should this be left to the banks, or is there a better way of doing it?

Why not simply have the government create money and send each individual a monthly check, to be spent as he sees fit? This money would stimulate the economy directly, through the purchases of goods and services, whereas money created by banks in the form of loans must be paid back, with interest, creating a parasitic class of people who get a share of real production by loaning at interest a commodity they get for nothing.

Again, every industry that produces real goods and services has accounting and inventory costs, but actual production has to come first. You have to make toys before you can count them. With banks, money is by created simply by bookkeeping operations, e.g., making loans. Bankers “produce” merely by juggling numbers.

But if money for nothing is simply a feature of the modern economy, why not cut out the parasitic “private sector” middlemen and simply have the government create money and distribute it directly to consumers?

Why is the government preferable to the private sector as the creator of money? Because, unlike private businesses, the government is accountable to the public. Its purpose is to secure the common good. Moreover, when the private financial sector is in crisis, the bankers look to the government to bail them out—at the expense of the taxpayers. Time for the government to bail the people out—at the expense of the banks. Let’s repudiate all our debts and start fresh with a new financial system.

“But simply creating money and mailing out checks would be inflationary!” some would object. True. But it would be no more inflationary than allowing banks to create money.

Furthermore, there is a deeper issue here: Is inflation or deflation simply a product of the commodification of money? The commodification of money means that money is not merely a tool of exchange, but a commodity that is exchanged, a commodity with a cost of its own (interest). Would it be possible to decommodify money, i.e., to eliminate interest and a secondary market in money, either partially or altogether? Would the creation of money that expires after a while cut down on the commodification of money?

“But money for nothing would be socialism!” others would object. Yes, I am proposing socializing the creation and initial distribution of money. But what people do with the money at that point is their own business. The system I propose is completely consistent with private property and private enterprise. Indeed, it would strengthen and secure them, because it would eliminate a parasitic class of people who steadily mulct the real economy, and occasionally send it into crises, by creating and loaning out money that is free to them and should be free to all.

“But how would businesses capitalize themselves without bank loans?” That is a fair question. Perhaps the best answer is to say that that just as individual consumers could get money for nothing from the state, creditable producers could do so as well. But nothing about my proposal would prevent banks and credit unions from forming to capitalize businesses. But they would not be allowed to create money out of thin air. They would have to attract savings by paying interest, then loan out their deposits—and no more than their deposits—at interest to creditworthy businessmen. To do this, banks would have to offer serious interest for savings and charge serious interest on loans, but it could be done. It would definitely be “tight” money, though, which might be a good thing in the long run, since it would discourage speculative investments. Of course if money went bad after a while, it would make no sense to save it. But none of this might be necessary if interest-free state financing is a viable option. It is certainly a question worth exploring.

Nothing, moreover, would prevent businesses from capitalizing themselves by selling shares and paying dividends, either.

“But shouldn’t people work for their money?” Yes and no. Money needs to get into circulation. And the modern welfare state gives people money for nothing all the time in the form of unemployment insurance, old age pensions, welfare payments, food aid, healthcare, etc. Why not bundle all these benefits together into a single, flat monthly payment? These payments would be enough to ensure the basic social safety net we all have anyway. It would also be fairer than the present system, which expropriates the fruits of some people’s labor to redistribute them to others. It would, in effect, be welfare without redistribution.

But the basic payments I envision would not allow people to live opulently. Thus most people would choose to work. Some might choose to invest their monthly checks. Others might wish to defer them so they can enjoy better old age pensions. But the whole character of work would be changed, because people would not work because they have to. They would work because they want to. The socialist dream of the “de-commodification” of labor would be realized.

Sure, some people might choose to spend their time smoking dope and strumming guitars. But one of them might be the next Goethe or Wagner. And surely we would be better off extending the adolescences of a million bohemians than supporting a thousand scheming Wolfowitzes, Madoffs, and Shylocks along with all their warmonger and pornmonger cousins.

“But this system would create public debt!” some might object. But I am talking about creating money, not borrowing it. Why should the government allow banks to create money and then loan it, at interest, to the government, when the government can create money itself? The very existence of public debt goes back to the time when money was something of intrinsic value (like gold) that banks might possess and that the government could not just make up. A government that can simply create money has no need of public debt.

“But this system will create idleness!” is another objection. Yes, but there is nothing wrong with idleness. In fact, as I see it, the whole point of social and technological progress is to create a world in which machines put us all out of work. The goal of social policy should be to create conditions of ever-increasing productivity through scientific and technological progress.

But it would be ecologically irresponsible, indeed catastrophic, if people were to take the gains of increased productivity in the form of more consumer goods or burgeoning population growth. Thus the goal of social policy should be to keep consumption roughly stable and cash out productivity gains in terms of ever-shorter work weeks. As productivity increases, it might be possible to maintain a comfortable standard of living with 20 hours of work per week, then 10, then 5, then 1.

When the work week approaches zero hours, we would be living in a “Star Trek” economy in which scarcity of physical goods is abolished through the invention of unlimited cheap and clean energy sources and the “replicator” which can turn energy into any desired good, simply poofing it into existence. In such a world, the only scarcity would be ecological carrying capacity, which would have to be zealously guarded by keeping populations in check—or sending them out to colonize the stars, terraform dead planets, create galactic empires, etc.

But what to would people do with their leisure? Such a society would be the culmination (and, I would argue, following Hegel, the hidden inner purpose) of all human striving, from the moment man first differentiated himself from the animal and stepped into history. It would obviously be a farce if mankind struggled for millennia only to give birth to a world of indolent, empowered morons. Imagine Homer Simpson poofing donuts and Duff into existence while watching holoporn until he becomes one of the boneless blobs in hoverchairs depicted in Wall-E. Utopia would be wasted on such people. Thus along with scientific, technological, and social progress, we would also need to pursue cultural, spiritual, and genetic progress to create a race worthy of utopia.

A job is just something you do to make money so you can do the things you really enjoy. A job is just a means to doing things that are ends in themselves. Once machines put us out of work and the lollygaggers and lotus-eaters are bred out of the gene pool, people can busy themselves doing the things they find intrinsically rewarding: raising children, writing books, playing and composing music, writing software, inventing machines, playing sports, tending gardens, perfecting recipes, advancing science, fighting for justice, exploring the cosmos, etc.

It will be a realm of freedom in which the human potential to create beauty, do good, and experience joy will be unhampered by economic necessity.

This is the stuff of science fiction and other utopias, staples of the American imagination. Yet the dominant political paradigm in America and the rest of the white world is profoundly regressive and dysgenic. While whites dream of the Space Age, our system is headed toward to the Stone Age, worshiping Negroes as heroes and gods (Morgan Freeman has been typecast as God) and placing a product of dysgenic miscegenation in the highest office of the land.

If we are to resume the path to the stars, we will have to begin by addressing four principal evils: dysgenics, economic globalization, racial diversity (including non-white immigration), and finance capitalism.

What do we call this alternative economic paradigm? Ultimately, I would call it National Socialism. But the little florilegium of economic heresies I have assembled above is drawn primarily from the Social Credit ideas of Clifford Hugh Douglas (1859–1952) and Alfred Richard Orage (1873–1934), partly by way of Alan Watts, who was my first introduction to these ideas, and Ezra Pound, who is the most famous exponent of Social Credit.

It is my conviction that the North American New Right, if it is to provide a genuine alternative to the existing system, must break with all forms of “free market” economic orthodoxy and work to recover and develop the rich array of Third Way economic theories, including Social Credit, Distributism, Guild Socialism, Corporatism, and Populism. This essay and others, including ones to come, are my naïve attempts to start a conversation in the hope that it might draw in other writers who are more qualified to construct a critique of capitalist orthodoxy.

Creating an ideal world will cost us, and our enemies, a great deal in real terms. But the first step toward freedom, namely the act of imagining it, is free.

 Greg Johnson

 https://counter-currents.com/


21 comments
ErnstDecember 24, 2015 at 3:27 am
This has to be one of your greatest articles, i think it also ties in to the “masters of the universe” speech by Alex Kurtagic. A nuanced critique of the current system followed by a coherent vision for our people that includes a take on economy that goes beyond naive leftism and messianic libertarianism a la Ron Paul. Masterful piece, thank you Greg for your work and happy Yule!

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TheodoreDecember 24, 2015 at 5:01 am
Greg,
In general, I strongly agree with your economic views (and possibly may be further to your left economically), and I basically agree with your premises here. But, while I’m no economics expert, doesn’t money ultimately have to be backed up by some sort of productivity? My understanding of inflation (in crude terms) is when there is too money circulating compared to the available goods and services that can be purchased with that money; deflation being the opposite. If you are just going to print money to hand out to people without an accompanying increase in “economic growth” you will degrade the worth of that money via inflation. I don’t think that the “decommidification” of money can solve this problem, which is based on supply/demand fundamentals.

Maybe in part the money for distribution should come from the confiscated wealth of the plutocrats, who’ll be spending their time breaking rocks in a labor camp? And via a properly progressive income tax, and corporate tax (and no whatever remaining private corporations would not be allowed to flee overseas).

It’s possible by economic understanding of inflation/deflation is flawed and in that case I await edification.

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lpcDecember 24, 2015 at 1:53 pm
You are right about the evil nature of fractional reserve banking. However, this statement is the direct opposite of the truth: “Because, unlike private businesses, the government is accountable to the public.”

Your article ignores the actual history of how true money evolves in a society of free men, as a cultural phenomenon, not a bureaucratic one. Money is any “thing” (often a commodity, but not necessarily) which happens to be most widely in demand in any given circle of people freely trading value for value. I emphasize: “happens to be”. By that I mean that money arises from a culture of shared values. It is not defined or created by ghastly bureaucrats.

In point of historical fact, it was precisely the intervention of governments that led to the ruination of money. The fiat banking system you rightfully denounce would arise naturally or be sustainable in a free society — and even if it were, alternatives would abound so we could escape its nonsense. It is entirely the creature of government force.

Please look once again at the history. Money is the creation of free men exchanging their values in shared culture of production and integrity. It is not the creation of pathetic government functionaries.

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Greg JohnsonDecember 24, 2015 at 2:25 pm
There’s no argument here, just libertarian emotionalist disdain for government.

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lpcDecember 24, 2015 at 3:25 pm
The argument is historical, with two major points.

(1) Money in fact arose as the creation of free men exchanging their values in a shared culture of production and integrity. (This by the way is how all good things arise.)

(2) Money in fact was ruined by vicious parasites who forcibly eliminated the honest money and substituted their own dishonest banking money for the purpose of enslaving those free men forever.

I am astounded by how many people rightfully decry the current miserable state of affairs, while demonstrating no historical knowledge of how we arrived here.

I am also astounded by how often when I laud the freedoms we enjoyed before 1965, and still more freedoms we enjoyed before 1913, and still others before 1865, I am derided as a “individualist” and a “libertarian”. For all of you wondering why the current ecconomy, government, and culture are corrupt cesspools, please keep in mind that it might have something to do with scuttling those freedoms like so much garbage. In other words, ask yourself precisely what is different between now and any halcyon date in the past that you care to choose.

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Greg JohnsonDecember 24, 2015 at 3:48 pm
I completely disagree with “sound” money policies and broad-brush anti-government sentiments. Only a state can create a pure fiat currency, which would rid the world of the curses of inflation and deflation and fully unlock the utopia potential of technological progress.

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lpcDecember 24, 2015 at 4:17 pm
I agree that only a state can create a pure fiat currency, I simply regard the product as one of the principal causes of the economic and cultural decay we see today.

To fully unlock the utopia potential of technological progress, I suggest a regressive policy instead of the progressive one of fiat money. I say regress straight back to the models of America in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and England in the late 17th through early 20th centuries. Those fine souls demonstrated how a real civilization can and should function: not perfectly, but with a vibrant and growing productive class and a notable lack of cultural degeneracy. For example, a man working at Ford Motor Company could pay for a year at Yale for his son with just one month’s wages.

You should note well that my statement is not anti-government, since America and England in those times did have governments. They were just far better than the ghastly examples we see today.


YohanDecember 24, 2015 at 2:13 pm
Very inspirational stuff about the Utopian goal of an ever shortening work week, and as you say once achieved with be a culmination of all human striving, and allow us to move onto purely intellectual pursuits.

But I want to point out a misunderstanding regarding interest and money that permeates your work, and no doubt its because you are a specialist in philosophy. Money is not the cause of interest. Interest has nothing to do with money. Interest is the difference between man’s propensity to satisfy his wants now or in the future.

We are not immortal gods, we live a finite lifetime, and because time is short, man prefers a want satisfied sooner rather than later. The time difference between present and future is the phenomenon of time preference, which leads to a personal interest rate for that individual. It could be high or low. But it’s got nothing to do with money. It’s a category of human action and human cognitive function.

The reason why I painstakingly explain this, is once understood you will see how all the ideas for ‘social credit’ and abolishing interest are built on unsound foundations. They are built on denying a basic category of human behavior, which is that man prefers a present good to a future good.

This is not to say the current banking system should not be abolished, of course the monetary system is ripping us off and impoverishing the poorest of us, but don’t conflate the issue by thinking the solution it to abolish interest and lending.

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Greg JohnsonDecember 24, 2015 at 2:44 pm
Time preference is a real phenomenon. And of course it is a foundation of interest. Abolishing interest does not, however, require abolishing time preference. An analogy: sexual desire is the foundation of prostitution. One can abolish prostitution without abolishing sexual desire.

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cryptocurrencyDecember 24, 2015 at 10:05 pm
Centralization will always attract the corrupt and the corruptible. Only decentralized currencies (such as Bitcoin and its anonymous cousin Monero) that are mathematically guaranteed to be secure and uncensorable and that require no trusted third parties can usher in the utopian age Greg invokes.

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LewDecember 25, 2015 at 12:01 pm
fwiw, I have a computer scientist acquaintance who has worked on projects of interest to the powerful from a software standpoint. Without sharing any details (because he can’t), he assures me their top priorities in the field of computer science have nothing to do with the NSA; he says they are working overtime to remove all anonymity and pseudo-anonymity from the internet and to abolish cash and make all currency transactions electronic.

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witty tongueDecember 27, 2015 at 12:59 am
This excerpt came from a little book, A Matter of LIFE or DEBT , page 97:

Between 1817 and 1820 in the island of Guernsey, they had been suffering the general depression and unemployment that followed the Napoleonic wars. Guernsey’s State debt stood at 19,137 pounds and bore an annual interest charge of 2,390 pounds when its annual revenue was only 3,000 pounds. The island badly needed a new market hall, and its harbor, dikes and roads were in urgent need of repair. An appeal to London was made for a loan but the Government said it had no money to spare. The island’s governor then called a meeting. Was the work urgently needed? he asked. Yes, was the unanimous reply. Had they enough materials on the island, had they plenty of unused labor? Again, the reply was an emphatic yes. All we need, then, is the money, declared the Governor, so we will print it. This was done in the form of special 1-pound State note secured by the revenue-raising capabilities of the new works in the future; the real credit behind the notes lay in the proposed new works, in particular the market hall. The contractors were paid with these notes, which in turn were paid to the workmen and others who supplied the materials, and they were accepted throughout the island by the shops and local banks as being sound money. As new building and repairs were completed, incoming rates, rents, and dock dues went to pay back the currency, which in time, was destroyed. No debts, arose and no long-term interest payments. The hungry unemployed found work and incomes, trade improved, and the entire island began to enjoy a new found prosperity. [end excerpt]

Note the part about currency being destroyed. That’s how inflation is controlled.

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Kerry BoltonDecember 27, 2015 at 2:59 am
Excellent article in every respect.

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ArindamDecember 27, 2015 at 11:52 am
This article brought back memories of what William Joyce wrote, in his classic ‘Twilight Over England.’

‘The notion that the level of production should be controlled by monetary considerations belongs to a very primitive and superstitious stage of social evolution. Indeed, there are few savage tribes that would accept it as it is accepted in Britain today. Suppose that in some very backward island, a shell standard of money prevailed. Assume also that some malicious or half-witted creature managed to acquire half the shells in the island and to drop them into the water beyond recovery. The chiefs and witch-doctors would have to hold a council of emergency. But if the rulers of that island decreed that because half the money of the community had been lost, hunting and fishing and tilling must now be reduced by fifty per cent, there’d be a hot time in the old town that night. In such a simple state of society, the criminal absurdity of the proposal would be obvious to the meanest and most untutored intellect. Yet a policy which the most undeveloped savage tribe would reject as nonsense has been accepted by the British people as a sacred ritual for many years. Thus, of course, international finance, by restricting supplies and causing shortage, can produce whatever conditions of marketing that may be most profitable to itself. If there is one truth against which the Old School of Finance is fighting today, it is the supreme verity that production of goods should be based on the needs of the people, the only limit being the limit of natural resources and raw materials. Since the dawn of human history, the great struggle of man has been to wrest from Nature by force and cunning the means of life and enjoyment. It was only when the blessings of modern democracy made their appearance one hundred and fifty years ago, that he was told, in an arbitrary manner, that his efforts must be slackened and regulated henceforth by the private interests of an infinitesimal proportion of the world’s population.’ (William Joyce, Twilight Over England, pages 53-54; emphasis mine).

Julius Evola, went further, noting that we have now reached the stage where instead of production serving to fulfil needs, needs are generated in order to facilitate production. As if that were not bad enough, much – perhaps the vast majority – of what is produced in the economy, constitutes waste in one form or another, (ex: resources used up for marketing, wasteful duplication, etc…) – as Thorstein Veblen outlined in his ‘The Engineers and the Price Mechanism, chapter V’.

Indeed, as a general rule, the more intelligent the individual, the more absurd he finds the current economic system.

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witty tongueDecember 27, 2015 at 4:59 pm
Robert Poteat did an excellent job in describing “What is Inflation”: https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/the-american-monetary-institute/FB5ng-6yDN0


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VerlisDecember 28, 2015 at 9:32 am
Although I disagree entirely, both morally and factually, with almost every point the author makes in this essay (and two other recent related essays), his clearly and reasonably expressed views make for a very promising discussion. I’m hesitant, however, to put my thoughts into words in a post which, precisely because it disagrees so strongly, may never see the light of day.

Just this observation for now: this series of essays makes for a significant departure from the metapolitical project the site, it was my understanding, had committed itself to. Greg, it seems, has settled on precisely the kind of ‘package deal’ WNism he once opposed (when enunciated by conservatives). (‘Package deal’ here refers to WN arising out of more fundamental moral or philosophical commitments — WN comes ‘packaged’ as part of the deal, although contemporary society, it is held, unnaturally overlooks this.)

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Luke AragonDecember 28, 2015 at 7:53 pm
I agree with most everything in this article. Of course, I’m assuming a homogenous high-trust society. There is, however, one important tweak that I would make:

The freshly printed money should only be given to households and not individuals. This would encourage marriage, and prevent women from using the state to finance the dysgenic promiscuous lifestyle that is currently filling our societies with sociopathic bastards (there’s a reason “bastard” was an insult). Perhaps it should also be a flat-amount per household to manage population size.

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anonJanuary 2, 2016 at 3:20 pm
good stuff. I think I agree, some thoughts (wider than the precise topic)

1. Metapolitics: I think this area is or at least potentially could be ultra metapolitics because there’s very few things that could reshape the ground more totally. The problem is it is hard to break down into meme sized chunks.

2. Stated Aim: What’s the aim of the economic platform? I’d say something like maximizing the middle class to create stability and freedom i.e. not an economic aim. This gives a clear demarcation: socialism focuses on the poor, capitalism focuses on the rich, third way focuses on the middle.

3. Capitalism: Capitalism has a tendency to create plantation economies with excessively concentrated wealth. The problem with this is not a moral egalitarian one but a practical one. If you have excessive concentration of wealth then the lack of disposable income among the majority poor leads the economy to stagnate through low demand. No demand, no innovation.

4. Socialism: In theory if wealth is shared equally then the economy ought to thrive from the maximized disposable income and maybe it does for a while but the lack of incentives leads to stagnation also and thus relative poverty over time. No incentive, no innovation.

5. Third Way: By maximizing the middle class there is a large amount of disposable income to drive the economy and by allowing the incentive of joining the rich there is also a drive to innovate and increase productivity. Demand plus personal incentives -> innovation.

6. Time Preference & Usury: It’s true that people have a time preference and thus are prepared to pay more to have a shiny object sooner and interest is a fair price for that preference however there are negative public consequences to consider. By choosing to pay the price of an object plus interest the person is reducing their future demand for real goods and services by the amount of interest paid. In terms of the effect on their demand it’s equivalent to someone getting their wages and burning a percentage of it.

And it’s not just a simple transfer of one person’s demand to the money lender’s demand because of the relative numbers. With debt-based consumption you end up with very large numbers of people seduced by time preference into surrendering some of their disposable income to a few who then hoard it. The effect is to siphon demand out of the economy. It’s probably the worst way capitalism can concentrate excessive wealth as it’s completely non-productive.

So as usury for consumption is harmful then no fractional reserve banking and either no borrowing for consumption at all or at least always require a deposit – saving up is good and provides the fuel for borrowing for investment.

7. Central Bank: Replace with a state bank that creates as much money as is needed for the economy to run at full capacity and inject it through public works or social credit removing any excess via taxation. Getting rid of the private central banks immediately removes their 2% yearly inflation target which is simply legalized counterfeiting.

8. Banks: There is still a role for private banks as regulators of investment borrowing. Successful investment loans are defined as those where increased productivity as a result of the investment puts into the economy more than is taken out by the interest payments. People specializing in judging those loans maximize the effectiveness of savings used as capital.

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AlexandraMay 31, 2020 at 12:52 pm
Any individual with any financial education can borrow money from a bank for a certain amount of interest, and then invest in a stock or a bond that pays more interest than the bank is asking. Yes, these deals may be hard to find, but when you do, you make a ‘profit’ on your money. Is that so ‘wrong’? I attempt to do it right along and I do not see myself as immoral or criminal. It’s the basis of capitalism, to which I subscribe. I ‘produce’ money to pay my other bills and buy food for myself (I am retired, and too old not to be retired), by cleverly using the capitalist system. I do make mistakes occasionally and lose money instead, so that balances the system, I suppose. Money always circulates, no matter how it is originated.

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Michael BroutinSeptember 28, 2020 at 2:46 am
The idea that the people in times of economic collapse should receive the bailout over Wall St. reminds me of a quote by the “founder of the modern welfare state”, Lester Frank Ward:

“The charge of paternalism is chiefly made by the class that enjoys the largest share of government protection. Those who denounce it are those who most frequently and successfully invoke it. Nothing is more obvious today than the single inability of capital and private enterprise to take care of themselves unaided by the state; and while they are incessantly denouncing “paternalism,” by which they mean the claim of the defenseless laborer and artisan to a share in this lavish state protection, they are all the while besieging legislatures for relief from their own incompetency, and “pleading the baby act” through a trained body of lawyers and lobbyists. The dispensing of national pap to this class should rather be called “maternalism,” to which a square, open, and dignified paternalism would be infinitely preferable.”