Palestinian-American Activist Lina Allan Lambasts People who Prohibit Stabbing of Jews by Palestinians.

Michigan Activist Lina Allan Lambasts People who Prohibit Stabbing of Jews by Palestinians: It’s Like Defending Animal Rights at Best. Video Clip No. 5235. MEMRI TV, December 28, 2015.

Lina Allan YouTube.

The World According to Russia. By Jeffrey Tayler.

Vladimir Putin at his end-of-the-year news conference in Moscow. Maxim Smeyev/Reuters.

The World According to Russia. By Jeffrey Tayler. The Atlantic, December 30, 2015.

Vladimir Putin’s Annual News Conference. en.Kremlin.ru, December 17, 2015. YouTube, YouTube with English translation.


Tayler:

A documentary on state television gives a glimpse of Vladimir Putin’s philosophy.

“Do you realize what you have done?” Vladimir Putin demanded at the United Nations in September. The question was a rebuke to the American-led bloc of countries that initially viewed with optimism the Arab Spring, which began five years ago this month, but has since given way to chaos and Islamist violence across once-stable parts of the Middle East and North Africa. Those events, and much else, look different when viewed from Russia than they do from the United States, and a documentary that aired recently on Russian state television helps explain the worldview behind Putin’s question.

The two-hour-plus film, Miroporyadok (World Order), explores, in the words of its narrator Vladimir Solovyov, “what is happening with us [Russians], what sort of world we have inherited from our parents, and what sort of world we will leave to our children.” Partly through interviews with the Russian president himself, it also offers a window on Putin’s own realpolitik perspective, one that I’ve found to be widely shared throughout Russia over many years of living in the country—a worldview according to which international relations consist of competing blocs of nations pursuing their interests, and the violation of sovereignty is a recipe for instability. This stands in contrast to Obama’s own position, which he stated at the UN two years ago, that “sovereignty cannot be a shield for tyrants to commit wanton murder, or an excuse for the international community to turn a blind eye to slaughter.”

“I believe,” Putin tells Solovyov, “that no one should ever impose any sort of values he considers correct on anyone. We have our own values, our own conceptions of justice.” Putin doesn’t name names here, but the implication is clear throughout: World Order endeavors to incriminate American foreign policy and place the blame for the current chaos in the Middle East on the United States. The film’s anti-Americanism is subtle but relentless, and the spin comes mostly from omission of relevant facts. And though it originated within the Russian state propaganda machine, some of its criticisms of wrongheaded U.S. policies and blundering interventions in the Middle East since September 11, 2001, would give American liberals, centrists, and even a few conservatives little cause for dispute. Yet the documentary goes further, leaving the strong impression that greedy, bungling, incorrigibly myopic conspirators “from across the ocean” (a phrase Putin uses repeatedly in the film to describe the U.S. leadership) bent on world domination are to blame; Russia comes off as unjustly demonized and Russians themselves forced to suffer economically as a result. 

The last point is not stated, but is implied, and gives another clue about how the world looks from Russia. For Russians, to a degree unthinkable in the United States, foreign policy is also domestic policy, not least because their Near Abroad includes Ukraine, with which their ties of blood, history, and culture remain intimate. And thanks to multiple invasions of Russia during the 19th and 20th centuries, a preoccupation with national security and national pride figure strongly in Russian politics, with the possibility of war not at all remote. A philosophy of realpolitik—and not, say, values promotion—would come naturally under the circumstances.

Indeed, as the film tells it, the root of all international evils is the American penchant for democracy-spreading, both subtle (via U.S. support for “color revolutions” in the post-Soviet sphere) and overt (as in overthrowing Saddam Hussein). Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declares that the Arab Spring was fomented from abroad, disregarding the Middle Eastern region’s widespread popular discontent with official corruption, political stasis, and lack of job opportunities. The United States intervenes despite bitter experience within living memory; the American director Oliver Stone appears onscreen to tell viewers that “America didn’t learn the lesson of Vietnam, which is you shouldn’t go around invading other countries.”

But Putin denies chiding Obama directly at the UN for the consequences of the Arab Spring. “I wasn’t saying this [to President Obama]” Putin tells Solovyov, but to the constellation of leaders, both American and European, who have been meddling in Muslim lands since 2001. “I have always been telling [these leaders] that they have to act carefully. It’s wrong to impose one’s scheme ... of ideas concerning good and evil, or in this case, good and democracy,” on countries “with differing cultures, a different religion, with other traditions. But frankly, no one listens, because they apparently consider themselves infallible and great.”  No one, he adds, holds those leaders accountable, whatever the outcome. When an “operation” produces the wrong results, Putin says, the (again, unnamed) leaders in question just say, “Oh well. Next!” After all, “They’re great and sitting across the ocean, the dollar is the world’s currency, they have the biggest economy in the world.”

The “operations” to which Putin refers include, of course, the 2003 Iraq war, which Russia, France, and Germany opposed. Then-French President Jacques Chiraq, Putin claims, even foresaw that terrorist attacks in Europe, resembling those that occurred in Paris this year, could grow out of the anarchy that would result from Saddam’s overthrow. Another is the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya in 2011 (to prevent the regime from using its air force to stage a massacre—a fact that goes unmentioned). The film replays video of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s remark, delivered with a callous laugh, about Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi’s subsequent death—“We came, we saw, he died!”—followed by footage of the tyrant’s brutal murder, which drives home the real-life consequences of the intervention and its bloody aftermath. (Eerily, the film also shows Qaddafi addressing Arab leaders at a 2011 Arab League summit, and asking, after Saddam Hussein’s execution, “Who among you is next?”)

The Wikileaks founder Julian Assange also makes an appearance, citing cables revealing U.S. efforts to undermine the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—though American officials continue to maintain that Assad must go eventually, the cables in question most likely concern Wikileaks revelations made in 2006. The film shows Syrians lamenting the chaos the presumably American-backed terrorists have unleashed. No mention is made of Assad’s murderous crackdown on the demonstrations that set off the revolt, or of the barrel bombs deployed against civilians to this day at great cost to civilian life, or of the U.S. air campaign against ISIS.

But the message of World Order, as the title implies, extends geographically wider and historically further back than America’s post-September 11 policies in the Middle East. As the film, and presumably Putin, have it, the real problem today is not the rise of ISIS but the breakdown in relations between Russia and the West. A key cause of this conflict has been the eastward expansion of NATO since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, which has brought with it the stationing of troops on Russia’s border with the Baltics, plans to one day admit Ukraine (and Georgia), and, as an eventual result, Russia’s intervention in Ukraine.

“Why did [the West] support the coup?” Putin asks, using his term for the uprisings that brought the ouster of then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. He cites Western fears that Russia was trying to recreate the Soviet Union. “I think many of our partners see they made a mistake, but just don’t want to admit it. They took advantage of popular discontent not just with Yanukovych, but going back to independence. ... Does anyone think things are better there now?”

Few would dispute Putin’s damning description of Ukraine’s post-Maidan straits: “The standard of living has fallen catastrophically. ... What have they gotten in return? Possibly [Ukrainians] will be allowed to travel to Europe without a visa. And possibly not.” 

But Putin emphasizes that he does not blame Europeans for the policies of the United States, since, in his view, they are nothing more than “vassals” taking orders “from across the ocean,” at least as far as foreign policy goes. He surely understands the relationship to be more complicated than that, but such an approach places the blame for standoff between Russia and the West on America, and lets him makes a direct overture to Europe. “We don’t expect our European partners to give up their Euro-Atlantic orientation” but they would do well to “unite with Russia” to resolve “economic, political, security, and economic problems. ... We are ready to work with them and aren’t about to pout about the sanctions,” he says.

Significantly, though he never rules out cooperation, Putin makes no such overture to the United States. Rather, the film closes with Solovyov asking him the question used to tease viewers in the intro: Will there be war—World War III, in particular?

Probably not, Putin responds, as long as no crazy individual decides to use nuclear weapons and start it. But just in case, “Russia will continue perfecting its [nuclear] weapons. The nuclear triad forms the basis of our security policy. We have never brandished our nuclear bludgeon, and never will, but it retains its proper place and role in our military doctrine.”

The upshot, according to World Order: Putin considers possible a renewed relationship with Europe, but sees no such likelihood with the United States. This is one area where the views from Washington and Moscow aren’t so different—and that is bad news.

Israel’s Future. By Cal Thomas.

In Israel, the More Things Change. . . . By Cal Thomas. Townhall.com, December 3, 2015. Also at Tribune Content Agency, CalThomas.com, NewsBusters, Wichita Eagle.

Thomas:

JERUSALEM — More than a decade after my 19th trip to Israel and the Middle East, this 20th visit shows how some things have changed, but the important ones remain the same.

What one notices first is the large amount of new construction, which suggests a certain Israeli permanency against religious opposition, hatred and threats of annihilation perhaps no other country has had to endure. Second are the many prosperous Arab neighborhoods, which defies much of the propaganda broadcast to the world about how Israelis mistreat Arabs and Muslims, locking them in poverty.

About half an hour’s drive from Jerusalem, I visit a plant that makes air-conditioning parts. Moshe Lev-Ran, the international manager, who bears a slight resemblance to actor Lorne Greene of the old “Bonanza” TV series, employs Jews and Muslims who he says work together without any problems. Lev-Ran, who says he believes in equal pay for all, thinks prosperity is the key to peace in the region. He admits to a “left hand” (liberal) worldview and given the periodic outbursts of violence by some who are better off than they were before the “occupation,” he is likely engaging in wishful thinking that money is the key to peace.

It seems that everyone in Israel has either a solution to the conflict, or a suggestion for better communicating Israel’s position to the world. Martin Sherman, executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies, thinks the government spends too little — a fraction of 1 percent on public diplomacy — allowing Israel’s detractors to dominate in the propaganda war.

Sherman would offer generous economic incentives to Palestinian Arabs to emigrate and seek a better life elsewhere, preserving the Jewishness of the Jewish state. Under his proposal, those who refuse to leave would see their services reduced, including electricity and water, which he sees as morally justifiable, since Israel should have no obligation to sustain its enemies.

He opposes the creation of a Palestinian state and thinks the rest of the world should, too. “Why would the world accept another state that is misogynist and homophobic?” he asks, adding, “Jews must realize that between the (Jordan) River and the (Mediterranean) Sea there will be either Jewish or Muslim sovereignty.”

To create a Palestinian state next to Israel, says Sherman, would lead to the Lebanonization or balkanization of Israel. “There is no way Muslim Arabs will accept a Jewish state.” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said as much.

Geography and demography are the central concerns of most Israelis. A trip to a mountaintop near the Israeli settlement of Barkan in the West Bank provides a dramatic view of “the three seas,” the Mediterranean, Sea of Galilee and Dead Sea. This vantage point, within view of Ben Gurion Airport, illustrates just how vulnerable Israel would be to terrorist rockets. Think Gaza times two. As the saying goes, “Israel is a small country,” a truth that shocks many first-time visitors.

The Obama administration has asked both Israelis and Palestinians to “tone down” the rhetoric that feeds the violence in Israel. It is unlikely that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will comply. Palestinian hatred of Jews permeates every facet of society and it starts early. According to Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli research institute studying Palestinian society, Palestinian textbooks, for example, “make no attempt to educate for peace or coexistence with Israel. Instead Israel’s right to exist is adamantly denied and the Palestinian war against Israel is presented as an eternal religious battle for Islam.”

Western governments must remove their blinders and support Israel’s attempt to curtail and conquer this virus, not only for Israel’s sake, but out of self-interest, because a strain of it is already spreading to Europe and America.

America’s Self-Destructive Whites. By Fareed Zakaria.

America’s self-destructive whites. By Fareed Zakaria. Washington Post, December 31, 2015.

Zakaria:

Why is Middle America killing itself? The fact itself is probably the most important social science finding in years. It is already reshaping American politics. The Post’s Jeff Guo notes that the people who make up this cohort are “largely responsible for Donald Trump’s lead in the race for the Republican nomination for president.” The key question is why, and exploring it provides answers that suggest that the rage dominating U.S. politics will only get worse.

For decades, people in rich countries have lived longer. But in a well-known paper, economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case found that over the past 15 years, one group — middle-age whites in the United States — constitutes an alarming trend. They are dying in increasing numbers. And things look much worse for those with just a high school diploma or less. There are concerns about the calculations, but even a leading critic of the paper has acknowledged that, however measured, “the change compared to other countries and groups is huge.”

The main causes of death are as striking as the fact itself: suicide, alcoholism, and overdoses of prescription and illegal drugs. “People seem to be killing themselves, slowly or quickly,” Deaton told me. These circumstances are usually caused by stress, depression and despair. The only comparable spike in deaths in an industrialized country took place among Russian males after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when rates of alcoholism skyrocketed.

A conventional explanation for this middle-class stress and anxiety is that globalization and technological change have placed increasing pressures on the average worker in industrialized nations. But the trend is absent in any other Western country — it’s an exclusively American phenomenon. And the United States is actually relatively insulated from the pressures of globalization, having a vast, self-contained internal market. Trade makes up only 23 percent of the U.S. economy, compared with 71 percent in Germany and 45 percent in France.

Deaton speculated to me that perhaps Europe’s more generous welfare state might ease some of the fears associated with the rapid change. Certainly he believes that in the United States, doctors and drug companies are far too eager to deal with physical and psychological pain by prescribing drugs, including powerful and addictive opioids. The introduction of drugs such as Oxycontin, a heroin-like prescription painkiller, coincides with the rise in deaths.

But why don’t we see the trend among other American ethnic groups? While mortality rates for middle-age whites have stayed flat or risen, the rates for Hispanics and blacks have continued to decline significantly. These groups live in the same country and face greater economic pressures than whites. Why are they not in similar despair?

The answer might lie in expectations. Princeton anthropologist Carolyn Rouse suggested, in an email exchange, that other groups might not expect that their income, standard of living and social status are destined to steadily improve. They don’t have the same confidence that if they work hard, they will surely get ahead. In fact, Rouse said that after hundreds of years of slavery, segregation and racism, blacks have developed ways to cope with disappointment and the unfairness of life: through family, art, protest speech and, above all, religion.

“You have been the veterans of creative suffering,” Martin Luther King Jr. told African Americans in his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963: “Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.” Writing in 1960, King explained the issue in personal terms: “As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways that I could respond to my situation: either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. . . . So like the Apostle Paul I can now humbly yet proudly say, ‘I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.’” The Hispanic and immigrant experiences in the United States are different, of course. But again, few in these groups have believed that their place in society is assured. Minorities, by definition, are on the margins. They do not assume that the system is set up for them. They try hard and hope to succeed, but they do not expect it as the norm.

The United States is going through a great power shift. Working-class whites don’t think of themselves as an elite group. But, in a sense, they have been, certainly compared with blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans and most immigrants. They were central to America’s economy, its society, indeed its very identity. They are not anymore. Donald Trump has promised that he will change this and make them win again. But he can’t. No one can. And deep down, they know it.

It Is Time for Muslims to Begin a Deep Soul Searching. By Yasmine Bahrani.

It is time for Muslims to begin a deep self-examination. By Yasmine Bahrani. Washington Post, December 30, 2015.

Bahrani:

In the wake of the Paris bloodbath, the attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., and Bamako, Mali, and murders elsewhere before and since, people desperately want to understand the root cause of all this violence. That’s true not only in the West, where many blame Islam itself. It’s true in the Middle East, too, where we are struggling to come to grips with the carnage and the region’s role in it.

Many of the usual suspects were singled out in the reaction here to the most recent attacks. Various Arab and Muslim writers blame Iran and Israel; others point to the West’s policies in the Middle East and the Muslim world. Of course, some media voices repeat the well-worn view that we Arabs are the victims of hidden conspiracies. But more self-critical voices have arisen as well.

Though their influence might still be minimal, a few journalists are speaking out. In the Arabic newspaper Al-Mada, Iraqi writer Adnan Hussein offered a suggestion: We must overhaul the educational system. In a piece published just two days after the Paris attacks on Nov. 13, he said that from elementary school through university, our young people are taught — sometimes with a stick — that Islam is not only great, but also better than other religions, and that those who are not like us belong in hell. What has emerged, he wrote, is a “savage faith that stirs up decapitation, spills blood, instigates plunder and rape.” As for the real Islam, he lamented: “It has no place in our lives, or in the best of cases, it has a barely audible voice that almost nobody hears.”

On the same day, celebrated Lebanese writer and editor of the Al-Hayat newspaper Ghassan Charbel wrote that to rescue itself, the Arab and Muslim world must participate in the struggle against Islamism. Charbel called for shutting down platforms of hate and said the Middle East needs to undertake “a deep re-examination” of its society. He called for “universities, schools, mosques, TV and electronic sites to reclaim their platforms from that handful” of destructive ideologues who control them. “What threatens the Arab and Islamic world today,” he said, “is no less dangerous than the threat that Nazism posed to Europe.”

Such writers are asking Middle Easterners to examine their institutions and society more broadly for their share of the responsibility for the violence. But this view is not limited to elite journalists; it is one that many of my own students at American University in Dubai share.

Recently, I asked my students what they thought about commentary that appeared in the Guardian newspaper in November suggesting that France and Britain had failed their immigrants through clumsy — and ultimately alienating — efforts to promote multiculturalism (in Britain’s case) and assimilation (in France’s). In this way, author Kenan Malik said, French and British policies gave Islamism an entrée into isolated Muslim communities.

Nearly all my students rejected the premise, arguing that immigrants were responsible for their own actions whether they were isolated or not. Of course, many of these students come from families who fled countries terrorized by Muslim extremists and have no sympathy for them. But they don’t blame Western multiculturalism for the rise of home-grown Islamism. “That’s silly,” shrugged one Syrian girl.

Why, then, I asked them, don’t Muslims march in the streets of London, Paris and New York loudly condemning the Islamic State? Because, they answered, mainstream Muslims are too scared that the extremists would come after them. The class brainstormed about what could be done instead. Most concluded that they, too, would be afraid to call attention to themselves.

When I asked another class what responsibility we have to explain to others that terrorists don’t represent all Muslims, the response was mixed. One Saudi student said it was not at all our responsibility. “If a (Western) person wants to learn about Islam, he should Google it,” she said. Another, an Egyptian, was angered by the question: “If I hear one more time that Muslims have not done enough to condemn terrorists. . . .” Many Muslims are weary of such criticism.

But others emphasize the work that needs to be done, whether it is in coming to terms with their own cultures’ problems, as Hussein and Charbel urge, or through advancing the acculturation of Muslim communities into Western societies. The Jordanian journalist Mousa Barhouma has written about such challenges for years, advising Muslims living in the West to integrate. If you are a Muslim who moves to Holland, he told me, “Don’t act shocked if they serve beer at the local restaurants.”

In a recent piece in Al-Hayat, Barhouma wondered whether anyone was struck by the fact that the carnage at Paris’s Bataclan theater took place on Boulevard Voltaire. Perhaps they were, and perhaps it was in response to this assault against not only life but also against reason itself, that more voices demanding responsibility are beginning to be heard.

Yasmine Bahrani is a professor of journalism at American University in Dubai.

Seeing the West as Worse. By Joel Kotkin.

Seeing the West as worse. By Joel Kotkin. Orange County Register, December 27, 2015.

Kotkin:

“Hey-hey, ho-ho, Western culture’s got to go.”

– Slogan from 1988 Stanford University protest led by Jesse Jackson.

In the aftermath of San Bernardino and Paris massacres, our cognitive leaders – from President Obama on down – have warned Americans not to engage in what Hillary Clinton has described as “a clash of civilizations.” But you can’t have a real clash when one side – ours – seems compelled to demean its traditions and values.

Leaders in America and Europe don’t want to confront Islamic fundamentalism, or other nasty manifestations of post-Western thinking, because they increasingly no longer believe in our own core values. At the same time, devoted to the climate issue, they are squandering our new energy revolution by attempting to “decarbonize,” essentially leaving the field and the financial windfall to our friends in Riyadh, Moscow, Tehran and Raqqa.

Western ethos deconstructed

As the great 15th century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun observed, societies that get rich also tend to get soft, both in the physical sense and in the head. Over the past two centuries, Western societies, propelled by the twin forces of technology and capitalist “animal spirits,” have created a diffusion of wealth unprecedented in world history. A massive middle class emerged, and the working class received valuable protections, not only in Europe and America, but throughout parts of the world, notably East Asia, which adopted at least some of the Western ethos.

The current massive movement of people from the Middle East, Africa and Asia to Western countries suggests the enduring appeal of this model. After all, people from developing countries aren’t risking their lives to move to North Korea, Russia or China. The West remains a powerful beacon in the “clash of civilizations.”

Yet a portion of these newcomers ultimately reject our culture and, in some cases, seek to liquidate it. They do this in countries where multiculturalism urges immigrants to register as “victims,” and not indulge in Western culture, as did most previous immigrant waves. After all, why assimilate into a culture that much of the cultural elite believes to be evil?

Perhaps the biggest disconnect may involve young immigrants and their offspring, particularly students. Rather than be integrated in some ways into society, they are able, and even encouraged, not to learn about “Western civilization,” which is all but gone from campuses, with barely 2 percent retaining this requirement.

The dominant ideology on college campus – “cultural relativism” – leaves little room for anything other than a nasty take on Western history and culture. Many students, whether of immigrant parentage or descendants of the Mayflower, have only vague appreciation or knowledge of Western civilization, making them highly vulnerable to such pleading. They often go through college now with only the vaguest notion of our history, the writings of the American founders, the philosophy of the Enlightenment, our vast cultural heritage or the fundamental principles of Christianity or, if you will, Judeo-Christianity.

This extends beyond religion to the very basics – like respect for the First Amendment – that underpin our social order. Two in five millennials, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey, believe the government “should be able to prevent people from saying ... statements that are offensive to minority groups.” A third of millennials opined that government should prevent speech “offensive to your religion or beliefs.”

The media and much of the nonprofit world share this perspective. For all the talk about Rupert Murdoch – the aging last remnant of contrarian journalism – and the Koch brothers, the cultural wars have been entirely won by the far larger, better-funded and protected progressive media and nonprofit establishment. In virtually every part of the West, more traditional values, from the primacy of the family to religion and belief in the efficacy of market capitalism, are being undermined, with increasingly disastrous results.

Psychological deindustrialization

Over a decade ago, the British historian Martin Weiner proffered his theory of “psychological deindustrialization” to explain the decline of the British capitalist class. In Weiner’s estimation, the great 19th century industrial expansion of that remarkable island nation lost its momentum as the scions of the capitalist class lost their taste for manufacturing, preferring the comforts of country estates, the clubby world of London and high-minded charity.

In the West today, the children of the rich, and often the rich themselves, embrace causes, notably climate change alarmism, that work against the whole ethos of progress and mass affluence. Now many of these people – notably in Silicon Valley, Wall Street, Hollywood and other centers of absurd wealth – are determined to “save” the planet by regulating and taxing the middle class back to the 19th century. That this effort is led by groups like the Rockefeller brothers, who owe their fortunes to black gold, is ironic, to say the least.

In this intellectual climate, it is no shock that at the recent Paris climate conference, Western capitalism was blamed entirely for climate change. This has sparked the demand for “climate reparations” without a thought that, over the past two decades, this same capitalism has helped a billion people out of poverty, mostly in the developing world.

The blame-the-West-first trend extends well beyond environmental concerns. Disbelief in the system of democratic give and take to address climate change reflects views on a whole set of issues, from feminism and gender to race. No surprise that draconian proposals to address the climate “crisis” often see little need to deal with Congress, legal due process, even free speech.

So, rather than address how to improve the environment without eviscerating our own middle class, we expend enormous energy on peripheral issues like transgender rights, often exaggerated claims surrounding “a war on women,” and whether the lives of African Americans matter more. A writer in a recent article in the New York Times, cogitating on racial privilege, opined, “For me, whiteness is not an identity but a moral problem.”

Such attitudes have been around a long time. It’s been almost a half century since the late Susan Sontag opined that the “white race is the cancer of human history,” for everything from eradicating “autonomous civilizations” and upsetting “the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself.” But in 1966, when these views were first expressed, they were in a minority, even on campuses. Today, they have evolved into holy writ.

As such views have become mainstream, it’s not surprising that there is little interest, at least in the culture’s higher circles, in protecting the Western heritage, even when under direct assault. One painful example is the pathetic nonresponse to the gradual genocide being carried out in the Middle East against Christians. Threatened with the abolition of the West’s dominant religion does not seem to motivate mainstream Christians often more worried about the evils of Islamophobia and climate change than mass killings of their own co-religionists.

Long-term implications

A society that no longer believes in its core beliefs cannot prevail against rivals who, although less wealthy and far less technologically advanced, embrace their core ideals. A West that rejects (and sometimes is unaware of) its own heritage cannot overcome those who, for religious or national reasons, have a powerful belief in theirs.

Some people in Western countries are reacting to this abandonment of culture and heritage. Unfortunately, many of them are attracted to demagogues like Donald Trump or Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Front whose anti-immigrant xenophobia now has potent analogues in countries from the eastern frontier of Poland, Slovakia and Hungry to seeming secure reaches of Scandinavia. Given the cultural dominance of the relativist Left and the post-Christian nature of the culture, none of these movements will likely do more than make noise and inspire “tut-tuts” among the intelligentsia.

Ultimately, we can only confront the challenge from authoritarian forces – whether in the Middle East, China or Russia – when we once again embrace our cultural values as important and worthy of protection. Our opponents – and that’s what they are – may be fundamentally weaker than us, but can count on the advantage of belief in their destiny. To save ours, Western culture needs to stay, not be put away.

The New Masters of the Universe. By Joel Kotkin.

The New Masters of the Universe. By Joel Kotkin. Spiked, December 2015. Also at JoelKotkin.com.

Kotkin:

From Silicon Valley, a new elite is coming.

Every age produces its own brand of oligarchs – feudal lords, banking gnomes, captains of industry. Our age has its own incipient ruling class, the tech oligarchs.

The ascendency of these new hegemons is barely complete, and could conceivably be slowed or even reversed. But the tidal wave of new wealth, and even greater influence, will not be easily turned back. Six of the world’s 20 richest people are from tech or related industries like media and entertainment. In America, the media-tech sector in 2014 accounted for five of the top wealthiest people. Not surprisingly, most self-made billionaires are either quite old (the Koch Brothers, the Waltons, Warren Buffett) or got rich the traditional way: they inherited it. In contrast, virtually all self-made billionaires under 40 are techies.

The making of a new ruling class

With their massive, and early, accumulated wealth, the tech oligarchs will dominate us long after the inheritors have financed the last art museum or endowed the newest hospital. Two decades from now, many tech oligarchs will still be young enough to be counting their billions and thinking up new ways to “disrupt” our lives – for our own good, of course.

This tech elite differs from the founding generation of Silicon Valley. The early leaders – Bob Packard, Bob Noyce, Andrew Grove, Jerry Sanders – tended to be centrist and pragmatic. After all, the early Valley was heavily subsidised by the military and NASA, and produced industrial products that faced enormous competition. They also managed vast organisations with large numbers of ordinary employees. Like other industrialists, they were concerned with low-cost power and water, reasonable labour regulation and the health of the overall manufacturing economy.

This changed when a combination of keen Asian competition and Californian regulation gradually shifted the chip and computer manufacturers out of Silicon Valley, which has lost roughly 80,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000. The new Valley is predominately post-industrial. For example, only 30 of about 16,000 production workers for the iPod are based in the US.

As Silicon Valley became software valley, tech firms no longer needed large numbers of semi-skilled workers and the network of small subcontractors to keep the industrial machine going. Those services, if needed, could be performed in India, China, Utah, Texas or North Carolina. “The job creation has changed,” notes long-time San Jose economic development official Leslie Parks. “We used to be the whole food chain and create all sorts of middle-class jobs. Now, increasingly, we don’t design the future – we just think about it. That makes some people rich, but not many.”

What has made “the sovereigns of cyberspace,” to quote author Rebecca MacKinnon, so wealthy is precisely what made John D Rockefeller so rich: control of markets. Google, for example, accounts for over 60 per cent of search, while, alongside Apple, it control almost 90 per cent of the operating systems for smartphones. Similarly, over half of American and Canadian computer users use Facebook, making it easily the world’s dominant social-media site.

More important still, the tech oligarchs control portions of their companies that would make most oilmen or auto executives fantastically rich. Indeed, owners of only one energy-related firm, Koch Industries, have made it into the top 10 of the Forbes 400. The CEO and chairman of Exxon-Mobil, America’s largest oil company, Rex Tillerson, controls 0.04 per cent of Exxon stock, while Google’s Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt control roughly two thirds of the company’s voting stock. Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg also control outsized shares of their firms.

These firms are now so rich that they resemble countries. Besides General Electric, a classic conglomerate, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle and Google often have more dollars on hand than the US government. And their influence can be felt in every office, home and phone through intrusive software that provides a trove of personal data that would make the old KGB turn from red to green with envy. As Google’s Eric Schmidt put it: “We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.”

The politics of the intangible class

The liberation from the constraints of the tangible economy has inflamed the ambitions of the oligarchs. “Politics for me is the most obvious area [to be disrupted by the web],” suggests former Facebook president Sean Parker. The success with which social media assisted President Obama’s re-election effort offers clear support to Parker’s assertion.

In allying with Obama, tech is moving in the opposite direction to much of the business community, particularly small business, which Gallup finds a hotbed of anti-Obama sentiment. Other traditional industries like oil and gas have also turned overwhelmingly to the right, as Obama has targeted them for their role in climate change. In 1990, energy firms gave out almost as much to Democrats as Republicans; in 2014 they gave over three times as much to the GOP.

In contrast, the oligarchs, as they have become ever richer, are clearly moving leftwards. In 2000, the communications and electronics sector was basically even in its donations; by 2012, it was better than two to one Democratic. Microsoft, Apple and Google – not to mention entertainment companies – all overwhelmingly lean to the Democrats with their donations.

The transformer and the disrupters

There seems a natural affinity between President Obama, who sees himself as a force for transformation, and the tech oligarchs, who love “disruption.” Each shares a high estimate of their basic intelligence and foresight; it is an alliance of those who feel they should own and shape the future.

“We need to run the experiment, to show what a society run by Silicon Valley looks like,” venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya recently argued. This effort could appeal to a public that tends to regard the tech firms as better than more mundane businesses or the government. Indeed, when Steve Jobs, a 0.000001 per center worth $7 billion, and rugged capitalist of the classic type, passed away, protesters openly mourned his demise.

One critical PR advantage the tech firms enjoy is that most, with a notable exception of Amazon, don’t mistreat blue-collar workers, or unions, since they have few of either. This gets them a free pass from social-justice warriors unavailable to traditional firms. Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford mostly exploited workers in Pittsburgh or Detroit, and paid a price; the exploitation of the oligarchs takes place far away in Chengdu, Guangzhou or India.

This alliance with the Democrats will not fade after Obama leaves office. Obama has enlisted several tech giants – including venture capitalist John Doerr, LinkedIn billionaire Reid Hoffman and Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla – to help plan out his no doubt lavish and highly political retirement. Many former Obama aides have gone to work for tech firms. Uber, for example, uses Obama campaign manager David Plouffe to lead its PR team, while other former officials have descended to other tech firms such as AirBnB, Google, Twitter and Amazon.

What is the ideology of Silicon Valley?

Silicon Valley may be progressive in its social or environmental positions, but it has little interest in class politics, an issue being pushed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries. “They don’t like [Bernie] Sanders at all,” notes San Francisco-based researcher Greg Ferenstein, who has been polling internet company founders for an upcoming book. Sanders’ emphasis on income redistribution, protecing union privileges and pensions hardly reflects the views of the tech elite. “He’s an egalitarian liberal,” Ferenstein explains, “these people are tech liberals. Equality is a non-issue in Silicon Valley.”

What are “tech liberals”? Ferenstein provides a picture of an unconscious elitism that runs through their worldview. Although their industry is overwhelmingly based in the San Francisco Peninsula’s suburban sprawl, the internet oligarchs, he claims, want “everyone” to move to the urban centre, something not remotely practical for most middle- and working-class families. They also advocate for strict environmental laws and ever higher energy prices, which don’t threaten their lifestyles, but are often devastating to those below them.

Yet there is a danger that the issue of inequality could eventually affect the tech industry’s PR. Unlike the earlier products, such as computers or semiconductors, the products the tech industry now develop have provided little of value to the rest of society, whether in terms of jobs (outside of the Bay Area) or boosting productivity. The social-media industry has made the likes of Mark Zuckerberg fantastically wealthy, but it’s difficult to maintain it has improved living conditions for most Americans.

At the same time, well-financed Valley “disruption” can be seen as a threat to many businesses and individuals. These already include groups such as cab drivers, owners and workers at small hotels, realtors and travel agents, and newspaper scribblers, all of whom are being driven out of the middle class. The much-needed “sharing economy” often offers these workers part-time employment without much in the way of benefits.

Even in the tech industry itself, American workers find themselves increasingly replaced by imported foreign workers. Oligarchs such as Mark Zuckerberg are anxious to expand H1B and other “guest-worker programmes” that bring in low-cost indentured tech workers to the Valley, as well as to IT departments across corporate America.

Of course, this hardly makes the tech oligarchs unique – after all, capitalists have always sought out the cheapest source of labour, and understandably so. But it does mean that, in oligarchic America, where even getting a degree in computer science and software does not guarantee a bright future, the hip, PR-friendly “don’t be evil” appearance of tech companies may soon be looking a little less cool.

Techies on the green team

Perhaps nothing separates the oligarchy from the rest of business than its support for Obama’s climate-change policies. Many industries see these policies as a direct threat to their very existence, but this means little to moguls, who can shift their energy needs to cheaper locales, such as the Pacific Northwest or the South. In California, such policies have less an impact on the temperate coast than in the less glamorous interior. As one recent study found, the summer electrical bills in rich, liberal and temperate Marin come to $250 monthly, while in impoverished, hotter Madera, the average is twice as high.

Not that there’s anything cynical about the tech oligarchy’s commitment to green policies. It is entirely sincere – the oligarchs really do believe, as do many liberal, Democratic types, that they are fighting the good fight. But that doesn’t mitigate the effects of their worldview.

Still, the oligarch’s energy politics are not entirely based on the greater good. For Silicon Valley and Wall Street supporters, there are also some business opportunities in the assault on fossil fuels. Cash-rich firms like Google and Apple, and many high-tech financiers and venture capitalists, have invested in subsidised green energy firms. Some, like Elon Musk, exist largely as creatures of subsidies. Neither Solar City nor Tesla would be so attractive, or might not even exist, without generous handouts.

The brave new world of the oligarchs

If we want to get some idea how an oligarch-dominated economy works, take a look at my adopted home state – of over 40 years – of California, the home of the most powerful oligarchs. The Golden State sees itself as the “brains” of the tech culture and proof of the bountiful ingenuity of “the creative class.”

Yet behind the media glitz, California is increasingly a bifurcated state, divided between a glamorous software- and media-based economy concentrated in certain coastal areas, and a declining, and increasingly impoverished, interior. Overall, nearly a quarter of Californians live in poverty, the highest percentage of any state, including Mississippi, and, according to a recent United Way study, close to one in three people are barely able to pay their bills.

So how do the oligarchs make this work politically? One way is simply to make alliances – through contributions and media support – with politicians who are most hurt by California’s regulatory vice. This strategy is evident in the odd coupling of San Francisco hedge-fund billionaire, Tom Steyer, the biggest funder of climate-change hysteria, and his Latino sidekick, California Senator Kevin de Leon, who represents impoverished East Los Angeles.

The new political configuration works in classic medieval fashion, with the rich providing the necessities for the poor, without providing them opportunity for upward mobility or the chance, God forbid, to buy a house in the outer suburbs. With the fading of California’s once powerful industrial economy – Los Angeles has lost much of its manufacturing base over the past decade – its working classes now must be mollified by symbolic measures, such as energy rebates, subsidised housing and the ever illusive chimera of “green jobs.”

This “upstairs-downstairs” California coalition could presage the country’s political future. Perhaps it’s best to think of it as a form of high-tech feudalism, in which the upper classes run the show, but bestow goodies on the struggling masses. This alliance will allow the present tech oligarchs to thrive without facing a populist challenge that could interfere with their profits and expansion into other markets.

In the oligarchic era, the bottom line is an increasing concentration of power in ever fewer hands. Romantic notions that the high-tech era would be marked by a surge of small, independent companies are belied by the market domination of a few firms and their expansion into ever more business areas. Companies like Google begin to morph into conglomerates, or American versions of Japan’s keiretsu, with interests in such businesses as health, media and autonomous vehicles.

Similar keiretsu are forming around companies such as Apple, Amazon and Facebook, which now can buy their way into what were once seen as unrelated markets. This is married to increased media power, which will allow them to set the agenda in coming decades. This is being accomplished both through the purchase of old media – the most important being the purchase by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos of the venerable Washington Post – or by new sites controlled by firms like Yahoo, the No 1 news site in the US, with 110 million monthly viewers, or Google’s news site with 65,000,000 users.

The intrusion of tech firms into media is likely to become even more pervasive as the millennial generation grows up and the older cohorts begin to die off. Among those over 50, only 15 per cent, according to a Pew report, get their news over the internet; among those under 30, the number rises to 65 per cent.

Ultimately the ambitions of the oligarchs are boundless. Firms like Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, and Elon Musk’s Space X, seek to lead the world in space exploration. If NASA continues to retreat from many areas of space exploration, it is likely that, in the future, the heavens may end up belonging to the oligarchs as well.

When historians write the history of this age, their attention likely will focus on the rise of these oligarchies. They already control California, with its unparalleled creative and technical prowess, as well as the dominant cultural power centre in the English-speaking world. Tomorrow the new oligarchs will be looking to consolidate their power in Washington. And the day after that, maybe the world and galaxy as well.