My Fight

WARNING…… What Follows is extremely long and massively contentious

“By far the greatest bulk of the political ‘education,’ which in this case one may rightly define with the word ” propaganda,’ is the work of the press. It is the press above
all else that carries out this ‘work of enlightenment,’ thus forming a sort of school for adults. This instruction, however, does not rest in the hand of the State, but partly in
the claws of very inferior forces.

As a very young man I had the very best opportunity of becoming really acquainted with the owners and spiritual producers of this machine for educating the masses.

At the beginning I was astonished how short a time it took this most evil of all the great powers in the State to create a certain opinion, even if this involved complete falsification of the wishes or opinions in the minds of the public. In the course of a
few days a ridiculous trifle was turned into an affair of State, whereas, at the same time, problems of vital  importance were dropped into general oblivion, or rather were stolen from the minds and the memory of the masses.So they succeeded, in the course of a few weeks, in  conjuring up some names out of nothing and attaching incredible hopes to them on the part of the great public, in even giving them a popularity which the really important man may never attain during his whole lifetime; names which.in addition, nobody had even heard of only a month before, whereas at the same time old and trustworthy representatives of public or political life, though in the bloom of health, simply died in the minds of their contemporaries, or they were showered with such wretched abuses that soon their names were in danger of becoming the symbol of villainy and rascality.

It is necessary to study this infamous  method with which they simultaneously and from all directions, as at a given magic word, pour bucketfuls of the basest calumnies and defamation over the clean garb of honest people, in order to appreciate the entire danger of these rascals of the press.

Then, too, there is hardly anything which does not suit the purposes of such an intellectual robber baron in order to reach his end.Then he spys into the most secret family affairs and does not rest till his truffle-searching instinct finds some trifling event destined to bring about the unfortunate victim’s fall. But even if the most thorough nosing about does not stir up anything at all in his victim’s public or private life, then such a fellow will turn to calumny with the firm conviction that not only something of it will stick to his victim, despite thousandfold refutation, but that, in consequence of the hundredfold repetition of the calumnies by all his accomplices, the victim is in most cases looking only at the resulting product together with its activity, it should suffice that the objective lunacy of this institution would dawn on even the most closed mind. ”

Well……Do you recognise any of the above?
Day after Day after Day…. A constant drip drip drip drip of demonisation of the SNP, the Scottish Government and particularly its leaders by our press and media…in particular the BBC radio and tv news and political forums. The denouncement of YES supporters as Cybernats and the depiction of Scottish Nationalists as Nazis.
They and Unionist politicians called the SNP dictators, comparing Alex Salmond to Hitler, PolPot, and many other nasty figures. They are now doing the same to Nicola Sturgeon, and I hear people in the street parroting them. Yet never ever do they refer to Theresa May or any in Westminster in such a fashion.

“Everybody speaks only before the audience that is able to hear him, or that receives a description of what has been said through the reports of the press.But the greatest direct audience is not represented by the hall of parliament, but by the great public meeting.For there, there will be thousands of people who have only come to hear what the speaker has to say, whereas in the session hall of the House of Parliament there are only a few hundred, whose chief reason for coming is only to receive their remuneration and not to let themselves be enlightened by the wisdom of the one or the other of the ‘ people’s representative.’

But above all :

It is always the same public which will never add to its knowledge, not only because it lacks the brains for this, but also the necessary, though modest, will power.
Never will one of these MPs willingly do better in truth the honour of entering its service.No, not one of them will do that, except he hopes to save or to regain his mandate for a further session.
For as soon as it is in the air that the existing party will not do very well in a coming election, only then will these ornaments of manliness set out to see how they can gain the other, probably winning party or direction, whereby this change of position takes place under a cloudburst of moral motivations.
Therefore, whenever an existing party seems to be out of the people’s favour to the extent that an annihilating defeat is threatened, a great migration begins: the parliamentary rats leave the party ship. This has nothing to do with greater knowledge or will power, but with that clairvoyant ability which warns such a parliamentary bedbug just in time, so that it can let itself drop on another warm party bed.

To speak before such a  forum means really to cast pearls before certain well-known animals. This is really not worth while. The result cannot be other than naught.

This, then, was actually the case.

The MPs could talk on till their throats were hoarse; the effect was naught.

The press, however, passed over it in silence or mutilated the speeches in a way that every connection, even often their meaning, was lost or distorted, so that public opinion
was given only a very poor picture of the intentions of the new movement. It was of no importance whatsoever what the individual gentlemen now said; the importance rested
in what one read of them. But this was only an abstract of their speeches, which, in its tattered condition, was nothing but nonsense and so it was intended. But the only forum
before which they actually spoke consisted of barely five hundred parliamentarians, and that says enough.

But the worst was the following:

The  movement could hope for success only if it realized from the very first day that the question involved was not that of a new party but that of a new view of life. The latter alone was able to summon the internal strength to fight out this gigantic struggle. But for this only the best and the most courageous characters are suited to act as leaders.

If the fight for a new view of life is not led by heroes willing to sacrifice themselves, then no more will death-defying fighters be found. He who in such a case fights for his own existence cannot have much consideration left for the community.But in order to preserve this assumption, it is necessary for everybody to know that the new movement has nothing to offer to the present except the honour and the fame of posterity. The more easily-to-be-won positions such a movement has to offer, the greater will be the onrush of inferior stuff, till finally these political jobbers overcrowd a successful political party in such numbers that the honest fighter of an earlier time no longer recognizes the old movement, so that the newcomers themselves decidedly reject him as an unwelcome ‘ intruder

With this the ‘ mission ‘ of such a movement is finished.

From the moment the  movement sold itself to parliament, it gained ‘parliamentarians’ instead of leaders and fighters.

Thus it deteriorated to the level of ordinary political parties of the day and lost the force to oppose a catastrophic destiny with the defiance of martyrdom. Instead. of fighting, it now learned to ‘speak’ and to ‘negotiate.’ The new parliamentarian considered it, within a short time, a nicer duty, because it involved less risk, to fight for the new view of life with the ‘ intellectual ‘ weapons of parliamentary eloquence than to throw himself into a fight, and possibly risking his own life, whose end was uncertain and in any case did not promise any gain.

But as now the party was in parliament, the followers outside began to hope and to wait for miracles, which, of course, never happened and never could happen. Therefore, they
became impatient within a short time; for also what one heard of one’s own MPs in no way corresponded with the expectations of the voters. This was only too natural, as the hostile press took heed not to report a true-to-life picture of the representative to the people.

But the more the new MPs began to find palatable the rather mild form of  fight in parliament and the diet, the less were they ready to return to the more dangerous work of enlightening the nation’s great masses.

Therefore, the mass meeting, being direct and personal, and which was the only way of exercising a really effective influence and which, therefore, alone could enable the winning of great parts of the nation, was pushed more and more into the background.

Once the table of the meeting hall was exchanged for the platform of parliament, so that from this exalted forum speeches could be poured into the heads of the so-called
‘elected representatives’ instead of into the people, the movement ceased to be a people’s movement and gradually sank into a club for academic discussion, to be taken more or less seriously.

Now also the bad impression that the press had rendered was in no way repaired by the personal assembly activity of the various gentlemen, so that finally the word of the leader had a very bad sound in the ears of the great public.

For let it be said to all knights of the pen and to all the political dandies, especially of today : the greatest changes in this world have never yet been brought about by a goose-
quill!

No, the pen has always been reserved to motivate these changes theoretically.

But the power which set the greatest historical avalanches of political and religious nature sliding was, from the beginning of time, the magic force of the spoken word alone.

The great masses of a nation will always and only succumb to the force of the spoken word. But all great movements are movements of the people, are volcanic eruptions
of human passions and spiritual sensations, stirred either by the cruel Goddess of Misery or by the torch of the word thrown into the masses, and are not the lemonade-like outpourings of aestheticizing literati and drawing-room heroes.

Only a storm of burning passion can turn people’s destinies, but only he who harbours passion in himself can arouse passion.

Passion alone will give to him, who is chosen by her, the words that, like beats of a hammer, are able to open the doors to the heart of a people.

He to whom passion is denied and whose mouth remains closed is not chosen by Heaven as the prophet of its will.

Therefore, may every writer remain by his inkwell in order to work ‘theoretically’ if his brains and ability are sufficient for this ; such writers are neither born nor chosen
to become leaders.

Every movement with great aims has anxiously to watch that it may not lose connection with the great masses.

It has to examine every question primarily from this point of view and to make decisions in this direction.

Further, it has to avoid everything that could diminish or even weaken its ability to influence the masses; perhaps not for ‘demagogic* reasons, no, but because of the simple
realization that without the enormous power of the masses of a people no great idea, no matter how sublime and lofty it may appear, is realizable.

Hard reality alone conditions the way that leads to every goal; shunning disagreeable ways means, in this world, only too often to renounce the goal; one may wish
this or not.

As soon as the  movement, because of its parliamentary position, began to place the weight of its activity upon parliament instead of upon the people, it lost
its future and won cheap successes of the moment.

It chose the easier fight, and therewith it was no longer worthy of the ultimate victory.

Already  I had thought most thoroughly about just this question, and in its non-recognition I saw one of the causes for the decline of the movement whose mission.in my eyes, was to take the leadership  into its hands.

The first two mistakes which made the movement fail were related to each other. The lack of  knowledge of the internal driving forces of great changes led to an insufficient evaluation of the importance of the great masses of the people ; from this resulted the scanty interest in the social question, the deficient and insufficient courting of the soul of the nation’s lower classes, but also the attitude towards parliament that favoured this condition.

If one had recognized the tremendous power which at all times is due to the masses as the bearer of revolutionary resistance, one would certainly have applied a different
policy as regards social and propagandistic directions. Then the center of weight of this movement would not have been removed to the parliament, but stressed in the workshops and streets.

All of the above could well describe how such an uninspiring figure as Corbyn could win the Labour leadership, and even manage to create such a fuss at the General election that even some YES supporters who are Left leaning voted for him in Scotland in the face of such an abject campaign that Theresa May ran….. they entirely overlooked in all the furore that such a vote would be taken as voting against Independence in Scotland, and that Corbyn was not who they were voting for in their constituencies.

It wasn’t that Corbyn was at all impressive… but the weight of the Momentum Movement in England and he being seen addressing them created that impression.
I am sure it didn’t take long for them to be very disappointed when Corbyn immediately whipped his MPs into voting with the Tories not to oppose Brexit, and also to agree with the Tories about coming out of the Single market and prevent free movement of these despicable foreigners coming into the country.
The Momentum Movement made him, it can also take him down.

Likewise the above section explains how the likes of Farage and Trump could prevail in manufacturing consent out of the politically uneducated masses discontent. Farage by being given unheard of platforms in the press and by the BBC from a non existent electoral base, and Trump by bypassing the mainstream media entirely and speaking directly to the impoverished and angry electorate.

I mentioned earlier how Civic Scottish Nationalists are maligned as Nazis
So here is the really contentious bit……  As someone who is utterly opposed to that type of Nationalism which has been more and more embraced by the Tories stealing the rhetoric of Farage and his mob in taking forward and considerably enhancing and expanding on the policies of the the quasi Tory Blairs New Labour in attacking the poorest, the disabled, the homeless and now the elderly far more than Thatcher could have dared dream of. In ramping up the rhetoric against those whose background and colour or accent is not English to the extent that ordinary citizens are scared to venture out in some parts of England in case they are verbally or physically abused or get disfigured with acid. In aligning with the DUP and ramping up sectarianism by supporting the Orange Order in Scotland, and speaking the languange of “Taking Back Control” with an intent to do away with Human Rights whilst using the excuse of Terror attacks to further diminish our civil liberties and aligning themselves with an utter unhinged bampot across the Atlantic…. And last but certainly not least…For the more rabid right wing media..replace Jews with Muslims!
Unionism is just British Nationalism by a different name.
It is nasty and it is horrible.

Well..do you know who I have been extensively quoting yet?

It was Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf… ( The title of this article “MY Fight” is the translation of Mein Kampf)
written while he was in prison… he learned the tricks from the media of his day, and his party developed on all of it…. particularly on the use of propaganda and the importance of Mass movements…

Let what you have been witnessing over the past couple of years be a WARNING
Open YOUR EYES.

Also Ironically there is a warning of a different sort to the SNP in all this.
If they distance themselves politically from the YES movement and keep playing safely safely and just timidly making little gains and concessions here and there and get too cosy with their nice political debates in parliament and the nice perks they too will lose their support from a disillusioned Independence support….and that just will not do.

The very last thing Scotland needs is to be hog tied to this dysfunctional Union which is going straight into an Isolationist Brexit hell on a handcart.
We have to be passionate and we need to make our voices heard…. Scotland does not deserve or want any part of what is happening… For all our sakes… We need to get out..and get out NOW!

Note: I changed the word Delegates to MPs….. and omitted references to Austria and Germany……but otherwise the extensive quotes were word for word from Mein Kampf