Posts

Wolfgang Reinhard | But it is the central ritual of the democratic theater state

"Politicians who want to stay in power have to keep the voters happy, even though the election itself is only symbolic. But it is the central ritual of the democratic theater state. After all, it is no longer about substantive decisions, but only about the confirmation or replacement of political figureheads, who are legitimized by the fact that citizens are allowed to perform this ritual. This symbolically reinforces the fiction of popular sovereignty on which modern constitutional states are founded. In this way, and not through substantive decisions, elections contribute to its stabilization."

Wolfgang Reinhard

Emma Goldman | do you not realize that the State is the worst enemy you have?

"Men and women ... do you not realize that the State is the worst enemy you have? It is a machine that crushes you in order to sustain the ruling class, your masters. Like naïve children you put your trust in your political leaders. You make it possible for them to creep into your confidence, only to have them betray you to the first bidder. But even where there is no direct betrayal, the labour politicians make common cause with your enemies to keep you in leash, to prevent your direct action. The State is the pillar of capitalism, and it is ridiculous to expect any redress from it."

Emma Goldman

Michael Rivero | Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker

"Most people prefer to believe their leaders are just and fair even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which they live is lying and corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it. To take action in the face of a corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one's self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice. Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all."

Michael Rivero

Peter Hübner | It’s an industrial arrangement based on the idea of mass filling

"I am always irritated by the fact that they are not really schools at all. We don't see places for living and learning, but barracks. Along long corridors, one room stands at attention next to the other. All the classrooms have the same shape. The children are crammed in, all facing the blackboard. The teacher writes, the children copy. It's an industrial arrangement based on the idea of mass filling."

Peter Hübner

Anita Hofmann | by practicing a state on a small scale, namely at school

"This is about: What is actually best for children and young people? And how do they get their education and how do they become citizens? Because that is also the goal of our schooling, that I am an educated person who can also fulfill my civic duties and for that I need appropriate behavior and I learn that not only explicitly through knowledge, but also implicitly by practicing a state on a small scale, namely at school."

Anita Hofmann

Charles H. Spurgeon | Es wird eine Zeit kommen

"A time will come when instead of shepherds feeding the sheep, the church will have clowns entertaining the goats."

Charles H. Spurgeon

Max Weber | All political entities are violent entities

"All political entities are violent entities. But the type and degree of the use or threat of external violence against other similar entities plays a specific role in the structure and fate of political communities. Not every political entity is equally "expansive" in the sense that it seeks power externally, i.e., making force available for the purpose of acquiring political power over other territories and communities, whether in the form of incorporation or [of] dependency. The political entities are thus, to varying degrees, outwardly turned entities of violence."

Max Weber

Konrad Lorenz | To the extent that handicrafts are wiped out by the competition of industry

"To the extent that handicrafts are wiped out by the competition of industry, and to the extent that the smaller entrepreneur, including the farmer, becomes unable to exist, we are all quite simply forced to submit in our way of life to the wishes of the large producers, to eat the food and put on the clothes they think good for us, and what is worst of all, by virtue of the conditioning bestowed upon us, we do not even realize that they are doing so."

Konrad Lorenz

John Henry Mackay | I am an Anarchist

"Ever reviled, accursed, ne’er understood,
Thou art the grisly terror of our age.
“Wreck of all order,” cry the multitude,
“Art thou, and war and murder’s endless rage.”
O, let them cry. To them that ne’er have striven
The truth that lies behind a word to find,
To them the word’s right meaning was not given.
They shall continue blind among the blind.
But thou, O word, so clear, so strong, so pure,
Thou sayest all which I for goal have taken.
I give thee to the future! Thine secure
When each at least unto himself shall waken.
Comes it in sunshine? In the tempest’s thrill?
I cannot tell—but it the earth shall see!
I am an Anarchist! Wherefore I will
Not rule, and also ruled I will not be!"

John Henry Mackay

Murray Rothbard | not for equal freedom but for equal slavery

"The egalitarians are arguing not for equal freedom but for equal slavery or equal robbery in the name of “fairness."

Murray Rothbard

Smedley Darlington Butler | Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys

"Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. The was the "war to end wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one told them that dollars and cents were the real reason. No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United State patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure". Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month! All that they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill...and be killed"

Smedley Darlington Butler

Lysander Spooner | agents of the people

"If a man is my servant, agent, or attorney, I necessarily make myself responsible for all his acts done within the limits of the power I have intrusted to him. If I have intrusted him, as my agent, with either absolute power, or any power at all, over the persons or properties of other men than myself, I thereby necessarily make myself responsible to those other persons for any injuries he may do them, so long as he acts within the limits of the power I have granted him. But no individual who may be injured in his person or property, by acts of Congress, can come to the individual electors, and hold them responsible for these acts of their so-called agents or representatives. This fact proves that these pretended agents of the people, of everybody, are really the agents of nobody."

Lysander Spooner

C.S. Lewis | Of all tyrannies

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."

C.S. Lewis

Ingolfur Blühdorn | Politics is losing ground dramatically to the power of the markets

"It has long been obvious in the Western tribal countries of democracy that the promises inherent in this concept will probably remain unfulfilled: Politics is losing ground dramatically to the power of the markets; supposedly democratic systems are firmly in the hands of powerfully organized interests and have less and less to do with popular sovereignty - if there ever was any. Social inequality and the disenfranchisement and reification of citizens as mere administrative objects or human resources are advancing inexorably - though every step of disenfranchisement is communicated as emancipatory gain."

Ingolfur Blühdorn

Jacques Élisée Reclus | the policy of hatred always breeds hatred

"History permits the well-founded observation that the policy of hatred always breeds hatred and fatally complicates the general situation, if not leads to final ruin. How many nations perished in this way. Oppressors as well as oppressed! Should we also be doomed? I hope not! And I owe this hope also to the anarchist thinking, which penetrates day by day more and more into the light and renews the human initiative."

Jacques Élisée Reclus

Howard Zinn | Our problem is civil obedience

"As soon as you say the topic is civil disobedience, you are saying our problem is civil disobedience. That is not our problem.... Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. And our problem is that scene in All Quiet on the Western Front where the schoolboys march off dutifully in a line to war. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem."

Howard Zinn

Coudenhove-Kalergi | Today, democracy is a façade of plutocracy

"The form of constitution that replaced feudalism and absolutism was democracy; the form of government, plutocracy. Today, democracy is a façade of plutocracy: since nations would not tolerate a pure form of plutocracy, they were granted nominal powers, while the real power rests in the hands of plutocrats. In republican as well as monarchical democracies, the statesmen are puppets, the capitalists are the puppeteers; they dictate the guidelines of politics, rule through purchase the public opinion of the voters, and through professional and social relationships, the ministers. Instead of the feudal structure of society, the plutocratic stepped in; birth is no more the decisive factor for social rank, but income is. Today's plutocracy is mightier than yesterday's aristocracy: because nobody is above it but the state, which is its tool and helper's helper. When there was still true blood nobility, the system of aristocracy by birth was fairer than that of the moneyed aristocracy today: because then the ruling caste had a sense of responsibility, culture and tradition, whereas the class that rules today is barren of feelings of responsibility, culture or tradition."

Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi

Roland Baader | It is … a naivety that cannot be excused by anything to believe

"It is ... a naivety that cannot be excused by anything to believe that a state can be total in the economic sphere without being so at the same time in the political and spiritual sphere ...." ... Democracy and socialism are not a tautology (à la Oskar),but radical, mutually exclusive opposites. Democracy is a method of limiting and controlling power. Socialism, on the other hand, always denies the individual freedom of choice of individuals over their economic preferences and life goals (supposedly in favor of the general public, the collective); thus socialism always assigns sovereignty over the decisive existential forces and life motivations to the state or a party or political cliques, and thus socialism is never a system or method for limiting power, but always and everywhere pseudo-moral justification for patronizing life, carte blanche for cynically moralizing unrestrained power."

Roland Baader

Michael Wendler | We are living at the peak of the time of the false world

"We are living at the peak of the time of the false world. That's why being real gets you shunned. Why speaking truth gets you scorned and banned. Society is at the tipping point of the height of illussion. It takes serious courage to be real right now. Please be brave!"

Michael Wendler

Winston Churchill | There is only published opinion

"There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion."

Winston Churchill

Paul Felix Lazarsfeld | The power of radio

"The power of radio can be compared only with the power of the atomic bomb."

Paul Felix Lazarsfeld

Wernher von Braun | the last card is the alien card

“And remember Carol, the last card is the alien card. We are going to have to build space-based weapons against aliens and all of it is a lie"

Wernher von Braun,1977 (cité par Carol Rosin)

Machiavelli | He who has once begun to live by robbery

"He who has once begun to live by robbery will always find pretexts for seizing what belongs to others."

Machiavelli

Henry Louis Mencken | The urge to save humanity

"The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve. This is true even of the pious brethren who carry the gospel to foreign parts."

Henry Louis Mencken

Marvin Simkin | Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch

"Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99% vote."

Marvin Simkin

Samuel Edward Konkin III | Every victim of statism

"Every victim of statism has internalized the State to some degree. The IRS’s annual proclamation that the income tax depends on “voluntary compliance” is ironically true. Should the taxpayer completely cut off the blood supply, the vampire State would helplessly perish, its unpaid police and army deserting almost immediately, defanging the Monster."

Samuel Edward Konkin III

Nicholas Murray Butler | I divide the world into three Classes

"I divide the world into three Classes – The few who make things happen, the many who watch things happen, the overwhelming majority who have no notion of what happens."

Nicholas Murray Butler

Florian Willet | sad human truth

"One cause is rooted in the sad human truth that 'slaves' usually dream less of what it would be like to be free than of what it would be like to be 'slave overseers'"

Dr. Dr. Florian Willet

Prof. Reiner Mausfeld | A ‘war against X’ decreed from above

"A 'war against X' decreed from above - be it against 'terror' or against a pandemic - is never about what is declared to be fought. All that is sold here as a war against a threat must not be successful at all, because its success for the economic and political centers of power lies precisely in not being successful and in remaining as a means of generating fear and securing domination."

Prof. Reiner Mausfeld