Monday, November 3, 2008

Sandwich Shop Evoliani


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The New York Times Style Magazine is a generally a good read as it has pretty models, often showcases the elegance and aesthetics of better, past times as well as whatever vapid, cosmopolitan crap du jour the ruling classes are eating up. In the Men's Fashion Fall issue, there was an article on the paninari, subject of the great Pet Shop Boys song. For those who don't know (and I didn't until I read the article, I thought the song was just about buying Italian brand clothes in NYC), this was a subculture of Italian kids who emerged as a reaction to the darker or crustier groups such as Punks and Goths and whose "fashion choices were a way of socializing and publicly embracing appropriation- specifically, the American dream as defined by the quick and easy pop culture culture of the Reagan era. (For an Italian of a previous generation, a slow death would be preferable to a diet of foil-wrapped hamburgers, French fries and Cokes.)

What really caught my eye is the youth second to the far right of the picture with the Celtic cross tshirt and upon closer inspection (see close up) an Iron Cross on his pant leg. Given that this picture was snapped in Italy during the late 1970s or early 80s, it can well be assumed that this symbolism was supportive of certain ultraviolent neofascisti groups operating during the time as part of a dirty war against various far left gangs, the Brigate Rosse being the most famous. Of course, it later came out that the whole Blacks vs. Reds conflict was wholly superficial as generally both sides were being controlled by the CIA and NATO as a part of the last rampart of World War III, i.e. the [not so] Cold War, in an effort to protect Western Europe from Soviet invasion. Now while American and Western European anticommunist tactics played no small part in the downfall of Stalinist tyranny, the outcome was pretty inevitable given the crapshack of economic theories the USSR was founded on, not to mention the eternal truth of all totalitarianisms: they are their own wost enemy.

Of course, the whole dichotomy of the Cold War, that it was between two different economic systems: Free Market Capitalism vs. State Socialism/Communism was utterly false. As we all know, capitalism in the West is hardly based on free enterprise and a lack of government intrusion. Instead we see corporate welfare and a litany of laws designed to complicate and prevent any upstart small businesses from flourishing or the individual worker from selling his labor to the highest bidder. As for the USSR and other supposed socialist countries, as anyone with knowledge of theoretical socialism (either Marxian or non-Marxian) will tell you, the USSR and China are what is more properly defined a state capitalism as the industries within these countries were owned either fully or in part by the state apparatus and controlled by party bureaucrats. So while the fall of the Soviet Union and its various satellites led people such as Francis Fukuyama to declare victory for free market capitalism as part of a neo-Hegelian interpretation of the "End of History", as we have since seen (in addition to my previous remarks on the lack of truly free markets and enterprise) with such recent events as the Wall Street bailout, it is really state capitalism which is evolving and becoming the dominant, world wide economic system.

But getting back to the youth in the picture, what I find most amusing about the whole scenario is that certain elements, in fact the most radical sections, of the rightist terror gangs operating during the Years of Lead considered themselves disciples of Julius Evola. As such, they saw themselves as not simply fighting against just Commies but also against democracy, capitalism and the most levelling and tyranically banal aspects of modernism. They wanted to create a hierarchal, spiritually pagan and autarkic order to replace the most profane aspects of Western liberal democracy, in short everything the paninari stood for. Of course, the Gladio operation wasn't simply about protecting Western Europe from Soviet imperialism out of some heartfelt love of liberty and desire to protect those with whom we share a common heritage. It was also about imperialism, but of the order of Scrooge McDuck capitalism and the shiny barbarism of consumer culture. As I've mentioned in previous posts, a healthy, strong and independent Europe was viewed with suspicion from the State Department and their corporate friends as the cases of Sweden, Iceland, Switzerland and Ireland seemed to prove the possibility of having a burgeoning upwardly mobile society while still providing such basic amenities as free health care and education. Of course since the victory of American domination over Europe we've seen these once socially democratic governments turn against their citizens with the most absurd, politically correct laws imaginable while accepting the most destitute and parasitical sections of the Third World, inevitably putting such a strain on the social services as to make them essentially worthless. There is no doubt that this will accumulate into a socio-economic crisis of Malthusian proportions within only a few years. End of History or civilization as we know it? As Rosa Luxemburg put it: Socialism or Barbarism? I think we all know which one is coming...

20 comments:

rmangum said...

I have to admit I don't know which one is coming, but in all likelihood it could be both (it all depends on how you define "socialism"; the "barbarism" part I am sure of).

Allen.J.Pseudonym said...

Hey there. I agree with a lot of your sentiment here. However I feel that in regards to your views on America's role in Europe's socialist societies over-embracing commercialism, political correctness and so on- you haven't included the very things that our books often fail to mention in this process. The ruling classes, the powerful people who have the most pull in their nations, and even in the world of foreign investments. The only advantage the U.S. has is perhaps a larger arsenal of military toys. I feel that things ranging from international trade journals, secret societies, even black magic could be the real pervasiveness towards ensuing mediocrity at large. Think of how every car manufacturer since the 1990's has totally embraced this elliptical art-deco revival aesthetic, or else the pop music tropes, reality tv and so on. What is so fascinating about such drivel? It feels like 1984 sometimes (or often) sure, but to me it doesn't appear tantilizing, mature, or even pragmatic unless it is simply an attempt to improve upon past failed efforts of conventional fascism by somehow stoning the masses with the worst visual media imaginable after all that has already passed (WWII, Holocaust and all subsequent apocolypses of modern man). Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree, or not well read enough to get a more sensible narrative from our recent history. It just seems too bizarre to me to witness old friends buying a Mac, watching Survivor, and staying energetic and social despite being struggling parents, in this world which is so sad compared to say, 15 years ago or whatever. I nearly lost my marbles, watching people in my city shift to the right during the Bush decade, just because the local talk AM Channel replaced Peter Warren the whistle blower with a right-wing Limbaugh impersonator who lambasted callers daily for not supporting the Iraq war (and this is in Canada). Completely surreal. Neo-Illuminati or free Masons hijacked reality during the 1990's mass fascination with eastern philosophy. I know when the concept of first Jesus, and then Buddhist thought enveloped me, things and people in the city made me feel physically ill and I've not been the same for a decade now, feeling like I'm witnessing something that is allowed to happen because officially there is no such thing as massive supernatural forces, or even just mass hypnosis. Perhaps this only happens in the city where I live. I haven't ruled that out, as it has been recently said that our parliament building infact contains a lrage amount of secret freemasonry symbols, and even the statued naked buy ontop is actually Mercury, the roman god of commerce.

Allen.J.Pseudonym said...

Situated thus presumedly due to our city being located almost in the center of the n. american continent. Perhaps something to do with ley lines. Sad shit for sure. A really terrible, depressing city, filled with students who have no feelings or sense of real art, and a bunch of angry indians in the core who somehow enforce a scary police state mentality with their sheer ignorance towards anyone white who doesn't give them whatever they ask for (they were put her in the 1980's from distant reserves to directly receive government welfare, rather than going through the indian chiefs (who are often corrupt) in their former dwellings. Plus, after a mass exodus of baby boomers to newer suburbs in the 1970's to raise children, the rental properties would have stood empty were it not for this massive influx of unruly, depressed, and sociopathic natives. Goddamn Mercury...
All I'm sure of, is that there's a lot to the ruling classes that we are missing here. Secret money cults, meta-narratives that officially do not exist. Funny thing is, they built that parliament building AFTER a massive 1918 general strike throughout our city for 40 days or so where most of the public and many private workers striking (these were the days whereonly the upper classes sat on the floor at the local theatre) caused the city to grind to a halt. Until the RCMP and the newspapers pulled some dirty tricks. I think the people here by and large are just their functioning puppets, and I barely mean that figuratively. This place closes echoes whatever happens on the U.S. media somehow. It doesn't seem Canadian at all. Almost like some twisted society experiment to mind fuck us so badly that it affects everything else. Everybody's freaking oblivious to everything that falls outside of their stereotypical schemes. But I swear, before the mid 1990's, we had a major sports team and I think that was a real rallying point for peoples' comaraderie. It's absurd. But really, no more absurd than what you've described for example, but certainly not canon. I hope things are better where you live, sincerely.

Theo Kalomiris

Allen.J.Pseudonym said...

This compared to the view I had as a youth that I might some day become like Jack or Larry from Three's Company. (not quite)..
But hey, sorry about those typos and poor grammar. The problem with metaphysics, or the concept of self and the other is that if one believes it, then the rest of society is potentially thought to be an illusion. What a crock of shit. How can people function properly with such drivel in their heads? It just increases the ego more, if anything. I'm referring to what I heard as being actual Buddhist philosophy, as taught in Japanese Budhist schools, at least. How can kids grow up with such ideas? For me it was synchronious (the notion of Buddhism) with the late 1990's Spice Girls invasion, U2 Pop, Britney, bad relationship breakup, existential crisis, society becoming totally supernatural, like people predicting my thoughts and anxieties while I'm working with them on the job, strange shit. I think I'm some sort of a spiritual mark of the worst kind- like George Orr, the protagonist from Ursula Leguin's work Lathe of Heaven. Some guy dressed as a medival philosopher at a posh co-op mansion halloween party revealed to me that my real name (Theo) actually means God. Then later that same night at the same party, this older Japanese-Canadian lady (another wallflower like me) starts telling em about Buddhism and how it has no concept of sin. I recently have begun to think that I was made to be the eyes of the world, so to speak. Jungian synchronicity of sorts. My anxieties and general beliefs somehow correspond, ( or at the very least are highly burdened by and suspicious of) the way of the world through our media, and also the signage and culture around town. Eveything here to me seems alive, God-like, but in a commercial, insidious fashion. I'm not happy. I've pretty much ruled out ever having a real job again, as well as a relationship (last one was in '97). Sorry for the confessional, I know it sounds probably like a far-fetched story, but that's essentially what I believe, and so thus at sme point I'm hoping that if I become well-read, then maybe my "karma" will improve, and hence the lot of the rest of humanity- since I care very deeply about our world, and so thus that would definitely constitute good karma for me. It's lke my subconscious is being read by unscrupulous psychic police. Who are these people? You tell me. I guess maybe I got banker friends in high places. All I know is, $540 a month for disability is a real steal considering what an "eyes of the world" mentality is providing. Honest, objective, a sort of everyman mentality. Imagine Jackson Browne as George Orr. The feeling of dread and terrible ideas about what could lay on the horizon in these times seems to summon up some terrible visual media for sure. I was thinking maybe monarchs, especially the females are subject to being some sort of ideal world view the Eye of Providence on the pyramid. The only head that matters to the money machine. Worst kind of fascism imaginable. Everything is so prefab in the 20th century pop culture that it makes me wonder if anything was really ever grassroots or not. People just seemed too easily to slip under the yoke of a new narrative, new phony commercialism and all its converts. I was busy, as a born-again Christian thinking it was really judgement day, in fall '97. To me, it was all par for the course. Something wierd definitely happened throught that season, and nobody here or anywhere I can tell noticed a thing. Look at those fugly cars on the road. Even Mercedes and Volvo.

Allen.J.Pseudonym said...

Russia's former aristocrats-turned communist officials-turned entrepreneurs, no sign of a mixed economy like Sweden there! Go figure! I think fascism embodies an almost off-world mentality. Like that of 2001. Some guy in a white victorian room on one of Jupiter's moons is doing a seance as we speak. How stupid can people be? Or maybe this magic I hypothesize is coming from those who are not the same race as we. Regardless, if I'm at least fractionally correct about what has already been stated about our parliament and secret rituals and God knows what else, this place is straight out of a Hollywood B movie thriller-type screenplay. Perfect cover. So ludicrous and unimaginable, not to mention unknown that I can talk candidly about it, and only sound like an imaginative kook. Maybe I just got no drive and a fanciful imagination (bankers, money, world conquest). If I could help Marxism, I would prefer that to watching the entire human race become even more degenerate and brainwashed than they already are.

So the moral of this wacky story is, don't name your kid "Theo" because someday they may become embroiled in some crazy scheme of worldly conquest because their name literally in its shortened form means God in Greek and also Latin. Futurism, expediency. Mercury. Commerce. Like we are freaking peasants. Sick. It must be some near-absurd way to force otherwise complacent or bored people to feed their brains. There's no impedment to that just yet, so it remains an only option in the face of an empire with such powers.

I am deeply sorry if I have gone on far too long for your liking. I feel a sense of urgency at least regarding talk of secret societies and magical rites, and when failing to notice any mention of such in an otherwise comprehensive perspective such as yours, I draw upon my own bizarre-sounding personal experiences to suggest (but not usually this candidly I admit) a more ecletic worldview.



could happen to anybody right?

  said...

Hi there Ean,

I already sent you an email, but it appears your email address is no active (I got an unsent notice for it).

This concerns the four long, ranting, delusional posts I added above a couple of years ago (I was wondering if you could please delete them all for me- and this too I guess). I think I was high on pot when I wrote the stuff, and paranoid and nervous to boot beforehand. People I knew who spouted conspiracy theories based on the radio show Coast to Coast filled my mind with all sorts of heavy-handed notions, and what I was really going through was mental delusions caused by mold inhalation in the damp basement bedroom of mine. Basically my nerves were affected, and I started getting the feeling that I had distant voices in my head, and I thought people were out to get me, tracking me or something. I can't express how unpleasant that notion was. It turns out my whole mattress had become infested underneath with a musty mold problem I didn't locate the source from earlier, and until I tossed it, my health problems didn't improve. I cannot explain enough how embarrassing it is for me to have posted my real name and now it's on Google with this big ball of kook-talk. Please, for the love of mercy, could you find it in your heart to delete these for me?

I'd really appreciate such an act of kindness.

Thanks, and all the best

  said...

P.S.

Fwiw, I'm actually a sort of radical-centrist perhaps, because I'm a social idealist (and utopian) at heart, and also a pacifist. I'd like to see things like B. Fuller's Spaceship Earth concepts to come about, for as a youth I was really keen on that sort of outlook for the space age.

  said...

Alright, so you're not around to check your blog. But having my real name up there, that's unwise. Please don't expose me to the world of pesky crooks and whatnot. it was a negative, conspiratorial and cynical bunch of notions I put forth there. I sound half-possessed or something. I consider it shameful expression (and wrong-headed) on my part.

  said...

The last thing I want is for people to Google my name and read such long-winded pseudo-commentary. All I think I know is, the system at large is run by powerful hustlers of people, and the majority of planetarians seem okay with that. It's designed to fool them, or something.


“Let not princes complain of the faults committed by the people subjected to their authority, for they result entirely from their own negligence or bad example.”

  said...

Another thing I don't want is for people who despise folks like me (whatever that entails) to search me out and distress me due to diatribes of mine such as those above four long nutty posts. I freaking labelled it, so terrible...
We the people...

  said...

I mean, even now there are times when I stop and ask myself, 'am I actually caught up in some multidimensional mind warp fest courtesy of the farthest right reaches of the imagination?' I don't know. I am sure confused. But writing my full name here, not too smart. Please, take my word for it, that's me up there. Or how about, I copy down each one of my entries here into notepad, and when I see that you've removed them (or perhaps I can copy them back here earlier) you can then intervene on my behalf and remove the earlier posts (and they also have typos remember) then everything will be okay for both of us.

  said...

...Or you can let me copy them back here, and sit back and watch me tear up the screen here with most likely pretty much the same information, as promised. My loss, your gain or whatever. But you, Mr. Frick would get the bad bigot karma then, that wouldn't be for me (VTS, Angels & Demons, etc). Mean-spirited, whatever. Degenerate motions in essence. Taking away from a cleaner slate. You're above that probably (I only read the one article of yours for this blog, but you sound like you went to school, so whatever. I'm not as much as a bookworm as you are, so please, have mercy. My i.q. is lower too, think about that. I'm a sorry poor-ass moron compared to you.)

  said...

Alright, I copied all the past comments to file. I'm not at the present certain whether to just go ahead and recopy them right away here. Hmm.

  said...

I happen to smoke a fair bit of m.j., that doesn't help.

  said...

Knock knock vts?

  said...

An infrared motion sensor or actual camera could inform others of when if at all to launch illegal sound technologies with post-Tesla secret technology on others. Like when one gets high. It's a convenient alibi for any staged activities on their part. Hearing asses whisper in one's thoughts. Studied buffoonery.

  said...

Just some illicit cons, that's what one finds out. Nobody with any mode other than egotistical. Smart enough to use a microphone and watch a video screen, wow. Now that I'm not brainwashed, what does it matter what is done? Might as well lay them off. ...the mold inhalation didn't help. A wet stain from washing cat odor off the bed corner that never dried also may have caused the mold, it looks like everything's got a simple explanation. I saw it with my own eyes when I pulled back the bedsheets and later saw the mold in the box spring and also could smell it from within the matress.
Aural hallucinations from mold infestation with cheap talk kind of character, sure.

Or my brain is out to get me, it thinks it's smarter than me and its own person apparently (but using subterfuge to drive me up the wall). No, I don't believe that's what's going on. Or some huge liar I might be. Doing it for free? I suffer from poor memory, especially while high, and this also makes things harder to figure out. I wish I took more notes. Ongoing, I could but, I take a sedative and either things feel more normal then or there's a lull and the more abnormal aural happenings seem less like reality than a foggy memory. They sure know how to be subtle, and when to fade fast, like dissipation.

  said...

In a lighter note, a 70's American artist named Ronnie Foster has a good Wonderesque album called Love Satellite (Stevie Wonder even plays drums on it, as he tended to on at least his own 70's work).

  said...

...It's possible that I imagine ambient noises around me to constitute actual dialogue and it is really a mental construct of mine alone. I don't have any close friends, so long stretches of sitting around alone hearing noises that my imagination tries to decipher might be solely my own creation. It sounds kooky to me, but that might be what's happened, as well as possible side effects from previously breathing in mold-infested air in my sleeping quarters. That's probably what a doctor would say anyway.

  said...

...and I'd possibly think I was deciphering more positive things overall, except that I'm generally a person who gets anxious fairly easily, so I tend to think in a worried manner often. I do find taking a sedative helps me feel fairly normal again though. But some people say they think the waves at a shoreline seem to speak to them, or the rustling of trees. Bad habit to get into, trying to interpret phrases out of random noise.