Newsletter: October, 96

Table of Contents:

[The Revolt Against Reason: A Quarter Century On] [Massacres in Contemporary Conflict] [The Non-Criminal Black Market in Firearms] [Voices of Freedom]

Editor’s Remarks

This edition of the Newsletter is dedicated to the memory of WO Jim Bradwell, REME. On October 8th, WO Bradwell was injured by the first IRA bomb at Lisburn Barracks, and then mortally wounded by the second bomb emplaced at a nearby military hospital.

Bradwell, a long-time soldier with experience in Germany, Belize and Canada, leaves behind his wife and two children. The Lisburn bombing drives home a message that some earlier IRA activities in London did not quite manage - the cease-fire is over.

Although the IRA will no doubt invent some reason for their renewed attacks, the plain truth is that violence is now the only trade that the extremists of the IRA know. Those whose only employment skills are a slanted political history and bomb-making have no place in a peaceful modern society, and the "hard men" have proved they cannot tolerate peace. Now, after a two year rest and refit, they have returned to work.

WO Bradwell was not the first to die in Ulster’s latest round of "troubles", and he probably will not be the last.

The article that follows attempts to summarise elements of Irving Louis Horowitz’s 1970 book The Struggle is the Message, published by Glenessary Press, Berkeley. The notes were just pulled from an old file (1980) and re-examined. However, the contents seemed so salient that the book was hunted down and re-read - having lost nothing in 26 years. To add to the introduction, our July 1996 Newsletter (Issue #26) described what appeared to be an emerging Populist-Elite political axis. Ironically, some elements within the populist camp have adopted the techniques of the revolt against reason, while a large share of the new elite came to power despite having participating in that very same revolt a quarter century earlier.

The New Leftists outlined by Horowitz have just passed the peak of their active careers and political power in the Western World. Their concerns and methodology are very much active, having enjoyed a strong influence on public discourse and our institutions. As a result, the concerns raised in The Struggle is the Message are still quite valid. They also require examination, as a new generation is picking up their tools and tactics to employ them in unforeseen causes.

Horowitz saw a parallel in New Left thinking with the 1890s, the theories of Sorel and fin de siecle thinking. He found the late 1960's style of the New Left abrasive, physical, impatient and eclectic. Its leaders sought to exercise their will over the political realities and currents that exist in the world, and in the process assumed a strong moralistic tone. Their prevailing ambition was to mobilize individual wills in one total will, thus imposing a new social order on the world. (Ironically, in this the Left unconsciously apes a central tenet of Nazism - one of the many things they claim to refute.)

The New Left was a revolt against capitalism and the self-satisfied consumer society of the 1950s. It was also a rejection of Marxist theories and their "objective conditions", and therefore also a revolt against Marxism as a scientific model. (The question arises: might not Lenin, Mao and Castro have shared these "new" beliefs since they also created their revolutionary conditions rather than waiting for them?) For the New Left, what remained of Marxism in 1970 were its myths of hard moral purpose and inevitable victory.

The New Left rejected the concept of political organization in favour of a concept of will. They didn’t join groups so much as they "turned on, tuned in and dropped out" - as Timothy Leary more or less put it. By wanting to become rebels, they became rebels. The New Leftist thought he would win because he must, rather than because he has organized for victory. This leads to an impulse towards anarchism (particularly of the nihilist flavor) stressing the importance of the person over politics per se.

The New Left also embraced a purity of conviction as opposed to stifling rationalism. While everyone from Libertarians and Populists to Fascists and Marxists tries to construct a rational gestalt, the ‘60s rebels couldn’t have cared less. Instead, the guerrilla movement offered a magnetic model of the transformation of radicalism from a rational to a romantic doctrine. Unity came from a common youth culture - savage passion, unexamined ideals and concerns with goals rather than interests.

In this climate, action was more important than victory and orientation overrode achievement. Indeed, the activists who carry the New Left torch still abide by this creed. A protest march where organizers hoped to attract 50,000 people and only got 1,000 is still a "victory" because the demonstration actually occurred, and all who participated showed their support for the cause of the month.

On the other hand, because organizations usually favour material accomplishment over passion and meaning, New Leftists believed it was necessary to attempt their destruction (or their subversion), in order that purpose should remain supreme. Thus, 25 years later, those of the New Left who are within official bodies can launch campaign after campaign against undefined ills such as "racism", without ever bothering to see if they are accomplishing anything.

Towards the end of the 1960s, the passions of the New Left often turned sour because they had no means of restoring the original sense of purpose to any particular campaign. Indeed, the question of how to restore purpose in a disintegrating movement that eschews the creation of formal mechanisms also troubled Sorel, Adam Schaff and Herbert Marcuse.

Because of this failure, the New Left became extremely vulnerable to overtures from Marxists of various stripes. The New Left believed that they ought to eventually work out some sort of conspiracy, whereby Society’s elites might be toppled by a "revolution" from below. This was necessary because they felt that the "establishment" was conspiring against them. When the latter was supported by technology, particularly computers that could hold and control intelligence and constituted a form of state violence (in the eyes of the New Left), it was proper for insurgents to use counter-violence and bombs. Indeed, a number of computer centres were attacked during this time.

A "revolution" allowed for speed, through the use of will, whereas electoral politics might take forever. In this, there was an element of anti-intellectualism. Conspiracy theory was also a hedge against personal immorality. A victory in the realm of psychology could occur irrespective of conditions in the material world and this was deemed necessary as a pre-condition of a good society. Thus, to the New Left activist, a bomb in a government office was justified, because the civil servants were obviously working to enslave everyone. Even if the bomb killed no one, obviously all civil servants would be quaking in fear and the cause of the "revolution" would be thereby advanced.

The New Left raised itself above socialism because an anti-political standpoint was necessary for psychological redemption or moral purification. Conventional political practices (such as joining parties or running candidates), like Puritanism, were hang-ups to be overcome, not a system to be worked. Some of the slogans of the time remain common - "Don’t vote, it only encourages them" is still frequently heard and the attitude may be gaining a new saliency.

Moreover, the New Left believed acquiescence to a bureaucratic organization brought impotence. If you joined a party, the civil service, or whatever, you became trapped by their rules. Hence, there was some need for a permanent revolution, so that organizations would always be under attack. An interesting compromise that Horowitz might not have foreseen was for the would-be revolutionary to enter an existing political party or organization to serve his own purposes, and slowly subvert the larger body. It is interesting to observe that this transformation occurred as the New Leftist baby-boomers started to approach 30.

For the New Left, the struggle was not between liberalism and conservatism, but between radicalism and liberalism. Liberalism was identified with the stultifying effects of reason in society. Therefore, by being anti-liberal, the New Leftist had to be anti-rational and against reason. It was necessary to mount an attack on the notion that reason was the only mode of knowing. There was also a suspicion that reason was an ideology that caught people between the two extremes, unable to act. This line of thinking has continued, and is currently being carried by the Canadian essayist, John Ralston Saul.

In summary, the attack by the New Left on society became totalistic, being against socialism (or at least socialism arising out of liberal democratic traditions), as well as capitalism, industrialism, agrarianism and technological achievement. However, Horowitz concluded: ﾒFascism returns in the United States not as a right-wing ideology, but almost as a quasi-leftist ideology." The New Left created a neutral style of activism in America, a style which can be (and is) used by Left and Right alike.

Horowitz’s brilliant analysis of the New Left is still relevant in 1996. As things turned out, the movement reached its height in the 1970s but lost momentum with the end of the Vietnam War and the maturing of many members of the generation that had created it.

As a revolt against reality, it was exciting. As a design, even a hazy outline, of the way things might be better, it was an empty and cruel hoax. The hard-liners drifted off to more-or less orthodox Marxism, supporting the Soviets against the West throughout the decisive decade of the 1980s. A few others in less orthodox Marxist groups (such as the Trotskyites) have continued the New Left revolt without let-up since the 1970s. One can still see their dreams of revolution in the language on their street-corner posters. The rank-and-file tried to meld their youthful radical vision with the bureaucracies of the civil service and publicly funded bodies, through unions, special interest groups, universities and even through business corporations.

Often, over the past 25 years, those "Boomers" who became adults while within the New Left have managed to achieve considerable success in warping or altering institutions. The desire of their youth for sudden and sweeping change against professionalism has resulted in a supplanted leadership in many organizations. The New Leftist exercise of leadership has little to recommend it, for everything old and practiced had to be swept away for the sake of an undefined future that would be "good" only because it is new. They continue to claim the moral high ground, because they refuse to count costs and never admit to error or defeat. The examples are endless: Affirmative action programs to fight racism by replacing it with more racism; human rights tribunals that seek to sweep aside long-established legal codes; new definitions of the family while grinding the traditional form underfoot, established churches which discard the verities for "New Age" practices... one could go on.

First the New Left undermined confidence in our Institutions. Then they began to run them.

Today, much that was written 26 years ago about the New Left applies to the anti-governmental, anti-rational, anti-intellectual, anti-liberal/conservative/socialist, anti-technological Patriot Movement. The New Left Method for being a rebel without a clue has found new adherents. Interestingly, the new rebels are opposed to a system that has been much shaped and influenced by the New Left. For their part, the anti-establishment movement of the 1960s and ‘70s has become the establishment and seems terrified by the purposeless rebels who are now poised against them.

Within the Patriot militias, and to a wider extent within the vaster community that shares some of the same anxieties, there is a growing distrust of all institutions and a belief in self-reliance. Two of the biggest trends in the North American church are declining attendance in established churches as parishioners grow dissatisfied with the changes wrought over the past decades, and the growth of hard-line Pentecostal churches. Many of those who drop out maintain their traditional beliefs as well, but feel compelled to do so outside of an increasingly alien Church. The distrust is also being reflected in attitudes towards the established education system and various government agencies. Fortunately, there have been few signs of vigilantism as a substitute for the justice system - for now.

Attempts by political leaders and party structures to capture the new rebel spirit are also floundering. This new spirit is largely populist among those who have not embraced the extreme, and will be hard for political leaders to control. The Reform Party of Canada experienced rapid growth at first but seems to have stalled once the demands of normal political life began. Smaller parties of various stripes have been springing up and withering away like prospectors’ boom-towns, but none have yet hit the mother-lode and really gathered sufficient strength to grow.

Apparently, the purity of dissent is now even more strongly compromised by political activity. This is perhaps the biggest difference between the rebels of 25 years ago, and their successors.

The Baby-boom’s New Left rebels for the most part entered into political and institutional life - the urge to enter society and change it proved too strong. So far, the new rebels seem more disposed to retreat from society and isolate themselves from a world that is seen to be in danger of self-destruction. This trend is reinforced by the Millenialist spirit of the time, and it remains to be seen if it will continue after the year 2000.

What is more dangerous: A brace of F-18s with laser-guided bombs and AIM-9L air to air missiles, or a group of men with pitchforks and improvised clubs? Think carefully, the correct answer may not be the obvious one.

A new book, War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage, has firmly placed the reputation of Thomas Hobbes over that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The author, Lawrence H. Keeley, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has reviewed all the available literature in three overlapping disciplines to forever dispel the notion that pre-civilized humanity is inherently peaceful. Some of his findings are quite disturbing, particularly when he points out that participation in primitive warfare, is often far deadlier on a proportional basis than participation in contemporary warfare.

While Keeley loosely defines primitive (and prehistoric) humanity as being either pre-literate and/or pre-civil, primitive-type warfare is still endemic around the globe. Here, perhaps it is best to supplant Keeley with the Israeli scholar, Professor Martin van Crevald. His book, the Transformation of War, makes a distinction between the "trinitarian" warfare of the nation-states with the non-trinitarian warfare of non-state actors. The trinity in reference is the one of a government waging war through its military with the support of its people against a similar trinity on the other side. Non-trinitarian warfare consists of conflicts where one or more of the elements of the trinity are missing on either side - if not both.

Modern trinitarian warfare might be exemplified by some of the grand campaigns of the Second World War, that of the Normandy Landing and Break-out being typical -- where resources and manpower of entire states were harnessed to war. Non-trinitarian warfare has many forms and many expressions. It is exhibited by terrorism, massacre, brigandage, guerrilla uprisings, or endemic rioting. One example arises out of the turmoil between the Hutus and Tutsi in Rwanda and Burundi, in recent years.

The Normandy Invasion (D-Day to the Liberation of Paris) lasted from June 6th until August 24th. During those 79 days, the German Army sustained enormous casualties to the 62 divisions it committed to the battle. The 35 mauled divisions that kept a degree of organization were often down to less than 25% of their fighting strength. (The 12th SS Panzer Hitlerjugend Division, for example, had barely 5% of its men left). The Germans suffered some 250,000 dead and as many captured. The Allies lost some 40,000 dead and 185,000 wounded or missing. In sum about 3,700 men died every day for 79 days during this campaign.

By contrast, the 1994 massacres of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda began with the murder of the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi on April 6th. This particular episode in Rwanda’s ongoing violence can arguably be said to have ended with the Rwandan Patriotic Front capture of Kigali on July 6th. The final toll is still unknown but probably lies somewhere between the estimates of 500,000 and 1,000,000 dead. Somewhere between 5,000 and 11,000 people were murdered every day for 93 days.

The two events do not make an even contrast. The Normandy Campaign was part of the greater violence of the Second World War, in which about 25,700 people died on an average day (and many of these were also victims of massacre). Yet almost the entire world was involved in the 1939-45 conflict, whereas the Tutsi-Hutu imbroglio is centred on two small nations with a combined population of about 14 million people.

A point that confirms Keeling’s observations about the deadliness of primitive warfare is that the Normandy Campaign was fought on an enormous scale. It featured clouds of aircraft, artillery lined wheel to wheel and vast herds of tanks. The Rwanda Massacres were undertaken with small arms, machetes and sharp sticks.

Another example of the lethality of non-trinitarian warfare arises out of the rivalry between India and Pakistan. The disputes between the two can be boiled down to the problems of the 1947 partition of the British Raj and the fundamental animosity between Muslims and India’s Hindu elites. Both nations have large amounts of modern military equipment, and reasonably professional officer cadres. Both nations now have nuclear weapons, but deny the fact when pressed.India and Pakistan have a long-simmering border rivalry. As recently as August 1996, their troops were exchanging fire in the vicinity of the Siachen Glaciers, well above the tree-line in the Himalayan mountains. India accuses Pakistan of arming Muslim guerrillas in the Kashmir, and the accusations probably have much truth behind them. Many Pakistanis believe India is abetting the political and criminal unrest in the country’s major centres, and these suspicions probably have some validity.

Indian and Pakistani troops fought each other in 1947-48 in a relatively modest war over the Kashmir. In 1965, they fought with tanks and aircraft over the frontier lines in the Rann of Kutch, the Punjab and Kashmir. 1971 was a violent year. Pakistani troops may have killed over 100,000 Bengali Muslims in the suppression of unrest in East Pakistan (now the nation of Bangladesh). This is one example of how Trinitarian military establishments often fail to cope with insurgencies. India cheerfully helped arm the Bengali rebels, while quietly preparing to deal with any overt Pakistani responses. When Pakistan attacked India in December 1971, its forces were badly defeated. The three weeks of trinitarian warfare with India resulted in another 6,400 death.

The Trinitarian-style conflicts between India and Pakistan pale when compared to the non-Trinitarian violence that attended the partition of the British Raj. Mobs of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh civilians engaged in a series of sectarian riots and massacres from April 1946 to October 1947. While no reliable statistics exist, between 800,000 and 1 million people were murdered and 10-15 million fled their homes. This level of Indo-Pakistani violence might only be reached again if the two countries go beyond Trinitarian warfare in their next encounter by escalating to nuclear weapons use.

There is also the tragedy of Cambodia to consider. After some years of general instability, a civil war developed between the new military government and the Khymer Rouge guerrillas. This period lasted from March 1970 to April 1975. Then the Khymer Rouge established a particularly murderous regime until toppled by a Vietnamese invasion in January 1979. A low level guerrilla conflict has continued since then - despite numerous political changes in the country. Professor R.J. Rummel, the noted researcher on mass murder, estimates that some 3,979,000 war-related deaths have occured during this time, of which 3,186,000 involved the massacre of the unarmed and defenceless.

The most concentrated period of violence in Cambodia involved an estimated 2,000,000 murders during the 1975-79 Kyhmer Rouge regime. Pol Pot’s killers were seldom armed with anything more than rifles, and the guerrillas were enjoined to save their cartridges and use bamboo stakes or agricultural tools when engaging in their executions.

There are other examples of the deadliness of hunting arms, knives, and sticks as opposed to aircraft, tanks and artillery. On a proportional basis, the soldier in combat may be safer than the civilian in a massacre, or some other form of non-trinitarian warfare.

The relative low lethality of weapons systems may seem paradoxical, but this is by no means unusual in human affairs. Indeed, those who oppose the sale of high-tech arms to other countries ought to re-consider their stance. Frigates and anti-tank missiles in the hands of a professional military are not nearly as dangerous as knives, rocks and sharp sticks in the hands of a mob of amateurs.

ﾒIf you destroy a free market, you create a black marketﾓ

- Winston Churchill, as attributed by James C. Hume in The Wit and Wisdom of Winston Churchill.

There are some select phrases that, presented in any language, are extremely irritating to the recipients. They run something like this... "I told you so, but would you listen? Oh, no. You just had to go on and..." Anyway, we have all heard them at one time or another. The irritation in receiving this preface to a complaint or observation is somewhat balanced against the thin smug pleasure of delivering it. It is in this latter spirit that this article is presented.

During the course of research for Misfire: The Black Market and Gun Control, our researchers established a number of links (and a strong sympathy) with the recreational firearms community. The paper suggested that the latest gun control bill C-68 was wholly unnecessary and that the proposed legislation had excited considerable suspicion as to the government’s motives among Canadian firearms owners. A great many gun owners stated that, while they had complied with firearms legislation so far, they would part company with the law of the land if C-68 was passed. Well, Ottawa can’t say it wasn’t warned.

Ordinary Canadians are often assumed to be pliant and obedient people, especially by their governments. This is true up to a point. The geography and climate that shape much of the Canadian character do tend to make the citizenry generally law-abiding and undemonstrative - up to a point. There is also a wide streak of individualism and self-reliance in the Canadian character. This is most strongly evidenced among those who are also most likely to own firearms - males who live in suburban and rural centres, particularly from Ontario and points west and north. The passage of C-68 is producing predictable results, Canadian firearms owners are quietly cocking a snoot at Ottawa and seem to breaking the law with abandon.

At present, the resources for a fuller examination of this emerging activity are not available, but the anecdotal evidence seems convincing. Consider the following:

• Discussion among gun owners in a southern Ontario gun show as to the best times and places to cross the border, particularly as some customs officers are known to be gun club members and will recognize their friends;
• A lively trade between friends and companions of unregistered rifles and shotguns. These do not need to be registered until 2002, and even then many will remain off the books as their owners do not intend to register all of their firearms.
• A terminally ill man who passed out a collection of some 20 handguns, with ammunition, to his friends along with strict injunctions never to register the firearms.
• Another man, known to the author was thinking of doing the same thing, but decided his heirs did not need the hassle from the police once his death was noticed;
• One Institute researcher ordered prohibited pistol ammunition and armour piercing cartridges for a rifle from local firearms owners (although he owns no firearms). Within three days the order was filled for a lower cost than local gun shops could have met. By inference, the ammunition was bought in the US and smuggled into Canada by an individual who was not motivated by personal profit. The Black Talon pistol ammunition, in one of the many curious twists to Canadian gun laws, can be legally owned, but it is a crime to fire it.
• Some Canadians are "selling" their restricted or prohibited firearms to sympathizers or relatives in the US. If the weapons are actually brought across the border, they are often smuggled back in.
• Some "assault rifles" that were supposed to have been registered in 1993 are available at minimal cost. (The Misfire report did suggest that some gun-owners were too uneasy about C-17 to comply with it). One Institute researcher says he could acquire an unregistered semiautomatic carbine with a 30 round magazine, a folding stock and a bayonet lug for about 20% of the cost of the same weapon on the criminal market.

These anecdotes suggest that the gun control debates of the early 1990s have had some predictable results - a growing number of Canadian gun-owners are slipping into the Black Market. It is far too soon to tell if this is a majority of firearms users, but the techniques for evading the growing number of firearms regulations seem to be catching on fast.

These developments are entirely understandable. The underground market seems to be cheaper and more responsive than the legal market. Moreover, gun owners could not see that the solution to armed criminals lay with registering their guns, and many sensed that the arguments for gun-control were neither accurate nor honest. They remain deeply suspicious about the Government’s motives, and the burgeoning underground trade is but one response to it.

There is one positive light to the whole affair. By any reasonable measure, Bill C-68 was a bad law. It was ill conceived, ill designed, far too punitive, and passed with a disregard for protest or amendment. Yet, for those who believe that Canadians are too passive and compliant, the gleeful willingness of so many citizens to subvert this law could be taken as a very wholesome sign. Canadian legislators should take note.

"It may be said with strict accuracy, that the taste a man may share for absolute government bears an exact ratio to the contempt he may profess for his countrymen."

"Freedom is like health, it is taken for granted while one has it. One becomes aware of it when it has gone."

"When good works cease to be voluntary and become compulsory, charity becomes confiscation and freedom becomes servitude".

Lastly, an explanation on why so many of the 1960s rebels were partial to Marxism and why some still remain attached to the notion...

"Marxism has tremendous appeal... It gives you something to believe in when what surrounds you seems unbelievable. It gives you someone to blame besides yourself. It’s theoretically tidy. And, best of all, it’s fully imaginary so it can never be disproved."

John Thompson is President of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism. He can be reached at: mackenzieinstitute@bellnet.ca