A Leninist critique of Western humanitarian imperialism

By Nicolas Bonnal

We are living dangerous yet moral times, for a few hundreds of arrogant and powerful men (call them Bilderbergs, Illuminati, Trilateralists) have decided to rule the World together in the name of "the commerce and the imaginative", as put Cecil Rhodes, the founder of the first version of the NWO which opened first modern concentration camps for the Boers' families 111 years ago.

We are thus ruled by humanitarian oligarchs, by imaginative and moral rascals who mix oil with principles and raw materials with innumerable moral commandments which oblige us to intervene everywhere. Warmongers adore justifying their wars. It is like in the time of Hitler, when he was compelled to invade Czechoslovakia to protect his fellow Germans, then Poland to protect the citizens of Danzig, then soviet Russia to protect the West against the evils of communism (the Nazis, while massacring anyone, often boasted of protecting western heritage)!

And today when the West attacks and bombs Libya, Syria or Lebanon, waiting for poor Iran, massacring civilians, we are used to understand that it is for the promotion of good and to fight evil. Thanks to their own bad faith and disinformation, western mainstream media, politicians, military and adventurers are auto-convinced that they castigate the bad to celebrate the good, may they be the sinister Mujahedin in Syria or elsewhere. Such limited handling of reality explicates in Europe or in America our debt, our uncontrolled immigration, our social unrest, our unemployment, our weakness. Yet it has to be understood. Why are we so wrong?

I was for that reason reading again Lenin's masterwork about imperialism (Imperialism highest stage of capitalism). Some things have changed, fortunately for some countries (they are no more starved and whipped by democratic colonial powers), some others have not. The imperial and barbaric movement is still the same, except that it is now uneasy to assail India or China for a new break up, and that Russia is too strong and efficiently protects some of her allies. Of course now the hidden companions who rule the world have decided to ruin western people delocalizing all production and developing immigration... but I won't complaint since at Lenin's times these enlightened elites had decided to butcher Europe as a whole to defend some local mines or overseas interests... Anyway Lenin shrewdly denounces in his book decaying capitalism, economic parasitism and the oligarchic conduct of the 300, as put Rathenau, who then ruled their gloomy West.

Yet I must recognize that the most interesting parts of Vladimir Lenin's book come from his quote of an unknown and remarkable British writer named Hobson (John A. Hobson, Imperialism, a study). Contrarily to Lenin, Hobson is not a Marxist, and that perhaps gives him more intuition and finesse when it comes to understand the motives of our humanitarian elites. A capitalist may be a ruthless businessman full of greed, but he can be a real idealist too, and of the worst kind. Writes Hobson on the matter:

In view of the part which the non-economic factors of patriotism, adventure, military enterprise, political ambition, and philanthropy play in imperial expansion, it may appear that to impute to financiers so much power is to take a too narrowly economic view of history.

Hobson then reproaches the sinister role of adventurers, writers (Kipling, Verne, Haggard, etc.), missionaries, travellers, sportsmen, scientists, who promote the imperialist ideals. He writes and it's always the case that the western imperialist consider that they must have such a divine right of force that they even can lead "to the point of complete subjugation or extermination the physical struggle between races and types of civilisation." The lower race must disappear not because it is black or yellow, but because it is less moral! This is what happens nowadays with the Arabs, may they be Palestinians, Iraqis, Syrians or Libyans.

Of course in 1900 nobody in the European populations is convinced of the imperialistic benefits. Life is hard in Europe, inequalities fantastic, and many people must emigrate... in free countries, not in our colonies. Also, the expenses for colonial wars are enormous. This is why, for Hobson, the imperialist bankers, traders and their affiliates emphasize humanitarian motives, buy the press, print travel books and celebrate heroism and exotic action. They adore the generous missionaries, travellers (Dr Livingstone, I presume?)  and all the Allan Quatermain and Phileas Fogg of the creation... These feelings are fed by a flood of the literature of travel and of imaginative writing... Today we have terrorist novels or books, manipulated reportages, false flag attacks, painted terrorism, faked digital pictures, and so on to justify for instance the "three trillion dollars" (Jo Stieglitz) war of Iraq or of Afghanistan. We all remember famous Randolph Hearst's expression, pronounced on the verge of infamous American-Spanish war: I'll produce the war! There was too a false flag attack to unclench war process.

Hobson has got a master point: like every capitalistic operation, imperialism is awfully interested in money yet it is often driven by a foolish agenda based on crossed morality, biased ethics and anarchic interventionism. We have today the human rights agenda, run by non-governmental-organisations, secret services and philanthropist billionaires. Already in 1900, there exists in a considerable though not a large proportion of the British nation a genuine desire to spread Christianity among the heathen, to diminish the cruelty and other sufferings... Hell is often paved with good intentions... western oligarchs want to be good even if, like said Oscar Wilde, "our conscience is always cowardice."

Since the West is no more Christian, it has become a criminal with a conscience! Western madness, this mix of hubris and nemesis, had of course softened after WW2 and decolonization, but it violently stroke back since the end of USSR; and the American agenda in Balkans and Middle-East was coldly applied by Clinton, Bush or Obama. And the same state of mind has remained: our elites and the so-called public opinion forged by media, polls, and bad consciousness ("we must destroy any new Hitler", especially if he lives in a small modernist Arab country!) have accustomed themselves to self-deception and fake ideals. Of course we know the strategic role of Afghanistan or Syria, the importance of oilfields, pipelines and minerals. But they're not alone, and we don't know how far the limits of Western bad faith can lead. I let humanist and pessimistic Hobson conclude:

The gravest peril of Imperialism lies in the state of mind of a nation which has become habituated to this deception and which has rendered itself incapable of self-criticism.

Nicolas Bonnal