The Trojan Horse
The "One Health" idea wants to lead all of humanity into global totalitarianism, citing health and ecology.
By Simone Hörrlein
[This article published on 11/13/2021 is translated from the German on the Internet, Das trojanische Pferd | Rubikon.]
The world is in a state of emergency. Not because of a viral pandemic, but because of the financial system on the brink. The powerful and super-rich know: If this system blows up in their faces, they face the threat of what they fear most - revolution from below. Such a revolution would deprive them not only of their wealth, but possibly also of their power over the world's resources and thus over the people. Because they can never allow this, they have opted for revolution from above. This is sold to us under the mask of a pandemic. And while the population is held for nearly two years with fear, panic and measures bordering on insanity in check, the unscrupulous aides of these robbers work in the background with high pressure on a system which can no longer be surpassed in perfidy. This is to cement the power of the mighty and to degrade the rest of mankind to lawless slaves. In order to install this inhuman order worldwide, the global network of the super-rich and their helpers positioned at all important control points use an intelligent strategy: the protection of the health of humans, animals and the planet. They call this global agenda One Health, which on closer inspection is nothing other than the long-planned world order under their sole rule. However, this order is not about health at all, it is about a global health and eco-dictatorship. It is about total control of the planet and its resources, including humans.
In March 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO), Angela Merkel and 24 other government leaders advocated a global health order. A health order that would prioritize against future pandemics. There will be more pandemics and other major health emergencies, says the written appeal of the 25 heads of government. The only way we will be safe is if everyone is finally safe. And to ensure that safety, vaccination must become a global public good. In addition, the One Health approach must be recognized. Those who are not familiar with the approach and its protagonists could almost overlook this inconspicuous sentence and thus the most important thing in the appeal.
The One Health approach
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) defines the concept as follows:
"One Health is a collaborative, multisectoral, and transdisciplinary approach that works at local, regional, national, and global levels to achieve optimal health and well-being outcomes, taking into account the interconnections among people, animals, plants, and their shared environment."
That this approach is in fact a Trojan horse hiding a global order under the guise of health was demonstrated by the conference held at Rockefeller University in September 2004 entitled "One World, One Health: Building Interdisciplinary Bridges to Health in a Globalized World."
This conference was already talking about the disease battles of the 21st century, whereas it called for interdisciplinary and intersectoral approaches to disease prevention, disease surveillance, disease control and disease reduction, and environmental protection more broadly. The Manhattan Principles that emerged from the conference were largely adopted by the One Health Initiative.
The One Health Initiative and its protagonists
The One Health Initiative is not new either; it was founded more than ten years ago, in October 2008, by veterinarian Bruce Kaplan and human physician Thomas P. Monath. According to its website, it consists of a group of private individuals dedicated to the health of the planet.
That seems like a truly noble approach, but anyone who meticulously scours the site quickly finds that One Health ties health exclusively to regular vaccinations for humans and animals, and that Kaplan and Monath are not private philanthropists but have significant conflicts of interest to contend with.
Who is Thomas Monath?
Thomas Monath was ranked second among the 50 most influential people in the vaccine industry by VaccineNation in 2014. In addition to being a co-founder of the One Health initiative, he is also the founder and chief scientist of Crozet Biopharma, a company focused on vaccine development.
The physician, who also describes himself as a virologist and vaccinologist, was chief scientific officer and chief operations officer of the infectious diseases division at NewLink Genetics Corporation, a company working on cancer immunotherapies that merged with Lumos Pharma in 2019, from 2014 to 2017.
Prior to joining NewLinkGenetics, Monath was chief scientific officer and executive director of Acambis, where he co-developed vaccines for dengue fever, West Nile virus and yellow fever.
Monath not only has extensive ties to the vaccine industry, however, but also to the U.S. military. He spent 24 years in the U.S. Army and U.S. Public Health Service, and he was chief of the Virology Branch at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID). He was also director of the Vector-Borne Viral Disease Branch at CDC.
There we have it again, the old familiar revolving door effect.
Lobbyists shuttle between government agencies and private companies and then hide behind the mask of philanthropy by founding NGOs or think tanks where they almost exclusively pursue the interests of corporations, which of course are always in line with their own interests.
Who is Bruce Kaplan?
The second mastermind behind the One Health initiative, veterinarian Bruce Kaplan, also has extensive contacts with the military and relevant authorities - who even out themselves as supporters of the initiative on the organization's website.
Kaplan has served as a public affairs editor, writer and consultant. His work has been published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the American Society of Microbiology (ASM).
In addition, Kaplan has worked on zoonotic diseases - diseases transmitted by animals - and in 2008 published the article "Teaching 'One Medicine, One Health'" in The American Journal of Medicine with his One Health colleagues Laura Kahn and Thomas Monath. And like Monath, Kaplan was also an employee of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Health exclusively through vaccination
Given this background, it should come as no great surprise to anyone that the One Health approach is primarily about vaccination. To achieve the goal of continuous vaccination for humans, livestock, pets and even wildlife, physicians, veterinarians, dentists, health workers and all other health science and environmental disciplines are to be networked on a global scale.
The lists of supporters show how far along this goal is. In the U.S., these include the American Medical Association, the American Veterinary Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Nurses Association, the American Association of Public Health Physicians, the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. National Environmental Health Association.
And countless organizations around the world have been working to implement this concept for some time. In addition to academic organizations, government organizations as well as numerous nonprofit organizations are involved in the implementation of One Health.
The digital health transformation
However, digital health transformation is needed to successfully establish the One Health approach, which involves continuous vaccination of humans and animals. It's a concern that U.S.-based Cerner Corporation, a leading provider of electronic health records, has also successfully addressed. In its inaugural Virtual Health Conference in October 2020, the company's CEO Brent Shafer spoke about how he plans to use data - our data - to drive global healthcare transformation.
He also puts his focus on pandemics when he said:
"More than ever, we have tools, technologies and innovations to fight this global pandemic. Whether we're working with health systems around the world to set up field hospitals, sharing data to stop the spread, or providing data to better manage patients, equipment or bed availability, we've rushed to support the work of healthcare providers around the world."
With that, Shafer again clearly outlines the goals of this transformation: it's about global order, it's about our bodies, and it's about our private data. Even if Shafer doesn't say it explicitly, his statements imply that the right of self-determination over our bodies and over all private data will also be taken away from us at some point - all for the good of our health, society and the planet, of course.
It is interesting to note in this context that Julie Gerberding, who left her position as director of the CDC in 2010 to join vaccine manufacturer Merck & Co. as vice president, is an active member of the board of directors of Cerner Corporation and also outed herself as a supporter of the One Health initiative. And it's no wonder; after all, as president of vaccines, Gerberding was instrumental in improving access to Merck's vaccines for people around the world.
The One Health Initiative has already developed a comprehensive concept to establish the One Health approach worldwide. The idea is for governments and healthcare systems around the world to pull together. For this to succeed, all disciplines in healthcare are to be infected with the agenda. This will require:
Joint educational efforts between human medical, veterinary, and public health and environmental schools;
Collaborative and coordinated communication efforts in journals, at conferences, and through allied health networks;
Collaborative efforts in clinical care through assessment, treatment, and prevention of cross-species disease transmission;
Collaborative efforts in public health surveillance and control of cross-species diseases;
Collaborative efforts to better understand cross-species disease transmission through comparative medicine and environmental research;
Collaborative efforts in the development and evaluation of new diagnostic methods and new drugs and vaccines for the prevention and control of cross-species diseases;
Collaborative efforts to inform and educate policy makers and the public through accurate media publications.
Reading these demands, one could almost get the idea that medicine should in the future deal exclusively with cross-species diseases and their control, while all other diseases are suddenly obsolete. That this assessment is not so far-fetched is shown by three comprehensive frameworks for the development and use of vaccines to combat zoonotic diseases that sprang from Monath's addled mind:
Framework I - Vaccines target human and livestock hosts;
Framework II - Vaccines target infections of domesticated animals and are used to prevent spread to humans;
Framework III - Vaccines target wildlife reservoirs.
The August 2019 press release from Crozet BioPharma is another indication that the vaccine craze promoted by One Health may soon become a reality for all of us. Together with the company Public Health Vaccines, Crozet BioPharma will develop a vaccine against the Nipah virus, although infections with this virus - at least so far - are extremely rare.
However, the fact that the Nipah virus, which like so many other viruses is said to be native to bats, triggers severe encephalitis in humans, which, prick up your ears, is fatal in 40 to 75 percent of cases, raises eyebrows. Also raising eyebrows, the funding for this development comes from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), founded by Bill Gates. Didn't Gates warn us just last year of a virus that would really get attention, Nipah certainly would.
In addition to chief scientist Monath, Crozet BioPharma's chief medical officer, D. Gay Heppner, is what's called a vaccine advocate. Heppner, who even calls himself a vaccinator, also works at the Public Health Emergency U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in addition to Crozet. From 2015 to 2017, he was chief medical officer at BioProtection Systems, the infectious disease subsidiary of NewLink Genetics, where he led the clinical and regulatory operations of the Ebola vaccine program.
Like Monath, Heppner has held high-level positions in the military. He spent 23 years in the Army, including as chief operating officer (2008 to 2011) of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), the Department of Defense biomedical institute with offices in Africa, Asia and Europe.
From 1999 to 2008, he led the Army's malaria vaccine development and international malaria vaccine program as Chief of Immunology and later as Director of the Department. In collaboration with pharmaceutical company Glaxo SmithKline, he led the development of the malaria vaccine that was later funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and provisionally approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the World Health Organization (WHO).
The connections of those pushing the One Health approach so vehemently could not be more obvious: Vaccine researchers, vaccine manufacturers, and the U.S. military. Not to mention the old-time philanthropists like Rockefeller and Gates, who naturally wish everyone a long life, regardless of the fact that, in their view, our world is suffering from pathological overpopulation.
The extent to which the filthy rich philanthropists care about our health is demonstrated by a May 2009 billionaire meeting organized by BMGF and attended by Bill Gates, David Rockefeller, Oprah Winfrey, Ted Turner, Warren Buffett, George Soros and Michael Bloomberg. As John Harlow reported in The Sunday Times on May 24, the philanthropists agreed to spend some of their wealth on slowing the growth of the world's population.
Why it's not about health
What the so-called philanthropists say in public can hardly be surpassed in hypocrisy. If it were really about the health of mankind, then the actual health problems would be tackled and these are - at least so far in no country of the world - to be solved with vaccinations.
While many people in developing countries struggle with either malnutrition or undernourishment, a lack of clean drinking water and a lack of hygiene, the biggest killers in industrialized nations are cancer, heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, obesity and neurodegenerative diseases. Obesity in particular is spreading rapidly and is now a growing problem in many Asian countries as well.
According to WHO, obesity has nearly tripled worldwide since 1975. In 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults were overweight, of which more than 650 million were obese. Overweight and obesity already result in more deaths worldwide than underweight, and the trend is rising. The situation is similarly dramatic in the case of obesity and cancer.
The leading professional society for oncology (ESMO) forecasts more than 20 percent more cancer cases in Europe by 2040. This means that 3.4 million people in Europe will then be newly diagnosed with cancer every year. Cancer deaths are even expected to increase by more than 30 percent. Instead of 1.3 million cancer victims, 1.7 million people in Europe would then die of cancer each year. The following Statista diagram shows the dramatic forecast of the most common civilization diseases for Germany until 2030 and 2050:
In Germany, according to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), we actually have an epidemic of national scope, an epidemic of diseases of civilization. In 2019 alone, 331,200 people died from cardiovascular diseases and 231,300 from cancer. That adds up to 562,500 deaths. In comparison, according to Destatis, 30,136 people "officially" died from Covid-19 in 2020, which is comparable to a severe flu season.
Where are the measures to protect our health from the real killers? Where are the bans on foods that are too sweet, too salty, too fatty? Where are the bans on smoking? Where are the bans on foods that are largely nutrient-free but brimming with chemicals and fillers? Where are the bans on pickling salt, sweeteners and flavor enhancers, all of which are said to be correlated with an increase in cancer risk? Where is the government when it is really about health?
Which is why it's not about the planet either
Just as implausible as the concern for health is the concern for the planet, which occupies an enormously important position in the One Health approach. If you look at the latest developments in the financial market, you'll also quickly realize why this is so. In September 2012, the Intrinsic Exchange Group (IEG), whose founders include the Inter-American Development Bank and the Rockefeller Foundation, launched a whole new asset class called Natural Asset Companies, or NACs.
The main purpose of these companies, the IEG website says, is to maximize ecological performance, that is, the production of ecosystem services for which the company owner has rights and authority to manage.
What are the details at stake? The IEG, in partnership with the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), is providing a platform to allow these new companies to trade, enabling the conversion - watch out - of natural capital into financial capital.
IEG believes that investing in nature can create financial value for natural asset owners and investors. The vision, it adds, is to bring hundreds of NACs, representing trillions of dollars worth of natural capital, to the capital markets.
Just how much money is at stake is shown in the 2014 article "Changes in the global value of ecosystem services" by Robert Costanza et al. The authors estimate that ecosystems provide an average of 5 trillion in services per year. That's a lot of money that, if the super-rich have their way, should be provided in the future by the users of those services - us humans. In plain language, this means that in the future we will probably pay user fees on everything that nature provides.
That sounds like protecting the planet, like sustainability without any financial ulterior motives. Now it's starting to become clear why people like Bill Gates are acquiring huge amounts of agricultural land and why NGOs are buying up nature reserves on a grand scale and why abandoned farms in the outback are being converted into protected areas where no one is allowed to settle anymore.
But what is hidden behind the services of nature for which we will soon be asked to pay? The Earth.org website provides a detailed list of all the ecosystem services that will soon be subject to economic valuation. You will be amazed, because these include not only supply services such as food, water or raw materials such as wood and oil, but also so-called regulatory services of ecosystems.
They also include climate regulation, regulation of floods and other natural hazards, pollination by wind and insects, and natural water purification services. Natural water purification services are estimated at 33 billion euros per year in Europe alone, it says.
And did you know that in the future, cultural ecosystem services such as spiritual enrichment, intellectual development, recreation and aesthetic values are also to receive a prize? While these types of services, compared to regulatory and utility services, are difficult to monitor and value, research in this area is increasing, it says. For example, he said, studies have shown that the ability to see or interact with nature through hospital windows or hospital gardens speeds patient recovery. So, in the future, will we even have to pay to just walk in nature?
So everything nature has to offer is soon to come with a price tag, and the scarcer a resource, the more expensive its user fee is likely to be.
Anyone who now knows that professional speculators continuously manipulate prices on the commodity exchanges to their advantage can imagine how we could be cannibalized to the hilt by such a scenario, while the owners and managers of natural assets earn themselves silly. We only need to take a look at the developing countries, where people often cannot even afford their daily ration of grain due to commodity speculation.
What it is really about
One thing is clear, One Health is not at all about our health, which is in fact completely irrelevant. No, it cannot be about the health of the "useless eaters" of Henry Kissinger any more than it can be about the health of the "global useless class" of Yuval Noah Harari, who is nominated for the Genesis Prize in 2022. Nor is it primarily about the health of the planet, but rather arguably about preserving the earth's resources for the descendants of a few by denying these resources to a large proportion of people and making them available only to the few who can pay for them.
But if it's not about our security at all, whose security are the 25 government leaders talking about? Quite simply, they are talking about those who have looted vast sums of money and values from a predatory financial system, at the expense of working people, of course. These values are now in danger, because the fiat money system is coming to an end, it is in its death throes. If this system collapses, a revolution from below is imminent. And such a revolution could sweep away not only their prey, but also themselves.
To prevent the uprising of the masses, the self-proclaimed ruling class has opted for a revolution from above - the Great Reset.
This Great Reset has nothing to do with health; it is primarily about profits, and gigantic profits for the pharmaceutical-digital complex and those who are secretly, quietly appropriating the world's natural resources.
One Health is the vehicle to cement and expand the status quo of a gang of robbers who have been shamelessly lying to us, cheating us, and robbing us blind for many decades. For the implementation of the health and eco-dictatorship disguised under the slogan One Health, a gigantic crisis was necessary, a pandemic. With the help of this pandemic, fear, panic and chaos were created. And with fear, panic and chaos, instruments of surveillance and control, of which the global vaccination passport is probably only the beginning, can be installed almost without resistance.
One Health is about total control and monitoring of the world's population by means of digital technologies. It is about prohibitions and compulsory medical treatments, of which the fight against all kinds of pathogens is probably only the beginning. And it is about generating gigantic profits for a few with nature after the death of conventional capitalism.
And one thing should be clear to all of us: Once the digital money system and the universal basic income, which will be linked to social good conduct, have been established, any resistance is likely to be futile. If this revolution from above succeeds, free decisions, property and individualism will forever be consigned to the dustbin of history.
Finally, a small anecdote from the website of the World Economic Forum, which shows the extent to which paternalism and control can assume. Once again, it is scientists who presume to want to dictate to us. This time, there seems to be a consensus on how often we should do our laundry. How long will it be before we are banned from using washing machines and dryers or told how often we should shower? All for the good of the planet, of course. It's time to wake up, it's time to say no.
Editorial note: This text appeared on November 2 under the title "With 'One Health' into global totalitarianism" on the blog NomoNoma.
Simone Hörrlein is a food chemist and science journalist. After studying at the Technical University of Munich, she worked for several years in medical research and most recently in science communication at the Competence Center for Nutrition. In addition to natural sciences, she is interested in finance and geopolitics. She currently lives in Canada.
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Away from the Herd
French writer Romain Rolland's World War I diaries hold up a mirror to the Corona era.
By Daniel Sandmann
[This article published on 11/13/2021 is translated from the German on the Internet, Abseits der Herde | Rubikon.]
Are we actually at war? Sometimes you think there's a fairly silent war going on - at least here - against the world's population that the majority doesn't understand. Especially in light of this question, it's worth looking at other war and turnaround scenarios to see patterns. Romain Rolland, the almost forgotten Nobel Prize winner for literature, pacifist and animal rights activist, presented such a view of a turning point with his diaries from 1914 to 1919: the First World War. Just in time, Angelika Gutsche is reissuing his entries in a book that reveals startling parallels to what is happening now. It is an occasion not only to gain new access to the First World War, but also, in this context, to take a look at the ghostly events of the past two years. It is precisely this parallelism that can strengthen resistance to oppression and give it a fruitful direction.
"The freedom to which all my love and aspiration is directed is inner freedom. A socialist or Bolshevik system secures this independence no better than a capitalist one. ... Never would I agree to a dictatorship, not even a socialist one." - Romain Rolland, January 9, 1918.
From which period does the sentence come: "According to the rules of the game, he who thinks differently from the others is accused of treason." or: "The condition of the press is terrible." or: "It is appalling to live in the midst of this insane humanity and to have to watch impotently the bankruptcy of civilization." or: "Today, however, the fact stands out that the socialists of all countries have taken sides for the war without hesitation."?
Perhaps one should specify in the last statement: "have taken sides for the war against the virus". Otherwise, they aim right at the heart of the pandemic staging that is underway. However, they come from Romain Rolland, they are part of his diary from the First World War.
Romain Rolland. The First World War through the eyes of a pacifist. From the diary entries 1914 - 1919 - this is the title of the book that Angelika Gutsche has just published. On the basis of selected entries, it leads into the thinking of a dissident of that time and lets the reader meet other war-critical personalities such as Albert Einstein, Stefan Zweig, Hermann Hesse, but also - mentioned by Rolland with horror - war advocates such as Thomas Mann. In the preface, Gutsche writes:
"It will astonish today's reader how many conflicts of the time are still virulent today and what topicality some of Rolland's statements still have."
This can truly be said.
The concrete reference to the events of today is already clear in the preface - prefixed to the entries in Guche's book - which Albert Schweitzer wrote to Rolland's widow many years after the First World War, in 1953. It states:
"Will it (this diary) nevertheless teach coming generations not to give in to passion on the basis of any events, but to remain faithful to the ideal of humanity, this single guiding star through historical events."
Further he writes:
"In this diary we see how thinkers of high reputation disappoint us miserably, while on the other hand simple minds delight us by their sound moral sense."
Sound familiar?
Angelika Gutsche selects the entries in such a way that for today's readers the conditions of that time come close quite quickly. Perhaps one has to look up a name now and then - the book contains an index of persons with brief details - but in combination with what is known, even passive knowledge, perhaps from school lessons, is reactivated and becomes vivid. In any case, I think, one slides irritatingly easily into that time and this probably has to do with the fact that it is not only that time into which readers slide.
The civilizational and epistemological decline and, as a general basic mood, a prevailing madness, the failure of the left, the indoctrination through education - as a prerequisite for the decline -, censorship such as the silencing of unpleasant books, the devastating state of the press, the defamation of dissenters, but also the profits of banks and corporations rising in sync with misery, and the particularly odious German mentality of obedience - all these are themes in Rolland's diaries and show that the present state of the world is not without antecedents. I would like to highlight a few of the "layers" from Rolland's diaries that fit particularly seamlessly into current events in this review.
Madness, stupidity, obedience.
First of all, the civilizational super-GAU should be mentioned as such. Rolland writes in his entry of August 3-4, 1914: "It is horrible to live in the midst of this insane humanity and to have to watch impotently the bankruptcy of civilization."
Again and again he returns to this madness, in the face of which not infrequently feelings of powerlessness, but also of loneliness arise in him. The entire diary, which is far more extensive than the collection presented here, can in this respect certainly also be understood as an attempt to confront powerlessness and to overcome loneliness, which is recorded in not a few passages in its oppressive dimension, for example:
"I spend the saddest days of my life in a feeling of spiritual loneliness, of distress of heart and mind. There are hours when I can bear it no longer. I throw myself on the sofa, cover my face, and seek release in the thought of death." - noted in March 1915.
However, Rolland also repeatedly relates madness to the stupidity of the masses, masses for whom he feels pity on the one hand because they are deceived, but to whom he also gives a share of responsibility by showing them to be stupid - and in several passages the self-inflicted immaturity comes out.
This thought is further specified when Rolland writes:
"And I think that it is the good who see to the eternal continuation of the criminal relationship that afflicts mankind, for they sanctify this calamity by their heroic affirmation. They make the highest virtue out of surrender to evil, and therein perhaps lies the cause of all these crimes. For if the good submit, it is the bad who determine."
A short commentary on the events of the past two years - solidarity chants, "We're staying home" slogans, Zero Covid included, plus vaccination heroism with bratwurst, not forgetting the directly and indirectly generated deaths, which already number at least in the hundreds of thousands - could hardly be more pointed. However, Rolland does not leave it at that, he connects the stupidity with brainwashing, when he states after a visit of Albert Einstein on September 16, 1915:
"The broad masses are tremendously docile, 'tamed,' as Einstein puts it. He sees the blame mainly in education, which is aimed entirely at national pride and blind obedience to the state."
It is less interpretation than observation to say Rolland's illusionless view of democracy, alluded to several times, is likely to be closely related to the masses' affinity for stupidity, to their propensity to be deceived.
Leftist Betrayal and Freedom
With emphasis, Rolland repeatedly addresses the left, to which he feels mentally affiliated. His horror is all the greater. He writes in August 1914:
"In 1870 at least an elite had risen up against the war. Bebel protested incessantly against the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. Today, however, the fact is striking that the socialists of all countries have taken sides for the war without hesitation. The Vorwärts (central organ of the Social Democracy of Germany, author's note) was the first to pledge allegiance to imperialism in the name of the German Socialists. (...) It seems that suddenly everyone is denying their faith in order to go over to that of their opponents with even greater enthusiasm."
On January 29, 1915, the following entry:
"By the way, I have little faith in the Socialists. (...) I do not believe that socialist associations will save humanity. In the way are their distrust of independent personalities, their so-called practical realism, which only aims at a better economic organization and which attributes everything to organizational questions, as in Germany."
Regarding freedom, he writes in March 1915:
"This war, by which everything has been called into question, has shaken morality to its foundations. One of the saddest discoveries I have made through it is that the spirits formed by the tradition of the great revolution are today the worst enemies of freedom. Freedom! The word they always carry in their mouths, but they designate by it an idol to whose fanatical priesthood they belong."
Can it be better summed up in terms of Corona idolatry? The failure of the left, the betrayal of its own cause, which runs as a red thread through its history to such an extent that it has long been questioned whether what is being betrayed all the time was ever its own cause at all, but also the structural violence through organization or bureaucracy, the discrediting of independent, autonomous personalities, and not least the perversion of the concept of freedom into idolatry carried out by the left: all this is addressed in Rolland's entries and at the same time is highly topical. Today's talk of "deniers" confirms the religious dimension that Rolland captures with the term "priesthood."
It should be noted that from the beginning Rolland sets apart individual leftist figures from this betrayal, for example Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, whose statements on the war he explicitly records:
"This is a war of lies. From the moment that censorship has forbidden our mouths, we are intellectual prisoners."
On September 26, 1914, after a meeting with Igor Stravinsky, Rolland notes, "Stravinsky declares that Germany is not a barbarian state, but a spent and degenerate one. (...) The attitude of the German intellectuals fills him with boundless contempt." With this approving takeover in his diary - later, however, he criticizes Stravinsky for his pro-war stance - two leitmotif-like themes are mentioned that are equally given today: the German peculiarities in dealing with the pandemic and the role of the intellectuals.
German mentality
Regarding the German mentality, in July 1915 Rolland quotes Friedrich Nietzsche from "Ecce homo: How One Becomes What One Is," prompted via the editor of the weekly magazine for politics, literature, art "Die Aktion."
"The Germans are impossible for me. If I think up a kind of man that goes against all my instincts, it always turns out to be a German."
These days a friend told me about his recent short vacation in Belgium. There, he said, all measures had been lifted, no masks in the swimming pool, no vaccination or test checks, nothing at all. And yet some people in swimming trunks were wearing masks. I could guess three times what language the masked people spoke.
The repugnance of the German mentality - as it becomes clear in various places in Rolland's diaries - results from obedience and its bureaucratic organization.
However, Rolland differentiates his criticism of Germany in the course of the entries, not only referring to individual personalities such as Hermann Hesse and Albert Einstein, with whom he is friends, but also to quite a few circles that are active in Germany against this obedience, so to speak. With reference to the Marxist cultural scientist and historian Ernst Fuchs, he emphasizes that the dissident potential in Germany in particular is greater than the composition of the Reichstag would suggest. We can only hope that the same applies to the recently elected Bundestag.
Intellectuals as Systematics
Against the background of current world events, what Rolland writes about the intellectual elites is even more astonishing. One could take over some sentences of him one to one and put them into texts of an Ullrich Mies, which in the judgment as is well known leave nothing to be desired in sharpness.
And the fact that this judgment was sometimes a divided one, even shared with Albert Einstein - so Rolland was not completely lonely - is particularly striking. Thus Rolland notes from a letter of Einstein's that he received on March 22, 1915:
"Even the scholars of the various countries are behaving as if their cerebrum had been amputated eight months ago."
Media, censorship and defamation
As for the condition of the media, reading Rolland's entries, we experience another déjà vu. On December 20, 1914, Rolland quotes from a letter written to him by Marcel Martinet, a pacifist friend and proletarian writer:
"The condition of the press is terrible. In Germany and in France we have already had a hate and lie press for ten years. Added to this, since the outbreak of war, is the socialist press, which demoralizes and confuses its whole people."
Rolland goes on to talk about the fact that his texts are censored in both France and Germany, and there is also talk of "mutilation." Mention is also made of the structural-economic reasons for censorship, reasons that are anything but foreign to us: "The big newspapers are bought and are bribed proficiently." - noted in May 1916.
However, there are also signs that the situation is perhaps not hopeless. These are positive phenomena that emerge from the destruction. Thus Rolland notes of one of his publications, a collection of articles on current affairs:
"Despite the silence of the press and attempts by certain booksellers to boycott the work, it is enthusiastically received by the public."
The same can be said about some books, especially those published by Rubikon.
The silencing of dissenters, however, goes further still. Rolland writes in March 1916: "House searches are taking place. And indeed my mother has discovered footprints in my apartment ..." This refers to the apartment in Paris; he himself stays in Switzerland during wartime. Professional punishment as a form of censorship, which we know from these days, is also not new. Rolland refers to the case of Dr. Nicolai, professor in Berlin and physician to the empress. "He expressed his dislike of the war so openly that he was deprived of his office and demoted to a mere regimental physician." Continuing, and under the impression of quite a few murders of dissenters that had already taken place and that broke away from the general howl of war, Rolland writes:
"The presumption is obvious that sooner or later an assassination attempt will be made on me (...) for one knew that if I wanted to speak, nothing could prevent me: neither threats nor considerations; I do not belong to the herd; no one holds me."
Shortly before the end of 1915, Rolland noted, "Hermann Hesse is insulted by his countrymen as I am by mine. A Cologne newspaper calls him a coward and a pacifist." Again and again, Rolland emphasizes how much he is antagonized because of his anti-war stance, in France as well as in Germany. He also mentions friendships that have fallen apart as a result of the social divide.
Other patterns
"The government has discovered a means of getting rid of troublesome independents: it conscripts them," reads an entry in March 1915. Today it would read: it inoculates them. Logical, because the war, as it was proclaimed in Corona times, no longer aims outward, it aims inward. In this respect, inoculation is also a metaphor. In the metaphorical, the synonymous meaning to the discharge about the war of 1915 is openly revealed and needs no translation. In another entry from that year, Rolland writes: "According to the rules of the game, he who thinks otherwise is accused of treason." The pest and enemy metaphors then take hold. Inoculate them through: System involvement is a form of divestment.
The aspect that it hits the youth the hardest is taken up by Romain Rolland on April 1915:
"... all youth (...) is sacrificed by the old generations and condemned to silence. The dying past is strangling the future ..."
This statement is also in line with statements and appeals, formulated in vain by psychologists, psychiatrists and educators in 2020 and 2021. Meanwhile, in July 2017, Rolland also refers to the conformity of the younger generation. He writes:
"What is new for me, and this is worse than anything else, is that the young generation of twenty and under no longer seems to have an enterprising spirit (...) they work quietly and aestheticize like the young German intellectuals."
In this context, it is worth looking at Nicolas Riedl's article "The Uprooted Generation" to see that there are overwhelming parallels in this regard as well.
The Vatican and, in general, the Christian churches as hypocritical instances, even more: as whores of power, are likewise components of the text. In March 1916, Rolland notes, "She (the Church) has sunk so low that she has become a slave to public opinion, a 'girl for everything' to the state that harbors her and sleeps with her."
Again, a judgment could not be more precise with respect to the Evangelical Church in Germany under Heinrich Bedford-Strohm. As far as the Pope is concerned, Rolland's judgment changes over time to the effect that he at least attests to a hesitant will to oppose the war, which, however, must remain without further effect in view of his weakness.
Russia
Russia, Russian culture, the Russian Revolution and its stages: These layers also run through the entire text. At the beginning, the focus is on the unspeakable Russophobia and Russia-baiting from the German side, which, as is well known, was and is perpetuated by the Nazis and, since Putin's election, by almost the entire German party and media landscape. Rolland opposes this with all vehemence. He repeatedly emphasizes his intimate connection to Leo Tolstoy (1828 to 1910).
Rolland paints a thoroughly ambivalent and yet rather positive picture of the events surrounding the Russian October Revolution. He also meets several times with activists in Switzerland who later hold prominent functions and roles in this revolution and also in the first government of the USSR. His reservedly positive attitude toward revolutionary events, which he nevertheless criticizes as soon as they become nationalistic, must also be seen against the background of his criticism of capitalism and his increasingly negative assessment of Western forces in general. Rolland, however, is not an ardent Bolshevist at any time; rather, he rejects all totalitarian tendencies.
Role of Switzerland
Romain Rolland lived in Switzerland during World War I, more precisely in French-speaking Switzerland: once in Geneva, then again in smaller towns such as Vevey on Lake Geneva or Sierre in the Valais, or even in places in the mountains. He expresses his ambivalent attitude towards Switzerland and the political currents he perceives here several times.
On the one hand, he mentions neutrality positively, on the other hand, he deplores the egoism and self-interest of Swiss politics. It is interesting that he first critically highlights the enthusiasm for Germany and the associated war in German-speaking Switzerland, in order to gradually criticize the development in French-speaking Switzerland even more. This corresponds with a partial shift of his criticism from Germany to France in the course of the war years, since he believes that in the German-speaking countries he sometimes recognizes more opposition to the war mania than in France or in the French-speaking part of Switzerland.
Of course, in this respect there can be no clear parallels as in the patterns before to the Corona situation. And yet anyone familiar with Swiss conditions knows that resistance to the Corona regime - which has been massively tightened in Switzerland since September, with the Social Democratic minister Alain Berset from western Switzerland in the lead - is greatest in the German-speaking cantons of central and eastern Switzerland, while in western Switzerland, namely the city of Geneva - the seat of the World Health Organization (WHO) - the whole arsenal of fascistoid surveillance and control mechanisms is much more widely accepted.
Economics, war profiteers, critique of capitalism and the U.S.
But Rolland also has his eye on the activities of the banks and the geopolitical strategies behind them. He points out that since the beginning of the war, the banks of the neutral states - and this includes the U.S. until 1917 - had received all the gold they could from South Africa, Australia, India and other countries, and that the "United States would like to become the bankers of the whole world." With such loans in the background, he said, the U.S. has now begun "the conquest of Latin America."
"After that, they will probably go to the conquest of the financial markets of the Far East. They are directing the exchange of money in all the countries of the world. And the author of the economic studies I am summarizing here concludes that when peace is concluded, exhausted and spent Europe will become economically dependent on the United States."
However, Rolland has the war profiteers in Europe equally in focus. Citing the German social economist and pacifist Oskar Stillich, he highlights the scandalous profits of the munitions factories in Europe, namely Friedrich Krupp AG. The munitions factories today are pharmaceutical corporations.
In the context of the economic viewpoints that Rolland mentions more and more frequently in the course of his entries, his view of the United States, which he still perceived as a kind of counterforce to the war at the beginning of the war, also becomes generally more critical.
In November 2016, he refers to the ,500 million for which the U.S. exported war munitions and equipment, concluding, "One understands that North American capitalists are in no hurry at all to see the war ended." However, he ultimately frames his critique of business as a global critique when he writes: "Thus everyone from the smallest to the largest will have his place in the industry of death, and no one will be able to stay away from crime without a crime."
Entries like the following from May 1917 confirm that his critical gaze is a holistic one and not limited to the bad guys "up there": "And everywhere it is the same: the Swiss workers who work in the munitions factories enthusiastically advocate the continuation of the war, considering the profits it brings them." - noted in May 1917.
And yet - in essence, dialectical movements repeatedly present themselves in Rolland's notes - he differentiates very well between masses and elites. Thus, Rolland already connects his criticism of the role of the U.S. - it clearly increases in the course of the war - and of the scandalous wealth that emerges from this war, especially in the U.S., with an insight that is quite decisive for the analysis of the global or geostrategic situation today. He writes, referring to an article in the New York magazine The Masses, " ... that the alleged wealth of the United States is in very few hands, and that the war is deepening the gulf between poor and capitalist." - noted in July 1917.
Rolland gets to the heart of the entanglement of capital and war when he notes in August 1917:
"One sees that war in the United States, as in Europe, is the work of the capitalists (Wall Street) and a group of intellectuals and clergymen."
Indeed: Rolland mentions Wall Street verbatim, placed in parentheses. And referring to the journalist and founder of the first communist party in the United States, he elaborates:
"John Reed proves that the claim to campaign against kings is a ridiculous pretext. The real king, he says, is capitalism. He (meaning John Reed, author's note) puts his finger in the open wound and calculates the tremendous profits of the big corporations and the 2 percent of Americans, while all the rest live on the edge of the abyss (...) From 1912 to 1914 wages have risen only 9 percent, while the cost of living for a family has grown 74 percent in the last two years."
Already two years before this entry, in August 2015, a Minneapolis weekly asked Rolland which favorite belief the war had destroyed for him. His answer:
"It has only strengthened my faith: my contempt for the ruling classes, governments, financial oligarchies, churches, and for the entire intellectual elite who have led nations to this senseless slaughter."
Romain Rolland's critique of capitalism and his distancing from Western civilization is then not entirely surprisingly combined in some entries with references to the Indian philosopher and writer Rabindranath Tagore, whose critical stance on Europe and materialism Rolland highlights, for example in an April 2017 entry:
"Tagore criticizes modern civilization, which is crushed by materialism. He compares it to a giant giraffe: intelligence has grown into excess and has departed from the heart, the body is wasting away. The modern nations are idol worshippers. They worship the idol of violence."
Great credit to the editor
I refrain from explicitly mentioning entries from the last two years of the war in this review. On the one hand, the overriding importance of this text for the present situation has, in my opinion, long since become clear; moreover, I would like to expressly recommend reading this book and also, for this reason, keep open other important insights and ways of looking at Romain Rolland at this point. This includes, among other things, his view of the soviet republics, which are indeed seen in some corona-critical movements as an inspiration in the search for new forms of coexistence.
Reading Rolland's diary, in my opinion, covers two essential needs that arise in those who are now soon to follow events analytically for more than two years. First of all, it pulls one away from the present and in this respect opens up new space in order to be able to see the situation today more clearly from the newly gained distance. Perhaps, by the way, this also happens to people who are at least halfway caught up in the staging. Via the detour of the First World War, or via Romain Rolland's view of it, perhaps a realization will dawn on them. In this respect, this book could also be recommended as a gift into the system - although, for tactical reasons, the parallels to current events should not be put in front of the reading, or only in a coded form.
The merit of Angelika Gutsche is to have compiled a hardly manageable work of more than 2,000 pages in a new selection so that an access is easily possible. As for the literary side - Rolland received the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature for "Johann Christof" - the translation may not be able to maintain the level of the original everywhere. Not being a novelist, I can't really judge. But in terms of contemporary history and epistemology, the selection is entirely successful, and in this respect it is one of the very important textual testimonies that opens up for us significantly and dangerously more than just a view of the First World War. The fact that such a book has to be published via Print On Demand says a lot about our times.
Finally, a word about the editor: Angelika Gutsche, who has always been involved in the peace movement, sees Romain Rolland as a role model in the effort for peace and international understanding. She has been running her blog on Freitag.de since 2011, when a NATO war was responsible for the destruction of Libya.
In her articles, which also take up cultural themes, she deals in detail with the events in and around Libya, a country she also knows from traveling. Patterns that were applied in the comprehensive destruction of Libya - far more than the country and Gaddafi's structures were destroyed, the destruction was aimed at an Africa that wanted to break away from Western dependencies - can also be found in patterns such as those Romain Rolland highlights for the First World War.
Angelika Gutsche (editor): Romain Rolland. The First World War from the Perspective of a Pacifist. From the diary entries 1913 - 1919. Mediengruppe Westarp, 2021 (298 pages). Available here. If you wish, you can also order the book directly from the author: kontakt@angelika-gutsche.de. The price is 18,95 Euro.
Footnote of the editor Silke Rudolph: It would be desirable that one or the other reader becomes attentive not only to the anti-war diary, but also to further of the gradually into oblivion sinking works of Rolland. For example, to the novel "Clérambault - The Story of a Free Spirit in War", completed in the summer of 1920, in the translation of the wonderful Stefan Zweig: The problem of the "sinking of the individual soul in the abyss of the mass soul", as Rolland called it, thematized there, is fascinating to observe at present in the believing vaccinators, whose thinking capacity is more and more narrowed by the herd instinct, far from Clérambault's realization that the individual has only to follow his own conscience ...
Daniel Sandmann holds a PhD in linguistics, philosophy and history. In November 2019, he published the essay "Peter Handke. For Example." The text was translated into Serbian for Vercernje Novosti. Since 2020, he has been focused on the epistemological decay of civilization.
