You don’t have to be a prepper to know that all disasters are not created equal; just look at the last couple of years. COVID impacted the entire globe. In comparison, other “smaller” disasters might have had a huge impact locally, but were limited to smaller areas.

The war in Ukraine has really only impacted a very small percent of the world’s population, but it has captured the attention of almost everyone, as a possible portent of what is to come. 

While wars are horrible, perhaps even more destruction can be caused by a total collapse of civilization. There are many such scenarios that exist, including conventional war, nuclear war, and an attack by an EMP; even a CME from the sun could being us to that point. 

Granted, we shouldn’t assume that any and every major disaster will result in a collapse of society, but we should be aware of the possibility. When enough people die in enough critical positions, things stop working properly.

Some of those things include our government and government services like the police, fire, and rescue. When that happens, we start seeing society collapse. Perhaps even more importantly, we see law and order collapse. 

Regardless of what happens to the government in any of these scenarios, they all have one thing in common: the collapse of the infrastructure and supply chain that we are so dependent on. We wouldn’t have fresh clean water piped directly into our homes, electric power at the flip of a switch, or any of a thousand products that we use every day. 

If we’re talking about only a few days, most people will probably be okay. The average American family has about three days’ worth of food on hand and usually a couple cases of bottled water. Our homes will hold in some heat, keeping them from getting freezing cold for a day or two. But what then? 

The most shocking article can be found below.

Liberal’s hidden agenda: more than just your guns…

… the impending collapse of the US food supply system
will steal the food from your kids’ tables…

Watch this video below to find out the great secrets hidden by the government.

The truth is, modern society has been trained to be dependent on our infrastructure and supply chain. It’s not like anyone has intentionally trained us that way. I’m not talking conspiracy theory here. But we are raised with all our technology, our conveniences, our infrastructure, and the ability to run to our choice of stores to buy whatever we can afford.

We don’t know any other system and the younger we are, the more dependent we are on that system. 

As part of that “training,” the average person no longer knows how to do the most basic survival tasks. They don’t know where to find water, how to purify it, where to find food (other than in the grocery store and restaurants), how to cook food without power, or even how to start a fire.

Even if they were given the tools that our ancestors used before everything became electrified, they wouldn’t know how to use them. 

This leaves anyone who is not a prepper very vulnerable to a collapse of society. Most don’t even know what their survival priorities are, let alone how to come up with them on their own.

If you ask the average person on the street what those priorities are, they’ll probably tell you their cell phone, keys and credit card, not even understanding the question. One or two might come up with “food, clothing and shelter,” without understanding why, other than they had heard that somewhere.

While they will all come to a recognition of those priorities, that won’t happen until they become desperate. 

Most Likely Group to Die First 

The first thing that will cause people to die won’t be lack of food or water, it will be a lack of medicine. More than 131 million Americans take prescription drugs for chronic conditions. While some of those people could actually survive just fine without those drugs, there are also many who can’t.

Even those who can survive without them for a while, like people with high blood pressure, would very likely end up in serious trouble due to the combination of their underlying health and the stress of the situation. 

The Next Killer We’ll Encounter 

Water will quickly become a problem, as people run out of the bottles they have saved up. Most will look around them, trying to find whatever water they can. But many will drink that water without first purifying it, either because they don’t have the knowhow or don’t have the tools to use. 

Sadly, there is some bad advice around, telling people things like they can filter their water through a T-shirt or other piece of cloth. That sort of advice can get people killed.

Yes, that T-shirt will remove some sediment from the water; but it’s not going to do anything about removing the microscopic pathogens that we really need removed. People will get dysentery from drinking that unpurified water and die of dehydration. 

Those that don’t drink whatever water they can find won’t end up much better off. The human body is largely made of water, trapped in each and every cell. We can only live three to five days without water. If our bodies don’t receive sufficient water, those cells die.

As that process cascades, it can lead to the shutdown of entire organs and systems, leading to death. 

Starving to Death isn’t Next

It would seem that the next likely problem people will face is starvation, but it probably isn’t. While food is important, we can actually survive for some time without it.

We’ll be hungry, along with a loss of energy and probably some loss of mental clarity after the first two weeks; but we won’t be in danger of dying of starvation that quickly. Most of us carry around too many reserves stored in our body’s fat for that to be an issue.

No, the next issue will be all those people out there who are hungry. The ones who take the hunger in their bellies and follow it, rather than following reason. Those people will start doing whatever they can to get food, even if that means crossing the line into crime. 

Before starvation can begin to set in, those people will be out there with whatever weapons they can get their hands on, doing whatever they have to do in order to get food. Some of them will be even more motivated because their children are hungry; and there’s nothing that can make a parent more desperate than their child crying because they are hungry. 

Many will die at the hands of those people before they end up reaching their own demise. That will probably come at the hands of someone who is better armed or better prepared then they are.

Before the First Few Weeks are Out

Disease always follows in the wake of disaster. I already mentioned those who will die from drinking contaminated water, but there will likely be a wave of people who die of disease that spreads through society, quite possibly through contaminated water supplies. One of the oldest known disease spreaders is water that becomes contaminate by people who are already infected by disease. 

Without proper sewage service, it is easy for human waste, one of the most toxic substances on the face of the earth, to contaminate ground water and to become spread from person to person. You remember how much propaganda there was about washing hands during the COVID pandemic; that wasn’t false information.

Diseases, even deadly diseases, spread quickly via person-to-person contact. When there isn’t adequate water for cleaning, it allows them to spread faster. 

Then There’s Starvation

Finally, people will start dying of starvation. It’s hard to say just how quickly that will start as there are many factors involved. The national obesity rate may help slow death by starvation, but fat cells don’t store nutrients, just energy. People can be fat and still die of starvation. 

There are too many people who think they can live off the land, hunting, fishing, and gathering. But the reality is, no matter how good you are at those things, there will be too many people trying to survive that way. It won’t take long for the game to play out and the fish to become scarce. When that happens, most of those people won’t have a Plan B. 

The starvation wave will probably start in about a month or so and will continue for the better part of a year. By then, those who survive will have figured out how to grow their own food. Either through community effort or their own, they will have enough food, water, and firewood to survive, even if they don’t have enough to thrive.

From there, things will start to improve, with the second year being better than the first and the third being better than the second. 

How to Avoid Becoming a Statistic 

This is what prepping is all about: becoming self-sufficient so we don’t need to depend on the infrastructure and supply chain. That’s the only true way that we can be sure that we will survive.

But these sorts of scenarios actually go far beyond just stockpiling food and water, as we’re talking about events that will destroy the very fabric of our nation. It’s not just survival for six months or a year; it’s not waiting for someone to rescue us; it’s being able to take care of ourselves the rest of our lives. 

I don’t care how big a stockpile you build; it won’t feed you the rest of your life. There was a family on “Doomsday Preppers” who were preparing a ten-year stockpile, but they had no plan after that. Their survival retreat wasn’t someplace where they could grow food. In the kind of situation we’re talking about, they’d survive longer than most; but they would still die. 

Getting to this point means developing a homestead; whether that’s a homestead out in the country, an urban homestead in suburbia or a commune-styled homestead on property purchased by your survival team. Homesteading is all about self-sufficiency; and building that homestead is the only insurance you can get. 

The latest news is shocking!!!

Experts predict that an EMP strike that wipes out electricity across the nation would ultimately lead to the demise of up to 90% of the population.

However, this figure begs an important question: if we were able to live thousands of years without even the concept of electricity, why would we suddenly all die without it?

The subject of Macron (we think it’s ‘Macron’ right now) is entirely puzzling. The MSM jumped on creating a solid identity with his ‘wife’ Bridget early on. But that has all unravelled, at least among those willing to be curious. Bridget has turned out to be another Michelle Obama or Jacinda Ardern. Benjamin Fulford has made certain claims about Macron in his blog from his Mossad intelligence sources (Mossad had a change of leadership last year; under the new head, plus overwhelming evidence of elite wrongdoing over ‘Covid’ and the ‘shot’ that Fuellmich and his team have amply demonstrated, especially in relation to Israeli citizens, Fulford’s contact(s) is (are) now a little more forthcoming).

So, Macron the child is rumoured to have been taken to Israel on the pedophilia circuit. ‘Bridget’, most likely Jean-Michel Trogneux, a man actually in his late 70s (see the image below), is believed to have been a client at some point along the way. A picture also surfaced of Macron the young child in a school class of peers, some of whom clearly have Downs Syndrome and other mental problems. The more that comes out, the more confusing the identity of the real man becomes. The research on Brigitte and Macron (the site will translate fully into English), done by combing through existing records and photos plus interviews, done credibly according to an expert in the field, points to puzzling and improbable gaps in Macron’s middle-class family history. Whoever is standing before us claiming to be him we have no idea about. We can’t point to a list of well-known actors as in the case of Biden. Did the real Macron ever go to France’s top university for those aiming at political careers? We wouldn’t be surprised if it came out that this was another Obama-type situation, where nobody at Columbia actually remembers him.

Important below:

You might be living in one of America’s deathzones and not have a clue about it
What if that were you? What would YOU do?

In the next few minutes, I’m going to show you the U.S. Nuclear Target map, where you’ll find out if you’re living in one of America’s Deathzones.

Trump apparently knew the raid on Mar-a-Lago was coming. Leaving critical files behind meant that these have to be put in the public domain. Let’s hope they are.

********

The writer’s concluding thought shows the degree to which Europe has woken up to the fact that its fate is being dictated from another place entirely. Which, of course, has been the case for decades, since WWII.

If we follow the writer’s logic, we can still conclude ‘it’s all a movie’.

********

Macron file seized at Trump: is the Deep State blackmailing our President?

LE COURRIER DES STRATEGES

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Everyone has now heard of the secret file on Emmanuel Macron seized by the FBI during its search of Trump’s home. Even BFMTV talked about it. Of course, no one knows exactly what this folder contains. Uncertainty increases the amount of sulfur that surrounds the mystery. The publicity given to this discovery nevertheless raises a question: are the American services issuing a warning to Macron, from a distance, to keep him under their influence, in particular to guarantee the “good treatment” of the Ukrainian crisis? (ER: And pretty much everything else)

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The FBI’s search of Trump’s home did not go unnoticed, even though it took place on August 8. Quite quickly, the “complosphere” announced that a secret file on Macron had been seized there. And… curiously, the cartel of the subsidized press, up to BFMTV (ER: France’s CNN), also mentioned it in the headlines.

For example, the Express:

FBI investigation: why is Trump hiding a “Macron file” in his safe?

Among the “top secret” files seized from Donald Trump on Monday August 8, one of them is of particular interest to Paris. According to the FBI, his label reads: “President of France”.

The wording is strange. What details, suddenly, on a search covered in principle by the secrecy of the instruction. Where did the French media get this clarification on a top secret file in Trump’s safe, with the label “President of France”? The answer is in the headline of the Express… the information comes from the FBI…

The strange chatter of the FBI

Incidentally, one wonders if the information disseminated… by the FBI is really aimed at the French public, or if it does not rather concern President Macron himself. Blackmailing an ally into standing still is a good old technique that has proven to be effective. And one can think that this technique has known a revival of youth over the past two or three years.

So a plausible reading of the information from this summer is that it constitutes a public warning to Macron of his necessary loyalty… if not… (ER: or to ‘Macron”s handlers)

A harsh management of the Ukrainian crisis?

To understand the reasons which push the American services to let the whole world know that they have a supposedly embarrassing secret file on Emmanuel Macron, it is necessary to delve into the news of August.

Thus, at the beginning of August, the Russian press announced that Vladimir Putin was breaking off communications with Macron, deeming him unfriendly. Here again, the sudden publicity given to a situation in force for two months gives the feeling that Russia wanted to “tackle” Macron and put him in a vulnerable position to force him to make concessions. Moreover, a few days later, Macron and Putin will talk again on the phone. They will decide to send inspectors to Zaporijia.

Meanwhile, the United States used the G7 to give its allies an armbar, demanding the Russian withdrawal from the Zaporizhia power station . In practice, this Zaporijia affair worries the American services, because it shows that Russia is part of a logic of lasting occupation of the territories it conquers.

Did the Americans suspect Macron of wanting to dissociate himself from his allies, knowing that Zelensky intentionally bombed the plant to create a nuclear cataclysm whose consequences would change the face of the conflict?

The end of abundance imposed by the United States?

On August 19, that is to say a few days after the announcement of the FBI’s secret file, Emmanuel Macron delivered his important contribution on the price of freedom, which we had to agree to pay, according to him, by supporting the Ukraine. The occurrence of this dark discourse a few days after the announcement of the FBI case is disturbing. (ER: This really angered the public.

Has Emmanuel Macron’s summer been busy searching for alternatives to war and its price, when the countless gas and electricity measures that are being announced could arouse popular anger? Did Macron have the temptation to preserve social peace in France by moderating his commitment in Ukraine? by sparing Vladimir Putin?

And, in doing so, did the Americans “catch up” with the overcoat by dangling the publication of embarrassing information about his private life? Certain insistent rumors indeed support the notion that the file in question would contain photographs taken in a nightclub in Africa. These may be gossip, but they are plausible.

For my part, it seems to me that if these photos really exist, their political effect would be very uncertain in the event of publication, and do not justify a major forfeiture on the part of the President.

It’s still too early to know what’s going on behind the scenes. Everything indicates, however, that Biden is holding his allies by the halter to force them to support an absurd war.

More than ever, the “American ally” holds Europe under its yoke. 

Shocking news !!!

On December 6th President Trump’s words shook the world.

For the first time in over 2000 years, Jerusalem was recognized as the capital of Israel.

Whether he knows it or not, President Trump fulfilled his part in a frightening biblical prophecy exactly as the scriptures predicted.

Only the top church leaders and Bible scholars know the real meaning behind this great and terrible moment, yet no one is saying a thing about it…

So pay chose attention because this video will change your life forever for the good!

According to TheHill.com on Tuesday:

“A number of (GOP House members prepared) impeachment articles against the” fake Biden they want introduced if Republicans regain control of the body in November midterms.

They accused him of “high crimes” on issues ranging from lack of border enforcement, all things flu/covid related and withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan a year ago in humiliating fashion.

GOP Rep. Bob Good was quoted saying:

“Congress has a duty to hold the (fake Biden) accountable for…failures of his constitutional responsibilities…”

“(A) new Republican (House) majority must be prepared to aggressively conduct oversight on day one.”

And this from TheHill:

Ahead of this year’s November midterms, “dozens of conservatives either endorsed (the fake JB’s) impeachment formally, or suggested they’re ready to support it.”

Since undemocratic Dems usurped power by election-rigging and took office in January 2021, “(a)t least 8 resolutions to impeach” him were introduced — to no avail with Dems controlling Congress and the White House.

According to GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s spokesman, Nick Dyer:

“She believes (that the White House imposter) should have been impeached as soon as he was sworn in, so of course she wants it to happen as soon as possible” if Republicans regain House control.

Reportedly, House and Senate majority leaders, Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell respectively, are cool to the idea.

Impeachment of Clinton in 1998 and Trump twice gained them added public support.

No US president — legitimate or the other way around — was ever removed from office by impeachment.

According to Article I, Section 2 of the US Constitution:

House members are empowered to impeach a sitting president.

Senate members have sole removal power, a two-thirds majority required.

Article II, Section 4 states: 

“The president, vice president and all civil officers of the US shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Indisputable grounds exist to impeach and remove the selected, unelected, White House imposter from office.

Election-rigging is an indisputable high crime.

Since Dems usurped control over the three branches of government, they recklessly escalated proxy hot and sanctions war on Russia over Nazified Ukraine.

They risk going down the same road against China over Taiwan.

In cahoots with the Wall Street owned and operated Fed, they wrecked the economy by soaring inflation and disrupted supply chains.

They caused shortages of basic goods, increased poverty and food insecurity, and are heading things for likely protracted Main Street Depression conditions.

There’s no ambiguity about the fake Biden’s illegitimacy and unfitness for any public office.

Along with other high crimes and misdemeanors, the illegitimate Biden regime continues war on Afghanistan by other means in multiple ways:

In pursuit of its war OF terrorism, not on it, the regime maintains illegal control of Afghanistan’s airspace.

According to a months earlier USCENTCOM statement:

When the Pentagon “authorizes (air) strikes…in Afghanistan, (it) won’t be negotiating with the Taliban about where and when (it’ll) drop bombs (sic).”

The Biden regime illegally considers the country “a free space” for US forces to operate in at its discretion — in flagrant breach of the UN Charter.

It went further by illegally and maliciously freezing around $9 billion held at the Wall Street-controlled New York Fed.

It was done to deprive the Taliban and millions of Afghans of access to the nation’s money — what’s vitally needed to prevent mass food insecurity from turning into widespread famine conditions.

Dominant Biden regime hardliners also ordered the US-controlled loan sharks of last resort IMF and World Bank to deny financial aid to Afghanistan.

And illegally imposed US sanctions on the nation remain in place with no prospect of their removal.

During 20 years of US occupation, the empire of lies and forever wars on invented enemies inflicted virtually every imaginable high crime against long-suffering Afghans.

The same reality applies to all nations raped and destroyed by hegemon USA throughout the post-WW II period — and earlier throughout the history of the self-styled indispensable nation.

If impeaching a nation and holding it accountable for high crimes too egregious to ignore was possible, the US would far and away top the list of offenders.

Dominant Biden regime hardliners are recklessly pushing things for direct confrontation with Russia over Ukraine and with China over Taiwan.

What’s building is the ominous threat of possible war in Europe and the Asia/Pacific against nations able to hit back hard with overwhelming power if belligerently attacked by an aggressor.

According to US MSM, the Biden intends to ask Congress for rubber-stamp approval of another $1.1 billion worth of arms to China’s breakaway province — once again in defiance of the One China principle.

What stood the test of time since enactment of the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act — affirming no US intention to establish formal diplomatic relations with Taipei — has been virtually declared null and void by the Trump and Biden regimes, a hostile affront to China’s sovereignty.

At its Monday and Tuesday press briefings, China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t comment on the new US arms sale.

In response to an earlier US announced one to Taiwan, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Zhou Lijian, said the following:

US sales to the breakaway province “seriously interfere with China’s internal affairs, seriously damage China’s sovereignty and security interests, send a seriously wrong signal to Taiwan independence forces, and severely damage China-US relations and peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” adding:

“China will make a legitimate and necessary response according to how the situation develops.”

In response to the latest MSM reported upcoming arms sale to Taiwan, spokesman for China’s US embassy, Liu Pengyu, said the following:

“The US side needs to immediately stop arms sales to and military contact with Taiwan, stop creating factors that could lead to tensions in the Taiwan Strait, and follow through on (its) statement of not supporting ‘Taiwan independence.’ ”

The new US arms package reportedly includes:

60 AGM-84L Harpoon Block II anti-ship missiles for $355 million

100 AIM-9X Block II Sidewinder tactical air-to-air missiles for $85.6 million, and 

$655.4 million for a surveillance radar contract extension.

On Tuesday, an unnamed Chinese official reportedly said that US arms sales to Taiwan strengthen pro-independence elements to resist reunification with the mainland.

At the same time, these sales to the island won’t change the military balance between Beijing and its breakaway province.

Repeated arms sales to Taiwan escalate regional tensions in pursuit of US imperial aims.

According to Bloomberg News on August 29:

“The State Department informally notified Congress of the sale late Monday,” adding:

“(N)otification marks the beginning of several weeks of staff consultations that will result in a formal arms-sale proposal from the State Department.”

“With support for Taiwan running high among both Republicans and Democrats in Congress, the package will likely face little resistance from lawmakers.”

According to the Biden regime’s State Department, it doesn’t comment on proposed arms sales until Congress is formally notified.

When approved, the latest package will be the largest one since a $2.4 billion sale to Taiwan in October 2020 and largest one since the illegitimate Biden regime usurped power by election rigging.

Its dominant hardliners and likeminded congressional members are recklessly challenging China by repeated arms sales — 4 so far by the Biden regime with a fifth package upcoming.

The Biden regime and Congress also increased numbers of provocative visits to the island.

And provocative saber-rattling transits through the Taiwan Strait by US warships risk direct confrontation with China by going too far.

Would either wing of the US war party tolerate the presence of Russian or Chinese warships positioned in international waters near the US east or west coasts, in the Gulf of Mexico, or deployed near the US border in Canada or the United Mexican states?

No elaboration of what’s clear is needed.

What’s going on is part of US war on China by other means, including decades of repeated arms sales to Taiwan, a breached promise to go the other way.

On August 17, 1982, the US/PRC Joint Communique included a promise by the Reagan admin. to reduce arms sales to Taiwan.

Instead, since the January 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, over $70 billion worth of US arms have been sold to Taipei — further proof that hegemon USA can never be trusted, its word never its bond.

Last Friday, China’s Xinhua stressed the above reality, saying:

So-called US “rules-based international order (is code language for its longstanding pursuit of) hegemony (over other nations by) destroy(ing) rules and order” — as mandated by the UN Charter and other international laws.

US actions on the world stage prove time and again that its ruling regimes pursue what they “see fit.”

They repeatedly and illegally interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, toppling their governments, replacing them with subservient to US interests puppet rule.

At the same time, virtually everything the US agreed to with other nations it breached.

Time and again, Beijing stressed that Taiwan is sovereign Chinese territory to be reunited with the mainland.

That it won’t tolerate US interference in this core issue.

Challenging China over Taiwan risks direct confrontation.

Is that where things are heading?

If the empire of lies pushes things beyond a point of no return with China and Russia, will its core NATO allies go along or break with the US on this crucial issue to avoid possible global war with nukes?

If the worst of scenarios unfolds ahead between hegemon USA and Sino/Russia, will Britain, France, Germany and other Western states risk self-destruction by going along with their higher power in Washington or make a clean break in self-defense?

The fullness of time will tell.

Gun Control is a favorite tactic for many politicians on the left. It allows them to shift the blame from the person, whose worldviews and political party often aligns with theirs, to a simple tool they can ban. With an all Republican everything, you’d think we wouldn’t have to worry, but that’s far from true. These people seemingly always find a way to infiltrate politics and attempt to strip us of our God-given rights. So what do we do? How do we fight back if gun control legislation is proposed or passed?

#1. Learn How To Make Your Own

California is the beacon of cruddy gun control laws in the United States. They’ve gone above and beyond to reclassify your standard semi-automatic rifle into what they call an assault rifle. What we’ve seen is people and companies outsmarting the legislature at every turn. One of the most famous means was building your own gun. Specifically AR 15s. AR 15s are always on the chopping block, but even California couldn’t stop the signal.

With the advent of 80% lowers Californians were able to again build their own rifles within the law. The AR 15 is hardly the only weapon you can build. In fact, an enterprising patriot build can manufacture their own semi-auto Sten gun, Glocks, MAC 10/11s, AK rifles and more. The main issue is going to be acquiring the skills and tools needed to make these weapons. It takes a little mechanical skill and a lot of different tools.

It would be wise to start learning the insides and outsides of guns now. Learn to build them, acquire the tools, and fire up the Youtube machine. Here you’ll find as hard as they try they can’t stop the signal. You can build your own with a little practice, and it’s perfectly legal to do so. You aren’t just building guns, you are learning valuable skills regarding the construction and design of firearms that could be invaluable if things got really bad.

Important below:

Today I’d like to share with you a “3-second survival hack” you can use to skyrocket your chances of protecting your loved ones during ANY crisis.

This technique is so powerful it can give you almost superhuman powers during the ugliest nightmares imaginable….

From natural disasters like earthquakes or tornadoes…

To explosive situations like mass shootings or even nationwide martial law.

And It doesn’t matter if you’re out of shape…

Or have no equipment…

Or even if you’re disabled living in a wheelchair.

This technique has been tested and proven by elite soldiers and real world “miracle” survivors from around the world.

#2. Recognize the Gun Ban Matrix

One fact we’ve seen over and over again with anti-gunners is that they know absolutely nothing about guns. If the power these people had wasn’t so terrifying it would be hilarious. Every time they open their mouths about guns they say something incredibly stupid. They simply target guns that look scary and that’s it. That’s why the gun ban matrix exists. The gun ban matrix is a list of features and guns unlikely to be banned because anti-gunners are idiots and don’t understand firearms.

These are the guns you should consider investing in should sweeping legislation occur. In case the situations getting drastic and confiscation begins things may move too fast for people to react. In that event a neutered gun is better than no gun.

The first guns to go are going to be the traditional targets for anti-gunners, the AK 47s, the AR 15s, the Tavors, and the usual suspects. They may be banned by name, or by the features they share. A good alternative to these semi-auto rifles is the Ruger Mini 14 and Mini 30 series. They can be purchased in not so scary configurations.

Past the Mini 14 and Mini 30, there is the fixed magazine SKS rifle. It’s often left off ban lists, and it’s affordable and common. It’s limited to ten rounds, but with stripper clips, you can reload quite fast with practice.

Past this level we get into manually operated firearms, this includes pump-action shotguns, and lever and bolt action rifles. A good lever action rifle is a rapid firing gun and in the right caliber can hold up to 14 rounds. These guns are highly unlikely to be banned without a full constitutional amendment.

#3. Don’t Give A Single Inch

With the recent Las Vegas shooting there has been an increased interest in banning a firearm accessory known as a bump fire stock. These accessories are rather dumb and useless, and in no way did it make the shooter more lethal. Regardless of how dumb and useless they are there is no reason the firearms community should let them be banned without a fight. With the NRA even saying the ATF should reevaluate bump fire stocks.

This is how gun control starts, with tiny little cuts. We let them take one dumb accessory and next time they’ll push for something else, and they’ll keep pushing. Give them nothing, not a single inch. As gun rights advocates we have to defend what we have and go on the offensive. Fight back and take our God Given rights back.

#4. Push Back and Push Back Hard

If legislation gets passed regarding gun control, and I mean any legislation at all, we have to push back. The vast majority of gun owners are law abiding, tax paying, job having citizens who want nothing more than to live in peace. We all know actual gun control will do absolutely nothing to strip criminals of firearms, just good people who already obey the law.

If gun control happens as law abiding gun owners we have to flood the legislator’s offices with our demands. We have to protest, we have to write letters, we need to march on the capitals. In 2012 the gun community did an amazing job of coming together to resist any form of gun control. We need that same response to every law that passes, heck we need that reaction every gun control law that is even proposed.

We need to push at the local, state and federal level. Work every angle possible. We have to keep supporting companies that agree with our God-given rights, we have to join gun rights organizations of every kind. We literally have to put our money where our mouth is.

#5. Focus on the Small Politics as Much as the Large

It’s easy to forget the importance of local politics when it comes to federal gun control. Local and state politics can make all the difference. We saw Sheriff’s in states across the union step forward and say they would refuse to enforce federal gun control laws in their counties. We saw states and municipalities adopt laws that would act to nullify federal gun control laws.

If we can’t toss the anti-freedom and anti-gun bastards out of federal offices we can at least elect the right people at the local and state level to ensure the laws are useless.

Resist

As American citizens, we owe it to future generations to resist. Resist with every fiber we have. Resist gun control measures with everything we can. We need to prepare for the worst and always ready to resist.

The most shocking article can be found below.

Liberal’s hidden agenda: more than just your guns…

… the impending collapse of the US food supply system
will steal the food from your kids’ tables…

Watch this video below to find out the great secrets hidden by the government.

Are things on a path toward global war 3.0?

Is it inevitable?

Will it be waged with nukes able to end life on earth by mass destruction and nuclear winter?

Cities turned to smoldering rubble can be rebuilt.

Radioactive contamination is long-lasting.

If occurs from enough detonations, nuclear winter threatens all life forms with extinction.

Physician, nuclear expert, anti-war activist, Helen Caldicott, earlier explained the following: 

“If present trends continue, the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink will soon be contaminated with enough radioactive pollutants to pose a potential health hazard far greater than any plague humanity has ever experienced.”

A “single failure of nuclear deterrence (could) start nuclear war.” 

Devastating consequences would follow, potentially killing “tens of millions of people, and caus(ing) longterm, catastrophic disruptions of the global climate and massive destruction of earth’s protective ozone layer.”

“The result would be a global nuclear famine that could kill up to one billion people.”

Nuclear winter is the ultimate nightmare.

Einstein stressed the following:

“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

The risk is greatly heightened by Washington’s criminal class, especially undemocratic Dems.

Paul Craig Roberts stressed it saying:

A Dem-controlled “new Third Reich…Nazi” regime runs hegemon USA — “one far more dangerous thanks to the digital revolution (and thermonukes), a godsend for tyrants.”

The vast majority of Americans and others throughout the West haven’t escaped from “The Matrix in which their minds are trapped.” 

So they don’t realize how greatly their lives and well-being are endangered by diabolical gangsterism running their nations.

On August 26, ResponsibleStatecraft.org (RS below) explained the following:

The Biden regime intends “naming” a Pentagon “military assistance mission in (Nazified) Ukraine…”

It’ll be a separate command like Operation Desert Storm or Operation Enduring Freedom — a US general and support staff running it.

This step represents a virtual US declaration of war on Russia in less than so many words.

It indicates no end to what RS called a “a long hard slog.”

It signals longterm US military support for Nazified Ukraine and use of its territory as a Pentagon base for perpetual confrontation with Russia.

It risks crossing the line from proxy to hot war between the world’s dominant nuclear powers.

Planned months in advance — begun 4 weeks after the made-in-the-USA mother of all false flags to that time — preemptive war on nonthreatening, nonbelligerent Afghanistan by the empire of lies lasted weeks shy of 20 years before a humiliating Biden regime pullout last August.

Will US war on Russia surpass it in length?

Or will nukes be used to end it sooner — and with it planet earth as now exists and all its life forms?

Perpetual war on invented enemies is longstanding US policy — how military Keynesianism on steroids operates.

Enemies are invented to advance hegemon USA’s aims for unchallenged control of world community nations, their resources and populations — by brute force and other diabolical means.

Well over 1,000 Pentagon bases worldwide are platforms for waging forever wars on humanity.

Their existence threatens everyone everywhere, including:

Large-scale Main Operating Bases, Forward Operation Sites (major installations but are smaller than MOBs) and Cooperative Security Locations.

The latter posts are to preposition weapons, munitions, and modest numbers of troops.

The existence of the above bases has nothing to do with providing homeland or regional security.

They’re launching pads for perpetual US aggression on invented enemies.

In cahoots with diabolical CIA actions, they’re also for toppling independent governments by coups or color revolutions, assassinating their leaders, propping up friendly despots, illicit drug trafficking, suppressing beneficial social change, and replacing democracy as it should be with vassal rule subservience to US interests.

A state of permanent war defines how the empire of lies operates at home and worldwide.

On establishing a new military command for perpetual war in Ukraine on Russia, RS quoted senior advisor to Concerned Veterans of America, Dan Caldwell, saying the following:

“This move could signal to other actors in the conflict — particularly (Ukraine and Russia) — that (hegemon USA) is planning on getting significantly more directly involved in the war itself.”

“That of course could lead to the war being prolonged and raise the risk of escalation between (US-dominated) NATO, and” the Russian Federation.

Separately, retired US Lt. Col. Daniel Davis explained the following:

“Putting a name on an operation is far more significant than merely coming up with a catchy tagline.”

“It confers an intent to provide longterm, sustained, and expensive support to one side of a war” against invented enemy Russia. 

It’s at a time of growing economic crisis conditions throughout the US/West — a reason for dominant Biden regime hardliners to want the the subject changed as a way to try staying in power.

Separately the Libertarian Institute noted what I discussed in an article last week:

Likely incoming UK prime minister, Liz Truss, replacing BoJo in early September, “declared (her willingness) to kick off thermonuclear warfare” once in power in a matter of days.

Last week, she minced no words, saying: “I’m ready to do it.”

In cahoots with Washington’s criminal class, humanity trembles with the likes of them in charge — their fingers on the nuclear trigger, their willingness to squeeze it.

The political “elite” clearly look on the rest of us as cattle to be herded, tagged, corralled and culled by their betters. That view of the rest of humanity justifies all manner of crimes against the herd and explains why their treatment of the  citizenry who place their trust in them is so amoral.

It is important not to lose sight of the fact that justifying their egregious treatment of the citizenry by pointing out the alleged dangers of the pandemic does not hold water. These people knew damn well that the alleged pandemic, based on fraudulent tests, false stats and outright propaganda lies, was not the threat it was made out to be, not even close.

Who is responsible for inflicting unethical behavioural-science ‘nudges’ on the British people?

The state’s strategic deployment of fear, shame and peer pressure – or ‘affect, ‘ego’ and ‘norms’ in the language of behavioural science – throughout the covid-19 pandemic, as a means of ‘nudging’ people’s cohttps://www.pandata.org/mpliance with restrictions and the vaccine rollout has been widely criticised. Ethical concerns about the Government’s use of these psychological techniques in their messaging campaign arise from several aspects of this form of influence: the wilful infliction of emotional distress on the general population as a means of increasing conformity; the failure to seek informed consent from those targeted; the contentious and non-evidenced public health policies which these strategies helped to implement; and the fact that ‘nudges’ commonly exert their influence below a person’s level of consciousness, thereby fuelling the accusation that they are manipulative.

But who is primarily responsible for inflicting these morally dubious, and often damaging, behavioural-science ‘nudges’ on British citizens?

There are four groups of stakeholders who could feasibly be responsible for these egregious actions:

1. British Psychological Society (BPS)
2. Behavioural Insights Team (BIT)
3. Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B)
4. Elected politicians and their civil servants

To date, all four seem to be shirking any responsibility. Indeed, when probed, the responses of these collectives resemble a duplicitous hybrid of a police officer’s, ‘Move along, nothing to see here’, and the reggae musician Shaggy denying his misdemeanours with the mantra, ‘It wasn’t me’.

Let’s consider, in turn, each group of actors who might be responsible.

1. British Psychological Society (BPS)

The BPS is the professional organisation representing psychologists in the UK. Several of its prominent members have been actively involved in SAGE, providing psychological advice to Government about how to maximise the impact of the covid-19 messaging campaign.  One of the central roles of the BPS is to ensure that its members practice in a responsible and morally acceptable way. According to its Code of Ethics, psychologists should respect ‘consent’ and ‘self-determination’, while always ensuring ‘the avoidance of harm and the prevention of abuse or misuse of their contribution to society’. Given this remit, and the BPS’s role as the guardian of ethical psychological practice, presumably this learned organisation would thoroughly address our concerns about ‘nudging’, expressed in a letter signed by 46 psychologists and therapists, and submitted on the 6^th January 2021.

But no, they were having none of it!

An initial response from Dr Debra Malpass (Director of Knowledge and Insight) questioned whether the ‘nudges’ under scrutiny were actually covert, asserted that it was ‘not appropriate’ for the BPS to respond to concerns about unnamed psychologists, and that they were ‘incredibly proud’ of the ‘fantastic work done by psychologists throughout the pandemic’. When it subsequently became apparent that our questions had not been addressed by their ethics committee, we prompted them further and on the 1^st July 2021 Dr Roger Paxton (chair of the BPS Ethics Committee) responded, stridently arguing that:

• The psychological strategies deployed were ‘indirect’ rather than covert;
• The application of psychology in this instance fell outside the realm of individual health decisions (so the ethical requirement to obtain informed consent was not an issue);
• Levels of fear within the general population were proportionate to the objective risk posed by the virus;
• The psychologists’ role in the pandemic response demonstrated ‘social responsibility and the competent and responsible employment of psychological expertise’.

Dr Paxton’s claims constitute a misleading cocktail of distortion, evasion and disingenuousness.

So if the guardians of ethical psychological practice deny any wrongdoing – ‘move along, nothing to see here’ – who else might be responsible for the unethical application of behavioural science?

2. Behavioural Insights Team (BIT)

In 2010, in the Prime Minister’s office, the BIT was spawned: ‘The world’s first government institution dedicated to the application of behavioural science to policy’. The psychological strategies deployed by the BIT have been described as providing ‘low cost, low pain ways of nudging citizens … into new ways of acting by going with the grain of how we think and act’. Many of these techniques of persuasion act – to various degrees – below people’s conscious awareness.

Since its inception, the BIT has been led by Professor David Halpern who, along with at least two other BIT members, also participated in the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), a subgroup of SAGE that advised the Government on its covid-19 communications strategy. Over the last decade, the BIT has witnessed major expansion and now operates in many countries across the world.

Importantly, a 2010 document describing behavioural science techniques and co-written by Professor Halpern states: ‘Policymakers wishing to use these tools … need the approval of the public to do so’ (p74). More recently, in Professor Halpern’s book, Inside the Nudge Unit, he is even more emphatic about the importance of consent: ‘If Governments … wish to use behavioural insights, they must seek and maintain the permission of the public. Ultimately, you – the public, the citizen – need to decide what the objectives, and limits, of nudging and empirical testing should be’ (p375). As such, the leading voice of the BIT contradicts the above-mentioned Dr Paxton, chair of the BPS Ethics Committee.

The malevolent influence of the BIT in promoting deployment of fear, shame and scapegoating as weapons of influence can be detected in a (subsequently redacted) document advising front-line healthcare staff about how to effectively promote the covid-19 vaccines. The paper – the product of a collaboration between the BIT and the NHS – included recommendations to ‘leverage anticipated regret’ in older people by telling them that the ‘over 65s are three times more likely to die if you get COVID’ and to tell young people that ‘normality can only return, for you and others, with your vaccination’ [my emphasis].

In light of the abuse of behavioural science throughout the covid-19 pandemic, have members of the BIT been announcing their disapproval? One of their former founder members, Dr Simon Ruda, has recently expressed concern, stating that ‘the most egregious and far-reaching mistake made in responding to the pandemic has been the level of fear willingly conveyed on the public’ – another comment at odds with Dr Paxton’s testimony. In contrast, the current BIT practitioners have remained silent about the ethical basis of their recent work, despite their sphere of influence broadening into many areas of our day-to-day lives, including zero-carbon green messages in the media and the work of Her Majesty’s Revenues and Customs (the latter involvement potentially implicated in tragic consequences for some of those targeted).

Intriguingly, on the 31^st January 2022, I received an email from the BIT’s communication department denying any responsibility for the Government’s use of fear, shame and scapegoating in their covid-19 messaging. According to this spokesperson, ‘none of the examples you reference were actually our work or anything we worked on at all, and we categorically do not believe in using fear as a tactic’.

So it’s an emphatic, ‘It wasn’t me’ from the BIT.

3. Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B)

The SPI-B is one of the subgroups that provided expert advice to SAGE throughout the covid-19 pandemic. Its membership includes mainly behavioural scientists and psychologists, alongside representation from other professions such as sociology and criminology. The number of BIT members involved is at least three; it is not possible to give a definite number as four members of the SPI-B have opted to remain anonymous. Prominent figures within the BPS – including Professor Susan Michie – also participated in the work of the SPI-B.

According to its terms of reference, the SPI-B offers the government the ‘best possible behavioural science advice’ to inform the response to covid-19, by providing ‘strategies for behaviour change, to support control of and recovery from the epidemic and associated government policy’.

In regards to transparency about who holds responsibility for the decision to inflict unethical ‘nudges’ upon the British people, it is unfortunate that meetings are not routinely minuted. However, the SPI-B do publish an occasional ‘high-level summary’ of their activities and recommendations, and one of these documents suggest a substantial degree of culpability for the government’s use of fear, shame and peer pressure in their covid-19 messaging strategy.

The (now-infamous) minutes of the 22^nd of March 2020 announced that ‘A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened … The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging’. In addition, the same document encouraged the victimisation of an outgroup with its recommendation that, ‘Communication strategies should provide social approval for desired behaviours’ and that ‘members of the community can be encouraged to provide it to each other’. More ominously, the ‘nudgers’ advised ministers to, ‘Consider use of social disapproval for failure to comply’. Furthermore, it seems that these behavioural-science experts were aware, even then, of the dangers of harnessing peer-to-peer censure in this way: ‘Social disapproval from one’s community can play an important role in preventing anti-social behaviour or discouraging failure to enact pro-social behaviour. However, this needs to be carefully managed to avoid victimisation, scapegoating and misdirected criticism’ (my emphasis).

Laura Dodsworth’s excellent piece of investigative journalism for her book, A State of Fear: how the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic, revealed that several participants in the SPI-B held major concerns about the group’s recommendations. One group member, educational psychologist Gavin Morgan, expressed the view that his colleagues ‘went overboard with the scary message to get compliance’ and confirmed there was no exit plan from the fear narrative. Another – who wished to remain anonymous – recalled that, in March 2020, ‘There were discussions about fear being needed to encourage compliance & decisions were made to ramp up fear’. The same SPI-B member described their use of fear as ‘dystopian’ and ‘ethically questionable’, and went on to say that, ‘It’s been like a weird experiment. Ultimately, it backfired because people became too scared’. A third group member (again anonymous) offered more generalised criticism: ‘People use the pandemic to grab power and drive through things that wouldn’t happen otherwise … We have to be very careful about the authoritarianism that is creeping in’.

In light of the incriminating SPI-B minutes, together with the grave concerns expressed by some members of the group, it was reasonable to expect that the SPI-B co-chair – Professor Ann John – would accept some responsibility for promoting the use of unethical ‘nudges’ during the covid-19 pandemic. Such an opportunity arose when Professor John was invited to appear in front of the Government’s Science & Technology Committee on the 30^th March 2022. (She had actually been scheduled to give evidence on the 2^nd March but, due to unforeseen circumstances, did not attend). Perhaps, for the first time around the issue of behavioural science as deployed in the pandemic, we would hear acknowledgement of errors by an expert in a position of power. Or maybe expressions of humility, of lessons learned, an apology and a pledge to never err in this way again.

Sadly, not a bit of it.

During her interview, Professor John denied any responsibility for the unethical use of covert psychological strategies over the last two years. When challenged by MP Graham Stringer about the strategic decision to indiscriminately ramp up fear (as referenced in the SPI-B minutes of the 22^nd March 2020) she responded, ‘I was not actually sitting on the SPI-B then’. When further pressed on this issue, Professor John implausibly claimed that her group advised against using scare tactics as a way of increasing compliance with covid-19 restrictions, stating ‘We never advised on upping the level of fear. I think it was presented as part of the evidence base … we absolutely advised that fear does not work’.

In an early part of the interview, Professor John contradicts her group’s terms of reference by insisting that the SPI-B was not trying to change people’s behaviour, but instead pursuing the altruistic motive of ‘ensuring that disproportionate and unintended impacts were not felt by different sectors of society’. When Graham Stringer asked which ethical framework her group was operating within, she shirks any responsibility for ensuring the morality of her group’s output, saying that, ‘although we present the advice, where policy decisions are made the Government have an advisory group on ethics’.

So it’s another resounding ‘It wasn’t me’ from the SPI-B.

4. Elected politicians and their civil servants

One can credibly argue that the ultimate responsibility for the methods used in the Government’s covid-19 communications strategy lies with the elected politicians and their senior advisors. While expert scientists are bound by their professional codes to practice ethically, it is the government decision makers who decide what policies to unleash upon its citizens. Yet attempts to trigger some serious reflection about the Government’s use of behavioural science have, to date, been unsuccessful.

One exception to this collective inertia of our politicians has been the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) that is focusing on ‘Pandemic Response and Recovery’. I – and several others with serious misgivings about the ethics of ‘nudging’ – were invited to present our concerns to the APPG on the 28^th February 2022. Members of the APPG listened with interest to our presentation and one of the co-chairs of the group – Graham Stringer – subsequently put some of our specific questions to Professor John (as discussed above).

The previous month, I had sent another letter (co-signed by 55 health professionals) to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC) (a Commons select committee chaired by William Wragg MP) formally requesting an independent inquiry into the Government’s use of behavioural science. I received a prompt response from a PACAC administrator informing me that an inquiry into the Coronavirus Act 2020 was already underway, one element of their remit being to consider behavioural science, and the committee was still accepting oral evidence. I asked if I, or another psychologist with concerns about ‘nudging’, could be given the opportunity to contribute. Alas, no such invitation was forthcoming. I continued to press the PACAC for a stand-alone inquiry into state-sponsored behavioural science, but – to date – they have made no commitment to conduct such a review. Indeed, when my local MP asked the PACAC about the prospect of such an inquiry he was informed by an administrator that ‘there are no current plans to do so’.

Further indication of our elected MPs’ disinterest in exploring the ethics of ‘nudging’ came in the form of  the omission of any mention of behavioural science or propaganda in the draft terms of reference for the Inquiry into the covid-19 pandemic, published on the 10th March 2022. This glaring exclusion has been highlighted in the feedback to the inquiry; one can only hope that a behavioural science review is included in the finalised terms of reference, but it is difficult to have confidence that this will be the case.

It is plausible that Government ministers, and their senior civil servants, are reticent about the prospect of further scrutiny on this issue. Maybe the publically expressed concerns in the aftermath of Dodsworth’s book, A State of Fear, have prompted some high-level introspection regarding their strategic deployment of fear, shame and scapegoating on the British people. Whatever is occurring in the corridors of power, it is apparent that our elected representatives are – with a few exceptions – keen to convey the message, ‘Move along; nothing to see here’.

Concluding comments

Throughout the covid-19 era the world has witnessed an unprecedented campaign of propaganda ostensibly aimed at increasing compliance with lockdowns and other restrictions. In the UK, and many other countries, a prominent weapon within this crusade has been the strategic use of a range of behavioural-science techniques, including the covert (and ethically dubious) deployment of fear, shame and scapegoating. The British people have a right to know which state-funded players were responsible for the decision to resort to these distress-evoking methods of persuasion that have caused significant collateral harms.

To date, there has been a stark reluctance for any stakeholder – behavioural scientist or political official – to accept responsibility for these manipulative and damaging tactics. The BPS and the politicians in the PACAC apparently see nothing remiss in the Government’s use of ‘nudges’, while the behavioural scientists in the BIT and SPI-B insist they are in no ways culpable. In the implausible event that all these stakeholders hold no responsibility for scaring, shaming and othering citizens into submission, who else could it be? Behavioural scientists are now ubiquitous across government departments – including the Cabinet Office, the Home Office’s Research Information and Communication Unit (RICU) and the Counter Disinformation Cell – so perhaps the blame resides in one or more of these groups? Or maybe it is the commercial advertisers the Government has commissioned (at huge expense) to broadcast their covid-19 messaging?

Whoever it is, we need to know.

The political “elite” clearly look on the rest of us as cattle to be herded, tagged, corralled and culled by their betters. That view of the rest of humanity justifies all manner of crimes against the herd and explains why their treatment of the  citizenry who place their trust in them is so amoral.

It is important not to lose sight of the fact that justifying their egregious treatment of the citizenry by pointing out the alleged dangers of the pandemic does not hold water. These people knew damn well that the alleged pandemic, based on fraudulent tests, false stats and outright propaganda lies, was not the threat it was made out to be, not even close.

The most shocking article can be found below.

Liberal’s hidden agenda: more than just your guns…

… the impending collapse of the US food supply system
will steal the food from your kids’ tables…

Watch this video below to find out the great secrets hidden by the government.

Who is responsible for inflicting unethical behavioural-science ‘nudges’ on the British people?

The state’s strategic deployment of fear, shame and peer pressure – or ‘affect, ‘ego’ and ‘norms’ in the language of behavioural science – throughout the covid-19 pandemic, as a means of ‘nudging’ people’s cohttps://www.pandata.org/mpliance with restrictions and the vaccine rollout has been widely criticised. Ethical concerns about the Government’s use of these psychological techniques in their messaging campaign arise from several aspects of this form of influence: the wilful infliction of emotional distress on the general population as a means of increasing conformity; the failure to seek informed consent from those targeted; the contentious and non-evidenced public health policies which these strategies helped to implement; and the fact that ‘nudges’ commonly exert their influence below a person’s level of consciousness, thereby fuelling the accusation that they are manipulative.

But who is primarily responsible for inflicting these morally dubious, and often damaging, behavioural-science ‘nudges’ on British citizens?

There are four groups of stakeholders who could feasibly be responsible for these egregious actions:

1. British Psychological Society (BPS)
2. Behavioural Insights Team (BIT)
3. Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B)
4. Elected politicians and their civil servants

To date, all four seem to be shirking any responsibility. Indeed, when probed, the responses of these collectives resemble a duplicitous hybrid of a police officer’s, ‘Move along, nothing to see here’, and the reggae musician Shaggy denying his misdemeanours with the mantra, ‘It wasn’t me’.

Let’s consider, in turn, each group of actors who might be responsible.

1. British Psychological Society (BPS)

The BPS is the professional organisation representing psychologists in the UK. Several of its prominent members have been actively involved in SAGE, providing psychological advice to Government about how to maximise the impact of the covid-19 messaging campaign.  One of the central roles of the BPS is to ensure that its members practice in a responsible and morally acceptable way. According to its Code of Ethics, psychologists should respect ‘consent’ and ‘self-determination’, while always ensuring ‘the avoidance of harm and the prevention of abuse or misuse of their contribution to society’. Given this remit, and the BPS’s role as the guardian of ethical psychological practice, presumably this learned organisation would thoroughly address our concerns about ‘nudging’, expressed in a letter signed by 46 psychologists and therapists, and submitted on the 6^th January 2021.

But no, they were having none of it!

An initial response from Dr Debra Malpass (Director of Knowledge and Insight) questioned whether the ‘nudges’ under scrutiny were actually covert, asserted that it was ‘not appropriate’ for the BPS to respond to concerns about unnamed psychologists, and that they were ‘incredibly proud’ of the ‘fantastic work done by psychologists throughout the pandemic’. When it subsequently became apparent that our questions had not been addressed by their ethics committee, we prompted them further and on the 1^st July 2021 Dr Roger Paxton (chair of the BPS Ethics Committee) responded, stridently arguing that:

• The psychological strategies deployed were ‘indirect’ rather than covert;
• The application of psychology in this instance fell outside the realm of individual health decisions (so the ethical requirement to obtain informed consent was not an issue);
• Levels of fear within the general population were proportionate to the objective risk posed by the virus;
• The psychologists’ role in the pandemic response demonstrated ‘social responsibility and the competent and responsible employment of psychological expertise’.

Dr Paxton’s claims constitute a misleading cocktail of distortion, evasion and disingenuousness.

So if the guardians of ethical psychological practice deny any wrongdoing – ‘move along, nothing to see here’ – who else might be responsible for the unethical application of behavioural science?

2. Behavioural Insights Team (BIT)

In 2010, in the Prime Minister’s office, the BIT was spawned: ‘The world’s first government institution dedicated to the application of behavioural science to policy’. The psychological strategies deployed by the BIT have been described as providing ‘low cost, low pain ways of nudging citizens … into new ways of acting by going with the grain of how we think and act’. Many of these techniques of persuasion act – to various degrees – below people’s conscious awareness.

Since its inception, the BIT has been led by Professor David Halpern who, along with at least two other BIT members, also participated in the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), a subgroup of SAGE that advised the Government on its covid-19 communications strategy. Over the last decade, the BIT has witnessed major expansion and now operates in many countries across the world.

Importantly, a 2010 document describing behavioural science techniques and co-written by Professor Halpern states: ‘Policymakers wishing to use these tools … need the approval of the public to do so’ (p74). More recently, in Professor Halpern’s book, Inside the Nudge Unit, he is even more emphatic about the importance of consent: ‘If Governments … wish to use behavioural insights, they must seek and maintain the permission of the public. Ultimately, you – the public, the citizen – need to decide what the objectives, and limits, of nudging and empirical testing should be’ (p375). As such, the leading voice of the BIT contradicts the above-mentioned Dr Paxton, chair of the BPS Ethics Committee.

The malevolent influence of the BIT in promoting deployment of fear, shame and scapegoating as weapons of influence can be detected in a (subsequently redacted) document advising front-line healthcare staff about how to effectively promote the covid-19 vaccines. The paper – the product of a collaboration between the BIT and the NHS – included recommendations to ‘leverage anticipated regret’ in older people by telling them that the ‘over 65s are three times more likely to die if you get COVID’ and to tell young people that ‘normality can only return, for you and others, with your vaccination’ [my emphasis].

In light of the abuse of behavioural science throughout the covid-19 pandemic, have members of the BIT been announcing their disapproval? One of their former founder members, Dr Simon Ruda, has recently expressed concern, stating that ‘the most egregious and far-reaching mistake made in responding to the pandemic has been the level of fear willingly conveyed on the public’ – another comment at odds with Dr Paxton’s testimony. In contrast, the current BIT practitioners have remained silent about the ethical basis of their recent work, despite their sphere of influence broadening into many areas of our day-to-day lives, including zero-carbon green messages in the media and the work of Her Majesty’s Revenues and Customs (the latter involvement potentially implicated in tragic consequences for some of those targeted).

Intriguingly, on the 31^st January 2022, I received an email from the BIT’s communication department denying any responsibility for the Government’s use of fear, shame and scapegoating in their covid-19 messaging. According to this spokesperson, ‘none of the examples you reference were actually our work or anything we worked on at all, and we categorically do not believe in using fear as a tactic’.

So it’s an emphatic, ‘It wasn’t me’ from the BIT.

3. Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B)

The SPI-B is one of the subgroups that provided expert advice to SAGE throughout the covid-19 pandemic. Its membership includes mainly behavioural scientists and psychologists, alongside representation from other professions such as sociology and criminology. The number of BIT members involved is at least three; it is not possible to give a definite number as four members of the SPI-B have opted to remain anonymous. Prominent figures within the BPS – including Professor Susan Michie – also participated in the work of the SPI-B.

According to its terms of reference, the SPI-B offers the government the ‘best possible behavioural science advice’ to inform the response to covid-19, by providing ‘strategies for behaviour change, to support control of and recovery from the epidemic and associated government policy’.

In regards to transparency about who holds responsibility for the decision to inflict unethical ‘nudges’ upon the British people, it is unfortunate that meetings are not routinely minuted. However, the SPI-B do publish an occasional ‘high-level summary’ of their activities and recommendations, and one of these documents suggest a substantial degree of culpability for the government’s use of fear, shame and peer pressure in their covid-19 messaging strategy.

The (now-infamous) minutes of the 22^nd of March 2020 announced that ‘A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened … The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging’. In addition, the same document encouraged the victimisation of an outgroup with its recommendation that, ‘Communication strategies should provide social approval for desired behaviours’ and that ‘members of the community can be encouraged to provide it to each other’. More ominously, the ‘nudgers’ advised ministers to, ‘Consider use of social disapproval for failure to comply’. Furthermore, it seems that these behavioural-science experts were aware, even then, of the dangers of harnessing peer-to-peer censure in this way: ‘Social disapproval from one’s community can play an important role in preventing anti-social behaviour or discouraging failure to enact pro-social behaviour. However, this needs to be carefully managed to avoid victimisation, scapegoating and misdirected criticism’ (my emphasis).

Laura Dodsworth’s excellent piece of investigative journalism for her book, A State of Fear: how the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic, revealed that several participants in the SPI-B held major concerns about the group’s recommendations. One group member, educational psychologist Gavin Morgan, expressed the view that his colleagues ‘went overboard with the scary message to get compliance’ and confirmed there was no exit plan from the fear narrative. Another – who wished to remain anonymous – recalled that, in March 2020, ‘There were discussions about fear being needed to encourage compliance & decisions were made to ramp up fear’. The same SPI-B member described their use of fear as ‘dystopian’ and ‘ethically questionable’, and went on to say that, ‘It’s been like a weird experiment. Ultimately, it backfired because people became too scared’. A third group member (again anonymous) offered more generalised criticism: ‘People use the pandemic to grab power and drive through things that wouldn’t happen otherwise … We have to be very careful about the authoritarianism that is creeping in’.

In light of the incriminating SPI-B minutes, together with the grave concerns expressed by some members of the group, it was reasonable to expect that the SPI-B co-chair – Professor Ann John – would accept some responsibility for promoting the use of unethical ‘nudges’ during the covid-19 pandemic. Such an opportunity arose when Professor John was invited to appear in front of the Government’s Science & Technology Committee on the 30^th March 2022. (She had actually been scheduled to give evidence on the 2^nd March but, due to unforeseen circumstances, did not attend). Perhaps, for the first time around the issue of behavioural science as deployed in the pandemic, we would hear acknowledgement of errors by an expert in a position of power. Or maybe expressions of humility, of lessons learned, an apology and a pledge to never err in this way again.

Sadly, not a bit of it.

During her interview, Professor John denied any responsibility for the unethical use of covert psychological strategies over the last two years. When challenged by MP Graham Stringer about the strategic decision to indiscriminately ramp up fear (as referenced in the SPI-B minutes of the 22^nd March 2020) she responded, ‘I was not actually sitting on the SPI-B then’. When further pressed on this issue, Professor John implausibly claimed that her group advised against using scare tactics as a way of increasing compliance with covid-19 restrictions, stating ‘We never advised on upping the level of fear. I think it was presented as part of the evidence base … we absolutely advised that fear does not work’.

In an early part of the interview, Professor John contradicts her group’s terms of reference by insisting that the SPI-B was not trying to change people’s behaviour, but instead pursuing the altruistic motive of ‘ensuring that disproportionate and unintended impacts were not felt by different sectors of society’. When Graham Stringer asked which ethical framework her group was operating within, she shirks any responsibility for ensuring the morality of her group’s output, saying that, ‘although we present the advice, where policy decisions are made the Government have an advisory group on ethics’.

So it’s another resounding ‘It wasn’t me’ from the SPI-B.

4. Elected politicians and their civil servants

One can credibly argue that the ultimate responsibility for the methods used in the Government’s covid-19 communications strategy lies with the elected politicians and their senior advisors. While expert scientists are bound by their professional codes to practice ethically, it is the government decision makers who decide what policies to unleash upon its citizens. Yet attempts to trigger some serious reflection about the Government’s use of behavioural science have, to date, been unsuccessful.

One exception to this collective inertia of our politicians has been the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) that is focusing on ‘Pandemic Response and Recovery’. I – and several others with serious misgivings about the ethics of ‘nudging’ – were invited to present our concerns to the APPG on the 28^th February 2022. Members of the APPG listened with interest to our presentation and one of the co-chairs of the group – Graham Stringer – subsequently put some of our specific questions to Professor John (as discussed above).

The previous month, I had sent another letter (co-signed by 55 health professionals) to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC) (a Commons select committee chaired by William Wragg MP) formally requesting an independent inquiry into the Government’s use of behavioural science. I received a prompt response from a PACAC administrator informing me that an inquiry into the Coronavirus Act 2020 was already underway, one element of their remit being to consider behavioural science, and the committee was still accepting oral evidence. I asked if I, or another psychologist with concerns about ‘nudging’, could be given the opportunity to contribute. Alas, no such invitation was forthcoming. I continued to press the PACAC for a stand-alone inquiry into state-sponsored behavioural science, but – to date – they have made no commitment to conduct such a review. Indeed, when my local MP asked the PACAC about the prospect of such an inquiry he was informed by an administrator that ‘there are no current plans to do so’.

Further indication of our elected MPs’ disinterest in exploring the ethics of ‘nudging’ came in the form of  the omission of any mention of behavioural science or propaganda in the draft terms of reference for the Inquiry into the covid-19 pandemic, published on the 10th March 2022. This glaring exclusion has been highlighted in the feedback to the inquiry; one can only hope that a behavioural science review is included in the finalised terms of reference, but it is difficult to have confidence that this will be the case.

It is plausible that Government ministers, and their senior civil servants, are reticent about the prospect of further scrutiny on this issue. Maybe the publically expressed concerns in the aftermath of Dodsworth’s book, A State of Fear, have prompted some high-level introspection regarding their strategic deployment of fear, shame and scapegoating on the British people. Whatever is occurring in the corridors of power, it is apparent that our elected representatives are – with a few exceptions – keen to convey the message, ‘Move along; nothing to see here’.

Concluding comments

Throughout the covid-19 era the world has witnessed an unprecedented campaign of propaganda ostensibly aimed at increasing compliance with lockdowns and other restrictions. In the UK, and many other countries, a prominent weapon within this crusade has been the strategic use of a range of behavioural-science techniques, including the covert (and ethically dubious) deployment of fear, shame and scapegoating. The British people have a right to know which state-funded players were responsible for the decision to resort to these distress-evoking methods of persuasion that have caused significant collateral harms.

To date, there has been a stark reluctance for any stakeholder – behavioural scientist or political official – to accept responsibility for these manipulative and damaging tactics. The BPS and the politicians in the PACAC apparently see nothing remiss in the Government’s use of ‘nudges’, while the behavioural scientists in the BIT and SPI-B insist they are in no ways culpable. In the implausible event that all these stakeholders hold no responsibility for scaring, shaming and othering citizens into submission, who else could it be? Behavioural scientists are now ubiquitous across government departments – including the Cabinet Office, the Home Office’s Research Information and Communication Unit (RICU) and the Counter Disinformation Cell – so perhaps the blame resides in one or more of these groups? Or maybe it is the commercial advertisers the Government has commissioned (at huge expense) to broadcast their covid-19 messaging?

Whoever it is, we need to know.

The latest news is shocking!!!

Experts predict that an EMP strike that wipes out electricity across the nation would ultimately lead to the demise of up to 90% of the population.

However, this figure begs an important question: if we were able to live thousands of years without even the concept of electricity, why would we suddenly all die without it?

This article was written by my grandfather a long time ago and I would like to share it with you!

When America go communist as a result of the difficulties and problems that your capitalist social order is unable to solve, it will discover that communism, far from being an intolerable bureaucratic tyranny and individual regimentation, will be the means of greater individual liberty and shared abundance.

Most Americans regard communism solely in the light of the experience of the Soviet Union. They fear lest Sovietism in America would produce the same material result as it has brought for the culturally backward peoples of the Soviet Union.

They fear lest communism should try to fit them to a bed of Procrustes, and they point to the bulwark of Anglo-Saxon conservatism as an insuperable obstacle even to possibly desirable reforms. They argue that Great Britain and Japan would undertake military intervention against the American soviets. They shudder lest Americans be regimented in their habits of dress and diet, be compelled to subsist on famine rations, be forced to read stereotyped official propaganda in the newspapers, be coerced to serve as rubber stamps for decisions arrived at without their active participation or be required to keep their thoughts to themselves and loudly praise their soviet leaders in public, through fear of imprisonment and exile.

They fear monetary inflation, bureaucratic tyranny and intolerable red tape in obtaining the necessities of life. They fear soulless standardization in the arts and sciences, as well as in the daily necessities of life. They fear that all political spontaneity and the presumed freedom of the press will be destroyed by the dictatorship of a monstrous bureaucracy. And they shudder at the thought of being forced into an uncomprehended glibness in Marxist dialectic and disciplined social philosophies. They fear, in a word, that Soviet America will become the counterpart of what they have been told Soviet Russia looks like.

Actually American soviets will be as different from the Russian soviets as the United States of President Roosevelt differs from the Russian Empire of Czar Nicholas II. Yet communism can come in America only through revolution, just as independence and democracy came in America. The American temperament is energetic and violent, and it will insist on breaking a good many dishes and upsetting a good many apple carts before communism is firmly established. Americans are enthusiasts and sportsmen before they are specialists and statesmen, and it would be contrary to the American tradition to make a major change without choosing sides and cracking heads.

However, the American communist revolution will be insignificant compared to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, in terms of your national wealth and population, no matter how great its comparative cost. That is because civil war of a revolutionary nature isn’t fought by the handful of men at the top — the 5 or 10 percent who own nine-tenths of American wealth; this handful could recruit its counterrevolutionary armies only from among the lower middle classes. Even so, the revolution could easily attract them to its banner by showing that support of the soviets alone offers them the prospect of salvation.

Everybody below this group is already economically prepared for communism. The depression has ravaged your working class and has dealt a crushing blow to the farmers, who had already been injured by the long agricultural decline of the postwar decade. There is no reason why these groups should counterpoise determined resistance to the revolution; they have nothing to lose, providing, of course, that the revolutionary leaders adopt a farsighted and moderate policy toward them.

Who else will fight against communism? Your corporal’s guard of billionaires and multimillionaires? Your Mellons, Morgans, Fords and Rockefellers? They will cease struggling as soon as they fail to find other people to fight for them.

The American soviet government will take firm possession of the commanding heights of your business system: the banks, the key industries and the transportation and communication systems. It will then give the farmers, the small tradespeople and businessmen a good long time to think things over and see how well the nationalized section of industry is working.

Here is where the American soviets can produce real miracles. “Technocracy” can come true only under communism, when the dead hands of private property rights and private profits are lifted from your industrial system. The most daring proposals of the Hoover commission on standardization and rationalization will seem childish compared to the new possibilities let loose by American communism.

National industry will be organized along the line of the conveyor belt in your modern continuous-production automotive factories. Scientific planning can be lifted out of the individual factory and applied to your entire economic system. The results will be stupendous.
Costs of production will be cut to 20 percent, or less, of their present figure. This, in turn, would rapidly increase your farmers’ purchasing power.

To be sure, the American soviets would establish their own gigantic farm enterprises, as schools of voluntary collectivization. Your farmers could easily calculate whether it was to their individual advantage to remain as isolated links or to join the public chain.

The same method would be used to draw small businesses and industries into the national organization of industry. By soviet control of raw materials, credits and quotas of orders, these secondary industries could be kept solvent until they were gradually and without compulsion sucked into the socialized business system.

Without compulsion! The American soviets would not need to resort to the drastic measures that circumstances have often imposed upon the Russians. In the United States, through the science of publicity and advertising, you have means for winning the support of your middle class that were beyond the reach of the soviets of backward Russia with its vast majority of pauperized and illiterate peasants. This, in addition to your technical equipment and your wealth, is the greatest asset of your coming communist revolution. Your revolution will be smoother in character than ours; you will not waste your energies and resources in costly social conflicts after the main issues have been decided; and you will move ahead so much more rapidly in consequence.

Even the intensity and devotion of religious sentiment in America will not prove an obstacle to the revolution. If one assumes the perspective of soviets in America, none of the psychological brakes will prove firm enough to retard the pressure of the social crisis. This has been demonstrated more than once in history. Besides, it should not be forgotten that the Gospels themselves contain some pretty explosive aphorisms.

As to the comparatively few opponents of the soviet revolution, one can trust to American inventive genius. It may well be that you will take your unconvinced millionaires and send them to some picturesque island, rent-free for life, where they can do as they please.

You can do this safely, for you will not need to fear foreign interventions. Japan, Great Britain and the other capitalistic countries that intervened in Russia couldn’t do anything but take American communism lying down. As a matter of fact, the victory of communism in America — the stronghold of capitalism — will cause communism to spread to other countries. Japan will probably have joined the communistic ranks even before the establishment of the American soviets. The same is true of Great Britain.

In any case, it would be a crazy idea to send His Britannic Majesty’s fleet against Soviet America, even as a raid against the southern and more conservative half of your continent. It would be hopeless and would never get any farther than a second-rate military escapade.

Within a few weeks or months of the establishment of the American soviets, Pan-Americanism would be a political reality.

The governments of Central and South America would be pulled into your federation like iron filings to a magnet. So would Canada. The popular movements in these countries would be so strong that they would force this great unifying process within a short period and at insignificant costs. I am ready to bet that the first anniversary of the American soviets would find the Western Hemisphere transformed into the Soviet United States of North, Central and South America, with its capital at Panama. Thus for the first time the Monroe Doctrine would have a complete and positive meaning in world affairs, although not the one foreseen by its author.

In spite of the complaints of some of your arch-conservatives, Roosevelt is not preparing for a soviet transformation of the United States.

The NRA aims not to destroy but to strengthen the foundations of American capitalism by overcoming your business difficulties. Not the Blue Eagle but the difficulties that the Blue Eagle is powerless to overcome will bring about communism in America. The “radical” professors of your Brain Trust are not revolutionists: they are only frightened conservatives. Your president abhors “systems” and “generalities.” But a soviet government is the greatest of all possible systems, a gigantic generality in action.

The average man doesn’t like systems or generalities either. It is the task of your communist statesmen to make the system deliver the concrete goods that the average man desires: his food, cigars, amusements, his freedom to choose his own neckties, his own house and his own automobile. It will be easy to give him these comforts in Soviet America.

Most Americans have been misled by the fact that in the USSR we had to build whole new basic industries from the ground up. Such a thing could not happen in America, where you are already compelled to cut down on your farm area and to reduce your industrial production. As a matter of fact, your tremendous technological equipment has been paralyzed by the crisis and already clamors to be put to use. You will be able to make a rapid step-up of consumption by your people the starting point of your economic revival.

You are prepared to do this, as is no other country. Nowhere else has the study of the internal market reached such intensity as in the United States. It has been done by your banks, trusts, individual businessmen, merchants, traveling salesmen and farmers as part of their stock-in-trade. Your soviet government will simply abolish all trade secrets, will combine all the findings of these researches for individual profit and will transform them into a scientific system of economic planning. In this your government will be helped by the existence of a large class of cultured and critical consumers. By combining the nationalized key industries, your private businesses and democratic consumer cooperation, you will quickly develop a highly flexible system for serving the needs of your population.

This system will be made to work not by bureaucracy and not by policemen but by cold, hard cash.

Your almighty dollar will play a principal part in making your new soviet system work. It is a great mistake to try to mix a “planned economy” with a “managed currency.” Your money must act as regulator with which to measure the success or failure of your planning.

Your “radical” professors are dead wrong in their devotion to “managed money.” It is an academic idea that could easily wreck your entire system of distribution and production. That is the great lesson to be derived from the Soviet Union, where bitter necessity has been converted into official virtue in the monetary realm.

There the lack of a stable gold ruble is one of the main causes of our many economic troubles and catastrophes. It is impossible to regulate wages, prices and quality of goods without a firm monetary system. An unstable ruble in a Soviet system is like having variable molds in a conveyor-belt factory. It won’t work.

Only when socialism succeeds in substituting administrative control for money will it be possible to abandon a stable gold currency. Then money will become ordinary paper slips, like trolley or theater tickets. As socialism advances, these slips will also disappear, and control over individual consumption — whether by money or administration — will no longer be necessary when there is more than enough of everything for everybody!

Such a time has not yet come, though America will certainly reach it before any other country. Until then, the only way to reach such a state of development is to retain an effective regulator and measure for the working of your system. As a matter of fact, during the first few years a planned economy needs sound money even more than did old-fashioned capitalism. The professor who regulates the monetary unit with the aim of regulating the whole business system is like the man who tried to lift both his feet off the ground at the same time.

Soviet America will possess supplies of gold big enough to stabilize the dollar — a priceless asset. In Russia we have been expanding our industrial plant by 20 and 30 percent a year; but — owing to a weak ruble — we have not been able to distribute this increase effectively. This is partly because we have allowed our bureaucracy to subject our monetary system to administrative one-sidedness. You will be spared this evil. As a result you will greatly surpass us in both increased production and distribution, leading to a rapid advance in the comfort and welfare of your population.

In all this, you will not need to imitate our standardized production for our pitiable mass consumers. We have taken over from czarist Russia a pauper’s heritage, a culturally undeveloped peasantry with a low standard of living. We had to build our factories and dams at the expense of our consumers. We have had continual monetary inflation and a monstrous bureaucracy.

Soviet America will not have to imitate our bureaucratic methods. Among us the lack of the bare necessities has caused an intense scramble for an extra loaf of bread, an extra yard of cloth by everyone. In this struggle our bureaucracy steps forward as a conciliator, as an all-powerful court of arbitration. You, on the other hand, are much wealthier and would have little difficulty in supplying all of your people with all of the necessities of life. Moreover, your needs, tastes and habits would never permit your bureaucracy to divide the national income. Instead, when you organize your society to produce for human needs rather than private profits, your entire population will group itself around new trends and groups, which will struggle with one another and prevent an overweening bureaucracy from imposing itself upon them.

You can thus avoid growth of bureaucratism by the practice of soviets, that is to say, democracy — the most flexible form of government yet developed. Soviet organization cannot achieve miracles but must simply reflect the will of the people. With us the soviets have been bureaucratized as a result of the political monopoly of a single party, which has itself become a bureaucracy. This situation resulted from the exceptional difficulties of socialist pioneering in a poor and backward country.

The American soviets will be full-blooded and vigorous, without need or opportunity for such measures as circumstances imposed upon Russia. Your unregenerate capitalists will, of course, find no place for themselves in the new setup. It is hard to imagine Henry Ford as the head of the Detroit Soviet.

Yet a wide struggle between interests, groups and ideas is not only conceivable — it is inevitable. One-year, five-year, ten-year plans of business development; schemes for national education; construction of new basic lines of transportation; the transformation of the farms; the program for improving the technological and cultural equipment of Latin America; a program for stratosphere communication; eugenics — all of these will arouse controversy, vigorous electoral struggle and passionate debate in the newspapers and at public meetings.

For Soviet America will not imitate the monopoly of the press by the heads of Soviet Russia’s bureaucracy. While Soviet America would nationalize all printing plants, paper mills and means of distribution, this would be a purely negative measure. It would simply mean that private capital will no longer be allowed to decide what publications should be established, whether they should be progressive or reactionary, “wet” or “dry,” puritanical or pornographic. Soviet America will have to find a new solution for the question of how the power of the press is to function in a socialist regime. It might be done on the basis of proportional representation for the votes in each soviet election.

Thus the right of each group of citizens to use the power of the press would depend on their numerical strength — the same principle being applied to the use of meeting halls, allotment of time on the air and so forth.

Thus the management and policy of publications would be decided not by individual checkbooks but by group ideas. This may take little account of numerically small but important groups, but it simply means that each new idea will be compelled, as throughout history, to prove its right to existence.

Rich Soviet America can set aside vast funds for research and invention, discoveries and experiments in every field. You won’t neglect your bold architects and sculptors, your unconventional poets and audacious philosophers.

In fact, the Soviet Yankees of the future will give a lead to Europe in those very fields where Europe has hitherto been your master. Europeans have little conception of the power of technology to influence human destiny and have adopted an attitude of sneering superiority toward “Americanism,” particularly since the crisis. Yet Americanism marks the true dividing line between the Middle Ages and the modern world.

Hitherto America’s conquest of nature has been so violent and passionate that you have had no time to modernize your philosophies or to develop your own artistic forms. Hence you have been hostile to the doctrines of Hegel, Marx and Darwin. The burning of Darwin’s works by the Baptists of Tennessee is only a clumsy reflection of the American dislike for the doctrines of evolution. This attitude is not confined to your pulpits. It is still part of your general mental makeup.

Your atheists as well as your Quakers are determined rationalists. And your rationalism itself is weakened by empiricism and moralism. It has none of the merciless vitality of the great European rationalists. So your philosophic method is even more antiquated than your economic system and your political institutions.

Today, quite unprepared, you are being forced to face those social contradictions that grow up unsuspected in every society. You have conquered nature by means of the tools that your inventive genius has created, only to find that your tools have all but destroyed you. Contrary to all your hopes and desires, your unheard-of wealth has produced unheard-of misfortunes. You have discovered that social development does not follow a simple formula. Hence you have been thrust into the school of the dialectic — to stay.

There is no turning back from it to the mode of thinking and acting prevalent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

While the romantic numskulls of Nazi Germany are dreaming of restoring the old race of Europe’s Dark Forest to its original purity, or rather its original filth, you Americans, after taking a firm grip on your economic machinery and your culture, will apply genuine scientific methods to the problem of eugenics. Within a century, out of your melting pot of races there will come a new breed of men — the first worthy of the name of Man.

This article was written by my grandfather a long time ago and I would like to share it with you!

When America go communist as a result of the difficulties and problems that your capitalist social order is unable to solve, it will discover that communism, far from being an intolerable bureaucratic tyranny and individual regimentation, will be the means of greater individual liberty and shared abundance.

Most Americans regard communism solely in the light of the experience of the Soviet Union. They fear lest Sovietism in America would produce the same material result as it has brought for the culturally backward peoples of the Soviet Union.

They fear lest communism should try to fit them to a bed of Procrustes, and they point to the bulwark of Anglo-Saxon conservatism as an insuperable obstacle even to possibly desirable reforms. They argue that Great Britain and Japan would undertake military intervention against the American soviets. They shudder lest Americans be regimented in their habits of dress and diet, be compelled to subsist on famine rations, be forced to read stereotyped official propaganda in the newspapers, be coerced to serve as rubber stamps for decisions arrived at without their active participation or be required to keep their thoughts to themselves and loudly praise their soviet leaders in public, through fear of imprisonment and exile.

They fear monetary inflation, bureaucratic tyranny and intolerable red tape in obtaining the necessities of life. They fear soulless standardization in the arts and sciences, as well as in the daily necessities of life. They fear that all political spontaneity and the presumed freedom of the press will be destroyed by the dictatorship of a monstrous bureaucracy. And they shudder at the thought of being forced into an uncomprehended glibness in Marxist dialectic and disciplined social philosophies. They fear, in a word, that Soviet America will become the counterpart of what they have been told Soviet Russia looks like.

Actually American soviets will be as different from the Russian soviets as the United States of President Roosevelt differs from the Russian Empire of Czar Nicholas II. Yet communism can come in America only through revolution, just as independence and democracy came in America. The American temperament is energetic and violent, and it will insist on breaking a good many dishes and upsetting a good many apple carts before communism is firmly established. Americans are enthusiasts and sportsmen before they are specialists and statesmen, and it would be contrary to the American tradition to make a major change without choosing sides and cracking heads.

However, the American communist revolution will be insignificant compared to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, in terms of your national wealth and population, no matter how great its comparative cost. That is because civil war of a revolutionary nature isn’t fought by the handful of men at the top — the 5 or 10 percent who own nine-tenths of American wealth; this handful could recruit its counterrevolutionary armies only from among the lower middle classes. Even so, the revolution could easily attract them to its banner by showing that support of the soviets alone offers them the prospect of salvation.

Everybody below this group is already economically prepared for communism. The depression has ravaged your working class and has dealt a crushing blow to the farmers, who had already been injured by the long agricultural decline of the postwar decade. There is no reason why these groups should counterpoise determined resistance to the revolution; they have nothing to lose, providing, of course, that the revolutionary leaders adopt a farsighted and moderate policy toward them.

Who else will fight against communism? Your corporal’s guard of billionaires and multimillionaires? Your Mellons, Morgans, Fords and Rockefellers? They will cease struggling as soon as they fail to find other people to fight for them.

The American soviet government will take firm possession of the commanding heights of your business system: the banks, the key industries and the transportation and communication systems. It will then give the farmers, the small tradespeople and businessmen a good long time to think things over and see how well the nationalized section of industry is working.

Here is where the American soviets can produce real miracles. “Technocracy” can come true only under communism, when the dead hands of private property rights and private profits are lifted from your industrial system. The most daring proposals of the Hoover commission on standardization and rationalization will seem childish compared to the new possibilities let loose by American communism.

National industry will be organized along the line of the conveyor belt in your modern continuous-production automotive factories. Scientific planning can be lifted out of the individual factory and applied to your entire economic system. The results will be stupendous.
Costs of production will be cut to 20 percent, or less, of their present figure. This, in turn, would rapidly increase your farmers’ purchasing power.

To be sure, the American soviets would establish their own gigantic farm enterprises, as schools of voluntary collectivization. Your farmers could easily calculate whether it was to their individual advantage to remain as isolated links or to join the public chain.

The same method would be used to draw small businesses and industries into the national organization of industry. By soviet control of raw materials, credits and quotas of orders, these secondary industries could be kept solvent until they were gradually and without compulsion sucked into the socialized business system.

Without compulsion! The American soviets would not need to resort to the drastic measures that circumstances have often imposed upon the Russians. In the United States, through the science of publicity and advertising, you have means for winning the support of your middle class that were beyond the reach of the soviets of backward Russia with its vast majority of pauperized and illiterate peasants. This, in addition to your technical equipment and your wealth, is the greatest asset of your coming communist revolution. Your revolution will be smoother in character than ours; you will not waste your energies and resources in costly social conflicts after the main issues have been decided; and you will move ahead so much more rapidly in consequence.

Even the intensity and devotion of religious sentiment in America will not prove an obstacle to the revolution. If one assumes the perspective of soviets in America, none of the psychological brakes will prove firm enough to retard the pressure of the social crisis. This has been demonstrated more than once in history. Besides, it should not be forgotten that the Gospels themselves contain some pretty explosive aphorisms.

As to the comparatively few opponents of the soviet revolution, one can trust to American inventive genius. It may well be that you will take your unconvinced millionaires and send them to some picturesque island, rent-free for life, where they can do as they please.

You can do this safely, for you will not need to fear foreign interventions. Japan, Great Britain and the other capitalistic countries that intervened in Russia couldn’t do anything but take American communism lying down. As a matter of fact, the victory of communism in America — the stronghold of capitalism — will cause communism to spread to other countries. Japan will probably have joined the communistic ranks even before the establishment of the American soviets. The same is true of Great Britain.

In any case, it would be a crazy idea to send His Britannic Majesty’s fleet against Soviet America, even as a raid against the southern and more conservative half of your continent. It would be hopeless and would never get any farther than a second-rate military escapade.

Within a few weeks or months of the establishment of the American soviets, Pan-Americanism would be a political reality.

The governments of Central and South America would be pulled into your federation like iron filings to a magnet. So would Canada. The popular movements in these countries would be so strong that they would force this great unifying process within a short period and at insignificant costs. I am ready to bet that the first anniversary of the American soviets would find the Western Hemisphere transformed into the Soviet United States of North, Central and South America, with its capital at Panama. Thus for the first time the Monroe Doctrine would have a complete and positive meaning in world affairs, although not the one foreseen by its author.

In spite of the complaints of some of your arch-conservatives, Roosevelt is not preparing for a soviet transformation of the United States.

The NRA aims not to destroy but to strengthen the foundations of American capitalism by overcoming your business difficulties. Not the Blue Eagle but the difficulties that the Blue Eagle is powerless to overcome will bring about communism in America. The “radical” professors of your Brain Trust are not revolutionists: they are only frightened conservatives. Your president abhors “systems” and “generalities.” But a soviet government is the greatest of all possible systems, a gigantic generality in action.

The average man doesn’t like systems or generalities either. It is the task of your communist statesmen to make the system deliver the concrete goods that the average man desires: his food, cigars, amusements, his freedom to choose his own neckties, his own house and his own automobile. It will be easy to give him these comforts in Soviet America.

Most Americans have been misled by the fact that in the USSR we had to build whole new basic industries from the ground up. Such a thing could not happen in America, where you are already compelled to cut down on your farm area and to reduce your industrial production. As a matter of fact, your tremendous technological equipment has been paralyzed by the crisis and already clamors to be put to use. You will be able to make a rapid step-up of consumption by your people the starting point of your economic revival.

You are prepared to do this, as is no other country. Nowhere else has the study of the internal market reached such intensity as in the United States. It has been done by your banks, trusts, individual businessmen, merchants, traveling salesmen and farmers as part of their stock-in-trade. Your soviet government will simply abolish all trade secrets, will combine all the findings of these researches for individual profit and will transform them into a scientific system of economic planning. In this your government will be helped by the existence of a large class of cultured and critical consumers. By combining the nationalized key industries, your private businesses and democratic consumer cooperation, you will quickly develop a highly flexible system for serving the needs of your population.

This system will be made to work not by bureaucracy and not by policemen but by cold, hard cash.

Your almighty dollar will play a principal part in making your new soviet system work. It is a great mistake to try to mix a “planned economy” with a “managed currency.” Your money must act as regulator with which to measure the success or failure of your planning.

Your “radical” professors are dead wrong in their devotion to “managed money.” It is an academic idea that could easily wreck your entire system of distribution and production. That is the great lesson to be derived from the Soviet Union, where bitter necessity has been converted into official virtue in the monetary realm.

There the lack of a stable gold ruble is one of the main causes of our many economic troubles and catastrophes. It is impossible to regulate wages, prices and quality of goods without a firm monetary system. An unstable ruble in a Soviet system is like having variable molds in a conveyor-belt factory. It won’t work.

Only when socialism succeeds in substituting administrative control for money will it be possible to abandon a stable gold currency. Then money will become ordinary paper slips, like trolley or theater tickets. As socialism advances, these slips will also disappear, and control over individual consumption — whether by money or administration — will no longer be necessary when there is more than enough of everything for everybody!

Such a time has not yet come, though America will certainly reach it before any other country. Until then, the only way to reach such a state of development is to retain an effective regulator and measure for the working of your system. As a matter of fact, during the first few years a planned economy needs sound money even more than did old-fashioned capitalism. The professor who regulates the monetary unit with the aim of regulating the whole business system is like the man who tried to lift both his feet off the ground at the same time.

Soviet America will possess supplies of gold big enough to stabilize the dollar — a priceless asset. In Russia we have been expanding our industrial plant by 20 and 30 percent a year; but — owing to a weak ruble — we have not been able to distribute this increase effectively. This is partly because we have allowed our bureaucracy to subject our monetary system to administrative one-sidedness. You will be spared this evil. As a result you will greatly surpass us in both increased production and distribution, leading to a rapid advance in the comfort and welfare of your population.

In all this, you will not need to imitate our standardized production for our pitiable mass consumers. We have taken over from czarist Russia a pauper’s heritage, a culturally undeveloped peasantry with a low standard of living. We had to build our factories and dams at the expense of our consumers. We have had continual monetary inflation and a monstrous bureaucracy.

Soviet America will not have to imitate our bureaucratic methods. Among us the lack of the bare necessities has caused an intense scramble for an extra loaf of bread, an extra yard of cloth by everyone. In this struggle our bureaucracy steps forward as a conciliator, as an all-powerful court of arbitration. You, on the other hand, are much wealthier and would have little difficulty in supplying all of your people with all of the necessities of life. Moreover, your needs, tastes and habits would never permit your bureaucracy to divide the national income. Instead, when you organize your society to produce for human needs rather than private profits, your entire population will group itself around new trends and groups, which will struggle with one another and prevent an overweening bureaucracy from imposing itself upon them.

You can thus avoid growth of bureaucratism by the practice of soviets, that is to say, democracy — the most flexible form of government yet developed. Soviet organization cannot achieve miracles but must simply reflect the will of the people. With us the soviets have been bureaucratized as a result of the political monopoly of a single party, which has itself become a bureaucracy. This situation resulted from the exceptional difficulties of socialist pioneering in a poor and backward country.

The American soviets will be full-blooded and vigorous, without need or opportunity for such measures as circumstances imposed upon Russia. Your unregenerate capitalists will, of course, find no place for themselves in the new setup. It is hard to imagine Henry Ford as the head of the Detroit Soviet.

Yet a wide struggle between interests, groups and ideas is not only conceivable — it is inevitable. One-year, five-year, ten-year plans of business development; schemes for national education; construction of new basic lines of transportation; the transformation of the farms; the program for improving the technological and cultural equipment of Latin America; a program for stratosphere communication; eugenics — all of these will arouse controversy, vigorous electoral struggle and passionate debate in the newspapers and at public meetings.

For Soviet America will not imitate the monopoly of the press by the heads of Soviet Russia’s bureaucracy. While Soviet America would nationalize all printing plants, paper mills and means of distribution, this would be a purely negative measure. It would simply mean that private capital will no longer be allowed to decide what publications should be established, whether they should be progressive or reactionary, “wet” or “dry,” puritanical or pornographic. Soviet America will have to find a new solution for the question of how the power of the press is to function in a socialist regime. It might be done on the basis of proportional representation for the votes in each soviet election.

Thus the right of each group of citizens to use the power of the press would depend on their numerical strength — the same principle being applied to the use of meeting halls, allotment of time on the air and so forth.

Thus the management and policy of publications would be decided not by individual checkbooks but by group ideas. This may take little account of numerically small but important groups, but it simply means that each new idea will be compelled, as throughout history, to prove its right to existence.

Rich Soviet America can set aside vast funds for research and invention, discoveries and experiments in every field. You won’t neglect your bold architects and sculptors, your unconventional poets and audacious philosophers.

In fact, the Soviet Yankees of the future will give a lead to Europe in those very fields where Europe has hitherto been your master. Europeans have little conception of the power of technology to influence human destiny and have adopted an attitude of sneering superiority toward “Americanism,” particularly since the crisis. Yet Americanism marks the true dividing line between the Middle Ages and the modern world.

Hitherto America’s conquest of nature has been so violent and passionate that you have had no time to modernize your philosophies or to develop your own artistic forms. Hence you have been hostile to the doctrines of Hegel, Marx and Darwin. The burning of Darwin’s works by the Baptists of Tennessee is only a clumsy reflection of the American dislike for the doctrines of evolution. This attitude is not confined to your pulpits. It is still part of your general mental makeup.

Your atheists as well as your Quakers are determined rationalists. And your rationalism itself is weakened by empiricism and moralism. It has none of the merciless vitality of the great European rationalists. So your philosophic method is even more antiquated than your economic system and your political institutions.

Today, quite unprepared, you are being forced to face those social contradictions that grow up unsuspected in every society. You have conquered nature by means of the tools that your inventive genius has created, only to find that your tools have all but destroyed you. Contrary to all your hopes and desires, your unheard-of wealth has produced unheard-of misfortunes. You have discovered that social development does not follow a simple formula. Hence you have been thrust into the school of the dialectic — to stay.

There is no turning back from it to the mode of thinking and acting prevalent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

While the romantic numskulls of Nazi Germany are dreaming of restoring the old race of Europe’s Dark Forest to its original purity, or rather its original filth, you Americans, after taking a firm grip on your economic machinery and your culture, will apply genuine scientific methods to the problem of eugenics. Within a century, out of your melting pot of races there will come a new breed of men — the first worthy of the name of Man.