<html>
<body>
<h1><b>System? What
system?</b></h1>
<a href="https://winteroak.org.uk/2022/11/18/system-what-system/" eudora="autourl">
https://winteroak.org.uk/2022/11/18/system-what-system/<br><br>
</a>Posted on
<a href="https://winteroak.org.uk/2022/11/18/system-what-system/">
November 18, 2022</a> by
<a href="https://winteroak.org.uk/author/winteroakpress/">winter
oak</a><br><br>
by <a href="https://paulcudenec.substack.com/p/system-what-system">Paul
Cudenec</a><br><br>
The other day, while out spreading the word in the streets, one of my
friends handed some of our dissident literature to a passer-by with the
explanation that we were countering the lies of the system.<br><br>
Although the man in question turned out to be warmly sympathetic to our
cause, this remark really stumped him.<br><br>
“The system?” he asked, with an expression of utter bewilderment clouding
his face. “What system?”<br><br>
<img src="cid:7.0.1.0.1.20221120230101.08cb2ca8@cultureshop.org.uk.0" width=584 height=722 alt="Emacs!">
<br><br>
<br><br>
Although this may have merely been a case of unfamiliarity with a certain
terminology, I like to think that his response revealed the greatest
triumph of the odious entity that now controls nearly the whole world and
is currently trying to impose its
<a href="https://winteroak.org.uk/the-great-reset/">Great Reset</a> on us
– it has managed to wrap itself in a cloak of invisibility!<br><br>
This is not even a question of <i>who</i> exactly is behind all this
(though there are some useful pointers
<a href="https://winteroak.org.uk/2022/05/15/empire-of-hypocrisy/">
here</a>,
<a href="https://winteroak.org.uk/2022/04/15/charles-empire-the-royal-reset-riddle/">
here</a>,
<a href="https://winteroak.org.uk/2022/08/02/a-developing-evil-the-malignant-historical-force-behind-the-great-reset/">
here</a> and
<a href="https://winteroak.org.uk/2022/10/14/a-crime-against-humanity-the-great-reset-of-1914-1918/">
here</a>): the root problem is that most people do not even realise that
the system <i>exists</i>.<br><br>
For them, we live in a pluralistic world. Within the framework of
something known as democracy, they picture a complex interchange of
competing forces and interests resolving themselves in a status quo which
we are more or less obliged to go along with.<br><br>
While this misunderstanding is perhaps forgivable for those whose
information comes straight from the corporate mainstream, it is also
shared by those who give the impression of knowing better.<br><br>
I have spoken to self-defined “anti-capitalists” whose view of
“capitalism” seems very similar to that of the ruling group they claim to
oppose: they see it as an agglomeration of social and economic
relationships without any overriding direction or control.<br><br>
To suggest otherwise, in their eyes, is to commit the grave heresy of
spreading conspiracy theory.<br>
<a href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa4a7cf8d-ed85-446f-84dd-d951252f3a99_584x722.jpeg">
<img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/httpsbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.compublicimagesa4a7cf8d-ed85-446f-84dd-d951252f3a99_584x722.jpeg" alt="[]">
</a> <br><br>
Their imagined reality of various independent capitalists struggling
against one another in a dog-eat-dog world of rugged competition – and
thus being incapable of ganging together to cheat and enslave the rest of
us – seems to have survived intact since the mid-1800s, when Karl Marx
was formulating his theories.<br><br>
Anyone paying attention today cannot have failed to have noticed the way
that multinational businesses and financial interests have converged to
the point that their ownership can be traced back to a handful of
concerns like BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street – which themselves
appear to be part of the same overall operation.<br><br>
This same corporate/financial über-entity has also become heavily
entwined with – and indeed essentially inseparable from – state bodies
and international institutions.<br><br>
The resulting monster is a self-concealing global public-private
governance pulling the strings behind all aspects of our contemporary
world.<br><br>
Once you have seen past the cloak of invisibility and understood that
there <i>is</i> such a thing as the system, everything else begins to
make sense.<br><br>
For instance, I have long despaired over the absence of an authentic
philosophy or movement of resistance. All the existing off-the-peg
options fall well short of what we need and even lead people in
completely the wrong direction.<br><br>
Why is this? Is it entirely due to the failings of the system’s
opponents? Is it because the arguments of those defending the system are
so strong and appealing that it is not possible to express coherent
disagreement?<br><br>
Or is it rather that, as part of its self-advancement, the system has<i>
deliberately</i> set out to ensure that there is no credible criticism of
its Great Racket?<br><br>
It would have to, wouldn’t it, if it wanted to remain invisible?<br><br>
Its big lie – or
<a href="https://www.weforum.org/press/2022/01/klaus-schwab-releases-the-great-narrative-as-sequel-to-the-great-reset/">
Great Narrative</a> if you prefer – has always been that the vile world
it has manufactured is inevitable, part of the necessary evolution of
human history.<br><br>
It projects the assumption that this “progress” towards modernity is
somehow tied in with the passage of time itself. Two thousand and
twenty-two years after the birth of Jesus Christ, it was <i>always</i>
going to be the case that humankind lived in a world of airports,
chemical factories, server farms and nuclear power stations.<br><br>
This is just the <i>way things are</i>. It just happened like that. There
is nothing anyone can do about it. You can’t turn the clock
back.<br><br>
This story is, of course, not true! There are lots of ways in which the
present could have shaped up. There was nothing inevitable about the
industrial revolution, for a start, as mentioned in
<a href="https://winteroak.org.uk/2022/11/15/when-another-england-seemed-possible/">
this article</a>.<br><br>
But it is crucial for the system that we believe this fairy tale of
spontaneously self-creating modernity. Because, if we don’t, it means
that we realise that <i>somebody</i> <i>created it</i> with a specific
purpose in mind, namely profit and control.<br>
<a href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F674e59a1-33b2-4177-ad3e-ecc68086f922_1558x783.png">
<img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/httpsbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.compublicimages674e59a1-33b2-4177-ad3e-ecc68086f922_1558x783.png" alt="[]">
</a> <br><br>
And, at that point, the system ceases to be invisible, ceases to appear
random, and reveals itself to be a
<a href="https://winteroak.org.uk/2022/08/08/facing-up-to-the-crime-in-progress/">
deliberate act of theft and enslavement</a> – for which specific groups
of people are historically responsible.<br><br>
In order to defend itself from people’s awareness of what it has done and
is still doing, with all the outrage and rejection that this would
rightly spark, the system therefore has to destroy any opposition that
calls attention to the fact that its world is not inevitable and which
insists that a completely different way of living is both possible and
desirable.<br><br>
One of its favourite tricks, over the centuries, has been to infiltrate
and take over a resistance movement, use it for its own ends, wipe out
the genuinely radical elements and then use the excesses and crimes
committed by its own fake-revolutionary placemen to discredit the
<i>whole idea</i> of revolt against its slave-system.<br><br>
“See! Look what happens when you rebel against our world!” it tells us
later.<br><br>
Thereafter, any dissident voices that seem to be connected to the
fake-revolutionaries deployed by the system are automatically discredited
and their ideas consigned to the dustbin of history.<br><br>
The system is thereby able to maintain the illusion that there is no
credible alternative to its noxious empire of greed.<br><br>
I was reminded of this method of manipulation while reading the article
placed immediately after my
<a href="https://winteroak.org.uk/2022/11/15/when-another-england-seemed-possible/">
own</a> in the latest issue of the French journal
<a href="https://www.lechappee.org/collections/brasero/brasero-ndeg2"><i>
brasero</a></i>.<br>
<a href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F718f34e8-2139-4dc5-9998-94c578a4048a_449x605.png">
<img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/httpsbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.compublicimages718f34e8-2139-4dc5-9998-94c578a4048a_449x605.png" alt="[]">
</a> <br><br>
Here, Jean-Christophe Angaut and Anatole Lucet look at the early 20th
century Wandervogel phenomenon in Germany. [1]<br><br>
This back-to-nature youth movement is now generally associated in the
public mind with the Nazis and their Hitler Youth. Indeed, the authors
remark that the main website dedicated to the Wandervogel in France today
is run by the extreme right.<br><br>
But its origins were very different. It was, in fact, a reaction against
the rapid wave of industrialisation imposed on Germany, which attracted
tens of thousands of youngsters into its ranks.<br><br>
Operating at a deeper level than that which we usually identify as
“political”, it started out as simply a desire to escape from the
increasingly artificial and restricted life of the cities in order to
breathe the fresh air of the natural world.<br><br>
According to Walter Lacqeur it was “a form of opposition to a
civilization which had little to offer to the younger generations, a
protest against a lack of vitality, warmth, feeling and ideals”.
[2]<br><br>
It was no less than a heart-felt and instinctive rejection by young human
beings of the grim modern prison of regimentation-for-exploitation that
was being built around them.<br><br>
Angaut and Lucet write that until the First World War the Wandervogel
movement (the name literally refers to the migration of birds) was
“romantic and anarchic”. [3]<br>
<a href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb99c5217-2150-4315-a4a8-e7cad7b97486_354x529.png">
<img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/httpsbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.compublicimagesb99c5217-2150-4315-a4a8-e7cad7b97486_354x529.png" alt="[]">
</a> <br><br>
Intuitively, this new generation of Europeans channelled the aesthetics
of earlier centuries, of a time when society was hardly perfect, but
still organic in nature.<br><br>
The name of their movement evoked both German romantic poetry and the
wandering groups of the Middle Ages who passed from town to town, from
country to country, perfecting their trade and their knowledge of the
world.<br><br>
The 20th century youngsters even initially dressed in the style of
medieval itinerant scholars, with their soft hats, staffs and
old-fashioned breeches.<br><br>
One observer, Gerd Knoche, remarked at the time: “Wandering is to swap
the slavery of human society for nature, the noise and dirt of the city
for the silence and pure air of the fields, work for contemplation, job
and family for new experiences, routine for the unknown, narrow limits
for vast horizons. Alongside all that there is the benefit of physical
exercise and a direct connection with Mother Earth”. [4]<br><br>
A declaration made by the movement in 1913 also gives a good idea of the
spirit behind it: “The free German youth wants to shape its life
according to its own law, under its own responsibility, in conformity
with its deepest truth. In all circumstances, it will be united in the
defence of this innner freedom”. [5]<br>
<a href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa7c1444f-4388-42d1-b2e6-76fa805d94fb_702x467.png">
<img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/httpsbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.compublicimagesa7c1444f-4388-42d1-b2e6-76fa805d94fb_702x467.png" alt="[]">
</a> <br><br>
While the involvement in the Wandervogel of “left-wing” Jewish
intellectual
<a href="https://orgrad.wordpress.com/a-z-of-thinkers/walter-benjamin/">
Walter Benjamin</a> confirms that the Wandervogel’s origins were a long
way from being Nazi, even during the Hitler regime many adherents
remained true to the original libertarian ethos.<br><br>
They objected to the nationalist and militarist corruption of much of the
movement and, of course, to its absorption by the fascist state.<br><br>
The article explains that Hans and Sophie Scholl of the White Rose
underground resistance network “remained members of a banned youth
organisation right up until the denunciation which led them to them being
executed on February 22 1943”. [6]<br><br>
Their sister Inge Scholl provided a fascinating insight into the outlook
of these secret groups of youngsters who kept the original Wandervogel
spirit alive in the dark years of Hitlerism.<br><br>
They lived wild and free, she wrote, tasting existence as a superb
adventure, an expedition into the allure of the unknown. They leapt into
icy rivers at dawn, spent hours lying flat on the ground watching wild
animals and birds, sang songs together around the camp fire in the
evenings, to the accompaniment of guitars, banjos or balalaikas.<br>
<a href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4a40c257-cb19-4a9c-a6a7-4ae99df80bf7_845x550.png">
<img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/httpsbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.compublicimages4a40c257-cb19-4a9c-a6a7-4ae99df80bf7_845x550.png" alt="[]">
</a> <br><br>
“Suddenly there was a wave of arrests all across Germany. This authentic
survival of a great youth movement, born at the start of the century and
carrying within it such great hope, was destroyed”. [7]<br><br>
This important cultural uprising against the system was in fact crushed
in two stages. The first came with the Great War, an
<a href="https://winteroak.org.uk/2022/10/14/a-crime-against-humanity-the-great-reset-of-1914-1918/">
earlier Great Reset</a> which the system deliberately used to push us
further into industrial slavery.<br><br>
Not only were many of that generation wiped out in the trenches, but the
post-war Germany to which the rest returned was a New Normal
version.<br><br>
The second stage came with the Nazi regime, which represented a further
acceleration of the system’s authoritarian-industrial
“<a href="https://winteroak.org.uk/2022/08/02/a-developing-evil-the-malignant-historical-force-behind-the-great-reset/">
development</a>” agenda funded by the same financiers who arranged and
profited from the First World War, as Antony C. Sutton has shown.
[8]<br><br>
The system cannot stand us feeling free, it cannot stand us feeling part
of nature, it cannot stand us having thoughts, yearnings and dreams that
might lead us out of its “inclusive” industrial work camps and “smart”
cities towards a future in which we are free from its sinister
life-hating power.<br><br>
Time and time again it twists and crushes the resistance that arises
naturally in each new generation.<br><br>
In the last couple of decades alone we have seen anti-globalists turned
into alternative-globalists, anarchists turned into rabid defenders of
<a href="https://winteroak.org.uk/the-great-reset/">Great Reset</a>
totalitarianism, environmentalists turned into marketing agents for the
fake-green “renewable” technology of the Fourth Industrial
Revolution.<br><br>
We will never stop falling into these traps so long as we do not see
clearly what the system <i>is</i> and what it <i>does</i>.<br><br>
And we are not going to manage to do that if we keep pretending that it
<i>doesn’t even exist!<br><br>
</i>
[<a href="https://winteroakextra.files.wordpress.com/2022/11/system-what-system.m4a">
Audio version</a>]<br><br>
<i>Follow Paul Cudenec on his
<a href="https://paulcudenec.substack.com/p/system-what-system">new
substack blog</a>.<br><br>
<br>
</i>[1] Jean-Christophe Angaut and Anatole Lucet, ‘Wandervogel: des
oisillons à contre-courant de la modernité’, <i>brasero; revue de
contre-histoire</i>, numéro 2, novembre 2022 (Paris: Editions L’Echappée,
2022).<br><br>
[2] Walter Lacquer, <i>Die deutsche Jugendbewegung: eine historische
Studie</i> (Cologne: Wissenschaft und Politik, 1962), p. 14, cit. Angaut
and Lucet, p. 123.<br><br>
[3] Angaut and Lucet, p. 115<br><br>
[4] Gerd Knoche, ‘Le mouvement de jeunesse allemand’, <i>Europe</i>,
numéro 2, août 1930, pp. 593-604, cit. Angaut and Lucet, p. 116.<br><br>
[5] Angaut and Lucet, p. 115.<br><br>
[6] Angaut and Lucet, p. 117.<br><br>
[7] Inge Scholl, <i>La Rose blanche. Six Allemands contre le nazisme</i>
(1953). (Editions de Minuit, 1995), pp. 33-36, cit. Angaut and Lucet, p.
117.<br><br>
[8] Antony C Sutton, <i>Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler</i> (Sudbury:
Bloomfield Books, 1976). See also Paul Cudenec, <i>Fascism Rebranded:
Exposing the Great Reset</i> (Winter Oak, 2021), pp. 284-290.<br>
</body>
</html>