Friday, December 29, 2017

The Past Glory

A few days ago on Facebook, I saw an episode of a Russian news program from a local TV station. The episode came from Omsk, a large Siberian city with population over 1 million. The episode disturbed me enough to cause a sleepless night and this blog entry.

The news segment commemorated Joseph Stalin’s birthday. The short overview of his tenure (almost 30 years) described the incredible accomplishments of the Soviet Union during this period. It not only included the obvious, like the victory in WWII, but also achievements in democracy, advancements in freedom, equal rights, education, industrialization and the modernization of the entire country. While some of that was true, the report never mentioned the price in human lives which paid for many of these achievements, nothing about destroying agriculture, nothing about the labor camps, nothing about the KGB, nothing about the environment of délation and fear, nothing about a famine so severe that it caused cannibalism in one of the most fertile regions of Russia. The news segment also managed to include ‘compare and contrast’ snippets to point out the United States’ problems with racism, Switzerland’s suffrage which only included women in the 1960’s, etc. Overall, in just 7 minutes this ‘news’ segment managed to present one of the most brutal and repressive regimes of the 20th century as progressive and enlightened.

I was stunned by this obnoxious whitewashing of well-established history. I’m closing in on my 60th birthday, but I remember that during the time of perestroika, when majority of Stalin’s crimes became public knowledge in the Soviet Union, I was in my late 20s. I suppose that Russians in their 20s, 30s and even early 40s will not remember that. The majority of them will think that Stalin was a great statesman and life in the Soviet Union was full of joy and happiness. When I was in Moscow this year, I noticed many signs of charming nostalgia for the Soviet past; which annoyed me a great deal. But pro-Russian friends explained to me that this is the preservation of history and some of this is probably true. But it was clear that there was more to this. The positive aspects – yes, not everything was bad -- were greatly exaggerated, but negative were missing altogether. This is not a preservation of history. It is destruction of history in order to build a glorious and completely fallacious past. Russians, like all other people, are happy to embrace this glory and forget the horrors. Who wants to be ashamed of the past?

Now, I’m going to make a geographical and temporal jump to the United States in the first half of the 20th century. About 50 years after the end of the Civil War, the Confederate states started to openly express anger about their defeat in the war. The most obvious expression of this anger was the KKK, but there were more understated signs of denial. The United Daughter of the Confederacy and other civil organizations began to erect statues of Confederate generals and to create and teach a mythology of what brave and noble people they were. The popular romance novel “Gone with the Wind” was written in 1934 and made into a blockbuster movie in 1939. I never understood the attraction, but for decades it was the most favorite movie in the U.S. Talking about intersection of popular culture and history, this movie was probably a final stroke in creating the romantic and heroic picture of Confederate South in the Civil War. The convenient theory, that the Civil War was not about slavery, fell on the fertile ground of a fictional history. Significant numbers of Southerners love this history and built local culture around it. Their ancestors didn’t fight for preservation of slavery; they fought for Freedom and for states’ rights and their Confederate memorials and flags became important symbols of this glorious struggle and noble lost cause. It doesn’t matter that heroic history is based more on Gone with the Wind than on anything related to the real war. Who wants to be ashamed of the past?

One could say: let them enjoy their fictional glory, why disappoint and make them angry, who will be heart by this? Well, in my opinion, there are a few groups of people who are very sensitive about this particular ‘version’ of history. The first and foremost are the African-Americans. Most of them are descendants of slaves and it doesn’t take a genius to understand that for them this fake history is not an innocent feel good story. The other group is more diverse and numerous. These are people who sincerely care about truth and justice. Most people in this group are well familiar with the history and are capable to recognize the harm done to society by the distortion of such critical events of the past. I was surprised to find myself in this group when I felt so disheartened by a news segment which in a few minutes whitewashed the tragic history of the Soviet Union and glorified one of it’s bloodiest dictators.

And just recently, we encountered another interesting dimension of the fictional history. The removal of the Robert Lee statue in Charlottesville was protested not by local Virginians, i.e. the real Confederate decedents. In fact, Robert Lee’s family was completely on board with local government decision to remove the monument. But the decision was a trigger for an impressive protest march by modern KKK and other neo-Nazi groups. They need the past glory -- doesn’t matter true or false -- to present themselves as the guardians of the history and the nation. The fake grievances of monument removal were used to demonstrate to the rest of us, who are the real masters and defenders of this land. I suspect that it won’t be long until we will find out who will exploit the Stalin’s past glory in Russia.

Thursday, December 7, 2017

Simple Answer

Should fascist and alt-right leaning parties be allowed to participate in democratic elections and be part of the coalition government in any country which considers itself democratic? While there is a simple answer to this question, as neo-Nazis movements are on the rise around Europe and United States this deserves a little more elaboration.

There is a valid argument for their participation in the democratic process. They represent a not insignificant portion of population and they have in mind relatively well formulated ideas and measures which according to them will improve society and create a better life. So far so good. If you are of democratic mindset the answer to this question should be an unwavering YES. They should participate!

But let us look a bit, just a bit deeper. What are these ideas and measures and do we have a historical and contemporary implementation samples? According to wiki Fascism is a form of government which is a type of one-party dictatorship. Fascists are against democracy. They work for a totalitarian one-party state. Which means no to real elections, no to government institutions, no to independent judiciary, no to free press. That along with nationalism and opposition to Enlightenment humanitarian ideas is at the core of the program of most alt-right parties. They make no secret about this and in fact the guide to alt-right had been published from all the places in Breitbart. I wrote another blog entry just to comment on this masterpiece.

This is exactly what we learn from history. When the Nazi party in Germany participated in political process and came to power in legal way, they destroyed democracy itself. In the modern world, we notice similar trends. Authoritarian leaders destroy institutions, free press and create an environment where the rise of the opposition is basically impossible. We can see it happening today in Russia. So even if you think that Putin is a great leader and single handedly improved life in Russia, there is no real opposition (Zherenvsky? Sobchak?), there is no free press and no independent judiciary.

The situation in the united States is somewhat unique. A mainstream political party over the course of a few decades has transformed itself to fascist party. The trend is easily traced from the raise of the Tea party to the current situation. The transition has been happening for a while and instead of fighting it the GOP leaders were accommodating to achieve their near-term political goals. Frighteningly, in Trump presidency, we can clearly observe fascists inclinations. His attacks on government institutions including judiciary, free press are numerous and outrageous. His racism is on display almost daily. The not so tacit support for most radical alt-right movements demonstrated at every circumstantial event. No wonder they love him.

As fascists government demoralize the population and erase opposition there is no easy way out. While many fascists governments came to power using legal democratic system, they erase it as soon as they get elected. There are several probable outcomes from this situation, another dictator who came to power as result of internal power struggle as we have seen recently in Uzbekistan (best outcome), war or revolution. If you don’t want yourself or your children to live through these events– SAY NO TO FASHISTS! For democracy antifascism is self-defense.

While I’m by no means a fan of simple answers, here is a rare situation which calls for simple answer. Neo-Nazi, alt-right parties doesn’t matter how popular they are should not be allowed to participate in election in democratic country. They destroy the democratic framework in order to hold on to power. Existing mainstream party should setup some meaningful controls within their committees to prevent this from happening. I’m sure there are other measures which include public education and other prevention measures. History scholars and political scientists should be able to propose actions and procedures to prevent this from happening in democratic societies. They better get busy now - before it is too late!

P.S. Surprisingly, there was an essay today in Opinion section of NYT on a related subject, by Thomas Edsall for whom I have a lot of respect®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0
He is pointing out a well-known research finding that about a third of the population have intrinsic authoritarian tendencies, love strong leaders and authoritarians and scared of open society and diversity. He is suggesting that there needs to be an accommodation for them. While I agree that their feelings and fears need to be considered, they can always be seduced by power seeking demagogue and no liberal accommodation will be enough to overcome their authoritarian tendencies.

Sunday, November 5, 2017

Not Only Uzbeks

The terrorist attack in Lower Manhattan Oct 31st allegiantly committed by an Uzbek fellow who came to US in 2010 on the diversity visa program (Green Card lottery) was a horrific news. The next day many major publications had analytical articles pointing out that Uzbekistan became a major supplier of Islamic terrorists. Many of them attributed it to an authoritarian regime and a lack of religious freedom in Uzbekistan. In the American Russian community there were some ugly, hateful conversations that there is no place in the US for Muslims and Uzbek terrorists. I was born in Tashkent and the news and reaction to them touched me personally since I grew up in a community with many Uzbeks.

A few words about Uzbekistan history. Uzbekistan is located in the middle of the Silk Road. The Silk Road is an ancient trade route on which goods travel from Far East to the West since about 200 AD. Many people of different looks, religion and culture stopped and passed by for almost 2000 years. Because of this location the economy and culture of the region developed based on trade and tolerance. Under Soviets Uzbekistan had a large infusion of population from other Soviet Republics – Russians, Ukrainians, Armenians, Ashkenazi Jews and many more. The majority of them came as Soviet evacuated civil population from the Western part of the country during WWII. Another wave of non-Uzbek came after 1966 to help rebuild Tashkent after strong earthquake. Many newcomers stayed in Tashkent attracted by it’s hospitable locals, nice climate and delicious Uzbek food.

One of the strongest childhood memory is of an Uzbek wedding. I was probably 8 or 9 years old. We just moved in the new flat in the center of the city. The flat was part of an apartment complex which had about 20 modest 4 store apartment buildings. The entire city center was rebuilt after a devastating earthquake. The Uzbek neighbors were celebrating a wedding. Long tables, covered with delicious fruits, hot naan bread and tea, were setup in the courtyard between apartment buildings. Vodka and brandy were served from tea pots to cover up drinking alcoholic beverages at Uzbek wedding 😊. Every neighbor, every kid and every stranger who pass by were invited! The celebration lasted for three days.

Not everything was rosy. Traditional Muslim culture was still repressive to women. It was particularly noticeable when in university I encountered many girls who came to Tashkent from the rural areas. They always looked down initially, but very quickly without family control living in dormitory developed somewhat schizophrenic attitude towards boys. Promiscuous and strict at the same time. But after a while most of them recovered and proceeded to have a normal life. I went to the best school for gifted children in Tashkent and our school’s principal was an Uzbek woman with a lot of power and very experienced in how to handle complex political situations which were a large part of her job. I met in school and at work many successful and very modern Uzbek women. As I learn later in life this is not typical in majority of other Muslim countries.

During my youth in Uzbekistan probably the most important trend was receding traditional Muslim culture and modernization of Uzbek society. With all the problems Soviets had, the severe limiting of many religious traditions did more for women equality then feminist movements on the West. My mother’s generation (born in 1920-1930) had most women of all ethnicities working and many of them in professional fields.

What happen in Uzbekistan after I left and after the fall of the Soviet Union, I know only vaguely and understand even less. I know that Uzbek president Karimov struggled to balance return to more traditional Uzbek culture while maintaining some level of modernity and secular attitude. At the same time geo-political challenges were coming in region with ever increasing frequency. When Uzbekistan was part of the Soviet Union it was protected from Middle East regional problems by the Soviets. But as this protection disappeared, the problems started to knock at the door. One of the biggest challenges were Saudis. The Uzbeks are traditionally Sunnis, but because of their history not particularly traditional or religious. Saudis decided that Uzbekistan now is a green field to expand Wahhabism. To restrict their influence already authoritarian Uzbek government became even more severe. The most serious revolt against Karimov’s government occurred in Andijan Valley in 2005. In the West, the events were covered as a human and religious right abuse. I’m sure it was a lot of that. But considering Saudis activities in Uzbekistan, the most likely alternative would be a coup to overthrow the sitting government and create an Islamic State govern by Sharia laws similar to Saudi Arabia.

Karimov died a year ago and from my limited knowledge, Uzbeks and remaining non-Uzbek population felt that Karimov, with all his shortcomings, lead Uzbekistan without major crisis through very dangerous times in the region which boils with religious wars and revolutions.

Now going back to Uzbeks in America. I personally know many very successful Uzbek Americans, but we are not talking about them. The coverage of why Uzbeks are rapidly becoming one of the main population on the West which susceptible to ISIS recruiting completely ignores that they became radicalize here in US and in the West, were ISIS propaganda widely available and surprisingly in concert in what they learn from US press about suppressing religious freedom in Uzbekistan. Writing an article about how authoritarian regime in Uzbekistan breeds terrorism when Uzbeks get indoctrinated here is not helping to deal with the problem, but rather leads to a dangerous path of fighting the wrong battle.

But there is a bigger picture. And it is not just about Uzbeks. It doesn’t matter how bad is an idea, even when the fallacy of the idea was proven by history many times, the powerful players will use and reuse it to brainwash people to do horrible things. The resurgence of fascism in US and other Western countries is just another demonstration. It is also a reminder that it is not just Muslims who are susceptible to dangerous ideas. It looks like democracy is not a cure of this illness. What is? I don’t have answers. But to attribute the spread of bad ideas to something we deservingly don’t like such as authoritarian regime and lack of freedom, when the evidence doesn’t support this, only leads us to more problems.

Sunday, October 1, 2017

Moscow. The view from my window

After last summer's amazing visit to Saint Petersburg (SPB), I was excited and intrigued to see Moscow. While I was overwhelmed by Moscow largeness, I felt that the difference between these two capitals (new Moscow and old SPB) have never been more striking. The root of these differences is, of course, the history of Russia. SPG was created and built by Peter the Great in early 1700s, as a window to Europe, to force a country isolated by Orthodox Christianity to join Europe’s road to Enlightenment. Meanwhile, Moscow which is almost 900 years old was and is now one of the pillars of Christian Orthodox tradition.

That tradition was rudely interrupted by October Revolution (1917) and communist aggressive anti-religious policies. After October Revolution Moscow lost a large number of its beautiful churches and Russians lost a significant part of their cultural identity. We rented an apartment in the heart of Moscow in an old apartment building, walking distance from Red Square. As we walked around the building I noticed a recently installed plaque on the building: The apartment building was built on the site of the church which was built 1686 and destroyed in 1929

The large old apartment in the heart of Moscow had many windows, with beautiful views and stories to tell.
Looking East is a beautiful grand cathedral looking brand new

The Cathedral of Christ the Savior is the second church constructed on the site. The first one was built in the 19th century to commemorate the heroes and victory in the First Patriotic War (Napoleon’s invasion in Russia). That Church was destroyed by Stalinist regime in the 1930’s. An Olympic size swimming pool was built on the site in 1960’s. The idea to rebuild the church was one of the first post-Soviet projects and mostly was executed on charitable donation of Russian citizens and ex-pats.

Looking North-West springs an ultra modern island of skyscrapers

Moscow-city or the Moscow Business Center complex is another baby of post-Soviet era grand projects and obviously a symbol of new Moscow global ambitions, this time looking in the future. The ambitions are on-going and ignore current political bickering. The beatification and modernization of Moscow is a project of surreal proportion.

The work is on-going 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The new sidewalks are paved with thick granite tiles, replacing the old asphalt sidewalks over large areas in the city center, with dozens of people working on each site. It is difficult to imagine the cost of this project, but it definitely provides a lot of working class jobs.

And looking directly North is Moscow of my youth

The glorious 70th. These New Arbat buildings looked magnificent to me when I was 18 years old; I had never seen modern buildings looking so big and grand. It was also a clever design idea to shape these buildings like open books. Obviously, the grandeur and magnificence didn’t last as with most construction of this period. These buildings are signs of the time and they are going through renovation efforts to make the best of it. The damage is particularly depressing when you see the Old Arbat neighborhood and imagine what streets were demolished to build the highway and these modern cheap monstrosities.

Wherever I go, I always check out food markets. Maybe it is my childhood memories when food was scarce or maybe just because I love good food. The state of the Danilovsky Market was exceptional in all departments

In addition to amazing food stands, the market was surrounded by eateries with amazing looks and smells. Every cuisine was represented: Georgian, Uzbek, Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese. At 11:00 am there was already a line to the Pho stand. We bought Uzbek samsa, which were still hot and Patrick finally tried real Russian kvas. This ancient, lightly fermented drink is impossible to understand when you buy it in the United States in plastic bottles. The real drink is slightly bubbly, has lovely flavor and is very refreshing.

To get to the market we took the metro to station Polyanka (meadow).
If you want to know how a perfect metro system should work, you must visit Moscow and use the metro. A weekly pass for all public transportation is less than $14. If you are in the middle of the train and exit to the platform, by the time you get to the end of station platform the next train has arrived. You are connected to free Wi-Fi at all times. It was a consistent experience throughout entire week. The only time we had to wait for about 3 min was after 11 pm. The metro first open in mid 1930’s and became a signature Moscow project. It was built to last and works like I never seen in any other metropolis. All stations have different design and older stations have imposing Soviet imagery, while modern stations looking very slick.

Nothing helps more to appreciate the country or a city than having enlightened friends which know the place well and who are generous enough to share their knowledge with you. My old friends took us to several lovely excursions, including ancient city of Vladimir. It was the taste of Russia outside Moscow - old, vast, beautiful and spiritual in traditional religious way.

The amazing tour of Moscow hidden treasures with old churches with fascinating history of survival communist regime, the streets of Old Arbat with many beautiful mansions left from the pre-revolutionary times when the area was populated by wealthy merchants and old nobility, the historical mansion, which was described in War and Peace as Rostov’s family home
The cloister setup by Elizaveta Fedorovna, member of Tzar’s family with tragic personal story of sacrifice and devotion. The church of remarkable beauty designed and built according to her vision behind the gate of the cloister.
There is more to Moscow than Kremlin!

Soviet imagery is very important and imposing theme in Moscow.

These days in SPB you can hardly notice remains of the Soviet regime. Most of the signs are gone and because the city is a complete architectural ensemble, there are no sign of Soviet architecture in the center of SPB. In Moscow, Soviet past plays a strange trick on you. Most of the Soviet imaginary has nostalgic appeal and sometimes kitschy expression. The explanations which were given to me by Russians, emphasized that keeping this imaginary – is preserving history. By design or subconsciously it felt more like whitewashing than preserving a history. Without the menace and depravity which associated with these images it didn’t feel like history, but more like a cute nostalgic movie about the past. If Russians decisionmakers really cared about history there should be a history museum where these artifacts are accompanied by appropriated context. Some of the imaginary was an all-out lie: the plaque installed on the Kremlin wall in 2015 to commemorate WWII depicts imaginary battle for Kremlin

There was also a different character to public events. In SPB, as part of annual White Nights festival, the live classical music was performed in city parks and it was in perfect harmony with classical city architecture. Moscow too was filled with music, but of another kind. On the Red Square nightly fireworks marked a week-long parade of military orchestras.
While Moscow Central park (Park Gor’kogo) was immaculately taken care off, when we visited, the loudspeaker projected live bad performance of the worst sample of Soviet pop-music. That was obnoxious and disturbing.

Obviously not everything could or should be moved to museum. The most impressive site of Soviet period is VDNH (pronounce ve-de-en-ha) stands for Exhibition of achievements of industry and agriculture. The site has plenty of Soviet imaginary and is the home of the most stunning sculpture of Soviet period created by Vera Muchina - Worker and Kolkhoz Woman

How to sum it up? What about the food, museums, theater, restaurants, pelmeni?

It is impossible to tell it all. The experience leaves the visitor overwhelmed with the feeling that to know Moscow will take many more visits and loving Moscow may take a lifetime. Just ten days visit cannot cover the largeness, history, the speed of changes and layers of complexity and culture. As Russians will say -- Moscow is a city of contrasts.
On the last day, after few days of miserable cold rain and grey skies, the weather suddenly turned sunny and warm. I told the driver who was taking us to airport how sad I was to leave the city on such a beautiful day. He said: “don’t worry, it’s not going to last.” So long Moscow!

Monday, July 17, 2017

Real Fake Media

Our President is truly inspirational. Turbulent times inspire artists, writers, journalists and simple bloggers. This little essay was inspired by the President’s blustery relationship with mainstream media (MSM). The President’s hostility to the MSM has created an atmosphere of strong distrust for the Fourth Estate. His crude tweets and rants about fake media have had a stunning effect. The President, who himself has no relationship with truth, has managed to discredit the MSM to such degree that public trusts the MSM only slightly more than the President. The goal of these attacks is very clear and part of the typical approach to build an authoritarian rule. A dictator to be destroys the independent press to become the authoritative news source. That WILL convert news to propaganda, just like it was in the Soviet Union.

Propaganda is basically any information which comes from the people in power. Any White House press conference including presidents we love and respect is supposed to promote/defend the current occupant of the White House. The Soviets were not good in feeding population or creating a real economy, but they knew propaganda. They knew it from the time of October revolution when Lenin immediately understood necessity of taking over the means of communication and controlling the media.

When I was young in 70-80s, the Soviet media was a laughing stock because of the glaring gap between our everyday life and what we were reading or seeing in the news. But since we were not allowed to travel abroad, we knew nothing about life outside of the Soviet borders. The media coverage of the Western world, while not exactly trusted, was our only glance at the life outside of the iron curtain. The lies were not that obvious, since we could not see it for ourselves. One story about the US had a very strong impression on me. It turns out it was a very important story which had an enormous impact on many lives in Soviet Union and in the West.

For the younger readers and not Soviet immigrant, a little bit of context. The Literaturnaya [Literary] Gazeta targeted the most educated part of the Soviet population. It was also an outlet for the most sophisticated propaganda. The Gazeta was a weekly and was thicker than regular daily newspaper. Think about Sunday New York Times. It covered foreign news and had analytical articles about world events and culture and it was the most respected news outlet for Soviet educated elite.

In the Literaturnaya Gazeta of 30 October 1985, I read for the first time the story about AIDS. It was a full-page article covering the origin and current state of epidemic and potential impact on Soviet life. The roots of the epidemics were traced to a secret US military biological weapon program which was supposed to reduce population of prostitutes, drug addicts, blacks and homosexuals. I think it was a first article in Soviet press which acknowledged the existence of gay people, at least in the rotten capitalist West. It described the disease in all gruesome details and explained that it was transmitted mostly by needles used for drug injections. The second part of the article was trying to calm down scared readers, by explaining that disease like this is completely impossible in the USSR. Because of our perfect social conditions, women are not reduced to become prostitutes, we have no racial problems, drug addicts, and of course no gays.

Many other publications followed suite and described the situation the same way. Meanwhile deadly disease was killing Russians all over the country. The statistic of this epidemic in USSR are not available, because there was no data collection, since there was no recognition of the problem. After perestroika was on the way, it turns out that AIDS had a very significant epidemic in Russia (the estimate 10,000 cases reported in 1996). Nobody really knows the real number of victims.

Meanwhile in the US, media coverage of AIDS epidemics did not start out very well. The coverage was scattered and controversial based on ideological and political biases. While there was clear admission of the problem the ideological biases had a strong impact. The science community understood that epidemic came from Africa and how it was transmitted in the population. But among religious conservative the prevailing view was that the epidemic is plague and God’s punishment for the sins of sodomy. Therefore, no government intervention (tax $$$) in God’s act was needed. The religious conservatives were a major constituency for Ronald Reagan and he had no political incentives to put money into research or cures. But eventually the pressure from citizens, especially the well-organized gay community and their support in Hollywood turned the media coverage around. The film “Philadelphia” with Tom Hanks, Tony Kushner amazing play “Angels in America” lead to reporting of devastating personal stories in major newspapers. As a result, it created a public pressure to invest in research to help and cure the disease. The ridiculous and cruel story about God’s punishment died of natural causes.

This strange tale of two countries coverage of one deadly epidemic has many important lessons for our time. We [Soviet immigrants] should never underestimate the importance of independent media. Presidential tweets, White House press conferences, or the media outlets directly supportive of government are not the news. They are official propaganda. Just like Pravda or Literaturnaya Gazeta. Only fact checkers, investigations and analysis of serious media will keep the powerful in line with reality. Yes, the MSM makes mistakes, it has biases and bends under pressure of the powerful. But eventually, under scrutiny of critical and active citizens, the media does its job and truth comes out. While Fourth Estate checks the power, the citizens check the Fourth Estate. If fake news takes over the media, it is because we didn’t do our job, and it will be us who will bear the consequences of living in the alternative reality created by propaganda and fake news.

Sunday, April 16, 2017

A Guide to the Breitbart Guide to alt-right

Alt-right official image
In my infinite reading and browsing, I finally ran into an article published on Breitbart by Allum Bokhari and now infamous Milo Yiannopoulos which provided to regular people -- who these two call the Establishment -- a guide to the alt-right:
While I already had an idea what the movement was about from various commentaries, for the sake of being open minded I carefully read the entire opus.

That was quite a 'feat'. I will start with couple major points first and then will switch to particular quotes and examples. I will use different font color when quoting from the guide directly.

The main incongruity of the movement is a stated goal of preserving western civilization by way of destroying its principles of Enlightening. This includes democracy, individual liberty, freedom of expression, and eradication of religious authority. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it looks like authors are completely unaware of the contradiction and do not recognize that implementation of alt-right ideas would destroy western civilization.

The reason for such obvious contradiction is not the lack of knowledge, but rather obnoxious pride in their intellectual superiority which disables the author’s critical thinking. To demonstrate their education, they start their opus paraphrasing Marx's Communist manifesto and move on by dropping names H. Mencken, Samuel Fransis and others conservative intellectuals. By no means do these educated and thoughtful authors have anything in common with regular skinheads and street hooligans. They present themselves as connoisseurs of western civilization which they are so eager to save.

Moving on to particulars. The authors present us with major species which represent alt-right movement.

The first and most important alt-right constituencies are Intellectuals. This group of alt-right intellectuals puts under microscope liberalism, democracy and egalitarianism and found them wanting. Liberal democracy, they argued, had no better a historical track record than monarchy, while egalitarianism flew in the face of every piece of research on hereditary intelligence. Asking people to see each other as human beings rather than members of a demographic in-group, meanwhile, ignored every piece of research on tribal psychology.

The authors of the opus didn't bother to provide any proof of such statement and failed to point out that the longest period of peace and improvement in human condition happened in western civilization by building in Europe and North America entire community of countries which are guided particularly by principles of liberalism, democracy and egalitarianism.

Moreover, the western civilization bloomed when people transition from seeing themselves as member of the group to see themselves as individuals and started to recognize certain universal moral principles which all these different groups have in common. That is the actual intrinsic philosophy behind all Abrahamic religions. Our so-called intellectuals didn't catch this.

Next group is called Natural Conservatives. For natural conservatives, culture, not economic efficiency, is the paramount value. More specifically, they value the greatest cultural expressions of their tribe. Their perfect society does not necessarily produce a soaring GDP, but it does produce symphonies, basilicas and Old Masters. The natural conservative tendency within the alt-right points to these apotheosis of western European culture and declares them valuable and worth preserving and protecting.

This group’s main concern is diversity. They think that massive immigration will not appreciate and even destroy these apotheoses. In their opinion, the Establishment doesn't care about preservation of this rich cultural heritage, our alt-right guides bring us to a stunning conclusion: Donald Trump, perhaps the first truly cultural candidate for President since Buchanan, suggests grassroots appetite for more robust protection of the western European and American way of life. I considered stopping reading right at this high point, but my curiosity made me to continue.

There is a real concern that some part of "regressive" left does have an inclination to diminish what they call a culture of "dead white males". But authors ignore that the critics of these inclinations are coming not just from conservatives but from a significant left constituency as well.

An addition, the natural conservatives completely ignore that culture is not a static entity enshrined in old cathedrals, but a living organism, and diversity, exchange and fusion of ideas make it much richer and brings layer of complexity and excitement. In fact, the cathedrals while amazing and beautiful are only small part of what western civilization has to offer. The more diversity was introduced, more sophisticated design styles emerged. For example, the amazing art-deco movement was heavily influenced by Asian esthetics. I could go on and on this, but it will take this essay in different direction. Again our preservationist failed to mention such details. In their view western civilization peaked at building cathedrals.

The USA would not exist and not achieve the cultural status it currently has in the world without massive immigration waves. The natural conservatives only see one side of immigration as destruction of the local culture. Yes, immigration partially destroys the local culture, and there is very little kumbaya in absorption and integration of each immigration wave. But the new culture comes out as a fusion of local and immigrant culture. Yes, the process could be painful, but I would be bored to death being surrounded by just cathedrals.

The next in line is MEME Team. They are rebels; the young people who rebel against self-censorship. These young rebels, a subset of the alt-right, aren’t drawn to it because of an intellectual awakening, or because they’re instinctively conservative. Ironically, they’re drawn to the alt-right for the same reason that young Baby Boomers were drawn to the New Left in the 1960s: because it promises fun, transgression, and a challenge to social norms they just don’t understand

As always, there is a form and there is content. The authors of this guide consistently miss the point. The young generation of 60s and 70s while was rebellious, it was not just for fun and transgression, but had a particular cause – social justice, civil rights, gay rights, abortion rights. While young people expressed this struggle in hippie movement, the content of the MEME team is to rebel against the culture which admitted the guilt and condemned racism, sexism and homophobia. This is not the same as Father Christmas as the authors proceed to explain: As with Father Christmas, Millennials have trouble believing it’s [Holocaust or racism] actually real. They’ve never actually seen it for themselves — and they don’t believe that the memes they post on /pol/ are actually racist. In fact, they know they’re not — they do it because it gets a reaction. Barely a month passes without a long feature in a new media outlet about the rampant sexism, racism or homophobia of online image boards. For regular posters at these boards, that’s mission accomplished.

The MEME team is young rebels against Establishment culture. But this is where the similarity with hippies ends. Their goal is not love and peace, but to hurt and scare people. They are ignorant, racist internet hooligans. More similar to the characters in the Kubrick's “Clockwork Orange“, than to the hippie's flower children.

The next group is 1488s. These are just simple Neo-Nazies. 88 stands for 8th letter of alphabet HH for Heil Hitler. Even super generous to alt-right folks authors of the guide had to admit that the group is not very edifying and initially compared them to Islamic terrorists which is somewhat appropriate. It would be OK, if they would stop right there. But they needed to pull in comparison to liberals and brought BLM as similar movement. Here we return again to the form and the content issue. While there are some questionable forms of the rebellion in the BLM movement, the content is a legitimate protest against police violence. Yes, just like in civil rights struggle, some protests turned criminal and violent and extreme wing of BLM could be compared to Black Panthers, but not to Nazis.

The Establishment's Frankenstein group is very much concerned about what’s acceptable and unacceptable to discuss in polite society. The authors put liberal identity politics on campuses against the plight of white working class male. While there are real problems with identity politics on campuses and the plight of white males is real, both of them are confronted and discussed plenty in Establishment media. As very active media consumer, I'm well aware of these problems. But, even when the established media does write about the plight of white men it is presented as a health and economic crisis. The words which are used are from medical and economic vocabulary -- opium epidemics and the disappearance of well-paid working class jobs. When similar processes affected the black population in former industrial cities like Chicago, it was all about crime and crack cocain addiction.

Alt-right anti PC group blames establishment for ignoring the plight of white males. And while taking a pride in being politically incorrect, they will not discuss why women are doing better than men. All they do are complaining about violent feminism. It never came to their minds that maybe women, when given equal rights, are better adjusted to the modern workplace. Maybe they are doing better because their biological function as children caregivers made them more social, responsible and flexible which are exactly the qualities which are desirable in post industrial economy. And white men just need to pull themselves by their boot's straps and say no to drugs. Just as native conservatives once told to poor minority population. Instead, they playing victim card, just like liberal identity politics aficionados they like to complain about.

In the conclusion of the guide, the authors are saying that natural conservative is the group which needs to be pursued by Establishment, otherwise is that the 1488ers start persuading people that their solution to natural conservatives’ problems is the only viable one. The bulk of their demands, after all, are not so audacious: they want their own communities, populated by their own people, and governed by their own values.

What authors don't mention that natural conservatives are just mild form of 1488ers. The only difference is that they don’t mind that other groups have their own way at least for now. They also don't mention that natural conservative idyllic society is impossible in multicultural immigrant country such as USA and the only choice for us is 1488ers or multiculturalism and diversity.

I do agree that natural conservatives are not going away and liberals need to work with the group. They need to learn how to peel away as many people from the group as possible. Hopefully, this could be done through better education and history lessons by explaining that their demands will not result in idyllic communities with traditional values -- these communities never have been idyllic. It will result in strict regimes similar to what we see now in Iran and other theocratic countries. These communities will fight with each other over territories which they considered traditionally belong to them, over minor religious differences like Sunnis and Shia, while internally will be torn apart by matters which we consider ridiculous, like the right of a Catholic to marry a Jew.

Overall, while the guide is an eye opener, introducing various groups which represent the alt-right coalition, it is real goal is to obfuscate the deplorable values at the core of each group. At the same time the liberals, the former Establishment needs to develop a strategy how to deal with alt-right in a way which could alter their popularity and take down a romantic aura of the revolutionary movement.

I would suggest making the guide a required reading in liberal colleges as a sample for critical reading and writing exercise. You cannot win the fight without understanding the enemy and without ability to prove a danger of their disingenuous ideas. In this fight liberals could learn where their ideas are failing and adjust their platform. It will make them stronger and give the ammunition to win the hearts and minds.