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August 20, 2007
Johan Galtung, Founding Fanatic of the Peace Racket
In an enlightening piece on the metastasizing cancer known as the "Peace Studies" movement, Bruce Bawer lifts a rock to expose Johan Galtung, the phenomenon's spiritual father: a moonbat who has pushed the moral derangement at the heart of liberal politics to the point of overt evil.
Bawer's term for the Peace Studies movement is the Peace Racket:
We need to make two points about this movement at the outset. First, it's opposed to every value that the West stands for — liberty, free markets, individualism — and it despises America, the supreme symbol and defender of those values. Second, we're talking not about a bunch of naive Quakers but about a movement of savvy, ambitious professionals that is already comfortably ensconced at the United Nations, in the European Union, and in many nongovernmental organizations. It is also waging an aggressive, under-the-media-radar campaign for a cabinet-level Peace Department in the United States. Sponsored by Ohio Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich (along with more than 60 cosponsors), House Resolution 808 would authorize a Secretary of Peace to "establish a Peace Academy," "develop a peace education curriculum" for elementary and secondary schools, and provide "grants for peace studies departments" at campuses around the country. If passed, the measure would catapult the peace studies movement into a position of extraordinary national, even international, influence.
By "peace" they mean submission of the West to its tyrannical enemies.
Patriots have George Washington et al. Moonbats like Kucinich have Johan Galtung:
Their founding father is a 77-year-old Norwegian professor, Johan Galtung, who established the International Peace Research Institute in 1959 and the Journal of Peace Research five years later. Invariably portrayed in the media as a charismatic and (these days) grandfatherly champion of decency, Galtung is in fact a lifelong enemy of freedom. In 1973, he thundered that "our time's grotesque reality" was — no, not the Gulag or the Cultural Revolution, but rather the West's "structural fascism." He's called America a "killer country," accused it of "neo-fascist state terrorism," and gleefully prophesied that it will soon follow Britain "into the graveyard of empires." […]
Fittingly, he urged Hungarians not to resist the Soviet Army in 1956, and his views on World War II suggest that he'd have preferred it if the Allies had allowed Hitler to finish off the Jews and invade Britain.
Though Galtung has opined that the annihilation of Washington, D.C., would be a fair punishment for America's arrogant view of itself as "a model for everyone else," he's long held up certain countries as worthy of emulation — among them Stalin's USSR, whose economy, he predicted in 1953, would soon overtake the West's. He's also a fan of Castro's Cuba, which he praised in 1972 for "break[ing] free of imperialism's iron grip." At least you can't accuse Galtung of hiding his prejudices. In 1973, explaining world politics in a children's newspaper, he described the U.S. and Western Europe as "rich, Western, Christian countries" that make war to secure materials and markets: "Such an economic system is called capitalism, and when it's spread in this way to other countries it's called imperialism." In 1974, he sneered at the West's fixation on "persecuted elite personages" such as Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov. Thirty years later, he compared the U.S. to Nazi Germany for bombing Kosovo and invading Afghanistan and Iraq. For Galtung, a war that liberates is no better than one that enslaves.
His all-time favorite nation? China during the Cultural Revolution. Visiting his Xanadu, Galtung concluded that the Chinese loved life under Mao: after all, they were all "nice and smiling." While "repressive in a certain liberal sense," he wrote, Mao's China was "endlessly liberating when seen from many other perspectives that liberal theory has never understood." Why, China showed that "the whole theory about what an 'open society' is must be rewritten, probably also the theory of 'democracy' — and it will take a long time before the West will be willing to view China as a master teacher in such subjects."
This might be a good time to point out that Mao killed over 70 million of his own people in peacetime — and life couldn't have been much fun for those who survived. Bawer resumes:
Nor has Galtung changed his tune over the decades. Recently he gave a lecture that was a smorgasbord of wild accusations about America's refusing to negotiate with Saddam, America's secret plans to make war in Azerbaijan, Nazis in the State Department, the CIA's responsibility for 6 million covert murders, and so on. Galtung called for a Truth and Reconciliation Committee in Iraq — to treat America's crimes, not the Baathists'.
Galtung's use of the word "peace" to legitimize totalitarianism is an old Communist tradition. In August 1939, when the Nazis and Soviets signed their nonaggression pact, the same Western Stalinists who had been calling for war against Germany did an about-face and began to praise peace. (After Hitler invaded Russia, the Stalinists reversed themselves again, demanding that the West help Stalin crush the Third Reich.) The peace talk, in short, was really about sympathizing with Communism, not peace. And it continued after the war, when Stalin's Western supporters whitewashed his monstrous regime and denounced anti-Communists as warmongering crypto-fascists. "Peace conferences" and "friendship committees" drew hordes of liberal dupes, who didn't grasp that their new "friends" were not ordinary Russians but the jailers of ordinary Russians — and that the committees were about not "friendship" but deception, exploitation, and espionage.
Disturbingly, the evil old coot Galtung's influence on our current generation of college professors has been strong:
What these people teach remains faithful to Galtung's anti-Western inspiration. First and foremost, they emphasize that the world's great evil is capitalism — because it leads to imperialism, which in turn leads to war. The account of capitalism in David Barash and Charles Webel's widely used 2002 textbook Peace and Conflict Studies leans heavily on Lenin, who "maintained that only revolution — not reform — could undo capitalism's tendency toward imperialism and thence to war," and on Galtung, who helpfully revised Lenin's theories to account for America's "indirect" imperialism. Students acquire a zero-sum picture of the world economy: if some countries and people are poor, it's because others are rich. They're taught that American wealth derives entirely from exploitation and that Americans, accordingly, are responsible for world poverty. […]
In short, it's America that is the wellspring of the world's problems. In the peace studies world, America's role as the beacon of opportunity for generations of immigrants is mocked, its defense of freedom in World War II and the cold war is reinterpreted to its discredit, and every major postwar atrocity (the Gulag, the Cultural Revolution, genocide in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Sudan) is ignored, minimized, or — as with 9/11 — blamed on the U.S. itself.
These professors are methodically preparing another generation of unhinged radicals, maniacally devoted to the West's destruction. As Bawer concludes:
What's alarming is that these students don't plan to spend their lives on some remote mountainside in Nepal contemplating peace, harmony, and human oneness. They want to remake our world. They plan to become politicians, diplomats, bureaucrats, journalists, lawyers, teachers, activists. They'll bring to these positions all the mangled history and misbegotten ideology that their professors have handed down to them. Their careers will advance; the Peace Racket's influence will spread. And as it does, it will weaken freedom's foundations.
Sleepless as rust, the corrosive combination of evil and insanity known as moonbattery will continue to eat away at civilization from one generation to the next, until the day comes that only a dim memory remains of concepts like freedom and dignity.
On a tip from V the K.
Posted by Van Helsing at August 20, 2007 1:32 PM
Comments
That says it all! The beer ad in the background. Crazy people, Great Beer! Galtung's joke of Kommunism/Socialism/Nazism/No Freedomism is a joke not worth a dollar!
Posted by: Bryherb at August 20, 2007 2:34 PM
we don't need a 'peace acaemy'.West Point, Annapolis , and the Air Force academy are doing just fine at protecting the peace.
Posted by: James F McEnanly at August 20, 2007 4:19 PM
You hit the nail on the head in describing the peace cult as haters of freedom. I was brutally exposed to the pathological hypocrisy of these people when in the mid 1980s I interviewed a top official at the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia. This was when they were functioning as a PR office in the US for the PLO. I asked, isn't it true that you oppose all violence? --Yes. So, I said, the merits of the case aside, how can you support a group like the PLO that openly practises such heinous violence? --We don't support them; we understand them.
Posted by: AWOL Civilization at August 20, 2007 6:33 PM
Meanwhile, a native Italian who murdered a British schoolteacher won't be repatriated to Italy because he has a family in Britain now and it might violate his human rights.
Posted by: Panday at August 20, 2007 7:32 PM
PEACE THROUGH SUPERIOR FIREPOWER !!!
Winkled old prunes like this are a waste of space and its time he stopped causing Global Warming by not exhaling. Glue his nostrils and mouth shut. Smelly wrinkly old bastard, die already!
Posted by: Anonymous at August 20, 2007 7:44 PM
The color RED just screams out at you in everything these alleged practitioners of "Peace" say and do. Anyone whose heroes are Lenin, Stalin and Mao has long out-lived his usefulness and needs to be put out to pasture (one way or another).
Great work by Bruce Bawer, whose "While Europe Slept" is one of the most sickening and terrifying things you will ever read -- if you ever had any question about the proposition that Europe may eventually become "Eurabia," read his book and your mind will be put at rest: there's absolutely no doubt that ALL of Europe will one day be part of the Pan-Islamic Caliphate.
And we're not all that far behind them, unfortunately, with our idiot PC politicians constantly pandering for votes instead of showing some intestinal fortitude on the conjoined issues of illegal immigration and the rapid Islamification of this country.
Posted by: jc14 at August 20, 2007 8:25 PM
Hey jc14, I've just purchased Bawer's book...looking foward to it after I've finished Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book "Infidel".
This Norwegian is just another commie NWO adherent
who has seeded the world with this satanic manifesto.
He can rest on his laurels now. The plan is coming to
fruition.
Posted by: fellowes at August 20, 2007 10:25 PM
fellowes: I've heard a lot about, but haven't yet read Hirsi Ali's book, but will do so soon. Also looks like Robert Spencer's new one, "Religion of Peace," will be exceptional -- trying to reserve a copy now at my local library, pre-publication. Mr. Spencer is such a knowledgeable foe of these "people" that he'd best start watching his back, as it were. And you're right, I fear, about Der Fuehrer Herr Professor Galtung's legacy . . .
Best wishes.
Posted by: jc14 at August 21, 2007 7:14 AM
Good Lord! Where do I even start with this one...
I thought guys like Galtung disappeared from public life after the Vietnam War in 1975, or maybe after the end of the Cold War in 1990. But no, just like herpes, they keep coming back.
"Peace Department?" Whats next? The Ministry of Truth?
WAR IS PEACE!
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY!
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH!
Posted by: phil at August 21, 2007 8:16 AM
It must be nice to see everything through "Rose Tinted Glasses". I don't really know what to say. THese guy and gals are out there in "lala" land.
Posted by: Richard Daugherty at August 21, 2007 2:09 PM
I wonder if this Galtung is a founding member of the Vidkund Quisling Fan Club in Norway...
Posted by: Toa at August 22, 2007 6:34 PM
The readers of this website will do themselves a great favour by reading other online materials on Galtung.
"First, it's opposed to every value that the West stands for — liberty, free markets, individualism"
This quote is nonsense.. why do u define the West by American standards.
Moonbattery..what a fantastic place to preach to the already converted right wingers. What exactly do you wish to accomplish by this site, which only serves to hide your American insecurities. Without open ideas, this site is nothing more than farting in the water. I seriously doubt that this posting will make it on the website.
Posted by: dan at August 24, 2007 4:57 PM
Toa what drivel you are spewing. Your pathetic anti american chip skews tour comments. Galtung is scum who pushes totalitarian butchery. As an African I say let him live in the countries he champions and hopefully we wont hear from this windbag again.
Posted by: Shoa at September 12, 2007 3:56 PM
I attended a rally where Mr. Galtung spoke. He was introduced as the world's foremost "Architect of Peace." What I heard him say simply blew me away. This man of peace went on (for hours it seemed) simply blasting vitriol at America. I swear, if a Martian had visited earth for an hour just to hear Galtung speak, he would go away believing that America is the worst thing to have ever happened to humanity. For such a man of "peace", Galtung sure has much hate in him. But whatever. For useful idiots like "Toa" above, he/she may live to see the resulting horror of the insane "peace at any cost" approach. If Europe doesn't change it's ways quickly, men like Galtung will be flayed as soon as they speak up in defense of gays, women, or of anything that insults Islam (which, it appears, is everything). Galtung has never favored peace, but centralized restriction on liberty. He is driven by fear. I for one am not afraid to stand up for my liberty. We must all stand up with confidence to anyone who defends the corrupt visions of such ignorants as Galtung or Dennis Kucinich. I will not be a dhimmis (look up the meaning of that term) like so many millions of Europeans already have become. P.S.: Take a first step, join the NRA.
Posted by: James at September 17, 2007 10:40 PM
