By Rostislav Ishchenko
Translated by Ollie Richardson and Angelina Siard
cross posted with http://www.stalkerzone.org/rostislav-ishchenko-who-the-enemies-of-the-people-are-and-how-they-fight-against-them/
Source: http://alternatio.org/articles/articles/item/60368-kto-takie-vragi-naroda-i-kak-oni-s-nim-voyuyut


If people exist as a subject (at least of history and politics), then they have friends and enemies. Not those “friends” who “fight against social democrats” and not those enemies who are periodically sent to camps or simply destroyed worldwide during all epochs (Stalin wasn’t a pioneer, and not even the most effective user of the technology of fighting against the “enemies of the people”). And there must be objective friends and enemies of the people (regardless of public moods, the subjective opinions of “controllers of thoughts”, or political leaders). Moreover, the fact itself of the objectivity of their existence makes them objectively the friends or, respectively, the enemies not of an individual person, but of all people at the same time. That’s why even rubbing shoulders in the narrowness of their native planet, fighting for “vital space”, non-renewable resources, or sales markets, all people see a happy future in the same way – a better life for the future and, if possible, for today’s generation too.

They understand a better life not as some abstract “system of values”, but in terms of a real comfortable and safe human community. In principle the person can think about values, the meaning of life, or spiritual heights only when they get rid of the hourly worry about daily bread and protecting themselves, their progeny, and their kin from unexpected danger. But if time is taken up by ensuring survival all the time, then there is no time to think about abstract matters. That’s why prehistoric societies are more than concrete – they didn’t have the time to hit upon abstraction (in the language of the rare modern savages who are completely cut off from civilisation there simply are no words to express abstract concepts). The rules of survival persistently demanded to concentrate only on the utilitarian benefit of concrete things. Those who distracted themselves by idle reflections perished due to not noticing danger in time.

Any instability, be it internal or external, demands additional resources for the restoration of a normal State. I.e., society sustains material losses and experiences a threat to the habitual way of life, and very often also a concrete threat to the lives of some of its members. Therefore, the first sign that can be used to distinguish the enemies of the people from their friends is whether a specific politician or political force works for stability or for destabilisation.

This is the first sign, but not the only one. If it was the only one, then everything would be simple: conservatives (evolutionists) would be friends and radicals (revolutionaries) would be enemies. But so far we can say that conservative (evolutionist) political trends harm society more rarely and the damage from them is less than it is from revolutionaries. Nevertheless, it happens that conservatives cause irreparable damage to society. After all, it is also the conservatives of the West that brought Hitler to power at the time, and the nowadays neo-Nazis were raised and educated by the present neoconservatives (neocons).

Sometimes conservative stability appears to be so stiffened that it rejects any, even necessary and ripened evolutionary changes. So then the arrival of revolutionary forces becomes inevitable. But there is revolution… and revolution. For example, the Great French revolution submerged the country in bloody Moloch while the revolution of 1830, which overthrew not just the same dynasty, but Charles X – the younger brother of Louis XVI, took place not without gunfire, but practically without bloody excesses.

The English bourgeois revolution caused rivers of blood, and the “Glorious Revolution” in this same England that happened a little more than 40 years later in general took place “in white gloves”. The Meiji’s revolution took place in Japan in an absolutely vegetarian way in comparison with the actions of the founder of the Kamakura shogunate – the first in the history of Japan – Minamoto no Yoritomo, which had a revolutionary character.

I.e., not every revolution immerses the country in destructive bloody bacchanalia. There are revolutions that take place in a quite evolutionarily way – some kind of conservative revolutions. Therefore, we can ascertain that revolutions happen there and then where the conservative government blocks those evolutionary changes that already ripened. Thus, if it is the smaller (but active) part of society that is eager for changes, the revolution can be extremely bloody and destructive because it is required to quell the resistance (even if it is passive) of the biggest part of society, and then to also paralyse (at the first stage) and then reformat or destroy the old (not loyal to revolutionaries) state apparatus. But if the changes are supported by the most part of society, the power resisting them falls like an overripe pear within several hours (or days) after the first public statement of its opponents is made. But repression doesn’t take place – the old order already has no chance of returning.

As we see, conservatism or revolutionism bring us closer to the definition of objective enemies and friends of the people, but they also aren’t an absolute measure – exceptions are so frequent that they themselves become the rule, allowing to affirm that in certain cases the stagnated conservatism turns into a force hostile towards the interests of society, while moderate revolutionism acts in the public’s interests.

In principle, there is just one last step for us to make. Now we can define that enemies of the people are those political forces that, contrary to the will of the people (although often with the best of intentions), try to hold onto the obsolete regime by force and repression or to impose a new regime.

It doesn’t matter if the person tries to preserve a thousand-year monarchy or aspires to a communist future, what is important is the methods they use to achieve their goals. If the politician or party holds a free discussion, proving its case, and, after having lost, accepts defeat and tries to recoup during the next election cycle, irrespective of how they see the future of the country, then they are the friends of the people because they act in accordance with procedure, giving the people the opportunity to decide for themselves how to live further. The more precisely the friends of the people observe lawful procedure, and the less they swindle during pre-election discussions, then the more friendly they are.

Enemies of the people are those politicians and political forces that, not having the support of the majority, dream of physically destroying their political opponents and forcing society to realise their ideas. Most often they not only dream, but also (with different degrees of success) try to destabilise the State in order to catch good luck in the muddy water and kill all those who aren’t with them.

We can call them radicals and counterpose them to evolutionists. There is just a need to understand that everyone can be radical: fascists, nazis, and communists of all colors and shades, as well as monarchists, bourgeois democrats, liberals, ecologists, anyone. As soon as you hear from the person that in order to achieve general happiness there is a need to gun down or jail some social groups, don’t ask them what views they have – regardless of what they are, a radical is stood in front of you. Even if their ideas sound nice, run away from them and never support them, because having gunned down today’s enemies, they will find new ones. Eventually your turn will surely come, even if today, gently patting your shoulder, they say: “You and I are the Himalayas, and they are pygmies”. The radical solves any political debates with the help of a bullet (or prison), and sooner or later a discussion will arise between people who are the most ideologically like-minded.

The radical respects only their own opinion and is confident only in their own correctness. They doesn’t reflect, they kill. At the same time they consider themselves to be something like a forest warden, relieving society of a harmful element. There, where radicals receive absolute, unrestricted power – like in Kampuchea with Pol Pot, they quickly lead matters towards the genocide of those same people for who they are going to do much good. And if they aren’t stopped in time, then there won’t be people – in the fight for people’s happiness the people will be simply used up to waste.

Representatives of any currents can be evolutionists too: monarchists and communists, liberals and democrats, even people of extremely right-wing views can appear to be quite law-abiding citizens. Another thing is that some extremely left-wing (communist) and extremely right-wing (fascist and nazi) political trends already in their basic ideology assume the violent seizure of power and forceful suppression of dissent. That’s why in order to differentiate between evolutionists and radicals very often new names are being invented for moderate wings of radical political forces. But recently radicals, disguising themselves as being normal, also refuse compromised brands. Thus, for example, Ukrainian nazis still say that they are not at all nazis, but democrats. Moreover, during the same declaration they can talk about the democratic structure of their State and immediately approve of illegal arrests, detention without trial, miscarriages of justice, and arbitrary political murders, motivating this by the need to defend the State.

Remember – if you are promised to be defended at the expense of someone being killed (or having their civil rights taken away), then it means you are dealing with a radical, and simply put – the enemy of the people. They, of course, are ready to kill others’ people for the benefit of their own and to destroy extraneous social groups for the good of justice, but not everyone’s hand can reach others’ people (you can have your hands beaten to the extent that you won’t be able to collect your bones), that’s why social experiments should be carried out on their own people. And somehow it always happens in such a way that the greater the number of hostile elements are destroyed on the way to happiness, the farther and unreachable happiness becomes.

It is possible to understand the inevitability of war (although it is necessary to seek to avoid it up to the last moment), and there is a need to be always ready for war (the enemy likes to attack unexpectedly), but the person calling for war (whether it be an internal or external war) as a way of solving actual political problems is always the enemy of the people. Because war destroys the people (it happens that this happens up to the end). But those who were lucky enough to survive are obliged to longly and persistently restore their habitat.

There is only one effective type of war – the war that, by Sun Tzu’s definition, wasn’t conducted, i.e., when the victory over the enemy is won without military operations and in general without a formal exit from peacetime. It is the highest form of victory that only really great politicians who aren’t born every century are capable of achieving.

Radicals in general don’t understand at all where the victory lies. Their limited intellect doesn’t allow them to see the victory until rivers of blood have been spilled (moreover, from their point of view the more blood that is shed, the more majestic the victory is). It is precisely limited intellect generating a feeling of social and political inferiority that limits the political tools of radicals to simple violence, because as a result it is the psyche that suffers, so in the end we receive a psychologically unstable (or even psychologically defective) individual who tries to send their people to the slaughter. In direct terms – a monkey with a grenade.

And it is precisely they who are the enemies of the people, because they (for some it is for the sake of honor and glory, for others it is about implementing childhood complexes, and some are just trying to avenge the fact that they weren’t personally appreciated) urge the people to go and die beautifully instead of living worthily. The final result is that they are the enemies of all the people on the planet because they push them straight into an apocalypse (not necessarily a nuclear one, but one that is no less effective all the same).