“Empire of Lies” – Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

“Of all the endangered species, Truth is the most endangered. I am watching it go out.” – Paul Craig Roberts, September 4, 2019

What makes Paul Craig Roberts’ writing so powerful, is his ability to cut through false narratives and identify the elite agendas that are shaping events. This is the work of a truth-teller which is the designation that is typically applied to Roberts.

The term refers to a person of deep moral convictions who devotes his life to exposing the lies and fabrications of the state and its corrupt allies. This is what Roberts has been doing for more than 40 years, and this is why thousands of people around the world flock to his website every day. They know his posts will be hard-hitting, well-researched and engrossing. More importantly, they know he will make every effort to bring them the unvarnished truth just as he has for more than four decades.

Roberts’ latest collection of essays, titled Empire Of Lies, is an assortment of articles that show the remarkable scope and depth of the author’s knowledge. Frequent visitors to his website will notice some familiar themes here while other topics may not have been as thoroughly explored.

For example, there are many essays on the fragile US economy, the experimental covid-19 vaccine, the war in Ukraine, the stolen presidential election and the January 6 fraud. At the same time, there are a number of other articles that one might not typically associate with Roberts. These include a short but riveting post on 9-11, ominous reflections on the year 2022, the manipulation of the bullion markets, and an astonishing piece titled Germany did not Start World War 2. Here’s a brief excerpt from the article:

“The aims of the National Socialist German Workers Party (was) to correct the unemployment caused by unjust reparations forced on Germany following World War 1 and to put Germany back together.

World War 2 began when the Churchill government and the French declared war on Germany.

The German leader, Adolf Hitler, had reacquired German territories given to Denmark, France and Czechoslovakia by the humiliating Versailles Treaty and had united with German Austria without war. The British guarantee emboldened the Polish military dictatorship to refuse to negotiate the return of German territory. All Hitler contributed was to force countries given German territory by the Versailles Treaty to release the lands and the Germans, who were heavily persecuted in Czechoslovakia and Poland. Hitler’s restoration of Germany’s national boundaries was misrepresented in the British and US press as ‘German aggression’.

This fake news story of German aggression was used to build the case that Germany, which was merely recovering its national territory, and rescuing German people from persecution in Czechoslovakia and Poland, was an aggressor with world conquest as its goal.

Hitler stated many times that he did not want, or intend, war with Britain and France and only intended to recover the lost German populations stolen from Germany by the unjust Versailles Treaty.” – Empire Of Lies, Paul Craig Roberts, Korsgaard Publishing, page 280, 2023

In these few paragraphs, Roberts obliterates the foundation upon which our understanding of World War 2 rests. The author challenges the ideas that:

• Hitler started the war
• Poland represented the first step in Hitler’s broader plan to conquer the world.

If neither of these is true, then we need to ask ourselves why Hitler’s invasion of Poland was used as a pretext for a full-blown world war instead of treated as a regional ‘border dispute’ as one would expect? Clearly, there was no need for France and England to declare war on Germany when Germany was simply gathering back the territories it had lost after Versailles. Had cooler heads prevailed, World War 2 could have been avoided. Here’s more from the text:

“During his political rise, Hitler had hardly concealed his attempt to dislodge Germany’s tiny Jewish population from the stranglehold they had gained over German media and finance, and instead run the country in the best interests of the 99% German majority, a proposal that provoked the bitter hostility of Jews everywhere. Indeed, immediately after he came into office, a major London newspaper had carried a memorable 1933 headline announcing that the Jews of the world had declared war on Germany, and were organizing an international boycott to starve the Germans into submission.”

This is another astonishing excerpt that conflicts with historical narratives propagated in the West. In the United States, students are told that Hitler’s treatment of the Jews was fueled by his insatiable antisemitism, but here the author suggests that there were social and economic reasons for his policies as well.

That doesn’t diminish the gravity of Hitler’s depredations, but it does create a more plausible explanation for why events unfolded the way they did. At the very least, Roberts provides a thought-provoking analysis that veers from the oversimplified “Hitler was a homicidal maniac” narrative that is used to answer every question and to effectively blunt critical thinking. In contrast, Roberts’ treatment of the topic generates curiosity which points the reader in the direction of more research which is the author’s intention.

Roberts treatment of the Civil War is equally provocative. In a chapter titled How We Know The So-Called “Civil War” Was Not About Slavery, Roberts disputes the widely-held view that the war between the states was launched to free the slaves. Here’s an excerpt from the piece that helps to explain:

“Two days before Lincoln’s inauguration as the 16th president, Congress, consisting of only the northern states, passed overwhelmingly on March 2, 1861, the Corwin Amendment that gave constitutional protection to slavery. Lincoln endorsed the amendment in his inaugural address saying, ‘I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.’

Quite clearly, the North was not prepared to go to war to end slavery when on the very eve of war the US Congress and incoming president were in the process of making it unconstitutional to abolish slavery.

Here we have total proof that the North wanted the South kept in the Union far more than the North wanted to abolish slavery.

The real issue between the North and South could not be reconciled on the basis of accommodating slavery. The real issue was economics as DiLorenzo, Charles Beard and other historians have documented. The North offered to preserve slavery irrevocably, but the North did not offer to give up the high tariffs and economic policies that the South saw as inimical to its interests.”

Later in the text, Roberts lifts a quote from Lincoln’s inaugural address that further supports his point of view. Lincoln says:

“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

Roberts presents his case rationally and persuasively, but Lincoln made other comments that appear to conflict with those above. He also said, “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public consciousness should rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

Even so, the passing of the Corwin Amendment in 1861 strongly suggests that Congress was not planning to go to war to end slavery otherwise they wouldn’t have supported the bill. So, how is it that so many Americans cling to the idea that the Civil War was a struggle to end slavery?

Just as historians have tried to describe World War II as a “morally unambiguous” intervention, so too, historians have transformed the Civil War from a bloody dispute over tariffs into a righteous struggle against human bondage.

Unfortunately, the propaganda does not align with the facts which suggests that more mundane factors were involved. Lincoln’s actions were not guided by some higher principle any more than FDR’s efforts to drag the country to the Second World War was aimed at “defeating fascism”.

In both cases, the presidents pursued policies that were aimed at crushing their enemies while increasing the power of the state. It’s the job of the court historian to make these recurrent bloodbaths look like lofty moral crusades, but they are not, which is why we are fortunate to have researchers like Roberts to strip away the fakery and expose the self-serving machinations of raw political ambition.

In another chapter titled The Proof is In: The Election Was Stolen, Roberts contests the outcome of the 2020 presidential election not based on voting machine snafus or the mail-in ballot fiasco or any of the other technical glitches that beset the election. Instead, he presents a number of common sense observations that reveal the utter implausibility of a Biden victory. Take a look:

“Consider that Joe Biden’s Twitter account has 20 million followers.

Trump’s Twitter account has 88.8 million followers.

Consider that Joe Biden’s Facebook has 7.8 million followers.

Trump’s Facebook account has 34.72 million followers.

How likely is it that a person with 4 or 5 times the following of his rival lost the election?

Consider that Trump’s campaign appearances were heavily attended but that Biden’s were avoided.

Consider that despite Biden’s total failure to animate voters during the presidential campaign, he won 15 million more votes than Barack Obama did in his 2012 re-election.

Consider that Biden won despite under-performing Hillary Clinton’s 2016 vote in every US urban country, but outperformed Clinton in Democrat-controlled Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and Philadelphia the precise cities where the most obvious and blatant electoral fraud was committed.

Consider that Biden won despite Trump bettering his 2016 vote by ten million votes and Trump’s record support from minority voters.

Consider that Biden won despite losing the bell-weather counties that have always predicted the election outcome and the bell-weather states of Ohio and Florida.

Consider that Biden won in Georgia, a completely red state with a red governor and red legislature both House and Senate. Somehow a red state voted for a blue president.

Consider that Biden won despite the Democrats losing representation in the House.”

There are many more of these eye-opening observations in the book, but they all underscore the same dismal fact; that the election was stolen and that the wrong man now sits in the White House.

It’s very clever of Roberts to avoid abstruse technical issues and to make his case based on the glaring inconsistencies that ordinary people can understand. The idea that Joe Biden, who was unable to draw enough supporters to fill a small gymnasium, got 15 million more votes than Barack Obama is laughable in the extreme. Roberts should be applauded for taking the time to create this compelling compilation that greatly reinforces his thesis that the election was rigged.

This is what we have come to expect from Roberts who always goes the extra mile to bring the truth to his readers. His latest contribution, Empire Of Lies, follows in that same tradition. The book is a varied digest of the author’s recent work covering a broad range of topics that include everything from Neo-Nazis in Ukraine to the manipulation of gold prices.

It’s a fascinating read that moves quickly due to uniqueness of the subject-matter and Roberts blunt but explosive writing style. Simply put, there’s something here for everyone. I’ll finish with a quote from Harold Pinter’s Nobel acceptance speech which, in many ways, could have been a description of Paul Craig Roberts.

“A writer’s life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection – unless you lie.

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man.” Harold Pinter, Nobel lecture, 2005

I repeat: “unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination.”

Indeed, that is Roberts in a nutshell.

Author: Michael Whitney (renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State)

 

yogaesoteric
September 12, 2023