be compared to the different successive stages in the livesrnof certain parasites, which go through a cycle which is apparentlyrncapricious, but which is in fact necessary to theirrncomplete development. They must, for instance, gornthrough a river mollusc, then pass into a sheep, and finallyrnlodge, not without deleterious effects, in the body of arnhuman. [In the case of ideology, the host organism is arnnation], whence it will return to the river. At everyrnchange of location, there is an equivalent change of form.rnAt this point, I think it is possible to state that the third child ofrnthe 20th century, the sibling of communism and nationalrnsocialism, is finally reaching its ideological synthesis. Thatrnideology, which 1 will call by the name it has proudly chosen forrnitself, democratic capitalism, having completed its incubationrnperiod and outlasted its rivals—and indeed having absorbed arnnumber of their impulses and even, in many cases, their formerrnpersonnel, much as in the post-World War II period, in manyrnEuropean countries, former fascists flocked to the CommunistrnParty—is finally taking center stage as the ruling ethos of thernworld’s only surviving superpower. While it would take anotherrnBesangon writing another The Rise of the Gulag to detailrnwhat may be an incipient totalitarianism, three key featuresrndeserve comment.rnMarxism-Leninism styled itself the champion of peace,rnprogress, and socialism, terms that had meaning only withinrnthe closed world of ideology. Likewise democratic capitalismrntouts as its principles a trinity of democracy, human rights, andrnfree markets, the latter being very broad and encompassing exchangernof people—i.e., unrestricted immigration—as well asrngoods and services. These concepts do not necessarily have anyrnrelationship to the normal, nonideological meaning of thernwords and are in fact endlessly manipulated by the politicalrnelite. Democracy does not mean simply broad participation ofrncitizens in the business of governance, but is an ideological conceptrnthat encompasses the progressive social content of thernpopular decision. Accordingly, if the citizens of California voternto withdraw benefits to illegal aliens or to repeal affirmative action,rnor if voters in Colorado prohibit localities from passing gayrnrights ordinances, this is not an exercise of democracy but a violationrnof democracy, and the courts are obligated to overturnrnthe vote. Likewise, if the Danes vote against the Maastrichtrnagreement, they have to vote again until they get it right; thernsame thing happened in Ireland on the question of divorce.rnFree markets generally do not mean just the private exchange ofrngoods and services for mutual benefit but encompass, forrninstance, the right of financial elites closely tied to the governmentrnto have their risks underwritten by their less-well-offrnfellow-citizens, as in the Mexican bailout; profits are privatized,rnlosses socialized. As was the case with communism, the corernconcepts are understood to be manifest in an inevitable globalrnmarch of progress toward (in Francis Fukuyama’s famousrnphrase) the “end of history.” We are building Utopia.rnMorality is a function not of objective behavior but of thernplace of the actor within the ideological system. Marxism-rnLeninism expressed the concept in terms of kto-kogo, “whowhom,”rnand Maoism employed it to the extent of recognizingrnentire nations as either progressive or reactionary. We see thernsame dualistic concept applied by the democratic capitalists today:rnif Iraq kills Kurds, it is bad; if Turkey kills Kurds, it is good.rnIf Muslims and Croats want to secede from Yugoslavia, it isrndemocracy; if Serbs (and now, Croats) want to leave Bosnia, itrnis aggression. If NATO warplanes overfly Bosnian Serb territory,rnthe Serb air defenses are a threat to the planes, but thernplanes are not themselves threatening. The Soviet Union, asrnleader of the “socialist camp,” authoritatively judged states andrntheir actions within this dualist scheme during the Cold War,rnand the United States, having assumed leadership of the “internationalrncommunity,” makes similar judgments today. Thernkto-kogo parallel with communism even extends to the domesticrnsphere, with, for example, the Bolshevik concept of the “sociallyrnfriendly,” i.e., common criminals that the regime consideredrnclass allies against the bourgeoisie. We see a similarrnphenomenon in what Samuel Francis has called “anarchotyranny,”rnmeaning the seemingly helpless posture assumed byrnthe reigning authorities in the face of real crime (murder, rape,rndrug dealing) as juxtaposed with the brutality to which ordinaryrncitizens are often subjected.rnIn general, while the use of force is available to the elites,rnmore useful is the employment of secondary concepts andrnmovements such as feminism, environmentalism, homosexualism,rnconsumerism, evolutionism, hedonism, educationism, antidiscriminationism,rnetc. They are used to further destroy traditionalrnmoral restraints, the family, and national identity,rnleaving an atomized population without resistance to ideologicalrndirection. Force is less necessary than it was in the ease ofrncommunism or national socialism: there is no need (yet) to jailrnor commit to punitive psychiatry Joseph Sobran or SamuelrnFrancis—only to brand them as being outside the mainstream.rnAs one policy analyst has put it, the main levers of control arernnot Pavlovian but Freudian, the message more subliminal thanrnconscious. A symptom of the tension between rulers and mledrnis the prevalence of conspiracy theories (usually involving thernCouncil on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, etc.),rnwhich, as Francis has observed, fall into the error of mistakingrnfor ruling organizations the organizations to which the rulingrnelites often belong.rnFinally, while the United States is without doubt the mainrnhost for the globalist ideology (analogous, in the case of communism,rnwith the Soviet Union), it is not the only one. One ofrnthe sharp divisions among the hegemonist elites is whether, asrnthe Clinton administration believes, the United States shouldrnbe the principal enforcer for an international order legitimatedrnby the United Nations, or whether, as the neoeonservatives believe,rnthe United Nations should be brought into line with therndictates of a hegemonist United States.rnIt is hard to say whether the above consolidation of powerrnis already an accomplished fact, or whether it is still short of itsrncompleted form. Has the United States already been irrevocablyrntransformed into a second evil empire or not? I can say thatrneven today in Washington it is almost impossible to have a seriousrndiscussion with most policymakers about our country’srninterests without entering the world of pseudoreality, withoutrnbeing treated to an endless ode to the shared values of democracy,rnhuman rights, and free markets, along with a defense ofrnthe righteousness of forcibly sharing them with lesser breeds. Irnconcede that one of the disabilities of living and working in therncapital of the New Wodd Order is a lack of appreciation for therncommon sense that I trust still remains in the country at large,rnwhich some believe will eventually beat back the ideologicalrntide. Conversely, I submit that those living in the real Americarn—which I assume is out there somewhere—little suspectrnhow bad things really are. I would be glad to be proved wrong.rnJUNE 1997/31rnrnrn