In 1904, Prince Pyotr Mirsky was appointed Minister of the Interior by Tsar Nicholas II, after the previous Minister of the Interior, Vyacheslav von Plehve, had been assassinated by Jewish revolutionaries. This was a volatile time in Tsarist Russia, as trust in the system was at a low. Liberal reformers wanted what they thought the West had in terms of political freedom. Revolutionaries were conducting terror campaigns in order to undermine the tsarist system.
For his part, Mirsky was both a reformer and loyal to the Tsarist system. In his role as Governor-General of Vilna, which is modern day Lithuania and Belarus, Mirsky implemented liberal reforms like granting political rights, ending the pogroms against the Jews, and allowing a degree of autonomy to ethnic minorities. In his role as Minister of the Interior, he granted freedom of the press, freedom of religion and increased the power and authority of local self-government.
Mirsky was not a reformer because he had dreams of creating a liberal paradise to replace tsarist Russia. He was a reformer because he worried that the lack of reform would result in more radicalism, like the sort that had claimed the life of his predecessor and the life of the Tsar’s grandfather. For Mirsky and his supporters within the system, liberal reform was a way to address some of the issues of the people, while also maintaining the legitimacy of the tsarist system.
Uncertain times always product men like Mirsky. He was not the only reformer around Tsar Nicholas before the revolution. There were others but all of them failed to arrest the process that eventually led to revolution. Reformers were around the King Louis XVI and among the aristocracy prior to the French Revolution. They failed for the same reason Mirsky failed. There were men who feared reform would go too far and there were those who feared reform would not go far enough.
This is what should come to mind while watching Elon Musk try to navigate his way through the current crisis. Musk is a reformer at heart. He bought Twitter because he thought it was drifting away from its essential purpose which is to allow for free and open debate about the issues of the day. His inhospitable takeover of the company was driven by a genuine concern for what is happening in the West. Like all reformers, Musk fears what could happen if current trends continue.
It may seem a bit odd to compare Musk to Mirsky or any of the other reformers who existed in revolutionary times. After all, Musk is the world’s richest man. In the managerial age, however, that only buys a seat at the table. The nine other men in the top-10 richest list are worth five times Musk combined. Apple has a hedge fund that is ten times the wealth of Musk. Blackrock controls trillions in assets and has unlimited access to the highest reaches of government.
While Musk may be the world’s richest man and the most famous of the plutocracy, he is just one voice among many. The managerial elite is thousands, and the managerial class is millions of people. This new class is analogous to the aristocratic classes that existed in 18th century France and 19th century Russia. The best Musk or any liberal reformer can do is influence the people in the system. This is what Musk is attempting with his mild reforms of Twitter.
In this illiberal age, Elon Musk has appointed himself to be the minister of speech on-line and is attempting to roll back the reactionary controls that were put in place by the ruling class over the last decade. While Twitter is not the internet of old, Musk has rolled back much of the censorship. He still bans certain accounts, mostly as a way to tell the reactionaries that his reforms will not go too far. Otherwise, he has had a light hand on the censorship of his platform.
This is where that old revolutionary vice shows its jaws. The side that fears the reforms will go too far has successfully organized an advertising boycott. State sanctioned pressure groups like Media Matters have organized other pressure groups to harass companies that were advertising on Twitter. Those companies dropped their ads, resulting in a fifty percent decline in ad revenue. Musk has been forced to hire a girl boss approved by the reactionaries to be his new CEO.
Meanwhile, the other jaw of the vice sees what is happening and assumes Musk will eventually be brought to heel. Open sites like Gab continue to flourish, building on the alternative platform model. Amusingly and a bit ironically, the hard-core censors are abandoning Twitter for the opposite reason. Mass media companies, no longer assured of artificial reach on Twitter, are also jumping ship. Musk is facing the same dilemma all reformers face when taking the middle position.
On January 22, 1905, soldiers of the Imperial Guard fired on demonstrators in Saint Petersburg as they marched towards the Winter Palace. Hundreds were killed and thousands were arrested in what came to be known as Bloody Sunday. Mirsky denied having any role in it, but he was blamed by his conservative opponents, as well as the radical opponents of his half-measures. Mirsky did the honorable thing and resigned from his office and retired from politics.
In the end, Mirsky was like all prior reformers in that he was both right and wrong about what was happening. He was correct that radicalism was spreading due to the inability of the system to address the issues of the times. He was wrong in thinking that the solutions to the problems of the system could be found in the system. Just as there was no saving King Louis XVI and the old order, there was no saving Tsar Nicholas II and the system that made him possible.
This is where liberal reformers like Musk find themselves. On the one hand, they are correct in fearing a rising tide of radicalism. He rightly sees that it is driven in part by the abuses of the ruling class, of which he is a part. The trouble is the system cannot withstand open debate. It cannot risk questioning the shibboleths that sustain the moral framework at the heart of the managerial system. In the end, reformers will be crushed by that old vice that has destroyed prior reformers.
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Arguably the disaster for Tsarist Russia from WW1 provided the essential catalyst for revolution. Without it the Tsarist regime could probably have hobbled on. Likewise for pre-revolutionary France: the high expense of the war with the British of 1756-1763 probably provided the catalyst for successful revolution. In both cases enfeebled regimes could have stumbled on but add a crisis and they were toast. Probably likewise for the enfeebled US regime: some crisis will be the catalyst for radical ( dare I say revolutionary?) change. Since there are several latent and incipient crises on the horizon to choose from, tis but a matter of time.
6
The Russo-Japanese war was the crucial error. That humiliation is what set the ball rolling. It is also an example of how an ossified and incompetnat regime staggers into disaster. Washington’s support of Ukraine looks similar. Like the Russian in 1904, Washington was sure this would be simple.
7
I would argue Iraq ushered in the revolution, and the accident of Trump was a glimpse of a possibly real Thermidor over the horizon that caused the Regime to go mad(der). The miscalculation over Russian sanctions may indeed be the predicate that takes down the Regime, which has been a revolutionary government much like the provisional Kerensky version since Iraq paved the way for Obama. Here’s to hoping the Whites prevail this time.
5
In the Oval Office, a geriatric geezer laughs and says, “Let them eat cack…”
We seem to be offered our choice of catalysts if you are correct. Noise is being made about war with China now…😖
3
“In the end, reformers will be crushed by that old vice that has destroyed prior reformers.”
Radicals already have crushed the system. Musk is the equivalent of Mirsky tinkering with the Russian Empire after the Czar and his family were taken to the basement. Just yesterday the “Department of Justice” declared that the coup is old news and all is well. The radicals are mopping up now, which Musk and many would-be reformers are belatedly discovering.
There indeed may be a Thermidorian Reaction over the horizon, but Musk isn’t Napoleon and Twitter isn’t the White Terror. This thing will burn until there is nothing left to burn, which may not be all that far off.
1
Possibly. Certainly plausible… but I’m sure the Czar thought he’d mopped up a few times before he was taken to the basement.
1
It’s amusing watching Musk cause lunatics to melt down, and I had fun watching the Trump “Town Hall,” in which the CNN female robot kept getting so angry it looked like her circuits were about to fry. But neither Musk nor Trump is a Great Man in the sense Carlyle defined it. Trump at least is a “Big Man,” in the anthropological sense, the kind who could defend a tribe or a village or a castle fiefdom pretty ably enough.
I have trouble even comparing Musk to Carnegie or Mellon, who at least gave us some beautiful architecture. Musk meanwhile is cluttering up low earth orbit with cubesats and his b.s. cars are basically a libel against internal combustion, which is still the best method we’ve got for the personally owned auto. His restoring Andrew Anglin and getting rid of Kevin MacDonald on twitter also would suggest that, like Trump, he’s mostly an entertainer.
I also think we’ve passed the potential of reforming the elite, even with help from sympathetic/sane elites. Greed is one thing, but if left unchecked, it descends into true degeneracy and then madness. Someone like Pelosi is in the Howard Hughes/Michael Jackson realm of unreality, or King Ludwig spending his empire’s entire fortune to create a lavish production of an opera. Soros has stated he views himself as an Old Testament God, literally quoted in the LA Times as “the creator of Everything.” We’re in the “Sun King” realm, the brains poisoned by arsenic-based makeup powder, towering wigs, orgies in halls of mirrors while the peasants starve terrain.
If anything, a reasonable elite like Musk is just delaying the inevitable, perhaps dangerously, like telling yourself you’ll just take a quick nap after getting a concussion, after which you’ll head to the hospital. It reminds me of what Ernst Von Salomon overheard an Organisation Consul member saying after he attended a Walter Rathenau speech. “He will be killed soon, as he is too reasonable.” A month later Rathenau got chopped down by an MP-18 on his way home to the Grunewald.
8
“like Trump, he’s mostly an entertainer”
Bored, incredibly wealthy men who pursue an expensive hobby and entertain us in the process, to be precise. The Regime, which has been revolutionary since Obama, will destroy Musk when the time comes.
2
So where are we headed?
But first, some background. Societal models were initially developed as tools of research, then as tools of advertising/sales, then as tools of prediction, and finally as tools of mass social manipulation. The latter is now being used skillfully to both control and modify macro social behaviors. And the goals of these efforts are as diverse as the array of power-players using them. They do this because it “works” so it’s not going away any time soon.
This phenomenon is a bit like hypnosis in that it can only take you so far before primal fail-safe mechanisms kick in. This is how revolutions occur and sustain themselves. And starvation (or abject hunger) is often the critical driver. As such, the only reliable way to postpone revolution is to keep the plates spinning as long as possible. Which gets evermore difficult as prolonged affluence eventually kills off productivity.
The West is currently facing a key tipping point. They gambled on being able to rape Ukrainian and Russian resources as a means of keeping the plates spinning for a few more decades, but that is about to go up in smoke. And when the smoke clears, the revolution begins. It will start in Europe.
3
It will be more of a counter-revolution, but, yeah, it will start in Europe. It would be no surprise if we are treated to a new version of the failing Soviet system propping up a Jaruzelski type.
1
I don’t think the metaphor of Musk as Mirsky holds in this case. The Z-Man has a Procrustean bed called “the system must be destroyed,” so he goal-seeks every metaphor to that end.
I rather doubt that Musk has any set of higher ideals that he operates by. He is a government subsidies whore and, through his validation of the electrical vehicle scam with is Tesla company, a major destructive force in his own right. I don’t care for him.
Y’know, Z… I wonder if you’re not reaching a bit on this one? Sure there’s much to be learned from history…but what’s happening in the insane unplumbed profundity of modern liberal America? I don’t see any parallels in old Czarist Russia.
In that conflict people knew what they wanted. The players were on their teams, they knew who their teammates were, and by today’s standards they even had rules of sorts to play by. Today?
The wahmen and queers don’t even know what they want beyond sodomizing your kids. The vibrants want free chit but will kill each other for it as readily as Whitey. As for Elon… he is No statesman, he’s not even a cloud person, nor does he seem to have any clout with the jews. In point of fact he’s really a shyster… but a very good one at that.
Twitter will only work and pay if both sides of the Great Divide use it. There is nothing to be gained by driving the left or the right out. He needs them both. In point of fact he is no real friend of the conservative right in any sense of the word.
I suspect the new liberal Girl Boss is the same as the old conservative Mitch McConnel type paid actors. In his boots, I’d give the Girl Boss a script and a vibrant supporting cast of suitably vibrant co-stars… and her job will basically be PR work with the growing numbers of disenchanted lefties. Elon will do the same for the users from the right, if he can’t do it himself. Regardless though…HE will be the decision maker and the last call will be his own. Elon doesn’t give a hoot about people or issues, he is about $$$$. Why – He’d dump Twitter in a heartbeat if he could get his money out of it!
We live in wonderful times, really. The mass media is on life support. Alternatives to controlled social media are everywhere. There will be very little money to be made with them, and incredible fortunes can be lost on them.
Things will go kinetic soon, unless something can be worked out. Men like Elon and his girl boss will have no say in that whatsoever…
1
This business with the new diversity powerskirt CEO brings to mind Musk’s recent meeting with Chuck Schumer, after which he jokingly said the reason for the meeting was to discuss AI. I wonder if that was when the deal was cemented. Who exactly does Schumer act for?
1
“In the end, reformers will be crushed by that old vice that has destroyed prior reformers.”
The French and Bolshevik revolutions are the two modern examples, most frequently, cited, of revolutionaries toppling a corrupt system that could no longer sustain itself. But the analogy may or may not apply here. Revolutions have been crushed, and dictatorships have prevailed.
Even as I was reading this piece, an email arrived from my woke town’s D.I.E. committee. A discussion will be held, on Saturday, at the town’s community center, to take up the following questions:
*What is the role of the white ally to Black and BIPOC communities?
*How can you shed the cape of savior to become the warrior ally?
The worst of progressive parasites may eventually be swept aside, but it’s too soon to predict that the beat won’t go on.