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Panaji, Jun 20 (IANS): Nationalism is the soul of the BJPs ideology and the very oxygen which fuels India, Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari said on Saturday in a virtual rally to address party workers in Goa.

Gadkari also said that the party was not against the minorities, alleging that repeated attempts were being made to project the BJP as an anti-minority party.

"We are not against minorities, but we are nationalists. Nationalism is our soul and the oxygen of our country, that is our belief," Gadkari said, as he blamed Pakistan for creating rifts between the Hindu and Muslim communities in the country.

"We have fought wars with Pakistan on three occasions. In all three wars, we defeated Pakistan. Pakistan realised that they cannot defeat India in a war. So they started exporting terrorists," Gadkari said.

"They executed bomb blasts in India, in which innocent persons were killed. The effort was to create a rift and struggle between Hindus and Muslims, which would destroy India," he also said.

The Union Minister also said Communism as an ideology is finished in China and Russia and Kerala's Left Democratic Front government may go down in history as the last Communist government.

Gadkari further said that BJP's pursuit of the 'Antodaya' principle laid down by the party's founder Deen Dayal Upadhyay could prove to be the economic model which the world needs with the decline in Communist, Socialist and Capitalist economic models.

"Importantly, Communists are finished in Russia and China. What they have adopted is actually a capitalist and a liberal economic model, on the lines of the US economic model," Gadkari said.

The Chinese city of Shanghai, he said, was in fact developed by wealthy industrialists of Mongolian descent, who invested in China after the economy was liberalised.

"China developed Shanghai by utilising that investment," Gadkari said.

Communism, Gadkari said, was of no use to the world because there could be no economic development based on the ideology.

"Today Communist ideology is finished... Tripura had a Communist regime. We did not have a single MLA there. But in the last state Assembly elections, we won full majority and ousted the Lefist hegemony in Tripura," Gadkari said.

"Although there is a Communist government in place in Kerala now, the state will be known to have the last Communist government in the history of Communism," the Union Minister said.

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Nationalism is the soul of BJP's ideology: Gadkari - Daijiworld.com

Playwright and president, Vclav Havel was widely regarded as the moral compass of modern Czechia. The recipient of numerous peace awards and accolades, his career as first a dissident, then politician and statesman spans Czechoslavakias communist regime, the Velvet Revolution that brought about that regimes demise, and the creation of Czechia.Yet his contribution to political theory is often overlooked, despite the pertinence of his work, even today.

Born in Prague in 1936, Havel spent much of his early years in a Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, only to then witness the communist take over in 1948. Dictatorship therefore set the background to his thinking, and the absurdities of one-party rule was a frequent narrative in his work.

His plays were central to his political involvement, but he was initially careful. Though works such as The Garden Party and The Memorandum, poked fun at the paradoxes of the communist regime, he avoided the dangers of making explicit attacks on Marxist thought.

However, the Czechoslovak Communist party could not tolerate Havel forever. After the Prague Spring of 1968 and the subsequent Soviet invasion and repression, much of the Czechoslovak dissident community channeled their criticism into art indirectly, holding up a fogged mirror to the regime at a time where too much clarity could harm. Here, Havel increasingly pushed his luck. His famous 1975 letter to Dr Gustv Husk, then general secretary of the Czechoslovak party, led to tighter secret polices surveillance, making it almost inevitable he would one day find himself in prison.

The letter is seen as one of the first expressly political works of Havel, which are often overlooked for his plays. However, Havels perspectives as a political philosopher and theorist, particularly from the Eastern bloc, is a significant contribution to the canon of political theory.

The letter to Dr Gustv Husk came after almost half a decade of normalisation, acting as a direct address to the general secretary and highlighting the various repressions of the system and the indignities of communism. However, its tone is not a letter of protest or despair, rather a declaration of war that betrays genius in its subtleties.

He begins by addressing Husk as Dear Doctor, implicitly denying the legitimacy of Husks leadership of the Communist party, as well as the partys very existence. He then delves into the nature of dictatorship, Why are people in fact behaving in the way they do? he writes, Why do they do all these things that taken together form the impressive image of a totally united society, giving total support to its government?

For any unprejudiced observer, the answer I think is self-evident, they are driven to it by fear, he answers his own question, for fear of losing his job the school teacher teaches things he does not believe, fearing for his future the pupil repeats these things.

This fear, he contests, is not necessarily a mortal fear, but covert and insidious which is paradoxically worse. It waxes and wanes as people find ways to cope with the regime to the best of their ability, yet this coping renders them complicit, and the whole cycle begins again.

What is the effect on man of a system based on fear and apathy? A system driving man into a fox hole of purely material existence and offers him deceit as the main form of communication with society?, he postulates, as the only aim of this system is superficial order and general obedience, regardless of the price.

Here, Havel places emphasis on the individual, seeking to understand the perpetuation of communism through discordant apathy. In fact, the way Havel sees it, the system in which he lives under can barely be labeled as communism, but rather a parasitic order that has been established in which an idea is sold as the veil to complicity.

Havel does not just critique, but offers an alternative. He believes that culture is the main instrument of self-knowledge, and is capable of enlarging liberty and leads towards truth, albeit indirectly. While this sycophantic elevation of culture is hardly surprising for a playwright, he touches on an element of hope. His work gives the sense that culture will shine through and fight back against entropy, and the aesthetics of banality. This optimism is especially remarkable considering the seemingly concrete position of the Soviet Union and its satellite states in the 1970s. Yet perhaps it was this optimism that enabled Havel to manifest his vision without restriction.

Shortly after the letter was returned to him, supposedly unopened, but with a stern warning, the situation for political dissidents became grave. When the music group The Plastic People of the Universe were arrested in 1976 by the Czech authorities, things become too much for Havel. He became one of the leading artistic figures to protest against their arrest and vocalised his condemnation of the regimes human rights abuses in the famous Charter 77.

This led him to write his most famous political work, The Power of the Powerless. In a lot of ways, this can be seen as a progression of his original ideas, albeit on a more powerful trajectory. Yet, it certainly lacked the subtleties of his letter, and has been labeled as a manifesto of dissent, beginning with a spectre is haunting eastern Europe, the spectre of what in the West is called dissent, a boldy ironic take on Marx.

He then explores what dissidents are, and their power within a seemingly powerless situation. He illustrates this with analysis of the actions of his greengrocer. His greengrocer puts a communist slogan in his window, just as he does carrots and parsley. He has been doing it for years unquestioningly out of routine apathy. He does it, according to Havel, because everyone does it, its a fact of life, and allows the greengrocer to be in harmony with society. In his typical absurdist fashion, Havel illustrates that this sign effectively says: I know what I must do and behave in the manner expected, Im obedient and dependable, and have the right to be left alone. It is an admission that the greengrocer has accepted the rules of the game.

Yet this same greengrocer would not put a sign in the window saying: I am afraid and unquestioningly obedient, although, according to Havel its meaning is synonymous. For this would break the facade of ideology. An ideology that offers human beings an illusion of identity, dignity and morality, while making it easier to part with them.

This system of illusion works in harmony, as everyone in the society operates under this currency of ideology, a sub-current power structure that is rooted in reflecting vital interests, establishing a bridge between individuals and the components of the system.

Here, Havel views the communist regime as a form of self-regulation. Borrowing from Foucault, he establishes that with ideology, there is no need for show trials and rulers can be anonymised, as it is a dictatorship of ritual where power regularly passes through oneself, and through the mechanism of the system. This kind of self-regulation is covert and hence much more powerful than any third party repression. The signaling of the greengrocer to the state is his own self-regulation.

Yet what if this bridge was burnt?, Havel asks. What if the greengrocer stops, and revolts, stepping out of the lie and rejecting the ritual? What if he breaks the rules of the game and discovers his repressed identity, allowing him to live in the truth? Of course, he will be ostracised, sacked, but only through others playing by these same rules. It is here that Havel reveals his untamed optimism. He believes that one day this general panorama of signalling and ritual will cease and the emperor will be denounced as naked. Once the genie of truth has been let out of the bottle, it will not go back.

While this manifesto got Havel locked up, the same hope for truth led to his, and his countrys eventual step into the light. After rising to be a prominent dissident figure in the late 1980s, Havel was at the head of the Czechoslovak Velvet Revolution and his place as a figure of unity led him to become the first president of post-communist Czechoslovakia.

Although it may be easy to place Havels ideas within the context of communism and resign them there, this would be restrictive. This ritual of signalling and self regulation can be paralleled even today, almost a decade after his death, perhaps with social media, or even more subtle uses of communication such as language and body language. Havel implores us to not play by these rules that self regulate and restrict, to not worry about being harmonious within society, but instead to live within our truth.

While this idea, when stretched, may seem unrealistic and idealist, so too was his idea of ending the regime.

The real question is this: Is the brighter future really so distant?, he writes. What if it has been here for a long time already, and only our own blindness and weakness has prevented us from seeing it around us and within us.

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Why the untamed optimism of Vclav Havel still resonates strongly - Emerging Europe

These movements have deep roots in America, and they are seeking to destroy the nation.

The Black Lives Matter (blm) movement and Antifa have never been more powerful. Around the world, politicians, celebrities, businessmen and crowds are pledging allegiance to blm. But what are these movements and what do they really represent?

Black Lives Matter sounds good; very few, if any, believe that black lives dont matter. But this group is about a lot more than anti-racism.

The group was founded in 2013 after the acquittal of George Zimmerman over the killing of Trayvon Martin. Each time a black person dies at the hands of a white man or a police officer, specifically, the blm movement grows stronger.

blm was founded by three black lesbiansAlicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi. As Medium wrote, the movement, with roots all the way back to the mid-20th century, is unapologetically feminist, womanist and queer.

Alicia Garza has said that she is influenced by Assata Shakur, an African-American activist of the Black Panther party and the Black Liberation Army. Shakur sought asylum in Communist Cuba after killing a New Jersey state trooper and is on the Federal Bureau of Investigations most wanted list.

The group is about much more than freedom and justice for black people, as its own website brings out. Here are a few objectives from its website:

But the words of its leaders are even more telling (emphasis added throughout):

Furthermore, Blake Simons, a blm activist, summed up the movements real agenda in a Nov. 4, 2015, article:

Our Black Lives Matter protests have stormed the country, yet cops continue to kill us daily, and the judicial system continues to justify our deaths with acquittals, non-indictments and light sentencesall in the name of upholding the Constitution. I have come to realize that the Constitution is the root of virtually all our problems in America. In order to understand the injustices against black folks in the United States, we must look back to its foundation. The U.S. is a country that was founded on slavery, genocide, rape and white male patriarchy. The colonizers that we condemn for enslaving Afrikans [sic] and murdering indigenous peoples are the same people that produced and upheld the document we use to govern our nation to this day. Our bloodshed is rooted in this nations founding document, the Constitution. A body cannot be separated from its head and remain living. The Constitution and all the evil that it allows to be perpetuated are the head of White America, or more so corrupt America. Racist America. If you separate the head, the racism will die. A constitution written by only white men will never serve the interests of black people. The Constitution was written for the ruling class of white men, which constructed whiteness to be more valuable than any other race. When we discuss institutional racism, it is essential that we realize the Constitution created it.

Clearly, Black Lives Matter is not about protecting or enhancing black lives. It is an attempt to tear down the United States of America and its founding documents.

Meanwhile, another force is also at work among the protesters: Antifa. The group is responsible for pre-planning violent clashes, including raising bail money before protests began and sending in medics in anticipation of violent clashes.

Antifa stands for anti-fascism. While this sounds goodmost people would agree that they are against fascismit does not tell the whole story.

To learn about the origins of Antifa, dating back to the same period as the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany, watch our video What You Need to Know About Antifa.

As the video points out, Antifa seeks to destroy four main pillars of American societythe same pillars that blm is attacking: capitalism, the police, the government, the U.S. Constitution.

Antifa has been described as having a combination of anarchist and Communist views. With no formal leadership or hierarchy, the group commonly combines the red flag of the Russian Revolution and the black flag of the anarchists to represent its group.

In Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, Mark Bray calls for militant anti-fascism to replace the austerity and incompetence of the governing parties of the right and left. He admits its roots in communism, anarchism, socialism and anti-racism. It is a movement founded on destroying capitalism.

As the Anti-Defamation League (adl) points out, The current political climate increases the chances of violent confrontations at protests and rallies. Antifa have expanded their definition of fascist/fascism to include not just white supremacists and other extremists, but also many conservatives and supporters of President Trump.

Another major area where the name Antifa comes up is the emerging autonomous zones in the U.S. Take for example Seattles Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, or chaz. The area was set up by Antifa members, as well as others, after the East Precinct Police Department surrendered. The group seized the region because the police department and democratic lawmakers allowed them to take it. When law enforcement and officials move out, it leaves a power vacuum that blm and Antifa members are quick to take hold of. As Fox Newss Sara Carter wrote, This is what happens when you dont have law and order.

Antifa is a dangerous and violent group. When its members turn up at protests, it often turns ugly. And you can be sure they are militarizing chaz too. Seattle Antifa tweeted last week, We need more people with guns at the chaz. Antifa members with guns are patrolling the zone. Sources report that as the Antifa mob took over, police officers were nowhere to be seen.

Both blm and Antifa are rooted in similar ideologies aimed at taking down America. At the root of both of these parties is communism, which has infiltrated America at the highest levels, primarily seen in the left-wing Democratic Party.

With these developments, Herbert W. Armstrongs forecasts during much of the 20th century take on new meaning. In 1944, he wrote, From official Communist literature anyone can learn, if he wishes to know the truth, that communism is a plan, in action, for the violent overthrow of capitalism and the capitalistic governments. And capitalism means democracy, since it is the democracies who control more than two thirds of the worlds capital.

He wrote in 1956:

What we fail to grasp, in the struggle with Russia, is this: We are not fighting a single nation in a military war, but a gigantic worldwide, plain-clothes army, masquerading as a political party, seeking to conquer the world with an entirely new kind of warfare. Its a kind of warfare we dont understand, or know how to cope with. It uses every diabolical means to weaken us from within, sapping our strength, perverting our morals, sabotaging our educational system, wrecking our social structure, destroying our spiritual and religious life, weakening our industrial and economic power, demoralizing our armed forces, and finally, after such infiltration, overthrowing our government by force and violence! All this, cleverly disguised as a harmless political party! Communism is worldwide psychological warfare!

This is exactly what we are seeing today. Black Lives Matter and Antifa are, in all actuality, political movements. And there is one very powerful political party, as Mr. Armstrong said there would be, allowing and even pushing for these Communist agendasthe Democratic Party.

These ideologies are bringing to pass prophecies such as those found in Isaiah 1:7: Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.

Antifa and Black Lives Matter will not bring about a better world; they are only hastening the destruction of America. And you can see it in their ideologies and in the war zones they are leaving in their wake.

What is happening in America today is a planned attack by Communists. To learn how purposeful this attack has been at so many levels, read The Communist Infiltration of America Was Prophesied.

Read the original here:
Communist Infiltration: BLM and Antifa - theTrumpet.com

As mentioned in my last piece, The French Revolution was truly a Watershed even in the history of the world. Not only did it mark the beginning of the end of monarchies and herald the hastening of attempting to establish a more equal political world order for all citizens of each state. We havent got there yet, nor ever will but, we now know, that is what mankind will continue to seek till the end of days.

But this revolutions greatest contribution was the introduction of the subject of political economy; which brought the significance of economy as a factor, of equal importance as political science in the comprehension of social sciences and the betterment of human life.

Hitherto, political philosophy focused on structuring a state to ensure better, and ever better protection of the rights of all peoples of the state. Experts were all very conscious that, at the very top of the list of the ends this study sought, was a better socio-economic life for all peoples in a state. Perhaps, it had not yet occurred to any of them that states could structure economies as well; nor that states could be constructed entirely on an economic order.

Thus far, economy was truly free for all, as Laissez Faire as it was possible to be. If you had wealth or means and used them well, you made as much as you could from it. You had to pay your taxes but, since the [Monarchist] state governed through a nobility which governed their estates as they chose to, taxes were for the nobles and princes, not for welfare.

Thomas Paine probably set the ball rolling in his book, Agrarian Justice, in 1797, by proposing a tax on land owners for the welfare of peasants. It was however, a Frenchman, Henri, Count of St. Simon, who is titled as the father of French Socialism, who first lucidly spelt out the structure of a [possible] socialist welfare state. Thereafter, the subject found an increasing following, including the better known German socialists, Joseph Engels and Karl Marx.

Socialism did not challenge political thought of the time, it only took the reasoning further in a socialist [welfare] direction. The reasoning went thus: if a social contract is to be formed, in which the state is to assume responsibility for the rights of all citizens, it stands to reason that all that lies within the boundaries of any state, is also owned by the state, on behalf of the people and that, thereafter the state assumes its responsibility to fulfill all needs of its peoples.

When socialism began to be viewed increasingly seriously, in the 19th century, the concept of Political Economy also emerged. Socialists averred that even the purest of democracies provided its practitioners with plausible deniability for their actions and that, only a socialist state could be a truly welfare state.

And, while socialism, essentially an economic construct, needed a political framework, based on devolution of governance. Perhaps influenced by the devolution of authority to the nobility in monarchical times, the concept of Communes, communities of governable size wherein local governance could more easily address local needs, emerged and was titled Communism.

It seems that even philosophers, the most gifted minds of their era can be blinkered and refuse to look beyond their horizon. Socialistic communism merely added another dimension to the growth of political thought

I cannot find this quote now but I believe Karl Marx once commented that, Socialism is a period between democracy and communism. Whether he did, or not, this reflects a view of the times. Although Socialism was emerging as an economic system challenging Capitalism, many Socialists viewed Communism as the final form of a social welfare state. Marx also said that, Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution; asserting the supremacy of Communism.

But, neither Socialism nor Communism turned out to be the panacea of all socio-politico-economic woes of the people. Capitalists, scared of the threat of socialists taking their possessions, painted communism and socialism as evils, just as communists did them.

As communism spread, post WW II, an Iron Curtain fell across Europe to divide the Communist-socialist world from the Free World. It didnt do much good either; ideas are sans borders. It seems that even philosophers, the most gifted minds of their era can be blinkered and refuse to look beyond their horizon. Socialistic communism merely added another dimension to the growth of political thought.

Today we find countries that have systems best described as socialist-capitalism or capitalist socialism; and democratic communism or communistic democracies.

Socialists are semi-capitalists and capitalists have become socialists. Unemployment benefits, free health care, free education, etc. are all socialist concepts. But, what is significant is that, whatever the mix, there is no headway in finding that elusive [perfect] Welfare State. Nowhere has Life improved merely because of the type of welfare state. Where there has been some improvement, it has been due to individuals, never the system.

Is that the real secret of life? Is life a perpetual attempt to seek The Holy Grail of equal justice, to no avail, just as the grail has been? With each avenue turning equally dark as the last, after the first curve? Perhaps. But, even if it is, life is the enjoyment of making the effort and breaking new ground.

Keep going and have fun.

The writer is a retired brigadier. He is also former vice president and founder of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI)

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Political Science 5. And then came Socialism - Daily Times

By Vejas Liulevicius, Ph.D., University of Tennessee, Knoxville Communism could not create the just society it promised. (Image: 4thebirds/Shutterstock)Communism and theMasses

The role of masses and individualsis salient in the communist ideology. They act as vital forces that help inshaping history. Marx had a steadfast belief in the power of masses working inorganized and coherent groups. In fact, the revolution was carried out by thesemasses of workers and revolutionary forces.

However, as it turned out, individualsdid not play the expected roles in history. The impact they had in the courseof history was constrained by the impacts of other unknown historical oreconomic factors. History imposes limitations on individuals and prevents themfrom making history as they desire. These limitations come in many social andeconomic forms.

Although masses have significantroles in shaping history, it is the elite individuals that determine the courseof revolution by leading the masses. Marx himself was the first leader whochanged the path communism took towards its destiny, followed by other rulerslike Lenin, Mao, and Stalin.

This is a transcript from the video series The Rise of Communism: From Marx to Lenin. Watch it now, on The Great Courses Plus.

Theleaders turned into substantial forces in the history of communism, and thisled to yet another unfavorable phenomenon that was most contradictory to thefundamental beliefs of communism. The idea of social justice and eradication ofsocial classes was central to communism. It promised to eliminate theexploitation of labor, which was partly encouraged by the gap between theworking class and the bourgeoisie. Ironically, a new class of elites emergedthat enjoyed privileges granted to them by the system. So the ideology thatpromoted the eradication of social classes served as a hospitable environmentto develop new classes of privileged elites.

Learn more about Revolutionary Russians.

A dream that communism followed fromthe beginning was to spread the system around the globe. Communists did notwant their ideology to be practiced in just one country. In particular, theypreferred to establish communism in developed countries. This is becausedeveloped countries are naturally home to capitalism, which communism promisedto eradicate.

Despite what was expected, the birthcountry of communism was not the birth land of Marx and Engels Germany. Instead, it started in Russia with Lenins revolution in 1917. Russiawas not an industrial and developed country at the time. Rather, it was anagricultural society ruled by the Tsar marked by intense oppression.

Another internal contradiction in this belief system was communisms stance on nationalism. Nationalism was not accepted by Marx and he dismissed it as a delusion. Although nationalism was a powerful model of community, ethnicity, or birthplace were not supposed to give identity to people. On the other hand, workers were supposed to identify themselves with class.

However, the communist regimesdeveloped somehow confused attitudes towards nationalism. They supported thisideology as a means of solidifying their power. Most communist parties soughtto be portrayed as patriots and followed nationalist policies.

Learn more about Red October: How the Bolsheviks Seized Power.

Communists were future-minded in their manifestos. They wanted to break all the links with the past and anything related to tradition. By contrast, communism itself became a tradition. As with most social and political ideologies, it developed its own rituals, traditions, and scriptures even to the point of giving them divine status.

One of the pillars of communism wasscience as a guiding principle. Communists wanted to free the working class sothat they would have free time to practice creativity and intellectualism.Their ideal population was one consisting of intellectuals who believed inscience rather than dogmatic religions. The communists dismissed religion asmerely superstitious ideas that belonged to the past.

Quite paradoxically, communismitself turned into a sort of faith, or as some have called it, a politicalreligion. In search of politically correct ideas and beliefs, communistsengaged in what is interpreted as secular confession through internal purgesand self-criticisms in the communist parties. There was supposed to be one truetheory that had to remain unchanged. Therefore, those internal purges served asrecommitments to make sure the ideology remains in its purest form.

Learn more about World War I as a Revolutionary Opportunity.

The communist ideology which promised to solve all the problems of humankind was not without its internal contradictions and paradoxes. The path of true communists did deviate from the canonical texts written by Carl Marx.

Communism dismissed religion as dogma and superstition. It was considered outdated and was to be replaced by scientific beliefs, which was one of the paradoxes of communism since communism eventually turned into a kind of faith.

Communist regimes have ruled many countries in the world. China, Cuba, and North Korea are the most famous ones. A paradox of communism is that it sought to take over the governments in developed countries.

The main purpose of communism is to bring social justice by abolishing private ownership and free markets which were at the core of capitalism. In the absence of social classes, exploitation of labor is eradicated and everything belongs to the public. A paradox of communism is that a new class of elites with special rights emerged in communist societies.

Communism and religion are conflicting principles. However, it is one of the paradoxes of communism that religious ideas and rituals have been incorporated into this ideology.

Excerpt from:
Paradoxes of Communism: Did Communism Deliver its Promises? - The Great Courses Daily News