Over the years, I’ve written a bit about how I hold one of the most decisive moments for civilization was the French quitting in Algeria. I’m just reading a book about it – A Savage War of Peace, highly recommended – and I’m just past the part where DeGaulle is returned to power (very much due to the political stresses caused in France by the war in Algeria) and he’s reforming France and sent out a first-rate military commander to Algeria who pretty much whacked the Algerian rebels from pillar to post. That is now the end of 1959. The bottom line is that France had won the war – the Algerian rebels were still here and there in the interior, but only in small, hunted groups and even many Algerians were tired of it all. And then, over the next two years, DeGaulle just gave it all away to the rebels. This has been held as wisdom: France had to get out of Algeria and DeGaulle cleverly played up to those who didn’t want out until he was strong enough to dispense with them and make a deal with the rebels. This, to the Ruling Class in the West, was the only way to go. But, was it?

First off, it involved the betrayal of more than a million French citizens in Algeria; about 10% of the total Algerian population. It also involved the betrayal of at least 100,000 Harkis – these were Muslim Algerians who fought for France. Their numbers may have been even higher. This was more active fighters than the rebel ALN army had. By a lot. And you figure that for the 100k fighters, gotta be at least some family/friends who were supportive, so that might work out to another million people there who clearly preferred to remain part of France. They were completely screwed over by the French government. The French citizens were evacuated (though some were killed on the way out) while the Harkis, considered traitors by Algeria’s new masters, were killed, imprisoned or otherwise made to suffer for many years after the war.

Now, why bring this up? Because what France did was cross a bright, red line. At the end of the day, they passed power over to a group of people who, in the course of the war, routinely targeted unarmed non-combatants for death…and not just death, but often quite horrible and cruel death. In the end, Algeria did have to be independent: their current population is 44 million against France’s 67 million and it is just about impossible for that to be a colonial relationship. But recognizing the inevitable doesn’t get one off the hook for basic morality. It was a crime – a French crime – to turn the people of Algeria over to a pack of brutes, which is all the ALN ever was. The correct course of action was to simply state that this would never happen – that the future of Algeria was going to be decided by decent people, not by those who set bombs in stores or tortured people to death. The Ruling Class holds that you simply make the deal with whomever is fighting you – end the war by any means necessary. Decency requires that you only give into brutes if they are so strong there’s no way to stop them. France had won. All they had to do was keep up the pressure until the rebels quit and then – only then – would it have been time for France to work with those Algerians who weren’t brutes about what came after French rule.

And so it has gone over and over again since the end of World War Two: repeated fights between civilization and barbarism where civilization – massively restricting its use of power – still comes out first against the barbarians and then civilization just hands things over to the defeated savages. No wonder they keep at it. If you wonder why, say, the Palestinian leadership keeps it up it is because of this: they know, from nearly a century’s experience, that if you just keep being savages and merely manage to survive the retaliation, you’ll eventually be handed all you wanted. This has to change if we are to save civilization. The barbarians have to be taught that the wages of savagery is death and nothing else but death.

Fauci helped create the Coronavirus and then, from his perch, pretty much ensured our response to it would be counter productive. He’s either stupid or a traitor: I go with stupid. I recall that he’s only famous because he stood athwart Reagan during the AIDS epidemic.

Yesterday was Tank Man day: the anniversary of when that guy stood in front of the tanks at Tiananmen Square. What was entirely unsurprising was China’s efforts to censor references to it. The tech giants got caught and had to quickly re-adjust their algorithms, but for a while there a search of “Tank Man” brought nothing related to China up. Meanwhile, Facebook banned Trump for two years while China’s accounts were up and running, spewing out lies all the time. Our large corporations are owned by China: they have to go. If it takes confiscation, they have to go.

In the deep blue cities, the long term result of Floyd’s death has been a massive spike in crime, and a lot more black deaths. But, hey, at least they weren’t killed by cops.