Extremely intrigued by what is effectively a teaser. I searched for “Background to Betrayal” by Hilaire du Berrier—the only two copies available are priced at $2,500 and $4,500! This is economic censorship. I would greatly appreciate at least an extended précis of its contents, at least until the JBS gets around to publishing a new edition. BTW your argument is totally corroborated by the memoir of Earl Smith, US Ambassador to Cuba from 1957 - 1959, who blamed leftist sympathisers in the State Department and CIA for Castro’s rise to power.
He, like a lot of these guys, was one of the original globalists. GHWB too. The idealism was real, even if it served more and more as cover for naked ambition. The liberal idea that we could all join hands and sing kumbaya was widespread - it helped a lot that the US was on top after the war. I think some of these men really thought they could remake the world in our image. Although in a lot of places that probably amounted to little more than making a mess.
I would have been taken in by this narrative if I hadn't been reading Peter Dale Scott's American War Machine right now. Nothing BAP points out here cannot be explained by the CIA's pragmatic approach to containing and rolling back communist influence, whether that includes installing right-wing governments or supporting non-communist leftists. He claims that the CIA "supported left wing regimes as often or more often than it tried to topple them" but the tweet he links to is his own simply making an adjacent claim without furnishing examples or evidence for either. I look forward to reading the next two installments in the series to see if they are able to change my mind.
Absolutely. I found this article disappointing. BAP is one of our most astute cultural critics and should be giving us his razor-sharp takes on movies, food, and manners, not regurgitating the rantings of some rightly forgotten French crank.
"piledriven and chopped up and re-plated by tedious old hags like Noam Chomsky and the whole of the academic left since at least 1960"
Thank you for accurately depicting Gnome Chumpsky. That assklown aggravates me no end. Why anyone EVER listened to that aging pile of Marxist horseshit is a Mystery For The Ages. How anyone could credit a linguistics guy with anything other than expertise in linguistics is yet another Mystery; like that wheelchair physics guy, Stevie Hawking, going on about politics...stick to physics, smart guy. Once these guys go off their plantation, they need to shut the Hell up.
Yours is an excellent essay. I'm grateful to see the gospel of what the CIA has been really getting up to over the decades coming out. That bunch of mid-wit incompetents needs a culling.
I interviewed with CIA in 1999; what HUBRIS! It took 4 hours of talking with them before they had the common decency to credit me with having 'got my scalp' by running operations for the Army in Somalia. They copied all our files and started preempting our source meets without so much as a courtesy call to tell us they were doing so. Not a very professional or sneaky batch of boobs. They had the budget tho...all the nicest toys.
I look forward to your next essays in this line. THANK YOU for shedding light on all of this.
Hillaire De Berrier is very shakey about a lot of these extreme claims. The most agreement you'll find with his read of the Vietnam story is in the hardest *left* accounts, like Sheehan's 'A Bright Shining Lie'. We have competing on the ground accounts from Right-leaning journalists the era warning of anti-Diemist hysteria potentially dooming the country (Higgins' 'Our Vietnam Nightmare') and serious revisionist studies of the period informed by newly available North Vietnamese sources suggesting that the situation getting better and the *Communists* were getting bogged down and losing power in the South (Mark Moyar's 'Triumph Forsaken').
Yes, this guy knew that guy who was the brother of a well connected socialist. Tri Quang was probably the most obvious embedded communist in South Vietnam during the reign of Diem. And he was also the loudest and strongest anti-Diem force. We have Northern accounts of the war now. Fighters wrote memoirs. Why would they lie now? If Diem was their bitch that would be something to brag about. They thought it was a miracle that the Americans had him killed. Their salvation.
De Berrier's picture of the war after reading more and more around the subject like less of a cool revisionist deconstruction of the real history and more of a breathless flood of names and *connections*, insinuations and innuendo. The more I read, the less I trust him. It's great fun to feel like you're being initiated into the *real* story behind something. But as Vietnam develops into more of a real interest for me I find De Berrier less compelling. Your frequent reference to him as a key source in shaping your worldview and understanding of history places this whole program of yours under a broad cloud of doubt for me because of this.
Geriatric left and progressive right. Absolutely. 100%. This proven by what the CIA did in Vietnam, ehhhhhh, maybe not. You ever heard of the Provincial Recon Units? Moyar wrote a hell of a book on that too.
> De Berrier's picture of the war after reading more and more around the subject like less of a cool revisionist deconstruction of the real history and more of a breathless flood of names and *connections*, insinuations and innuendo.
CIA meddling as “the expression of an inherent leftist, egalitarian liberation theology that was genuinely believed by these men” rings true. The winners of WWII took for granted that their world view should be universally shared. You can see the through line to today’s do-gooder meddling. And it’s about time the notion of the omnipotent CIA was demolished. What is more likely in cases of little accountability is that any messes were easily shoved down the memory hole.
The CIA supporting anti-communist social democrats and social liberals (and in some cases, like Olof Palme, disposing of them when they get too uppity) isn't exactly 4d chess.
lol, if Hilaire du Berrier is your only source for this history, you need to read more widely. The guy had a very colorful and adventurous life, I'll give him that. But he isn't the last word on post-colonial African history, or on the Cold War. Berrier was one of those after-dinner speakers on the John Birch Society circuit in the 1950s. I think I have his JBS-published book on Vietnam. I have a bunch of those books. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilaire_du_Berrier
If you're going to review the history of Europeans in Africa, the place to start is the book Stanley, Tim Jeal's biography of Henry Morton Stanley--that impossibly tough and resourceful Welshman, orphaned young and sent to an orphanage, immigrated to the US at age 18, and ended up as a soldier in the American Civil War--both fighting and deserting--from both sides!And then he rafted the Missouri after that--building the raft himself, after being stranded, I forget the details. And then he raised money for his first foreign expedition, to Turkey! At age 23! That's just the abridged outline. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Morton_Stanley
Stanley had already lived enough life for any three adventurers by the time he was 23, and he had yet to set out on his first exploration to Africa. When he gets to Africa, Stanley even outdoes Sir Richard Burton as an explorer. And that's some doing, considering that--among other exploits--Burton disguised his identity to make the pilgrimage to the shrine at Mecca, as the first Anglo ever to accomplish that feat. Granted, Henry Stanley can't match Burton's enthusiasm as a drinker, doper, and whore-chasing sex tourist. (Somehow, both Stanley and Burton had wives waiting faithfully for them whenever they returned from their journeys into the wild. Stanley, it kinda makes sense. But Burton was just a rake. Horrendous.) They both got terribly sick multiple times, still summoning the energy and clarity to write in their journals almost every day.
fwiw, while the dissolute Burton kept his attitude of Anglo-Saxon racial superiority throughout his journeys and forays into the demimonde, Henry Stanley gives the impression of being a fair-minded and honorable man. It's clear that he did what he had to to get down the road. But he didn't view black Africans as a racially inferior population.
Tucker Carlson has the credibility of a pregnant nun. His comments regarding Winston Churchill as the leading villain of WWII eliminate him from the ranks of people whose thoughts should be considered. Mike Benz on the other hand seems consistent and at least intending honesty. His description of the CIA and related intelligence organizations is not "amoral and competent," but rather immoral and of middling competence at best. All three times I've heard him have ben on the topic of the leftist/internationalist/anti-free speech bent of the the intelligence agencies and State Dept. Maybe those were three outliers.
Extremely intrigued by what is effectively a teaser. I searched for “Background to Betrayal” by Hilaire du Berrier—the only two copies available are priced at $2,500 and $4,500! This is economic censorship. I would greatly appreciate at least an extended précis of its contents, at least until the JBS gets around to publishing a new edition. BTW your argument is totally corroborated by the memoir of Earl Smith, US Ambassador to Cuba from 1957 - 1959, who blamed leftist sympathisers in the State Department and CIA for Castro’s rise to power.
https://ia801306.us.archive.org/30/items/BerrierHilaireDuBackgroundToBetrayalTheTragedyOfVietnam/Berrier%2C%20Hilaire%20du%20-%20Background%20to%20Betrayal%20the%20Tragedy%20of%20Vietnam.pdf
Thank you!
Check out the books published by Western goals foundation
Thank you!
Cord Meyer was another key figure in establishing the Left's presence in the early CIA.
https://www.amazon.com/Facing-reality-world-federalism-CIA/dp/0060130326
He, like a lot of these guys, was one of the original globalists. GHWB too. The idealism was real, even if it served more and more as cover for naked ambition. The liberal idea that we could all join hands and sing kumbaya was widespread - it helped a lot that the US was on top after the war. I think some of these men really thought they could remake the world in our image. Although in a lot of places that probably amounted to little more than making a mess.
Go off Unc
I would have been taken in by this narrative if I hadn't been reading Peter Dale Scott's American War Machine right now. Nothing BAP points out here cannot be explained by the CIA's pragmatic approach to containing and rolling back communist influence, whether that includes installing right-wing governments or supporting non-communist leftists. He claims that the CIA "supported left wing regimes as often or more often than it tried to topple them" but the tweet he links to is his own simply making an adjacent claim without furnishing examples or evidence for either. I look forward to reading the next two installments in the series to see if they are able to change my mind.
BAP makes sense when you consider everyone who is not a sworn fascist is a communist to him
The cia introduced “non communist” left elements in regions where the left wasnt a threat, so it wasnt just midplaced pragmatism
Examples?
Read the next article in the series
Absolutely. I found this article disappointing. BAP is one of our most astute cultural critics and should be giving us his razor-sharp takes on movies, food, and manners, not regurgitating the rantings of some rightly forgotten French crank.
Extremely excited to read this! Every time I see you poast a new article or essay I am immediately fascinated
Yes hello
yes hhelo
Thanks for the link to that interesting Palladium article by Costin Alamariu. Seems like an interesting contemporary voice.
"piledriven and chopped up and re-plated by tedious old hags like Noam Chomsky and the whole of the academic left since at least 1960"
Thank you for accurately depicting Gnome Chumpsky. That assklown aggravates me no end. Why anyone EVER listened to that aging pile of Marxist horseshit is a Mystery For The Ages. How anyone could credit a linguistics guy with anything other than expertise in linguistics is yet another Mystery; like that wheelchair physics guy, Stevie Hawking, going on about politics...stick to physics, smart guy. Once these guys go off their plantation, they need to shut the Hell up.
Yours is an excellent essay. I'm grateful to see the gospel of what the CIA has been really getting up to over the decades coming out. That bunch of mid-wit incompetents needs a culling.
I interviewed with CIA in 1999; what HUBRIS! It took 4 hours of talking with them before they had the common decency to credit me with having 'got my scalp' by running operations for the Army in Somalia. They copied all our files and started preempting our source meets without so much as a courtesy call to tell us they were doing so. Not a very professional or sneaky batch of boobs. They had the budget tho...all the nicest toys.
I look forward to your next essays in this line. THANK YOU for shedding light on all of this.
Hillaire De Berrier is very shakey about a lot of these extreme claims. The most agreement you'll find with his read of the Vietnam story is in the hardest *left* accounts, like Sheehan's 'A Bright Shining Lie'. We have competing on the ground accounts from Right-leaning journalists the era warning of anti-Diemist hysteria potentially dooming the country (Higgins' 'Our Vietnam Nightmare') and serious revisionist studies of the period informed by newly available North Vietnamese sources suggesting that the situation getting better and the *Communists* were getting bogged down and losing power in the South (Mark Moyar's 'Triumph Forsaken').
Yes, this guy knew that guy who was the brother of a well connected socialist. Tri Quang was probably the most obvious embedded communist in South Vietnam during the reign of Diem. And he was also the loudest and strongest anti-Diem force. We have Northern accounts of the war now. Fighters wrote memoirs. Why would they lie now? If Diem was their bitch that would be something to brag about. They thought it was a miracle that the Americans had him killed. Their salvation.
De Berrier's picture of the war after reading more and more around the subject like less of a cool revisionist deconstruction of the real history and more of a breathless flood of names and *connections*, insinuations and innuendo. The more I read, the less I trust him. It's great fun to feel like you're being initiated into the *real* story behind something. But as Vietnam develops into more of a real interest for me I find De Berrier less compelling. Your frequent reference to him as a key source in shaping your worldview and understanding of history places this whole program of yours under a broad cloud of doubt for me because of this.
Geriatric left and progressive right. Absolutely. 100%. This proven by what the CIA did in Vietnam, ehhhhhh, maybe not. You ever heard of the Provincial Recon Units? Moyar wrote a hell of a book on that too.
> De Berrier's picture of the war after reading more and more around the subject like less of a cool revisionist deconstruction of the real history and more of a breathless flood of names and *connections*, insinuations and innuendo.
Sums up BAP and Moldbug as well
Naomi Klein should be tied to a chair clockwork orange style and forced to read this essay until she disavows her retarded communist beliefs
https://libgen.li/edition.php?id=149120381 Background to Betrayal
CIA meddling as “the expression of an inherent leftist, egalitarian liberation theology that was genuinely believed by these men” rings true. The winners of WWII took for granted that their world view should be universally shared. You can see the through line to today’s do-gooder meddling. And it’s about time the notion of the omnipotent CIA was demolished. What is more likely in cases of little accountability is that any messes were easily shoved down the memory hole.
The CIA supporting anti-communist social democrats and social liberals (and in some cases, like Olof Palme, disposing of them when they get too uppity) isn't exactly 4d chess.
lol, if Hilaire du Berrier is your only source for this history, you need to read more widely. The guy had a very colorful and adventurous life, I'll give him that. But he isn't the last word on post-colonial African history, or on the Cold War. Berrier was one of those after-dinner speakers on the John Birch Society circuit in the 1950s. I think I have his JBS-published book on Vietnam. I have a bunch of those books. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilaire_du_Berrier
If you're going to review the history of Europeans in Africa, the place to start is the book Stanley, Tim Jeal's biography of Henry Morton Stanley--that impossibly tough and resourceful Welshman, orphaned young and sent to an orphanage, immigrated to the US at age 18, and ended up as a soldier in the American Civil War--both fighting and deserting--from both sides!And then he rafted the Missouri after that--building the raft himself, after being stranded, I forget the details. And then he raised money for his first foreign expedition, to Turkey! At age 23! That's just the abridged outline. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Morton_Stanley
https://www.amazon.com/Stanley-Impossible-Africas-Greatest-Explorer/dp/0300142234 (More mind-blowing than any fiction.)
Stanley had already lived enough life for any three adventurers by the time he was 23, and he had yet to set out on his first exploration to Africa. When he gets to Africa, Stanley even outdoes Sir Richard Burton as an explorer. And that's some doing, considering that--among other exploits--Burton disguised his identity to make the pilgrimage to the shrine at Mecca, as the first Anglo ever to accomplish that feat. Granted, Henry Stanley can't match Burton's enthusiasm as a drinker, doper, and whore-chasing sex tourist. (Somehow, both Stanley and Burton had wives waiting faithfully for them whenever they returned from their journeys into the wild. Stanley, it kinda makes sense. But Burton was just a rake. Horrendous.) They both got terribly sick multiple times, still summoning the energy and clarity to write in their journals almost every day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Francis_Burton
fwiw, while the dissolute Burton kept his attitude of Anglo-Saxon racial superiority throughout his journeys and forays into the demimonde, Henry Stanley gives the impression of being a fair-minded and honorable man. It's clear that he did what he had to to get down the road. But he didn't view black Africans as a racially inferior population.
Tucker Carlson has the credibility of a pregnant nun. His comments regarding Winston Churchill as the leading villain of WWII eliminate him from the ranks of people whose thoughts should be considered. Mike Benz on the other hand seems consistent and at least intending honesty. His description of the CIA and related intelligence organizations is not "amoral and competent," but rather immoral and of middling competence at best. All three times I've heard him have ben on the topic of the leftist/internationalist/anti-free speech bent of the the intelligence agencies and State Dept. Maybe those were three outliers.
Funny enough I rewatched recently Barcelona, and the references to the AFL-CIA have new meaning now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9naLNBqblY