The Historiography of Islam in the 1700s: Explaining the Eighteenth Century

Islam, as a socio-political movement, has organized itself in a variety of associations over the centuries, sometimes successively, and sometimes simultaneously in parallel. One of those associations was the Ottoman Empire, sometimes also cited as the Turkish Empire. This empire lasted until 1922, and in previous centuries had ruled, at various times, areas including North Africa, Yugoslavia, Greece, parts of Persia, the Levant generally, and of course the region now known as Turkey.

Islam had at times hoped to expand further northward, and mounted military campaigns to capture Vienna in 1529, 1683, and other times. Islam also invaded and briefly occupied parts of Poland and Ukraine.

The reign of Ahmed III from 1703 to 1730 saw another stirring of Islamic expansionism. He oversaw the Muslim armies which invaded what is now Romania, Ukraine, and Russia in 1711; this invasion was ultimately unsuccessful. Likewise, he ordered his armies to attack Venice; Austria came to the aid of Venice, and in 1716, Prince Eugene of Savoy led an Austrian army to defeat the Islamic army in the Battle of Petrovaradin (also known as Peterwardein).

Describing Islam in the mid-1700s, historian Will Durant explains the expanse of its influence:

It still dominated Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Arabia, Palestine, Syria, Persia, Asia Minor, the Crimea, South Russia, Bessarabia, Moldavia, Wallachia (Romania), Bulgaria, Serbia (Yugoslavia), Montenegro, Bosnia, Dalmatia, Greece, Crete, the Aegean Isles, and Turkey. All these except Persia were part of the immense empire of the OttomanTurks. On the Dalmatian coast they touched the Adriatic and faced the Papal States; on the Bosporus they controlled the sole naval outlet from the Black Sea, and could at will block the Russians from the Mediterranean.

He surveys Islamic culture from Turkey to North Africa to Persia, and then presents his generalizations.

Although he admired Islam and often praised it, Will Durant was not blind to the fact that Muslim “women stayed at home, or walked” subservient “under their burdens and behind their veils.” He gives the date of 1754 for significant Ottoman legislation which made even stricter the requirement for veils and burqas, but he does not cite the source of this date.

Infatuated with a romanticized concept of Islam — an image promulgated by some European poets — Durant describes the Muslim women, wrapped in burqas, carrying baskets or large clay jars on their head, as moving with a “certain ease and grace” and “in stately dignity.” He is either oblivious to, or deliberately disguising, the oppression under which these women lived and worked — or perhaps he sees the situation clearly, and is honoring the character of these women as they carry on despite the most brutal subjugation.

While Christianity appeared as, and developed ever more into, a personal spirituality or belief, Islam constituted a political, social, and military program, as Will Durant explains:

Religion was more powerful and pervasive in Islam than in Christendom; the Koran was the law as well as the gospel, and the theologians were the official interpreters of the law.

Islamic morals were entrenched. The social patterns of Islam persevered. While Christianity promoted an ethic, Islam promoted a morality, as Will Durant writes:

Morals hardly changed from century to century. Puberty came earlier than in the north; many girls married at twelve or thirteen, some at ten; to be unmarried at sixteen was a disgrace.

In the passage quoted above, Durrant’s partiality towards Islam can be detected. If there were any difference between the north and the south in the onset of puberty, then it was indeed slight. No biologist will claim otherwise. Instead, it was merely Islam’s authorization to allow unrestrained male lust. The same was true of “the polygamy that Koranic law allowed.”

The Qur’an dictated such inequality. The same asymmetry in the legal treatment of women was applied to cases of adultery:

A cuckolded husband was not only permitted by law, but was encouraged by public opinion, to put the offending wife to death.

Forgiveness, not only in the case of an adultress, was rare or unknown. “Islamic theology,” writes Durrant, “considered woman a main source of evil, which could be controlled only by her strict subordination. Children grew up in the discipline of the harem.” Women moved “with a certain” motion, which they derived “from carrying burdens.”

The physical role of women in Islam was clear, as Durrant explains:

Polygamy did not prevent prostitution, for prostitutes could provide the excitation that familiarity had allayed. The courtesans of Egypt specialized in lascivious dances; some ancient monuments reveal the antiquity of this lure. Every large town allotted to prostitutes a special quarter where they might practice their arts without fear of the law.

Christianity’s earliest sources were not in Europe, but rather in the same ancient near east which also birthed Islam. Yet while Christianity imperfectly but increasingly gave status to women, Islam did the opposite. While Hildegard of Bingen was issuing written rebukes to popes and kings, Muslim women were bound by their gender to subservient roles.

Yet strict legalism sires energetic defiance.

So it was that Islamic civilizations, based upon the most stringent of written legal codes, rebelled correspondingly in the most excessive exploitation of women. The laws of the Muslims repressed sexuality in an extreme way, so the lives of the Muslims violated those laws in the most extreme way. Islamic rigidity fueled Islamic hypocrisy.

Women skilled in erotic dances were engaged to vibrate before male assemblies, and in some cases, women also took pleasure in witnessing such performances.

Again, Durrant’s fondness for Islam persuades him to understate, or to phrase in the most gentle way, his description of what was standard practice in Islamic society in the mid-1700s. The reader will understand what a less euphemistic account of these realities might be.

Islamophobia and Islamophilia — Two Problematic Words and Their Histories

French author Pascal Bruckner explores some of the vocabulary which has been used to analyze Islam and its relation to the world. Much of this discourse arose in the context of French colonialism. Among the administrators assigned to institute and keep order in the French colonies, especially the colonies in north and northwest Africa, there were competing views about Islam among the native populations.

On the one hand, some colonial governors thought — or felt — that Islam was a threat to French rule, and should be discouraged. On the other hand, other commissioners in the government believed that Islam was not a danger to the French bureaucracy, and in fact might even be in some cases helpful, as it provided an ordering principle or influence in society.

The Oxford English Dictionary explains that the word ‘islamophobia’ did not appear in the English language until 1920, and the adjective form ‘islamophobic appeared in 1980. The noun form ‘islamophobe’ appeared as early as 1877, but remained almost entirely unused for many decades. Even in the twenty-first century, it is little-used.

The vocabulary of islamophobia appeared earlier, and was more frequently used, in French. This seems natural, given the locations of French colonies. To be sure, the British also had colonies in areas populated by Muslims, but the French territory skewed more toward Islam than the British.

The etymology of ‘islamophobia’ remains controversial. It has been pointed out that it is sometimes — perhaps often — used inappropriately, because it strictly denotes fear, as opposed to dislike or aversion. By contrast, the word ‘islamophilia,’ while less frequently used, is also less debatable in regard to its meaning and etymology.

Bruckner reports that Andre Quellian, who authored a book in French about colonial politics, was among those who argued that Islam posed no threat to the French administration. Likewise, Bruckner notes:

During the same period, Maurice Delafosse, another colonial official residing in Dakar, wrote: “Whatever may be said by those for whom Islamophobia is a principle of governing natives, France has nothing more to fear from Muslims than from non-Muslims in West Africa [...]. Thus Islamophobia has not more raison d’etre in West Africa, where, on the other hand, Islamophilia (in the sense of a preference granted to Muslims) is said to create a feeling of distrust among non-Muslim peoples, who are the most numerous.”

Shortly after the beginning of the twentieth century, then, there were at least some writers who argued that Islam was not a threat to order in French colonies, and specifically the colonies in north and northwest Africa. Whether these writers represented a majority or a minority of the colonial administration, of the French home government, or of the French citizenry are three questions which will be left as an exercise for the reader.

Given that the use of these words was documented in French in the early twentieth century, and that there are a few known appearances of them in English in the late nineteenth century, it is a reasonable conjecture to assert that they probably existed in French prior to 1900. And Pascal Bruckner makes exactly that conjecture.

This group of words has been in circulation, hence, for around 150 years. But the meanings — both denotations and connotations — attached to these words have changed.

Originally, these words were used in the context of French colonialism, and perhaps also British colonialism, when Islam posed questions for the administrators of those territories.

So, who was right? Was Islam a danger to colonial administration? Or was it a neutral or even helpful factor in organizing the colonies?

The evidence is mixed: on the one hand, Islam did not seem to play an essential role in the uprisings and rebellions which ended the colonial rule in some places, or in the more peaceful negotiations which ended that rule in other places. But Islam did make itself significantly felt in the post-colonial chaos into which these territories descended in the wake of their independence.

When these words were first invented, those who thought that Islam posed difficulties for those governing the colonies were deemed Islamophobic. Those who found Islam to be neutral or even helpful to the colonial administrators were deemed Islamophilic.

By the end of the twentieth century, ‘Islamophobic’ referred to those who had or showed “a dislike of or prejudice against Islam or Muslims, especially as a political force,” in the words of one dictionary. This word is often used in political conflicts — conflicts which contain more passion than reason. It is used as an insult.

Geographically far from the colonies and former colonies, the word ‘Islamophobic’ is used as a weapon in debates inside Western Civilization.

Over the course of the century, ‘islamophilia,’ never a frequently-used word, became even more rare, but continues to exist. It refers to “a generalized affection for Islam and Muslims” which is “likely to be based on wishful thinking and a politics of fear,” writes Andrew Shryock, who continues:

If we persist in portraying Islamophobia as an irrational force of misperception, we might well render ourselves oblivious to its ultimate causes and consequences. The corrective policies we develop in response to it might, in the manner of a bad diagnosis, end up reinforcing the very syndrome they were meant to counteract.

Islamophilia morphed during a century from a term relevant to colonial administration to a term used by Romanticists and Orientalists. “Romanticists” were authors of a particular phase of European literature which viewed the world through the lens of passion and emotion instead of reason and logic. “Orientalists” were researchers who explored the texts and cultures of what is called the Middle East or the Near East. The intersection of these two — Romantic Orientalists — invented fanciful accounts of the cultures of the Middle East: accounts which often painted Islam in an optimistic light, depicting the Muslims as wise sages, dashing heroes, and shrewd tacticians. These Romantic Orientalists departed from the actual data gathered by Orientalists who did linguistic and historical research; the Romantic Orientalists relied more often on folk tales and accounts of medieval travelers.

The twists and turns in the histories of these words is described by Pascal Bruckner:

Islamophobia: the term probably already existed in the nineteenth century, which explains its spontaneous use by imperial officials. As for its antonym, Islamophilia, whether erudite or popular, since the seventeenth century it has been a constant in European history, which is still massively fascinated by Islamic civilization. But after the Iranian Revolution of 1980 the expression ‘Islamophobia’ underwent a mutation that weaponized it. Between the expulsion of the American feminist Kate Millet from Teheran in 1979 for having protested against the regime’s requirement that Iranian women wear a veil, and the Rushie affair in 1988, which exploded under the influence of British Muslims, this dormant word suddenly awoke and became active in another form. A word does not belong to the person who created it but to the one who reinvented it to make its use widespread. This lexical rejuvenation makes it possible to kill two birds with one stone: stigmatizing traitors to the Muslim faith, on the one hand, and shutting up godless Westerners, on the other.

As these words changed their meanings over the course of a century, the geographical reference changed as well. At first, they were focused on the situation in the colonies. A century or more later, they are now focused both on the relations between the former colonies and Western Civilization, as well as on societal conflicts within Western Civilization.

Who Really Has Control? Who Rules Behind the Scenes?

Who is in command when it comes to global diplomacy, international politics, and the world’s economy? Not presidents, prime ministers, chancellors, and other heads of state. Not the CEOs of major corporations. Not the boards of directors of big businesses. Not the leaders of political parties. Not the opinion-makers and influencers in the new and old forms of media.

The power, and the lust for power, is held by people whose names don’t often appear in the media — people associated with organizations which are equally unknown. Klaus Schwab and Stephanie Kelton aren’t featured in headlines. The World Economic Forum (WEF) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) don’t trend on social media platforms.

Yet they may have more power than most putative powerholders.

While the media keep ordinary citizens busy with controversies like “socialist vs. capitalist” or “progressive vs. libertarian,” these shadowy figures manipulate the political and socio-economic systems from a much higher level, and are content to use the guise of socialist or capitalist from time to time, choosing whichever of the two suits their agenda. The agenda is simply power and control. In changing situations, they might benefit by promoting one political group or another — such furtherance always anonymous and from unseen sources through unseen channels — and a decade later, it might be to their advantage to support the opposing group.

At the global level, such individuals can use both Democrats and Republicans, both socialists and capitalists, both business leaders and organized labor leaders. The debates and disputes which occupy the attention of the media, the elected political leaders, and the ordinary citizens are merely distractions which the conspiracy has created to keep the average person from becoming aware of a world-wide network of controlling manipulators.

Much of this sinister power is carried out behind the facade of “The Great Reset,” a slogan unveiled in 2020 by Klaus Schwab, the WEF, and other associates.

What is “The Great Reset”? At first glance, it might seem like a list of the usual leftist political agendas: green environmentalism, “stakeholder” economies leading to more equity, and a technocracy empowered to bring these goals to fruition. The reader might wonder: what is new here? Such agendas have been the bread-and-butter of leftism for decades.

What’s different here is the exploitation and insincerity. “The Great Reset” could easily change in an instant and suddenly demand that people burn more fossil fuels and put more CO2 into the atmosphere. It could suddenly pivot from fighting racism to promoting it. For “The Great Reset,” and for the individuals and institutions which are promoting it, concepts like “environmentalism” and “social justice” are merely tools which can be used to control people.

All the causes and movements which “The Great Reset” promotes require regulations, taxes, and laws. The Great Reset uses these idealistic and noble convictions to gain power — to gain the ability to control people. The leaders who empower Green movements and “social justice” movements from behind the camouflage of “The Great Reset” have no interest in the earth’s environment, no interest in reducing CO2, no interest in reducing racism, and no interest in shrinking income inequality. They embrace these ideals temporarily, only long enough to use them to create some regulatory structure.

Neither is the other end of the political spectrum safe. Those who seek free markets and free speech are equally likely to be exploited by “The Great Reset.” At the moment, the megalomaniacs may be using leftist factions to gain power, but they can easily switch and begin exploiting rightist movements in the same way.

To perceive the hidden patterns requires rethinking. The daily media focuses on the micro-controversies of liberals and conservatives, progressives and libertarians, Democrats and Republicans. The media have been fooled by the conspiracy. The reading public must learn to take a step back and look at the big picture. The global question is this: Are the lives of individuals becoming freer and less regulated? Or are the lives of people increasingly managed and subject to rules?

Human beings are the best they can be when no other human being is controlling or ruling them. It is perhaps a good thing to be regulated by moral principles, or by God, but it is destructive to be taxed and regulated by a political power structure.

In the words of a Mercury Radio Arts report,

I want to once again stress the importance of resisting the urge to view the Great Reset as a socialist or even progressive framework.

The clue is this: Why would capitalists promote socialist programs? Why would the producers of fossil fuel promote Green energy schemes?

“There are socialist and progressive elements to the plan,” and yet the reader sees “repeatedly that corporations, bankers, and some of the world’s wealthiest people have proudly stood behind the Great Reset.” Why would an oil tycoon decide to support Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal”?

Does anyone believe that these Wall Street cutthroats and billionaire entrepreneurs have suddenly become card-carrying members of the Democratic Socialists of America? Of course they haven’t.

If some of these leaders have no faith in the movements which they have suddenly started supporting — movements which oppose the beliefs, livelihoods, and existences of these leaders — then why are they so eager to promote these ideologies? Have they suddenly become suicidal?

No. They’re simply realists. They see that they have been outmaneuvered by forces which are far more powerful than they are. Resistance would be futile. Going along with the demands of the global conspiracy is not self-destructive; it’s survival.

It is important to understand that the most corrupt — and most terrifying — elements of the Great Reset also help explain why so many business leaders and financial institutions have agreed to promote this movement. Many have gone beyond mere promotion and even helped develop some of its primary components. This includes presidents and CEOs from Microsoft, Bank of America, Mastercard, BP, and other highly influential business and investment firms.

The reader will learn to observe world events with an eye to one variable: control. Who’s in control? Who’s being controlled? Is the level of control increasing or decreasing?

In order to focus on this one variable, the reader will learn to see that the concerns and debates of low-level politics are either mere distractions, to prevent the public from perceiving the real impact of the international conspiracy, or they are actively being used by the conspiracy to obtain more power. The powerful individuals who proudly announce their deep concern about CO2 levels and the climate do not care about CO2 levels and the climate. They have simply determined that they can obtain more power by enacting climate policies. Leaders who declare their concern about social justice, income inequality, and racism do not care about the lives of individuals, or about any form of justice. They have learned that these movements can be exploited to allow these leaders to manipulate the lives of individuals — whether by legal regulation or by social trends, it makes no difference.

As the report from Mercury Radio Arts notes,

The crony corporatists running these multibillion-dollar companies have seen the writing on the wall: governments around the world are increasingly pushing for “green” mandates and sustainable development, as well as restrictions on speech — whether businesses and their customers like it or not. Plus, central banks are literally printing trillions of dollars that governments are directing toward the causes they favor, including many focused on social justice. If you were running a business, especially a large multinational corporation, it would be stupid not to do everything in your power to get your hands on some of that “free” cash, right?

On the one hand, there are people who truly believe in some cause and see it as a noble effort. They are manipulated by “The Great Reset” and they believe that “The Great Reset” shares their beliefs and values and is an ally in the noble struggle. They’ve been fooled, and they are being used.

On the other hand, there are those who may not discern the full program of this hidden conspiracy which lurks behind a variety of individuals, movements, and international organizations. They don’t fully understand the plot, but they clearly understand that they will suffer if they don’t go along with the officially sponsored trend of the moment.

In the end, both types of people are serving the purposes of a small handful of masterminds who are operating an international conspiracy. In the end, individual freedoms continue to be lost, and human beings continue to be increasingly controlled by a network of shadowy power mongers who are several layers behind the frontline bureaucrats, media personalities, and political activists who seem to be shaping the world, but who in reality are also puppets.

Klaus Schwab and the Great Reset: The WEF’s Plan to Dismantle Justice and Prosperity

Although his name is not frequently mentioned in the news media, Klaus Schwab has now, and has had for several years, a significant effect on current events around the world. From 1958 to 1972 he worked in a number of businesses in the private sector in Switzerland and Germany. From 1972 to 2003 he was a professor in Switzerland. Throughout his career, he was interested in economics and policy. After 2003 he worked as an opinion-maker and strategist for the United Nations.

But parallel to his career as outlined above, Klaus Schwab has been involved with the World Economic Forum (WEF), having founded it in 1971. The WEF does not deal with economics as a science, i.e., in the words of Investopedia: “Economics is the science that studies how societies produce goods and services and how they consume them.” A scientific approach to economics is about finding principles which are reflected in data and which can be used to predict future events from data. Economics as a science involves observing, measuring, finding patterns, etc.

Science is about gaining knowledge and understanding.

When economists recommend policies, they’ve left science behind and entered the world of politics. They are no longer engaged in a search for correlations and equations. They’ve entered a struggle for power and control.

The WEF is about control.

The WEF is a group of individuals: leaders in government, business, and academia. As their website states, their goal is “to shape global, regional and industry agendas.” They have rejected the scientific approach to economics and seek instead of influence policy.

In its own words, the WEF’s purpose is to “shape” — i.e., control and have power over — economic systems and policies. The WEF is not an organization doing research to discover lawlike regularities in economic phenomena. It is a group seeking power.

The WEF is not trying to control European economic systems, or American economic systems. The “W” in WEF means that this group wants to control the world’s economic systems.

Simply put, Klaus Schwab and the WEF would rather control events than understand them; they would rather have power than knowledge.

One example of this approach is Schwab’s introduction of what he calls “stakeholder capitalism.” Historically the two main types of capitalism have been “free market capitalism” and “crony capitalism.” Is Schwab’s “stakeholder capitalism” a truly distinct third type, or is it merely one of the previous two types dressed up in new terminology? Exploring such questions includes the analysis of specialized jargon. According to Schwab, “free market capitalism” was “shareholder capitalism.” He is dismissive of “shareholder capitalism” as a system which needs to be discarded.

But, “free market capitalism,” as a report by Mercury Radio Arts explains, is “an economic system in which businesses, especially corporations, focus primarily on the desires of their customers, owners, and employees.” It’s a system of negotiation and compromise: a system in which all three parties — customers, owners, employees — engage in give-and-take. It’s a very inclusive system, because nearly everyone in society is a customer, an owner, or an employee — and some people are two of those, or even all three, at once.

So what is Schwab’s “stakeholder capitalism”? It’s related to yet another phrase: it’s part of “The Great Reset.” The Mercury Radio Arts report attempts to define that term:

The reason that the Great Reset is so hard to define is because nothing quite like it has ever been tried before, at least not on this scale. The most accurate name for the Reset is probably something like “modern corporate cronyist techno socialistic international fascism,” but that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

Another attempt at explaining the Great Reset would be to call it “soft authoritarianism” — “soft” because it avoids the brutality of Joseph Stalin or Mao Zhedong, and “authoritarianism” because its goal is control.

It’s called “socialistic” and not “socialist” because it employs some aspects of socialism as instruments — as means to an end — without embracing the socialist goals of equity. The Great Reset uses the paternalistic role of the socialist state to buy the dependency and compliance of the average citizen.

The WEF’s Great Reset is not only for Europe, and not only for the United States. It is a truly global attempt to gain power. As extreme as it may sound, Klaus Schwab wants to control the world. But he wants to do this in a “soft” way — soft authoritarianism — he presents this as a series of initiatives, ideas, and programs which are for the global good. Everyone should want to go along with his ideas, he thinks, because he’s presented them as if they’re for everyone’s benefit.

Of course, simply because Klaus Schwab has presented these ideas as if they’re for everyone’s good, well, that doesn’t mean that they actually are for everyone’s good.

So how do the Great Reset and “stakeholder capitalism” appear in practice? What do they look like?

The WEF’s technique is to use money to control. This is a different use of wealth than the ordinary working-class person’s use of wealth.

For example, a working-class person who obtains money might use it to buy a car or a house — or take a vacation, or eat in a fancy restaurant, or save for retirement or for a college education. For working-class people, money is for buying things.

The people at the WEF have wealth measured in the billions — of dollars, euros, francs, yen, yuan, wen, pound sterling, krona, krone, etc. — and view money differently. A person who has 300 billion dollars will be able to afford the same lifestyle as the person who has 400 billion dollars. The increase of 100 billion dollars isn’t about being able to buy more things or being able to afford more luxuries. It’s about an increase in power, in the ability to control people and institutions.

Here’s how “stakeholder capitalism” works: Companies need, from time to time, to borrow money. Maybe a shoe company needs to build a new factory. Maybe a small restaurant wants to expand. Companies borrow money for these purposes. Banks or groups of investors lend the money: they’ll lend the money if they think that the company will be able to pay it back. That’s why it’s difficult to get a loan to build a factory to produce green-and-purple-striped socks, but it’s easy to get a loan to build a factory to produce navy blue socks.

So the decision about whether or not to lend money to a company is based on the perceived ability of the company to repay what it’s borrowed. The interest rate on the loan will also vary: a company might be able to borrow money at 5% if it’s building that factory to produce navy blue socks, but the company will have to pay 10% to borrow the money to build the factory making the green-and-purple-stripe socks.

Given that the decision about whether or not to lend money is based on the perceived ability of the borrower to pay it back, then it follows that the interest rate on the loan is based on the same thing.

Klaus Schwab wants to change that. He wants banks, or groups of investors, to lend money based on the political and social opinions of the company’s management. He wants the interest rate to be based on those opinions as well. Notice that he’s not lending his own money this way, but he’s interested in persuading or forcing others to lend their money this way.

In the shift from “free market capitalism” to “stakeholder capitalism,” the ability of the owners, employees, and customers of the business to negotiate and compromise has disappeared. Now, all three groups must reshape their opinions and beliefs to match the requirements of the lender. Everyone’s being controlled in a system of “stakeholder capitalism,” and nobody’s free.

If six shoe companies — Nike, Puma, New Balance, Converse, Adidas, Reebok — each wanted to borrow $100 million dollars from a bank to build new factories, then it might be the case that three of them would be allowed to borrow the money, but the other three would not. Under Schwab’s “stakeholder capitalism,” it wouldn’t matter how good the shoes were, or how popular they were. The decisions would be made by asking the management of the companies how they had voted in recent presidential elections, or which political groups they supported financially, or what they’d done to fund the printing of bumper stickers about social justice.

In Schwab’s “stakeholder capitalism,” who decides the standards? If a company’s loan application will be accepted or rejected based on the political views of the company’s management, who decides which political views are the correct ones? In answering these questions, it becomes clear that “stakeholder capitalism” is “crony capitalism.” In Schwab’s “Great Reset,” the standards are set by the government, but the process of setting them is influenced by a few large corporations. The separation between the public sector and the private sector — i.e., between the government and the businesses — has been blurred or violated. No fair competition between companies is possible. The government, which is supposed to be the referee and umpire between the competing corporations, is instead intimately related to one of them, and gives disadvantages to all the others.

What happens to ordinary people? The workers in these companies might get pay raises, or they might get pay cuts, or they might even lose their jobs, based on the social and political opinions of the banks, or of the groups of investors, who will or won’t lend money to their employers. Klaus Schwab and the WEF are quite willing to throw the lower-class factory worker under the bus. They are quite willing to make the people in the middle-class and lower-class suffer. They are willing to do this because they demand the ability to control. They’re not after money: they already have so much of it that they can’t spend it all. They want control.

The irony is that “stakeholder capitalism” is willing to throw low-income workers into deeper poverty, or complete unemployment, while claiming that they’re doing all of this in the name of “social justice.” This is another instance in which it’s important to see the words as mere disguises for unseemly motives. Those who claim to work for “social justice” are actually against it. Those who claim to seek the interests of the low-class worker are actually willing to push that worker into deeper misery for their own purposes.

Such people use words to cover up their actions: actions which have the exact opposite than the meanings of those words. Those who claim to help the poor want to harm the poor. Those who claim to help the climate are the ones who destroy it. Those who claim to seek racial justice are actually racists. Whichever words Klaus Schwab and the WEF use, their actions are opposite of those words.

Their techniques and strategies are many. A variant on the loan scenario is this: companies which seek to borrow money often do so by selling bonds.

A bond is worth a small amount of money, and so, most ordinary citizens can buy one. If a company needs $100 million dollars, it can sell one million bonds at $100 each. Many lower- and middle-class people can afford to buy a bond for $100. Eventually, they’ll get their $100 back, with interest, and so they’ll be better off — having gained the interest. This is a good deal: a lower- or middle-class person can make some money in this type of investment, and the company can get the $100 million it needs.

When ordinary people buy bonds, they’ll look up the company’s reliability rating. There are economists who rate companies: they explain which companies are reliable. People rely on these ratings to decide which bonds to buy. People don't want to give $100 to a company unless they’re pretty sure that the company can pay it back.

But Klaus Schwab and WEF are changing the system. They are forcing economists to rate companies, not on their ability to repay the $100, but on their social and political opinions.

How does the “Great Reset” coerce economists to play along with its version of “crony capitalism”? Again, the key here is “soft” authoritarianism. No soldiers will show up to demand that the economists use certain rating systems. But economics departments at major universities depend on government grants and taxpayer dollars. With such money come conditions. Individual economists build careers by publishing articles in professional academic journals and giving presentations at international conferences. Whose articles get published? Who gets invited to speak at conferences? Who extends the invitations? People like Klaus Schwab and the WEF. To be clear, there are many more people like Schwab, and many more institutions like the WEF.

What are the results of this “stakeholder capitalism” and its effects on bond ratings? Some companies who are able to repay the bonds won’t be able to sell those bonds to investors; these companies lose the opportunity to expand; their workers get less pay or lose their jobs altogether; the consumers aren’t able to buy the good products they want; because low- and middle-class investors can’t buy those bonds, they lose an opportunity to earn that interest.

Meanwhile, companies who can’t repay the bonds can still sell them to investors. Therefore, low- and middle-class investors lose the $100 they invested in the bonds. These companies can’t sell their products, so their workers either get less pay or lose their jobs.

Pretty much everyone in this system suffers — except Klaus Schwab and the multi-billionaires in the WEF.

One of the mechanisms used to implement this scheme, according to the Mercury Radio Arts report, “is called the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics, and it functions as the heart of Schwab’s stakeholder-capitalism model,” and it provides “the elites with transformative authority over — well, just about everything.”

Again, the WEF vocabulary is an exercise in using words to cover up the realities which are the opposites of those words. When a bank or an investor reads about an “environmental, social, and governance” score for a company, each of those words has been twisted into a reverse meaning. The “environmental” part of an ESG score doesn’t tell the reader about a company's environmental friendliness; rather, it simply reflects whether the company has met the arbitrary demands of the economists who rate it — economists who are influenced by the WEF. Likewise, the “social” component of the ESG score doesn’t reveal anything about a company’s effectiveness in combating racism or inequities; it shows rather whether the company has complied with the symbolic but ineffectual demands of the WEF — demands spread through professional and academic networks. Likewise, the “governance” score simply reflects the degree to which the company corresponds to the WEF’s political agenda. Note that, in each of the three metrics, the WEF’s control is mediated and indirect, spread via economists, bank loan officers, and bond-rating agencies.

To be quite precise, the reader may note the following examples: BlackRock is an investment firm which invests billions of dollars on behalf of its clients. BlackRock’s CEO is Larry Fink, who also happens to be a member of the WEF. Under Fink’s leadership, BlackRock pressured many companies to do business in ways which did not maximize returns to BlackRock’s customers. In one case, BlackRock coerced Exxon Mobil into making decisions which did not maximize profits. Those profits would have gone to retirement funds for blue-collar union workers. BlackRock chose to reduce retirement benefits for factory workers in order to advance its political agenda.

Another example is FitchRatings, a company whose task it is to guide ordinary individual investors as they buy bonds. Rather than rate companies based on their ability to repay — a bond is simply a small loan made by the individual to the company — FitchRatings now rates companies on their ESG scores. Investors have little guidance when they buy bonds. Ordinary working-class people are vulnerable: they might buy bonds which will never be repaid, and they’ll buy them because FitchRatings chose to conceal the relevant financial information from the public. FitchRatings, infected by the influence of the WEF, would rather see people’s savings evaporate than see the political and social agendas of the WEF be ignored.

Thus is made manifest the net impact of Klaus Schwab, the World Economic Forum, and “stakeholder capitalism” — no concern for the economic well-being of lower- and middle-class workers, and therefore no concern for true social justice; feigned concern for the climate, cloaked in arbitrary demands; a political agenda camouflaged as concerns about “governance.”

What is true of the WEF — at least in terms of its economic views — can be said of other similar organizations: the IMF, the WTO, the CFR, the Bilderberg Meetings, etc.

What is true of Klaus Schwab — at least in terms of his economic views — can be said of Larry Randall Wray and Stephanie Kelton.

Klaus Schwab and the WEF — the “Great Reset” and “stakeholder capitalism” — are merely two of the clearest examples of a worldwide network of elite individuals and elite organizations who are seeking to consolidate power and control for themselves.

Klaus Schwab, the WEF, and “stakeholder capitalism” have one clear objective: control — control consolidated in the hands of a small group of elite multibillionaires in the WEF.

Who’s Really Running the World? Who Controls? Who Governs the Governments?

One might imagine that the most powerful people in the world would be a group including the President of the United States, the President of Russia and Prime Minister of Russia, the Secretary General of the Chinese Communist Party and the President of China, perhaps the Secretary General of NATO, the Chairman of the General Council of the WTO, the leaders of the WEF, the chairman of Bilderberg Meetings, the CFR, the Board of Governors of the IMF, the President of the European Council, the President of the Council of the European Union, the President of the European Parliament, or the President of the European Commission.

(NATO is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the CFR is the Council on Foreign Relations, the WTO is the World Trade Organization, the WEF is the World Economic Forum, and the IMF is the International Monetary Fund. The “European Council” and the “Council of the European Union” and the “European Commission” are three distinct entities.)

The reader might also add the political leadership of Brazil, India, and South Africa.

Upon reflection, one could also name the richest people in the world and the people who lead the biggest businesses and companies in the world. To that could be added religious leaders, like the Pope and Dalai Lama, and media leaders, who influence millions of followers on social media, other internet venues, television, and radio. Famous athletes and coaches could be included in the list.

All of the above are certainly influential and powerful people. To be added to that list are, however, people whose names, affiliations, and job titles are unknown to the reading public. These people are the “insiders” as historian Gary Allen describes them.

Some of the “insiders” have job titles which sound humble and obscure, but persist in governments and bureaucracies as political leaders come and go. Some of them are by accident of birth well connected to various leaders. Some have knowledge and expertise which make them valuable, or which give them the ability to manipulate.

In the media, some of the “insiders” belong to that class which is known as the “opinion makers.” While nominally powerless, they exert great influence on society. On platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, and many others — in an earlier generation, they were newspaper columnists and radio commentators — they have no governmental authority or power, but nonetheless can shape public opinions and perceptions.

Other “insiders” are invisible and obscure. Their names don’t show up in Google searches, but their influence circles the globe.

These “insiders” are networked among each other, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly, and form a bloc. Much more subtle than a Cold War bloc, this bloc moves silently and invisibly behind the scenes. Viewers all know the faces, voices, and opinions on YouTube, TikTok, and other apps, but who are the “old men” on the Boards of Directors who operate those apps? Who makes those faces, voices, and opinions possible?

And why does the viewing public feel the need to agree with one or another of those media influencers?

Historian Gary Allen explains:

One thing which makes it so hard for some socially minded people to assess the conspiratorial evidence objectively is that the conspirators come from the very highest social strata. They are immensely wealthy, highly educated and extremely cultured.

These “opinion-makers” have millions of hits and millions of followers on their platforms. The average viewer will wonder if they know something and if they should earn our respect.

But these conspirators — Gary Allen uses the word, but the reader should distinguish between those who are conspirators and those who are unwitting instruments of the conspiracy — might not be worth the public’s respect. They might know some secrets, but those are sinister secrets, secrets which make these “influencers” guilty, not honorable.

Or these “influencers” might know very little, and be mere unknowing puppets.

These familiar faces, often the facade behind which lurk much more powerful but unfamiliar faces, do not work for the well-being of their fellow citizens. Instead of a citizen’s rights, they are motivated by a conspiracy’s ability to control.

Instead of maximizing each human’s right to make decisions, these influencers enable an international conspiracy to control the lives of individuals.

It is a global conspiracy. It extends beyond the political and partisan squabbles within any one nation. In the United States, the Democrats might argue with the Republicans. In the United Kingdom, the Conservative Party might argue with the Labour Party. In Germany, the Social Democrats might argue with the Christian Democrats. But these divides are irrelevant and insignificant to the much deeper and quieter conspiracy which includes members of all these parties, and includes many others as well.

The goals of this conspiracy are many and nuanced, but one element unites all these goals: control. The conspiracy works to control, to remove freedom, to remove liberty, and remove the individual’s ability to make meaningful choices.

Gary Allen writes:

Many of them have lifelong reputations for philanthropy. Nobody enjoys being put in the position of accusing prominent people of conspiring to enslave their fellow Americans, but the facts are inescapable.

The international conspiracy is quite adept at using social psychology. The phrase “social psychology” is used to describe “how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others,” in the words of one textbook.

The global conspiracy — it makes no difference whether it’s called a “socialist” or a “communist” conspiracy, and may even be called, in some cases, a “capitalist” conspiracy — uses social psychology effectively, as Gary Allen notes:

Many business and professional people are particularly vulnerable to the “don’t jeopardize your social respectability” pitch given by those who don’t want the conspiracy exposed. The Insiders know that if the business and professional community will not take a stand to save the private enterprise system, the socialism through which they intend to control the world will be inevitable.

For the global conspiracy, socialism and communism are means to an end. The goal is control, and these socio-economic ideologies offer an excuse for those in power to control individuals and to gain yet more power. The rank-and-file members of socialist and communist movements may indeed have good-hearted desires to alleviate poverty and work toward some version of justice. But the leaders of those organizations see only the opportunity to amass more power for themselves.

There is a certain insincerity and cynicism with which wealthy industrialists fund and promote socialist movements. Billionaires in the twenty-first century world economy obtain and maintain their prosperity by using the “free market” version of capitalist economics.

In the various versions of socialism which these movements espouse, these billionaires would lose the source of their money, because there would be no free market, and they would lose much of the wealth which they already have, because of massive property taxes and wealth taxes. So why would these rich women and men promote socialist schemes?

They have no desire to fully implement utopian socialist visions. Instead, they merely institute those aspects of socialism which would give them institutional control over the lives of individuals and control over businesses and economies.

Gary Allen explains how the “insiders” use a combinations of social psychology and economic pressure to exact compliance:

They believe that most business and professional men are too shallow and decadent, too status conscious, too tied up in the problems of their jobs and businesses to worry about what is going on in politics. These men are told that it might be bad for business or jeopardize their government contracts if they take a stand. They have been bribed into silence with their own tax monies!

Insincerity and cynicism are also visible as the “insiders” embrace various social causes.

Race and racism have become focal points for such social movements during the first quarter of the twenty-first century. The opinion-makers, insiders, and influencers fund and promote such movements, repeat the slogans and programs of the movements, and are happily seen in the media with the leaders and members of the groups which the movements claim to help. Yet their own personal lives remain surprisingly free of diversity. This is true of political leaders, media personalities in music and movies, and other types of influencers.

Another topic among the social movements of the era is that of gender and sexuality. Here, too, the global insiders offer insincere but highly visible support. On the one hand, those wealthy and powerful individuals energetically proclaim their alliance with non-standard concepts of gender and sexuality; on the other hand, among their own friends and family, they tolerate only the most traditional understandings of gender and sexuality. Members of the conspiracy see the gender/sexuality questions only as one more way to control people by having a connection to what those people see as a component of their identity.

A third example is found in the current concerns about climate. Global insiders endorse various “green” movements to protect the environment. Yet these same insiders have the largest “carbon footprints” on the planet. They build or buy large and expensive structures in low-lying areas near the seacoast, revealing thereby that they do not anticipate rising ocean water levels. But the “green” movements offer them further opportunities to control: numerous regulations and taxes.

The pattern is clear: wealthy capitalists who promote socialism; people who insist on traditional marriage structures for their friends and family but promote alternative understandings of gender and sexuality; people who use massive amounts of fossil fuel and don’t believe in rising sea levels, yet promote “green” politics.

Those who seek only power and control use these social groupings as a facade to cover their activities and as instruments to manipulate individuals and societies into cooperating with their deceptive actions.

When the Toddler Throws His Food on the Floor — Dealing with North Korea: Could China Help? Would China Help?

For decades, the global community of diplomats have struggled to find ways to have meaningful conversations with the government of North Korea — the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK.

Most analyses of the situation see China as a major factor in dealing with the dynasty ruled successively by Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-Il, and Kim Jong-Un. This three-generation dictatorship has good relations with no nation on earth, but its relations with China are its least bad relations. Exasperated diplomats around the world have sometimes turned to China for help in making any progress with North Korea in discussions.

In 1994, when the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) learned that the DPRK was accelerating its program to develop both nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them, it produced a report exploring possible scenarios. How would China react if the United Nations enacted trade restrictions on North Korea as a consequence of the DPRK’s stockpiling atomic bombs? Robert Wampler explains the DIA’s assessment of such a scenario:

In the event of efforts to impose economic sanctions, DIA analysts believed that China would protect its economic interests (such as maintaining Most Favored Nation status with the United States) by abstaining from any U.N. vote. Beijing would further likely work to ease the impact of any sanctions by facilitating the supply of needed goods to North Korea with the primary goal of preventing the country’s economic collapse, which would threaten a political crisis on China’s border.

The DIA explored another, even more serious, scenario. What might China do if there were full-scale armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula? Robert Wampler writes:

Military actions raised a whole new set of concerns for Beijing. DIA analysis divided military contingencies into two main categories: war as the result of North Korean attack, and war resulting from a U.S./U.N. attack on the North. If Pyongyang attacked South Korea, China would likely avoid giving military support and would work to end hostilities. But, if U.S. and South Korean forces pushed into North Korea, it would face a dilemma. In a worst-case scenario, the report suggests that Beijing might deploy Chinese forces across the Yalu River to prevent the whole country from being overrun by the Americans and their allies.

In the decade following the writing of this DIA report, diplomatic thinking shifted. Could China function as part of a team — as one of several nations who jointly worked to nudge the DPRK toward a more peaceful path?

North Korea had half-heartedly engaged in some discussions with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and had at one point turned off a nuclear reactor by early 2002 to comply with an IAEA guideline.

Officials in the U.S. government had adopted a metaphor for the behavior of the DPRK’s dictator. They said that Kim Jong-il was prone to throwing his food on the floor, an image comparing the ruler to a badly behaved toddler. Like a three-year-old child, the tyrant would from time to time knock over some international understanding, simply to make a mess.

Maybe China could calm the toddler down?

It was certainly a long shot: China is fiercely independent, and rarely cooperates with any nation or any global effort. But if a mutual interest could be found, i.e., if there were some motive for China to desire what the other nations desire, then perhaps China could be lured into being part of a global effort to persuade North Korea to back away from its buildup of atomic weapons.

Condoleezza Rice, who was National Security Advisor at the time, recalls a conversation in November 2002 among a group of people who were on their way to a meeting. In that group was President George Bush. Rice remembers Bush presenting the idea that China should be a part of a multinational effort to urge the DPRK away from its nuclear weapons program. She writes:

Before we went down to the Situation Room, however, he told me that he had come to the conclusion that nothing would work without getting China on board. That was clearly right, but at the time, we didn’t have a way to enlist the Chinese, and the point just hung in the air. By the end of 2002 the North had blown up any chance for negotiation by announcing in a letter to the IAEA that it was restarting its reactor. The North further declared that its nuclear facilities were not subject to any agreement with the IAEA and were instead a matter between North Korea and the United States. Kim Jong-il had just thrown a big wad of food on the floor. For the time being, we made no effort to pick it up.

Bush’s idea was to make China part of a group process. Up to that point, there had been a series of one-on-one negotiations between the United States and North Korea, with China being considered as a variable in those discussions. Bush proposed to make China a part of the conversation, instead of merely a factor to be considered in the negotiations.

By 2003, the time had come to implement Bush’s strategy. A previously negotiated deal, called the “Agreed Framework,” was clearly ineffective. A new approach was needed. Rather than let the DPRK have one-on-one talks with each of the nations, the new procedure would be to have a group of nations present at the conference table together simultaneously to engage North Korea. Condoleezza Rice explains:

We’d been trying for some time to get the Chinese to play a more active role in reining in the North Korean nuclear program. The President had been right that only Beijing had enough leverage to convince Kim Jong-il to abandon his aggressive stance toward the international community. Much of the problem with the Agreed Framework was that it had left the United States negotiating bilaterally with the North Koreans, allowing Pyongyang to play the South Koreans, the Europeans, and the Chinese off of us by seeking concessions from each party individually.

Now the task was to get the Chinese to buy into Bush’s idea. Secretary of State Colin Powell had presented it already once to the Chinese, who weren’t interested.

President Bush creatively guided a phone conversation with Chinese leader Ziang Jemin (also spelled Jiang Zemin) and got the Chinese willing to participate in the multilateral negotiations, as Condoleezza Rice reports:

Now we had a different idea. Rather than the bilateral negotiations with the North that were being urged on us by our allies, we proposed a six-party framework with China in the chair. Beijing had initially resisted the idea when Colin proposed it in March 2003. President Bush had been so frustrated with the Chinese that he’d raised the ante in a phone call with Chinese President Ziang Jemin. Before getting on the call, he had asked what more he could say to move Beijing. I suggested that he raise the specter, ever so gently, of a military option against North Korea. He liked the idea, and when Ziang began to recite the timeworn mantra about the need for the United States to show more flexibility with the North, the President stopped him. A bit more directly than I’d expected, he told Ziang that he was under a lot of pressure from hard-liners to use military force and added, on his own, that one also couldn’t rule out a nuclear Japan if the North remained unconstrained.

China didn’t especially want North Korea to have nuclear weapons, particularly if it meant that other Pacific-rim nations like Japan would subsequently also obtain nuclear weapons in order to maintain parity. China’s chief goal for the region was stability, as Vice President Richard ‘Dick’ Cheney notes:

It was with the intention of breaking this pattern of deceit and deception that President Bush in 2003 established the six-party talks made up of the United States, South Korea, North Korea, Japan, China, and Russia. The idea was to move away from bilateral, or one-on-one, negotiations that had failed in the past and to bring into the diplomatic process other nations that had an interest in preventing North Korea from developing nuclear weapons. China was particularly important, because as North Korea’s economic lifeline, China had considerable influence over the isolated and insular North Korean government. We knew that the Chinese were concerned about the regional instability that could arise from a nuclear-armed North Korea, particularly given the likelihood that nations like Japan and others would feel the need to follow suit.

Ultimately, China’s desire for stability meant that it also desired to keep North Korea free of nuclear weapons. Therefore, China was willing to participate in Bush’s plan for the “six party talks” and the first round of the talks were held in August 2003. Explaining the dynamic, President Bush writes:

The key to multilateral diplomacy with North Korea was China, which had close ties to its fellow communist nation. The challenge was that China and the United States had different interests on the Korean Peninsula. The Chinese wanted stability; we wanted freedom. They were worried about refugees flowing across the border; we were worried about starvation and human rights. But there was one area where we agreed: It was not in either of our interests to let Kim Jong-il have a nuclear weapon.

By early 2007, the talks had made enough progress that the DPRK was willing to again shut down a nuclear reactor in return for fuel and for better diplomatic relations with the United States and Japan. The talks continued into late 2007 and seemed poised for more beneficial breakthroughs.

Significant shifts in U.S. foreign policy after January 2009 caused the North Koreans to walk away from talks. The DPRK attempted to launch a satellite into earth orbit in April 2009. President Obama threatened increased economic sanctions against North Korea in response, but failed to actually implement those sanctions. Seeing this failure to continue the task to its conclusion, the DPRK judged Obama to be soft and therefore proceeded to conduct another test explosion of a nuclear weapon in May 2009.

The inclusion of China into the six party talks from 2003 onward was made possible by finding common ground which incentivized China to work with other nations as they collectively sought to help North Korea become less bellicose. China was and is a key factor in any interactions with the DPRK. But when the United States revealed that, after January 2009, it was unwilling to consistently follow through on its stated intentions, e.g., the intention to implement economic sanctions, then North Korea simply walked away from the negotiations.

A Persistent Problem: The Global Community Ponders North Korea

The macro patterns of North Korea — the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or DPRK — are clear: disregard for the physical wellbeing of its citizens; repression of any freedom of speech, thought, or belief; a maniacal militarism; the deification of its absolute dictator; the globe’s most extreme isolationism; an aggressive persecution of religion; and a paranoid belief that the other nations of the world are deadly enemies.

The micro patterns of the DPRK’s internal politics and external foreign policy are less well presented in the news media, and often thoroughly understood and studied only by specialists.

The ruling dynasty in North Korea began with Kim Il-Sung, who was installed as ruler prior to the founding of the DPRK as a state in 1948. He ruled until his death in 1994. During the reign of Kim Il-Sung, North Korea began developing nuclear weapons. The other nations of the world attempted to use diplomacy to persuade the DPRK to stop its efforts to build atomic bombs, but these efforts were unsuccessful.

During these same decades, the DPRK was also developing missiles to deliver these nuclear weapons to targets thousands of miles away.

As countries around the globe became more nervous about the nuclear weapons program, diplomats hoped that China could play a role in a process to dissuade Kim Il-Sung from building atomic bombs. If China weren’t able to use diplomacy to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, perhaps it would use force. Decades later, leaders around the world would still be wondering about the same question: would China help to make the DPRK somewhat humane? In the second decades of the twenty-first century, they would look back to 1994 and see the parallels, as Robert Wampler wrote in 2013:

Then, as now, the role Beijing would play in resolving the crisis was a major unknown. But a partially declassified Defense Intelligence Agency report from late January 1994 — published for the first time here and on the National Security Archive’s website — laid out Beijing’s options and possible responses, ranging from economic sanctions to war. The report notes that the Chinese needed to “reconcile their interest in stability on the Korean Peninsula and long-standing ties to Pyongyang with their interests in a denuclearized peninsula, in avoiding isolation among UN Security Council (SC) members, and in maintaining stable relations with the US, Japan and South Korea.”

While North Korea does not have good relations with any other nation, it has its least bad relations with China.

Since 1994 — at the latest — the global diplomatic community has hoped that China could be a factor in persuading North Korea to desist from its endless violations of human rights.

Kim Jong-Il inherited power in 1994 and continued the program to develop nuclear bombs. In 2006, the DPRK exploded its first atomic weapon in test. Between 2006 and 2023, North Korea has conducted a total of six such test explosions. Various intelligence agencies estimate that the country has an arsenal of between 20 and 115 atomic weapons on hand, with more being constructed on a regular basis. Its weapons continue to grow in number and sophistication, as do its missiles.

When Kim Jong-Il inherited the dictatorship in 2011, the family’s pattern of mental illness, narcissism, and brutal oppression remained unchanged. The people of the DPRK remained malnourished, uneducated, intimidated, misinformed, and subject to arrests, beatings, imprisonments, and executions at the whim of the state. The cruelties and oppression are obvious. The North Korean regime is inadvertently transparent, as Edward Luttwak writes:

The transparency is not due to anything revealed by North Korea’s string of rulers, from whom it is pointless to expect any change of policy — just because the previous one liked Japanese food and film stars, or because the current Kim Jong-un spent time in a Swiss boarding school. The regime, past and present, continues to exceed even Stalin’s Soviet Union in its pervasive secrecy, but what remains in full public view is more than enough to explain its frenetically aggressive stance.

Luttwak goes on to explain how economic calculations to divert resources into weapons programs and into the lavish lifestyle of the Kim and his cronies are unmistakable. Nobody — short-term visitor or lifelong citizen — can spend time in North Korea without understanding that this is a deliberate choice to keep the population at the starvation level, and that it is an explicit policy to demand complete unquestioning obedience and enthusiastic support from that population.

No resident of the DPRK is surprised when a neighbor, family member, or friend dies of starvation. That’s a routine occurrence. Neither are they surprised when a coworker disappears to spend decades in a prison camp — or to simply be killed.

In 2013, Frank Jannuzi reported:

Hundreds of thousands of people — including children — are arbitrarily held in political prison camps and other detention facilities, where they are subjected to forced labor, denial of food as punishment, torture and public executions. In 2011, Amnesty used satellites to document the apparent expansion of some of these prison camps. Last month, analysis of newly acquired images showed what appeared to be the blurring of lines between a political prison camp (Kwanliso-14) and the surrounding population, raising fears of new movement controls and other restrictions on people living near prison camps.

Because the DPRK government doesn’t understand Western Civilization’s habit of valuing human life, it is prone to make mistakes when dealing with the few outsiders who visit North Korea. One such incident involved an American college student whose fatal punishment was based on allegations that he might have taken a poster off a wall without permission.

The student, from the University of Virginia, was accused of stealing a poster, and sentenced to fifteen years in a labor camp. He began serving that sentence in early 2016. In June 2017, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson secured the student’s release. The student, named Otto Warmbier, was flown home to the United States. He had been released in such poor physical condition that he died several days after returning home.

The routine attitudes and practices of the DPRK’s authorities — i.e., capital punishment for an insignificant crime, if indeed a crime it was at all — suddenly caught the world’s attention.

The North Korean officials were surprised that anybody took note of Warmbier’s death. Such officials routinely assign individuals to be executed, or to spend life in prison.

Ambassador Nikki Haley recalls explaining the situation at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council:

”To Americans, the death of one innocent person can be as powerful as the death of millions,” I told the Security Council. “Because all men and women are created in God’s image, depravity toward one is a sure sign of willingness to do much more harm.”

At that point in time, three questions coalesced and caused for a renewed global effort to confront North Korea about its crimes: first, the continued production of atomic weapons and missiles to deliver them; second, the brutal disregard for human rights manifested in the prison camps and executions; third, the attempted extermination of people who showed evidence of spiritual or religious interest.

Nikki Haley spoke about actions which could accompany the words of the diplomats. Actions were needed because words along had failed. She said to the U.N. Security Council on that day in July 2017:

In the coming days, we will bring before the Security Council a resolution that raises the international response in a way that is proportionate to North Korea’s new escalation. I will not detail the resolution here today, but the options are all known to us. If we are unified, the international community can cut off the major sources of hard currency to the North Korean regime. We can restrict the flow of oil to their military and their weapons program. We can increase air and maritime restrictions. We can hold senior regime officials accountable.

North Korean citizens were being beaten and tortured by their own government. The DPRK was constructing missiles and nuclear weapons in an ongoing program. Freedom of thought, belief, or speech was almost nonexistent.

The coordinated efforts of Nikki Haley, Rex Tillerson, and officials from both the United Nations and the United States produced a slight thaw in North Korean behavior. The coordinated diplomatic and economic efforts were called “maximum pressure” tactics, a term borrowed from the global community’s similar approach to Iran at the time. Sadly, the small improvements were short-lived, and the DPRK returned to its oppressive ways.

Merely possessing a copy of the New Testament is a crime in North Korea, punishable by life in a prison camp or by death. In 2019, citing the research of Yeo-sang Yoon and Sun-young Han, Doug Bandow explained:

Kim Il-sung, still considered the DPRK’s “eternal president,” once explained that “we came to understand that religious persons can only be broken of a bad habit if they are killed.” While North Korean policy later relaxed — it could hardly grow stricter — religion remains under siege. Indeed, as border controls have loosened, Yoon and Han note, “the North Korean regime has tightened its watch on the refugees and defectors who are deported from China because of the fear that they have been exposed to religion.”

Bandow notes that children are taught to turn their parents over to the police if the parents possess a copy of the New Testament.

By 2023, the DPRK had resumed a vigorous weapons development campaign, emboldened by America’s embarrassing withdrawal from Afghanistan, and encouraged by the fact that much of the world’s attention was directed toward the conflict in Ukraine. To fund its weapons program, North Korea engaged in high-tech theft. In June 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that “North Korea’s hacker army stole $3 billion in crypto, funding” the “nuclear program.” The newspaper went on to report that the North Korean “​​regime has trained cybercriminals to impersonate tech workers or employers, amid other schemes.”

At the same time, the DPRK resumed arresting anyone who demonstrated an interest in religion. Political arrests continued, targeting anyone who failed to show great enthusiasm in supporting the Kim dynasty.