The Speaking Pebble

Reconnecting with History, #11

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I keep a little flake of concrete with me. It lives in an unassuming little box where it won’t be noticed by a burglar or a mugger. It travels with me when I move across country. I’ve carried it nearly ten thousand miles in the last few years.

It is a burden of witness and understanding, the reminder of what has become a footnote in history that marked a turning point in the history of the entire planet.

I carry it in trust.

I carry it because it is—if the word means anything—a piece of pure evil. It’s the Loc Nar. It’s the One Ring (and, like the One Ring, it was a birthday present).

But the only thing more evil than the object itself would be allowing it to disappear from the Earth on my watch.

When Our World Was Young

In the aftermath of World War 2, FDR and Stalin (along with Churchill) divided up Europe. The major powers that teamed up to stomp out the rise of a new major geopolitical contender divided up the spoils. At Yalta and Potsdam, they made a deal that gave Western Europe to the Western powers who mostly returned them to their original people (the United States still maintains a heavy military presence in many European countries, eight decades later).

At the time, Britain was broken—Churchill had sold his empire’s birthright to FDR for a mess of pottage¹—but it still held on to enough of its prestige and had played a vital enough role in the war to command a seat at the table. The United States and The Soviet Union were rival imperial powers, both intent on ruling the world, each with divergent ideologies.

The United States sold itself (and, indeed, fancied itself) as The Great Liberator that would bring industry and enterprise and commerce and economic uplift and freedom to the far corners of the world.

The Soviet Union sold itself (but had long since internally given up the pretense) that it was the world’s Great Liberator, who would free the oppressed peoples of the world from the burdens of economic subjugation, corporate imperialism, the tyranny of oppressive family life,² and the greed of international bankers (especially the Jewish ones).³

The Soviet reality, of course, was quite different. Even as left-wing thinkers sympathetic to the Soviet cause were very good at formulating incisive (and often very accurate) critiques of the Western system (which by this point had evolved away from the free market championed by Adam Smith⁴ and into the nightmare scenario of managed merchantilist corporatism⁵ he alluded to⁶), the Soviet system they preferred was in the process of conducting the most extensive series of genocides in world history up-to-that point,⁷ and were running a system of universal totalitarian slavery—a crime they intentionally and systematically covered up.⁸

The legitimacy of the Soviet system, and its hope for future conquest, depended upon its ability to use its allies in the intellectual class of the First World⁹ and the Third World¹⁰ to sell its program and erode the credibility of the Western system(s).¹¹

This led to a problem during the Post-War Era in the Soviet sphere:

People living near enough to the West to receive Western broadcasts, or to go shopping in Western cities, could see that the grass was greener on the other side of the border, and were tempted to leave.

And leave they did.

In droves.

The problem was most pronounced, early on, in Berlin.

Berlin lies deep inside what was then East Germany, but because of the city’s economic and symbolic significance it was divided up between the Western Powers and the Soviets. The Soviets got roughly half the territory, and the rest was divided between the British, the Americans, and the French—these three powers quickly consolidated their administrative zones into a unified West Berlin.

The existence of West Berlin, situated deep in East Germany, became a sore spot for the Soviet puppet regime in East Germany. The first crisis came just a couple years after the Post-War settlement, when the Western powers introduced the West German Deutsche-mark currency.

The Deutsche-mark was so attractive to Easterners as a store of value that it set off a currency crisis in East Germany. The East German regime retaliated by blockading the railroads and other supply lines to West Berlin, saying they’d only lift the blockade if the Western powers withdrew the new Mark from circulation.

The Western allies responded by organizing an airlift, flying supplies into West Berlin to keep it afloat, and making it clear that they were willing to bankrupt their own countries in order to defeat the Soviet blockade. It was extremely expensive—both in terms of money and political capital. An early example of the strategy “We can stay stupid longer than you can stay solvent.”

It worked.

For a little while.

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The Fortification of the Frontier

Over the next twelve years, the Soviets took a series of steps to prevent their subjects from fleeing to the West. They erected broad frontiers; wide no-man’s-land borders bulldozed between Eastern Europe’s Soviet Bloc and the West, guarded by troops and dogs and barbed wire and border checkpoints. It was called The Iron Curtain.

This frontier also went up around West Berlin, encircling its borders and cutting a nasty gash across the city. But it wasn’t enough to stop the residents of East Berlin from fleeing to the West.

So, in 1961, the Soviet regime (in concert with its East German puppet state) began building a wall. First with bricks and cinderblocks, which sometimes bisected buildings and blocked off the windows which had a view of the West, and then with twelve-foot-tall concrete panels, until there were only a handful of checkpoints allowing highly-regulated traffic between the halves of the divided city. Usually Westerners (who had the proper papers) were allowed to go East and return, but Easterners were generally not allowed into the West—a rule which gradually intensified in the years after the Wall went up.

The Berlin Wall viewed from the Western side, with no-man's land and the Eastern Wall visible on the left.

The Soviets said it was to “protect” its people from “fascist influence.” In reality, it turned all of East Germany into a prison colony. People who attempted to cross the wall were mauled by dogs, shot, and otherwise liquidated for their troubles.

The Symbol of a Divided Humanity

Human culture doesn’t scale well. We are a tribal species, and we form small groups of people we can trust—families, towns, city-states, clans, tribes, and sometimes nation-states. For an empire to scale, it must do at least one of three things:

1. Eliminate the distinctions between people-groups within its own borders

2. Encourage hatred between those people-groups

3. Induce those people-groups to have an allegiance and identity to a larger entity in addition to their own local group.

The Romans, the Persians, the Babylonians, the Hellenists, the British, the Muslims, and the Catholic Church all did some combination of all of the above to consolidate their power.

The Soviet program, on the other hand, was fiercely devoted to using the first method. Those groups whose solidarity they couldn’t break through subversion, seduction, or intimation? They simply wiped them out. They weren’t the first to attempt this—the Han Chinese had been doing a version of it on-and-off for thousands of years—but the Soviets were the most ruthless and successful up to this point in history (the Chinese would later reclaim that mantle with Mao’s Cultural Revolution).

The Berlin Wall was the symbol of this program. On the Eastern side, you had the People of the Soviet Union. On the Western side, you had Everyone Else. They might be called Capitalists, Imperialists, Western Decadents, Fascists, or any number of other things, but from the Soviet point of view (which the rest of the developed world eventually came to share) the Berlin Wall wasn’t just a border wall. It was a sharp dividing line splitting humanity into two halves.

And when it went up, it didn’t just divide the world. It divided communities, and friends, and separated families, many of whom died waiting for that golden day when the border would open again.

The Brandenberg Gate (pictured above) became the place for Western leaders to direct public calls for liberalization against the Soviet premier, and to make shows of solidarity for the people of Eastern Europe. Kennedy and Reagan made arguably their best speeches in front of the Gate.

Hell, even Alvin and the Chipmunks played a (fictional) concert there.

Take a moment and watch that clip. It originally aired in December of 1988, when the momentum of the US/Soviet detente seemed to be slowing, and hopes of the end of the empire of slavery seemed as distant a dream as it ever was. I watched that cartoon on its initial run, and adults in the room wept—not for the hope on display, but for the vanity of that hope.

But then, eleven months later, a file clerk screwed up.

Let the Wall Come Down!

In August of 1989, the Hungarians opened their border with Austria and allowed the limited movement of people between the West and the East. The experiment payed good PR dividends for the Soviets, so more events were scheduled, including the Pan-European Picnic. It was another opening in the Iron Curtain—limited in time and scope, but a real opening nonetheless.

With East Germany in the depths of a political and economic crisis, a new travel policy allowing limited traffic between East and West was authorized in Berlin. The East German government hoped it would ease tensions and buy public approval.

But someone fucked up. The text given to the East Berlin official in charge of announcing the change was vague, and he left the public with the distinct impression that the wall was going to be opened for people to cross without permission.

So on the night of November 9, 1989, East Berliners showed up at the six checkpoints in the Wall en masse, to the confusion of the border guards who were still under orders to shoot anyone who tried to cross without the correct papers. The crowd protested, claiming that the official word put out on television was that anyone could cross without papers. A flurry of phone calls ensued, but all the bureaucrats in the East, who were similarly confused, declined to accept responsibility for affirming the lethal-force policy.

At 10:45 PM local time, a guard named Harald Jäger gave up and opened his checkpoint.

The crowd flooded through. The crowds were so large that people began climbing the wall, and heavy equipment was called in to lift segments of the wall out of the way.

What ensued was the most televised party in human history.

And, over the next four years, the Soviet Empire was demolished. In concert with its allies and client regimes in Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, and China, it had conducted genocides and the eradication of culture on a scale never-before seen in the history of the world. It imprisoned, oppressed, and enslaved more than half the world’s population for over half a century, (and some of them are still thusly enslaved).

And, tragically, it is barely remembered anymore…because it was the perverse beacon of hope for most of the world’s intellectuals.¹²

But I remember.

I watched some of its horrors unfold.

I watched its end happen in real-time.

And I hold one of its talismans in my hand.

The Pebble Speaks

Thirty-five years ago today (well, tomorrow by the time you’re reading this), the Berlin Wall came down. Partiers with hammers set to it at once, carrying off fragments for themselves—some as keepsakes, some to package and re-sell as souvenirs.

This pebble that I carry with me was once part of the Berlin Wall. A fragment of a now-ancient evil obelisk that divided a nation and a culture in ways that are still felt on the ground all over Germany, and divided the world into the slaves and the free.

It is a reminder of the things that desperate governments do to shore up their control, and what despots are willing to do when cornered.

Walls have been part of the world since the discovery of stone axes. They were always fortifications to keep the people safe. Today we see walls going up all around the world as the post-Cold War peace finally finishes unwinding, all of them aimed at keeping undesirables out.¹³

The wisdom and desirability of these walls are each debatable on their own merit. But there is something important that separates them all from the Berlin Wall, which we are fools to lose sight of.

The Berlin Wall wasn’t a border control to keep invaders out.

It was a perimeter wall meant to keep prisoners in.

It proclaimed to the world: “From the potentate intent on total subjugation, there is no escape!”

But the pebble whispers, too. It says:

“With the might of the world’s greatest slave empire behind me, I could not contain the human spirit.”

Sic Semper Tyrannus.

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1. Genesis 25:34—read it. It’s one of the most broadly applicable myths in the Western canon, and one that very few people learn from.

2. Those of you who grew up in good families have no conception how well this message sells to children who were abused, neglected, or had their lives meticulously-managed by their parents and extended families (and who didn’t fit in with that family).

3. Yes, despite the prominence of disaffected Jews like Trotsky in the early Communist movement, the Soviet Union (and Communism in general) was every inch as anti-Semitic as the Nazis. Bear in mind that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion originated in the Russian dissident spheres before the Revolution).

4. In his book The Wealth of Nations

5. i.e. a system in which monopolies are chosen/fostered/created by government action (either directly), often as a result of lobbying, and managed by bureaucrats, for the advancement of the interests of the State as perceived by those State actors on the payroll of the lobbyists.

6. Both in Wealth and in his much shorter book The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Also anticipated in frightening exactitude by The Managerial Revolution by James Burnham).

7. Yes, far more extensive than even the Nazis.

8. What, you thought “fake news” was a recent phenomenon?

9. The Industrialized world that fell under the Anglo-American sphere of influence

10. The rest of the world that fell outside of the American (First World) and/or Soviet (Second World) spheres of influence.

11. One of its favorite tactics was, and still is, the prizing of “Democracy” (strategically defined) over the values that, in the West, it is supposed to support, such as the consent of the governed, liberty, the peaceful transition of power, and the accountability of officials to the public.

12. For reasons I will go into in a future post (not all of which are obvious at first blush), Communism and its descendant ideologies are very appealing to intellectuals.

13. See my series Unfolding the World for how and why this is happening, and what it means for us plebs.