Our Enemy, The State: 1, How The State Tyrannizes Its People

by

Gabriel Donohoe

[This is the first of two articles on how ‘The State’ subjugates and swindles its own people by imposing austerity, fear, and fraud upon them. The first article propounds that ‘The State’ is a criminal enterprise which accumulates unwarranted power and wealth by suppressing the Natural Rights of the People. This essay focuses on the Irish State but it could equally apply to almost any State in the world.

The second article is titled, “Our Enemy, The State: 2, How The People Can Smash State Tyranny.” It explores how a nation’s credit is systematically stolen and re-cycled by the banks and what the People can do to take back their own inherent power and defeat the tyranny of ‘The State’ in all its virulent forms.]

In 1935, Albert J. Nock published “Our Enemy, The State”, his classic treatise on how successive governments conspire to increase the power of the State by stealthily decreasing the power of the People. Nock bluntly describes the State as the common enemy of all industrious and decent men, a controlling bully that operates through deception and threats. This is a damning observation, even more true now in 2016 than it was 81 years ago.

In Ireland today, it is becoming more and more apparent that the State is not a benevolent matriarch who cherishes all her children. Far from it. The Irish State, according to James Joyce, is “the old sow that eats her farrow.” The State is contrived to devour the wealth of its people and to stifle their freedoms and individual sovereignty. The outcome of this great villainy is austerity, poverty, servitude, suicide, eviction, emigration, bank bailouts, unnecessary taxation, and myriad injustices and hardship, all leading to compromised health and early death for many people.

But who or what exactly is “The State”?

‘State’ and ‘Government’ are terms often used interchangeably but this is not entirely accurate. ‘State’ is more an abstraction, a nonphysical entity, while ‘Government’ is a collection of people.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘State’ as: “an organized political community under one government; a commonwealth; a nation.”

Max Weber describes ‘The State’ as: “a compulsory political organization with a centralized government that maintains a monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a certain territory.”

Yet Murray Rothbard forthrightly defines the ‘State’ as “the organization of robbery systematized and writ large”. In other words, the State is a huge mafia organization and the government is its ‘wiseguys’ – hoodlums who are paid to enforce a plethora of ‘laws’ and to steal as much from the people as they can. The State, through the muscle of government, is but a glorified ‘protection racket’ run by the few to fleece the many.

So, if the government merely functions as mafia ‘wiseguys’, who then are the godfathers?

The godfathers are a small but all-powerful cabal of international banksters operating in the shadows behind the façade of the State. While governments may come and go, these omnipotent crooks are always in the background, scheming, grasping, and controlling. They maintain their ‘death grip’ on the people by directing the activities of subservient governments. Those politicians whom they cannot bribe or cajole, they threaten, blackmail, or destroy.

While the government ‘wiseguys’ go about the business of looting the nation, they are aided and abetted by willing State whores in the judiciary, senior civil service, police, mass media, churches, academia, entertainment, and other spheres of influence. It seems that the State has no trouble finding corrupt individuals in the highest and most respectable echelons of society, unprincipled men and women whom it can manipulate and control.

The despotic State is quite a monster, a colossus of great power and wealth. Yet for all its power and wealth, it must be understood that the State has no power of its own, no wealth of its own. It must obtain these things from the people. But the public in general seems to have forgotten this important fact, i.e., that the State depends on them for its existence – not the other way round.

Nock says of the State:

“All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn.  Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can there be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.”

And Nock warns us of a chilling truism:

“In proportion as you give the State power to do things for you, you give it power to do things to you.”  (Emphasis not in original.)

On State money, Nock says:

“Another strange notion pervading whole peoples is that the State has money of its own…The State has no money. It produces nothing. It existence is purely parasitic, maintained by taxation; that is to say, by forced levies on the production of others. ‘Government money,’ of which one hears so much nowadays, does not exist; there is no such thing.”

The Invisible Government

Only the most naïve believe that the government actually runs the country, and runs it in the interests of the people. The fact is that government works perpetually in the interests of a shadowy elite who controls the State. We know this for a fact because politicians, popes, presidents, and prime ministers have told us so down through the years. Here are just a few random quotes…

“A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various powerful interests, combined in one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in banks.” – John C. Calhoun, U.S. Vice President (1825-1832) and U.S. Senator.

“The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.” British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881).

“It [Freemasonry] bends governments to its will sometimes by promises, sometimes by threats. It has found its way into every class of Society, and forms an invisible and irresponsible power, an independent government, as it were, within the body corporate of the lawful state.” –Pope Leo XIII, 1902.

“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.” — Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States, “Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography” (1913).

“Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.” – Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States ‘The New Freedom’, 1913.

“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson [1828- 1836].” – A letter written by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Colonel House, November 21st, 1933.

“We have a well-organized political-action group in this country, determined to destroy our Constitution and establish a one-party state… It operates secretly, silently, continuously to transform our Government… This ruthless power-seeking elite is a disease of our century… This group…is answerable neither to the President, the Congress, nor the courts. It is practically irremovable.” – Senator William Jenner, 1954 speech.

“The Rockefellers and their allies have, for at least fifty years, been carefully following a plan to use their economic power to gain political control of first America, and then the rest of the world. Do I mean conspiracy? Yes, I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent.” — Congressman Larry P. McDonald, November 1975. (Died along with 268 other passengers when Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down over Russia in 1983.)

And here is an often quoted gem, almost 100 years old, which could be so easily applied to Ireland today…

“The real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation. Like the octopus of real life, it operates under cover of a self created screen….At the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually runs the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both political parties.” – New York City Mayor John F. Hylan, 1922.

What the ‘invisible government’ certainly does not want is a free-thinking, educated, and affluent populace. Such a people cannot be controlled or manipulated. The State godfathers want a brainwashed, gullible, and debt-laden society that is easy to fleece and control. To that end they have devised a sophisticated mind control programme, running stealthily and extensively today, that regiments the behaviour of the serfs and governs their every thought and deed.

Many of these mind control programmes can be traced back to Edward L. Bernays, the father of spin doctors and black propaganda. Bernays was a PR guru and a nephew of famed psychiatrist, Sigmund Freud. He had many spectacular successes in propaganda operations such as the overthrow of democratically elected Arbenz Guzman in Guatamala (while Bernays worked for the United Fruit Company and the U.S. Government) and in convincing the American public that the fluoridation of water was not only safe but beneficial to health as well (on behalf of ALCOA, the Aluminum Company of America).

In his 1928 book, “Propaganda,” Bernays wrote:

“Those who manipulate [the organized habits and opinions of the masses]…constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country….We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of….In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”

It is not difficult to see how Bernays’s devious programmes have been used effectively over the last nine decades, especially in the Ireland of today. It is only now that a growing number of people are becoming more and more aware of “an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.” This ‘invisible government’ directs the actions of the visible government; this is true of Enda Kenny’s pathetic administrations, Brian Cowen’s wretched coalition, and all governments since the founding of the State.

Government By Criminals

Still doubt that Irish governments are operated by criminals?

Think of the infamous bank guarantees of 2008 and the reprehensible bank bailouts that followed… Think of the shadowy dealings of NAMA and its collusion with foreign financial vultures… Think of the notorious ‘Eviction Bill’ which eased the way for banks to evict tens of thousands of families and seize their homes… Think of the great give-away of our fish and our oil and gas fields worth billions upon billions of euro…

And think of the dogged, conspiratorial attempt to steal our water, our most precious resource, through the sly privatization of a monster called Irish Water… And think of the countless number of other plots and schemes by the black-tie thugs who “pull the wires” of our government puppets.

And reflect on the qualities or otherwise of numerous politicians in whom we trusted to run the affairs of the nation with probity and integrity: Charlie Haughey, Bertie Ahern, Michael Lowry, Ray Burke, Liam Lawlor, Denis Foley, Ivor Callely, ‘Pee’ Flynn, John O’Donoghue, Willie O’Dea, Ray MacSharry, Seán Doherty, to name a few.

Albert Nock was familiar with Bernays’s work. No doubt it appalled him. Nock’s vision for society was one free from the influence of the political State. At the time of his writing in the 1930s, Nock saw F. D. Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ – a series of laws passed by Congress and presidential executive orders – as merely a pretext for the federal government to increase its control over society.

Nock was horrified at FDR’s grab of unprecedented power which he described as a veritable coup d’état. He saw that the State constantly seized new powers for itself which penetrated to every act of the citizen, however secret. He observed that the agents of the State had elevated themselves as a separate and superior caste “with their thumbs in every pot”. This led Nock to describe the State as that which “claims and exercises the monopoly of crime”, a shocking indictment indeed.

In the Ireland of today we wonder what Nock would have thought of Fine Gael & Labour’s grab for power in Enda Kenny’s faithless government of 2011 – 2016? Or further, of Kenny’s second government, the current minority administration of Fine Gael supported by a patchwork of enticed Independents and by the collusion of Fianna Fáil who squat with one opportunistic foot in government and the other in opposition.

Originally, the Irish Constitution called for government of the country to be carried out by all TDs in the Dáil. Nonetheless, the voice of opposition TDs was soon brushed aside, effectively disenfranchising all those citizens who had voted them into office. And the voice of backbench government TDs was also stifled by imposing the party whip on them, forcing them to vote as directed by the party mandarins. There would be no loose cannons in the controlled and lucrative business of government.

The decision-making power of the Cabinet was next to be brushed aside with the formation of the so-called Economic Management Committee, aka the ‘Gang of Four’. All key decisions would be made by four ministers in the 2011-2016 government: Kenny, Burton, Noonan, and Howlin. In effect, just four people took it upon themselves to run Ireland. All laws and decisions made by them alone would be presented to the Cabinet as a fait accompli. No discussion, no debate, no dissension. Thus the self-serving schemes of four State mercenaries came to undermine the best interests of the Irish nation.

This seizure and consolidation of power is a blatant side-stepping of the democratic authority of both the Cabinet and the Dáil. It is totally unconstitutional. But regard for the Constitution has not been one of the Kenny government’s priorities, especially when we consider that the widespread evictions and bank seizures of people’s homes is in direct contravention of Article 40.5 of said Constitution.

Another repressive practice indulged in by the Kenny Government more than its predecessors is the guillotining of bills before the House. Guillotining means abruptly ending discussion or debate on a bill and denying deputies the right to speak or question its contents. By use of the party whip and superior voting numbers the Government can guillotine any bill by calling for a vote before the bill is properly scrutinized. Thus the government bulldozes its way over the Opposition and enacts bills without proper examination, debate, or objection. With the use of the guillotine, the Kenny Government has reduced the national parliament to the status of a rubber stamp for decisions made by a handful of oligarchs.

The Executive, Legislature, and Judiciary are meant to be independent elements of government and free from the dominance of one over the other. The originally conceived checks and balances to prevent interference are no longer in effect. The Executive, or rather an elite element of it, has rendered the Legislature powerless and irrelevant and has also compromised the independence of the Judiciary by the inordinate amount of political appointees to the bench.

Thus has democracy in Ireland has been thoroughly subverted. What we now have is a de facto fascist State.

(As a side-note, in 2004 the leader of the Opposition complained that Bertie Aherne’s government’s overuse of the guillotine rendered the status of the Dáil as “little more than nuisance value.” Who was the leader of the Opposition? A Mayo TD called Enda Kenny, the very same man who now as Taoiseach has willfully embraced the guillotine as virtual government policy. How’s that for political hypocrisy?)

Corporatism And Statism = Fascism

Today, the Fine Gael party has re-embraced its extreme right-wing roots. Fine Gael was founded in 1933 from its support base of the ‘Blueshirts’, a fascist group that admired both Mussolini and Hitler and which later sent a brigade to fight in the Spanish Civil War on the same side as the Nazis.The first leader of Fine Gael was Eoin O’Duffy, who, during World War II contacted Adolf Hitler and offered to send him a brigade of Irishmen to fight communism alongside the Nazis. Thankfully, Hitler turned him down. Incidentally, the current leader of Fine Gael, Taoiseach Enda Kenny, also supports thuggish governments. Kenny has called for sanctions against Russia, the only country in the world standing up to the U.S., Britain, France, and NATO for their criminal war-mongering in Syria.

The aim of the fledgling Fine Gael Party under O’Duffy was to create a corporatist United Ireland within the British Commonwealth. Today we see the fruits of this policy with the cosy bonhomie between the Irish Government and the international bankers and corporatists. O’Duffy’s corporatist policy of the 1930s clearly came from the influence of Il Duce whose chief political aim was to promote corporatism in Italy. In fact, Mussolini is quoted as saying:

“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”

It is precisely this “merger of state and corporate power” that has devastated Ireland today and impoverished and dispossessed a great majority of the Irish people. On the other hand, the corporate State has swelled the coffers of the international banksters to overflowing and filled the pockets of their hirelings in government and other apparatchiks.

Corporations Larger Than Countries

A startling fact today is that of the world’s 100 largest economies, 51 are corporations and only 49 are countries. For example, General Motors is bigger than Denmark, Poland, Norway and more than 20 other countries. And 16 corporations are bigger than Ireland, including AXA, Royal Dutch Shell, General Electric, Mitsui, Exxon Mobil, and Wal-Mart, just to name a few. (Sources: Sales: Fortune, July 31, 2000. GDP: World Bank, World Development Report 2000.)

In a more recent listing, Apple computer is coming in at Number 20 in the top economies of the world with a market value of $710 billion. This is greater than the GDP of countries like Switzerland, Sweden, Poland, Argentina, Belgium, Norway, Austria, and many, many others… (IMF data for 2014.) And Apple’s market value represents three times Ireland’s GDP, which is the equivalent of 238 billion U.S. dollars.

Some readers will be aware of the recent brouhaha about Apple being instructed by the European Commission to pay Ireland some €13 billion in back taxes which Apple tried to avoid paying, in collusion with the Irish Revenue Commissioners. The full amount owed to Ireland may come to €19 billion with interest. Incredibly, the Irish Government does not want to take the money. More incredibly, the Government has spent some €670,000 in legal fees in trying to prevent Apple paying this money.

This should be more than enough to demonstrate to all doubters exactly for whom our politicians and top civil servants are working.

Apple’s transgression may only be the tip of the iceberg. It has recently been revealed that Kellogg, the breakfast cereal giant, has paid zero tax for the past two years. And it’s come to light that a vulture fund, Mars Capital, only paid a miserly €250 on revenues of €14,000,000! Now we’re hearing that Zara, a clothing giant, has avoided taxes to the tune of hundreds of millions of euro.

On the subject of vulture funds, the Irish Government has allowed these predators to buy up thousands of mortgages en bloc for a fraction of their value. (E.g., Ulster Bank sold off €2 billion of its ‘Project Clear’ portfolio for €500 million – a 75% write-down.) Yet the Government has refused to extend this generous write-down consideration to house and business owners for whom they supposedly work. Consequently, the vulture friends of the government make huge profits while the hard-pressed mortgagors suffer.

Thus it is clear that the current Irish Government and its predecessors have succumbed to the diktats of the banksters, the invisible power behind The State. Government officials have aided these unconscionable criminals to amass great prominence and standing and use it to accumulate huge wealth and power for themselves.

As Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset frankly declared in “The Revolt of the Masses” (1930),  “The State’s rapid depletion and seizure of social power is the greatest danger that today threatens civilization.” That was 86 years ago, but it is even more chillingly true today.

A SUMMARY of what we have postulated so far…

• ‘The State’ is not the Government;
• ‘The State’ is not the People
• ‘The State’ is in fact a tiny group of wealthy opportunists, a Power Elite, who pull the strings of government and exploit the People
• This Power Elite is comprised of imperious banksters & corporatists who control all finance and trade among the nations of the world
• Like almost all other global states, the Irish State falls under the sway of the Power Elite whose currency is fraud and deception
• The Irish State is a de facto criminal enterprise
• Successive Irish governments willingly serve as the bully-boys of the oppressive State
• The clandestine task of government is to transfer the inherent powers of society  into the grasping hands of the State
• The Irish Government manipulates the legislature, the judiciary, and the police to threaten and coerce the people
• The Irish Government, in collusion with the judiciary and the mass media, strives to hold the people in ignorance, poverty, and servitude
• Democracy in Ireland is a pretense whereby ALL political parties are controlled & regulated by mercenary party mandarins
• Irish Mass Media has been subverted to become a propaganda tool of the State
• The merger of State and corporate has led to rule by tyrants
• ‘The State’, through its cudgel of government, is the greatest danger to the liberty & prosperity of the people

These realities are so important, so outrageously evident, that they need repeating:

1. THE IRISH STATE IS A CONSTRUCT SET UP TO DECEIVE AND EXPLOIT THE IRISH PEOPLE.
2. THE IRISH STATE IS CONTROLLED BY A COTERIE OF INTERNATIONAL BANKSTERS.
3. THE IRISH GOVERNMENT SERVES AS A WILLING TOOL OF THESE RAPACIOUS BANKSTERS.
4. THE IRISH GOVERNMENT BETRAYS THE SACRED TRUST PLACED IN IT BY THE IRISH PEOPLE.
5. THE IRISH GOVERNMENT IS, BY DEFINITION, GUILTY OF TREASON.
6. THE IRISH GOVERNMENT IS THE AVOWED ENEMY OF THE IRISH PEOPLE.

Today, the Irish Nation is in the throes of serious difficulty and distress. The Government, like the ‘Judas goat’ in an abattoir , has led the people to deliberate economic slaughter. The lot of the people has scarcely been worse since the so-called Famine of the 1840s. This government, and its predecessors, has failed abysmally in its job. It has broken faith with the people and has acted in a ruthless, unconscionable manner.

Many of the activist groups which have emerged from the great social collapse talk of change and reform. They talk of reform in government, reform in banking, reform of the judiciary, reform in politics, reform in everything that has contributed to the ruination of the Irish Nation.

But, if truth be told, the entire system is unreformable. It is completely unfit for purpose.

For years, scientists have pursued a Theory of Everything, a single theory that would explain everything in the universe, how and why everything works and fits together. They haven’t yet succeeded.

With regard to the corrupt institutions of State, some people wonder if there is a Theory of Everything, a single root cause that permits or encourages such widespread injustice and thievery. Is there a single action that we the people can take to end tyrannical government and bring freedom, justice, and prosperity?

Yes. There is. Absolutely!

That will be the theme of the next article, “Our Enemy, The State: 2, How The People Can Smash State Tyranny.”