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Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy
THE END OF THE WESTERN WORLD
THE END OF THE WESTERN WORLD
Jacopo Brogi, editor of the Italian Magazine Come Don Chisciotte, interviews the author, Paul Craig Roberts, and the editor, Costantino Ceoldo, of Il Capolinea Dell’occidente published by Passaggio al Bosco in 2023.
An English translation is here:
PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS AND THE END OF THE LINE OF THE WEST: “WASHINGTON AND ISRAEL ARE LEADING US TO ARMAGEDDON”
By Jacopo Brogi
Exclusive interview with renowned U.S. economist and Italian analyst Costantino Ceoldo between Empire and tricolor colony: “Italy’s destiny passes through the willingness of each of us to want to step out of our mental comfort zone”.
A journey to the heart of the Empire, bouncing instantly to its quintessential colony, Italy: miracles of the web. This is the interview you are about to read, thanks to the willingness of Paul Craig Roberts – at the time among the Reagan Administration’s economists – and analyst Costantino Ceoldo; together, they recently gave to the presses “The End of the Line of the West – Tyranny of the Market, Woke Thought and Multicultural Society” (Passaggio Al Bosco, 2023).
Finance, Propaganda, Technology and War. These are the only pillars and nuclear force of the West, which is denying itself, while the East now has everything to win the global challenge: millennial culture, demographics, real economy and energy. Vital energy, versus technocratic decadence. How will it end? Meanwhile, the European University Institute (EUI) in Fiesole – an EU academic outpost in the Florentine hills – cancels Christmas: to be inclusive, it will honor the “Winter Festival”:
“An Europe that wants to be ahead of any other continent in promoting universal human rights, rather than communities defined on the basis of religion…”, explains Professor Costanza Hermanin, one of the promoters of the initiative, which may soon spread, amidst near general silence – Catholic world that matters first and foremost.
If this is how we are, how are things elsewhere? Let’s go in order and welcome Paul Craig Roberts and Costantino Ceoldo.
JB) Dr. Roberts, thank you for agreeing to this interview. “The End of the Line of the West” is a kind of historical fresco of how Western society has been disjointed in order to subject it, through supranational organizations, to a handful of unscrupulous corporations: from the real economy down to our naked bodies. It certainly seems that the plan is having great success. Is it really?
Roberts – A number of factors have brought about the deracination of Western civilization. My answers to your questions below will bring out a number of them. As for your first question, the offshoring of manufacturing operations to low wage countries was driven by Wall Street and financial interests for profit maximization purposes. The Covid vaccination mandates showed the power of the pharmaceutical industry to use public health authorities to maximize pharmaceutical profits. The World Economic Forum (WEA) is attempting to impose an agenda on the world, but for the most part supranational organizations are not powerful. Consider the UN. Also, the question is who controls them. The UN is owned by Washington as Washington foots the largest share of the bill. Economic and ideological factors prevent consensus. Therefore, the era of supranational organizations is coming to an end.
JB) Mr. Ceoldo, what did it mean to you to make “The End of the Line of the West” and how do you see today’s Italy in this context?
Ceoldo – This book was both a small personal dream and a cultural challenge. I hold Paul Craig Roberts in high esteem and consider him a Master Thinker. His analyses are always lucid and precise. In a Western (and Italian in particular) landscape full of opaque and poorly educated figures, Roberts demonstrates a vast knowledge of the topics he covers. I would add that in an era of single-minded thinking and political correctness, I feel sincere admiration for his courage to tell it like it is, while trying to spread a message of reasonableness about the topics he writes and speaks about. I wanted to put together a roundup of how American and Western society had changed over the past twenty years or so, and Roberts’ articles lent themselves perfectly to the purpose.
JB) Dr. Roberts, you worked with President Reagan: many analysts identify the “trickle downs” as path-breaking policies in neoliberal terms, then used in the post-Cold War world to initiate the globalization that has brought us this far. What are your thoughts on this?
Roberts – The Reagan administration’s economic policy was not “trickle down” or neoliberal. It was a supply-side policy, an innovation described in my book, The Supply-Side Revolution (Harvard University Press, 1984). Neoliberal (demand-side) economists disparaged the new policy as “trickle down” in order to characterize the policy ideologically as a tax cut for the rich rather than as new economic thinking. The policy had nothing to do with economic globalization. That was triggered by the Soviet collapse, which convinced China and India that the future was with capitalism, not socialism, and led these two countries with massive excess supplies of labor to open to foreign investment.
Paul Craig Roberts
JB) Mr. Ceoldo, Italy’s demographic decline is there for all to see, as is the unrestrained immigration to the peninsula. In fact, Giorgia Meloni has used sovereignist proclamations to implement globalist policies. How do you see the Italian social fabric in the coming decades?
Ceoldo – Italy has been subjected for years to powerful centrifugal forces, of internal as well as external origin, and which a self-declared sovereignist government (in this case even a coalition one, thus implicitly weak) would have enormous difficulty containing. As Roberts has already written, “sovereignist” has now become synonymous with “Nazi” where the two are clearly different. The idea of Fatherland has all but disappeared in Italy, almost banished. North and South harbor mutual resentments for reasons that are partly real but still fade when viewed from a secular perspective. In the event of secession, Northern Italy would become a colony-vassal of France and Germany while the South would become the great cesspool of Africa: a humiliating fate for both sides. The so-called “progressive Left” is a formidable fifth column systematically working against Italy by chasing demented dreams of universal green/rainbow harmonies. In the past they played Soviet communists and today they ape the Americans “awakened”, perhaps even bending a knee to the death of a black thug overdosing on Fentanyl. Giorgia Meloni was good at presenting herself as a wise politician when her party was not in office: her messages, her statements, communicated to many voters the idea of a person with a head on her shoulders, capable of putting Italy back on a reasonable course. However, after a year in office, the landings of illegal immigrants not only continue but have even increased, and those who bring them to Italy continue to blatantly and brazenly flout the authority of the Republic and still remain unpunished and free to act for the time being. Funding for Ukraine and, by extension, its Nazis destined for defeat also continues, and the government’s official position seems to disregard the sufferings of the Palestinian people, sufferings that in the past were instead denounced forcefully and courageously in our very Parliament by some of the much-troubled politicians of the First Republic. Lastly, let us not forget that the Biagi and D’Antona labor reforms are still there, almost untouchable and without anyone feeling the need to criticize them even though it is now clear how much they have turned Italian workers into disposable tools and how only a return to the previous status can restore their dignity, thus relaunching the development of our country. Therefore, unless there is a change of course, courageous and decisive, presented in clear terms to the good and healthy part of our Nation, the Italian social fabric will continue to disintegrate until the United States and some European countries (which are neither our friends nor our allies) decide that it is now advantageous for them to do away with Italy, fragmenting it into protectorates of convenience as was done with the former Yugoslavia. Then, it will be fully realized the prophecy of Bettino Craxi, who, even in his mistakes, paid with exile and life his love for our country.
JB) We know a lot about the global and globalist powers and their goals. Can you help us understand if there is a real alternative to them, an alternative capable of countering the designs of Davos, UN 2030 and Great Reset?
Roberts – Since the end of World War II Europe and much of the rest of the world has lived under globalism in the form of US Hegemony maintained by financial and military dominance and CIA assassinations and coups. Globalism requires uni-power and the destruction of nationalism and nations, something that the world was well on the path toward. The purpose of globalism and its tools – “diversity” and “multiculturalism” – is to destroy ethnic nations and to replace them with Towers of Babel. The immigration policies of the US, Canada, and Europe have achieved this. All over Europe, “nationalist” is equated with Nazi. In the US “nationalist” is someone who wants to close the open border and is dismissed as a racist white supremacist. Countries without borders cannot be nations. They are geographical locations. The rise of China, India, Iran, and the return of Russia as major powers have ended the globalist period. As Russian President Putin has repeatedly made clear, the world today is multi-polar. Neither Russia, China, nor Iran has any intention of subjecting their national interest to globalism.
JB) Mr. Ceoldo, The Great Reset is also economic. The region of Veneto is always one of the engines of Italy. As a citizen, how do you see your region and how much weight does the energy crisis have?
Ceoldo – I really do not believe that the Great Reset can be achieved without the extermination of two-thirds of Humanity, an eventuality that British Malthusian circles openly wish for by looking at themselves as stern but fair, even compassionate shepherds, but never as the cruel psychopaths they actually are. Both Sergey Glaziev and Nikolai Patrushev have publicly warned this self-styled elite on several occasions about its plans concerning the “Golden Billion” but it does not appear that these warnings have been given due consideration. The people of Veneto (as in fact all Italians) have the cult of work bringing prosperity and dignity. This is both a strength and a weakness, because obviously it is not enough working hard to become really rich or to save one’s skin in certain situations. The economy of the Veneto region, for the time being, is still prosperous, but the cult of work will not save the people of Veneto if Russia definitively falls victim to Western circles.
JB) Cr. Roberts, viewed from the East, this Davos-style Great Reset, so much green, now seems to be confined precisely and only to the West, while other countries in the rest of the world are reformulating what is and what will be in their own national ways. What do you think?
Roberts – The talk of globalism seems to be limited to the West. But with the US Empire collapsing from overreach, from US sanctions causing de-dollarization, from the difficulties of forming a unifying policy in a Tower of Babel, globalism is everywhere on its way out. What Western intellectuals and university professors have accomplished is to destroy the belief system of Western Civilization. Western Civilization has been under attack for decades. It is presented to students as “racist and exploitative”. In the US even the Constitution, the very basis of the country, is derided by law faculties as a barrier against “equity” and “social justice”. Countries without an intact belief system are not countries.
JB) Mr. Ceoldo, the fulcrum of the italic reset passes through hospitals. We have experienced and are still experiencing restrictions in health care that make Public Health, disrupted by years and years of cuts, the soft underbelly of the country. Numerous were your articles during the Covid emergency. It has been more than three years. Where do we stand?
Ceoldo – It was thanks to Covid that the action against Donald Trump was successful, thus enabling the inauguration of a Joe Biden in the grip of some form of dementia and therefore clearly unfit for his duties but, precisely because of this, functional to his hidden handlers. It was thanks to the Covid that the final phase of the war against Russia could be launched, even if the results are not yet what was intended and, with God’s help, never will be. Again, it was thanks to the Covid that those who dream of the complete reorganization of Humanity, to bring about what they say is a bright future, have come fully out into the open. Or rather, the reorganization of that part of Humanity that will be allowed to survive the coming (not many I fear…) epidemics and vaccination campaigns. It is, clearly, a group in the grip of a messianic type of self-exaltation. Thinking of Italy, in our country Covid has been run with perfect adherence to the plans of this so-called elite and it is tempting now to paraphrase the poet Ungaretti’s words: “One stands as in autumn as on the trees the leaves”. The impression I experience is as if many, here in Italy, are waiting for the trigger, the almost supernatural authorization, to reenact the same spectacle of gruesome stupidity, cowardice, incompetence and malevolent prevarication that we have helplessly witnessed during the pandemic phase and that, in many respects, is typical of a herd that moves madly because it is in the grip of terror. Let’s be clear: this has nothing to do with welfare cuts. What we have seen and experienced, in spite of ourselves on our living skin, has been due to having artfully cultivated, for decades, the worst characteristics of the Italic soul, first and foremost ruffian submission and feeling important by shining a supposed reflected light due to submission, ruffian in fact, to the master of the day.
JB) Dr. Roberts, could Donald Trump on the one hand and the BRICS bloc on the other already be a symptom of these different political and geopolitical orientations and interests at play?
Roberts – Donald Trump tried to take government from the ruling elites and to give it back to the people, something that the elites have made it clear they will not permit. In effect, the defeat of Trump is the defeat of American democracy. The growth of the Brics block is a measure of the world’s growing disaffection from the West.
JB) By following Washington in all its diktats, Europe is making itself more and more dependent on the U.S. Will it be forced into a new TTIP, this time no longer negotiable and unwaivable?
Roberts – Europe has been devastated by its subservience to Washington. It is now cut off from energy and from trade with sanctioned countries. The US has offshored its manufacturing to China and Asia. Throughout the West the floods of immigrant-invaders are lowering wages and living standards and introducing alternative languages. The entire fabrics of Western societies are disintegrating. Soon there will be nothing left.
JB) BRICS+ prefigure a multipolar world from multiple perspectives: does the “End of the West” also mean dedollarization?
Roberts – De-dollarization has already begun. It means the end of American power.
JB) Is there a correlation between the spread of rainbow gender theories among our youth and the Malthusian theory of population decline?
Roberts – An academic could no doubt create one. But the fact of the matter is that the normalization of sexual perversity is an effective way of destroying the moral fabric of the West.
JB) “The End of the Line of the West,” between Utopia and Imagination: how might a revival of Italy come about?
Ceoldo – It’s me that usually asks this question… Let’s say there is no certain rule, no textbook to follow slavishly that guarantees the result. But a path can still be identified. This kind of awakening stems from many factors: the upbringing received from one’s parents, one’s relationship with others, the layering of life experiences that lead to the crystallization of the conviction that one can no longer live a certain way but must change one’s path. In my case, in addition to the fundamental teachings of my mother and grandmother, the books I have always read and the difficulties I have experienced while living, I think martial arts (even when I was unable to practice them at the dojo) and, for the last 15 years at least, just not having had television helped. Ernst Junger talked about moving to the woods, even literally for someone. And in his Im Stahlgewittern (“Storm of Steel”), a century ago, he described well the condition that Western peoples experienced a hundred years later during the Covid: those who live their lives as pets end up finding themselves prey. If one were to ask me which authors to recommend, I would obviously say Junger but certainly also the Italians Roberto Giacomelli because his “Beyond the Weak Male” is exemplary, Roberto Marchesini because in “Chivalrous Code for the Man of the Third Millennium” he strongly affirms the need for a behavior that is also deportment and, finally, Matteo Carnieletto’s latest book because in his “Last Degeneration”, we are offered a vision, steeped in touching humanity, about the limits of our daily living. However, books alone are not enough: one really has to get out, really physically go into the woods, perhaps with some survival schooling, and never run away fearing the possibility of getting hurt in some way as well as ending up exhausted from fatigue. In other words, the willingness to step out of one’s mental comfort zone is the essential initial requirement as well as one of the ultimate goals. The fate of Italy will change for the better if the number of those who follow this path is high enough.
JB) Dr. Roberts, woke ideology and political correctness are the two deadly weapons to dominate the eternal present of the ordinary citizen: what might be the antidotes that one should equip a nation and, at the same time, the individual citizen to escape these cultural and psychological cages?
Roberts – You are asking how does a country recover from the loss of its beliefs. I know of no way. Western youth are no longer inculcated into the belief system known as Western Civilization. They are educated to be hostile to Western Civilization. The chant “Western Civ has to go” is decades old.
JB) Given many of the recent statements by President Biden and his administration, are we on the eve of World War III?
Roberts – The West’s provocations of Russia and the American/Israeli provocations of Iran, Hezbollah and the Muslim world are extremely dangerous. Either or both area conflicts can spin out of control. The West has no chance in such wars except Washington’s nuclear weapons. Washington would have to accept defeat or use nuclear weapons which together with the Russian and Chinese response would destroy the world. The utter irresponsibility of Washington and Israel are leading to Armageddon.
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Original column by Jacopo Brogi: