The decades are happening not in weeks but in moments. History, it seems, is revisiting itself. In this epoch its nostalgia for the past is at its most epic. For Marx, repetition of history is a sheer fallacy since it keeps moving ahead, though the movement itself is not linear but a spiral. While condemning some and sublimating others, it piggybacks all the burdens of the past. At a cursory glance it looks as if it is yearning to embrace its past yet a resolute reflective mind is not unaware of its natural course to the future. The clock is ticking back to the mid-20th century when capitalism in recession found Hitler in Germany though it did not fail to discover Roosevelt and Churchill simultaneously. Each of them strove to the hilt to bridge the imminent and immense cracks appearing in the bulwark of capitalism. The redemption from cyclic recession, an inherent malady of this system, was nowhere to be found. In the USSR, Stalin was the sole survivor of this mayhem. To realise that stagnant capital silently developed general consensus was to unleash a limited war, though everyone was suspicious and scary not only about its outcome but the extent of its flare. Once the inevitability of war became necessity, the initial, arrived agreement was finding a convenient scapegoat. Hence the victimisation of the ‘chosen people’, upon whom history always chose to pile its perdition, began. Fascism, the distorted form of capitalism, alone was not responsible for their plight. It is time to remove the mystifying veil of history. For hegemony and conformity its real face has always been masqueraded if not altogether mutilated. It needs to be “stripped off from its false neutrality”, “from a dupe of a lying tongue”, which have covered the crimes of the vanquisher while piling the heap upon the vanquished alone. Contrary to Athena, who sneaked her way out of the scalp of Zeus, the ‘good guy’ ‘bad guy’ theory was not a brainchild of any individual, such as George W Bush or his ghost-writer. Instead of finding fault in its own anarchy, this system for the few cleverly shifts every responsibility of sinking the boat to a single ‘sinner’ — this tool is convenient and effective. While accruing the blame of World War II, A J P Taylor steadfastly reminds us: “This war had no heroes but many villains.” Hence, if Hitler and Stalin were to be stigmatised as villains, Roosevelt and Churchill were no saints either. Since saints and Satan are necessary tools of capitalism, this system, apt at orchestrating such symbols of vice and virtue, not only utilises them at the moment of its need but for future reference keeps preserving them long after they leave the stage as actors. To add further drollness to this piquant enigma, saints and Satan keep changing their places. The 20th century had Hitler as Goethe’s Faust. One rarely comes across his original words. For a change, let us listen to him for once. In 1933, in an interview to New York Staats-Zeitung, he stated, “Why does the world shed crocodile tears over the richly merited fate of a small Jewish community…I ask Roosevelt, I ask the American people: are you prepared to receive in your midst these well-prisoners of German people and the universal spirit of Christianity? We would willingly give every one of them a free streamer and a thousand mark note for travelling expenses, if we could get rid of them.” Certainly a diabolical statement, sufficient to unmask his real intentions. Greedy that he was of gains, and beyond doubt “his heart was set on pillage and rapine”, which was lusting to snatch the pelf of the Jews, but is this not what capitalism is all about, commodity production and intensified exploitation in which “happiness of the one has to thrive upon the suffering” of the rest? Does it not indicate “that the consensus behind the principle which this system seeks to reaffirm”, means keeping aside “its economical and political might. He who offends it is forewarned.” The stubborn and nonconformist are exterminated. “Only the desperate laughter and the cynical defiance of the fool” are left as rare “means of demasking the deeds of the serious ones who govern.” Another page from history is amiss here. The infamous decrees issued in this regard by the mighty Napoleon ordering the Jews “to take French names, privatise their faith and ensure that at least one in three marriages per family be with gentile” have all but been forgotten. But then bigger atrocities committed by Thomas Jefferson, the man of enlightenment in the US who ordered the massacre of “backward people of native Americans”, too have been pushed into oblivion. Man without memory is a characteristic trait of capitalism. No wonder it excels in sweeping its heinous crimes under the carpet. Except for a few sane voices, who cares to remember the massacre of the Boer population, the fate of Chinese resettlement, the ordeal of Cyprus internment, the devastation of the Irish and Bengal famines? The latter, according to one version, was engineered by none other than the great apostle of human liberation, Winston Churchill. Another genocide was carried out by Mustafa Kemal. The blue-eyed boy of the west executed nearly one million Armenians, pronouncing them as “dangerous microbes” in “the bosom of the fatherland”. The reason behind this systematic massacre and deportation was the same vulture, capital. Fast-forward to the 21st century. The same cyclic phase along with general crisis, has yet again struck ‘almighty’ capitalism. The refusal of the patient to respond to one after the other panacea indicates the extent and gravity of the malady. The affliction this time appears to be far more lethal in nature, hence the prognosis seems equally poor. Marx would be amused at this bemusing situation. In a desperate bid of revival the time old tactic has been reinvoked. The enemy chosen this time is an advanced version of the same specie, who, contrary to the previous one, is not meagre in number but greasy and drenched in the wealth of oil as well. The hysteria against a one time allied alley is boundless. “With us or against us” was imperialism’s initial chime. “The axis of evil”, “the coalition of the willing” are others. To impose domination upon lesser nations the whole language is being changed. With this attributive construction not only is the whole syntax altered but the semi-eclipsed memory of the past is being revived as well. The adjective ‘evil’ once implied the former Soviet Union and “axis” reminds one of the union of Germany and Italy. During the Second World War, the combined forces of the twins were with notoriety identified as the “forces of the axis”. Hence, the term “axis of evil” not only has the striking resonance of the past but it carries and glorifies the impact and history of domination as well. The “coalition of the willing” is, in fact, a coalition of wheedling stooges who, for their personal survival, have little option but to cling to the sleeves of hegemonic power. While, around the world, fellow believers of the same faith are being hunted and brutally massacred, they, with their eyes shut, are resting snug in the wings of imperialism. Besmirching a caste, creed and/or a conviction is not something novel or perplexing. Even in advanced industrial societies, rational persuasion is not very common. Had that been the case, people from developed countries would have strongly retaliated against the continuous process of de-humanisation of thought. Partly, this democratic abolition of thought, which the ‘common man’ undergoes automatically or which he himself carries out takes place partly under the influence of strong media and partly due to the scourge of wage slavery that demands mere self-preservation. It coerces humankind to conform to the established reality. (To be continued) The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism and history. He can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com