REVOLUTIONARY OPTIMISM, WESTERN NIHILISM
Andre Vltchek
Badak Merah Semesta
2018
Revolutionary Optimism,
Western Nihilism,
Copyright 2018 by Andre Vltchek
All rights reserved
Cover Photos by: Andre Vltchek
Cover Design by: Rossie Indira
Layout by: Rossie Indira
First edition, 2018
Published by PT. Badak Merah Semesta
Jl. Madrasah Azziyadah 16, Jakarta
http://badak-merah.weebly.com
email: badak.merah.press@gmail.com
ISBN: 978-602-50954-1-2
By the same author
Exposing Lies of the Empire
Fighting Against Western Imperialism
On Western Terrorism: From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare (with Noam Chomsky)
The World Order and Revolution! (with Christopher Black & Peter Koenig)
Western Terror: From Potosi to Baghdad
Indonesia: Archipelago of Fear
Exile (with Pramoedya Ananta Toer & Rossie Indira)
Oceania Neocolonialism, Nukes & Bones
Fiction:
Aurora
Point of No Return
Nalezeny
Plays: Ghosts of Valparaiso and Conversations with James
Content
Revolutionary Optimism andWestern Nihilism ...................1
At Night I Hear Victims Screaming ....................................... 23
How the West Creates Terrorism ........................................... 37
Europe is Built on Corpses and Plunder.................................53
Academia: Hands off Revolutionary Philosophy! ................69
Why I Am a Communist ......................................................... 83
Western Propaganda So Simple But So Effective!............101
Unreliability, Spinelessness of The Western Left............ 119
Western Culture is Wrecking Entire Continents ............129
The Entire World is Fake News ......................................... 135
Outside World, According to Western Liberals .............. 146
The West is Finished, But Why?........................................... 161
The West Is Becoming Irrelevant,
The World Is Laughing ...................................................... 179
World is Burning While
Western Left is Quarreling ................................................ 197
Only Rational Thinking Will Save The World .................... 209
Why I Reject Western Courts and Justice ............................224
Love vs Pornography, Revolution vs Passivity ...................235
About Author ......................................................................... 253
Revolutionary Optimism and Western Nihilism
H ow dreadfully depressing life has become in almost all of the Western cities! How awful and sad.
It is not that these cities are not rich; they are. Of course things are deteriorating there, the infrastructure is crumbling and there are signs of social inequality, even misery, at every corner. But if compared to almost all other parts of the world, the wealth of the Western cities still appears to be shocking, almost grotesque.
The affluence does not guarantee contentment, happiness or optimism. Spend an entire day strolling through London or Paris, and pay close attention to people. You will repeatedly stumble over passive aggressive behavior, over frustration and desperate downcast glances, over omnipresent sadness.
In all those once great [imperialist] cities, what is missing is life. Euphoria, warmth, poetry and yes love are all in extremely short supply there.
Wherever you walk, all around, the buildings are monumental, and boutiques are overflowing with elegant merchandize. At night, bright lights shine brilliantly. Yet the faces of people are gray. Even when forming couples, even when in groups, human beings appear to be thoroughly atomized, like the sculptures of Giacometti.
Talk to people, and youll most likely encounter confusion, depression, and uncertainty. Refined sarcasm, and sometimes a bogus urban politeness are like thin bandages that are trying to conceal the most horrifying anxieties and thoroughly unbearable loneliness of those lost human souls.
Purposelessness is intertwined with passivity. In the West, it is increasingly hard to find someone that is truly committed: politically, intellectually or even emotionally. Big feelings are now seen as frightening; both men and women reject them. Grand gestures are increasingly looked down upon, or even ridiculed. Dreams are becoming tiny, shy and always down to earth, and even those are lately extremely well concealed. Even to daydream is seen as something irrational and outdated.
To a stranger who comes from afar, it appears to be a sad, unnatural, brutally restrained and to a great extent, a pitiful world.
Tens of millions of adult men and women, some well educated, do not know what to do with their lives. They take courses or go back to school in order to fill the void, and to discover what they want to do with their existence. It is all self-serving, as there appear to be no greater aspirations anywhere. Most of the efforts begin and end with each particular individual.
Nobody sacrifices himself or herself for others, for society, for humanity, for the cause, or even for the other half, anymore. In fact, even the concept of the other half is disappearing. Relationships are increasingly distant, each person searching for his or her space, demanding independence even in those rare moments of togetherness. There are no two halves of one; instead there are two fully independent individuals, co-existing in a relative proximity, sometimes physically touching, sometimes not, but mostly entirely on their own.
In the Western capitals, the egocentricity, even total obsession with ones personal needs, is brought to a surreal extreme.
Psychologically, it can only be described as a twisted, unnatural and truly pathological world.
Surrounded by this bizarre pseudo reality, many formerly healthy individuals eventually feel, or even become, mentally ill. Then, paradoxically, they get convinced that they have no choice, and they embark on seeking professional help, so they can re-join the ranks of the normal, read thoroughly subdued citizens. In most cases, instead of continuously rebelling, instead of waging personal wars against the state of things, the individuals who are still at least to some extent different, get so frightened by being in the minority that they give up, surrender voluntarily, and identify themselves as abnormal. There is always plenty of help available for those who repent and choose to join the ranks of obedient masses.
Short sparks of freedom experienced by those who are still capable of at least some imagination, of dreaming about a true and natural world, get rapidly extinguished.
Then, in a short instant, everything gets irreversibly lost. It may appear as some horror film, but it is not, it is the true reality of life in the West.
***
I cannot function in such an environment for more than a few days. If forced, I could last in London or Paris for two weeks at most, but only while operating on some emergency mode, unable to write, to create and to function normally. I cannot imagine being in love in a place like that. I cannot imagine reading a book of poetry. I cannot imagine writing a revolutionary essay there. I cannot imagine laughing, loudly, happily, freely.
While briefly working in London, Paris or New York, the coldness, purposelessness, and chronic lack of passion and of all basic human emotions, is having a tremendously exhausting effect on me, derailing my creativity and drowning me in useless, pathetic existentialist dilemmas.
