Monday 21 February 2011

Heil Big Brother!


I originally wrote this for Retarius and Anastasia, a site which I share with an Australian friend of mine. My discussion with Yun Yi on my previous blog reminded me of some of the issues raised, so I’m publishing it here also.

There they are, all wearing black shirts, all raising their right arms in stiff salute, all shouting ‘Sieg Heil’, all praising Adolf Hitler and his commitment to ethnic purity. Where are we exactly – in the back streets of Munich or Berlin, or any other place in the west where unregenerate extremism continues to exercise its baleful fascination? No, as a matter of fact this is Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia.

Yes, indeed, there is a Nazi movement in Mongolia, including a group which goes by the name of Tsagaan Khass – White Swastika -, led by a man who calls himself, wait for it, Big Brother. Please stop laughing; it’s all true! Big Brother has a rather confused view when it comes to Hitler, which involves some bizarre cherry-picking;

We don’t agree with his extremism and starting the Second World War. We are against all those killings, but we support his ideology. We support nationalism rather than fascism.

What Big Brother fails to mention is that in Hitler’s racial pyramid the Mongolians came close to the bottom. It’s such a bizarre irony that Nazism is now embraced by at least some among the ‘degenerate horde’ as a positive ideology.

There is really no great surprise in this. Racist nationalism is often adopted by people with a deep sense of personal grievance or inferiority, people who excuse their own failings by scapegoating some minority or other. In Germany it was the Jews. I confess I don’t know an awful lot about Mongolia but I’m guessing that Jewish people are something of a rarity. No, it’s not the Jews that Big Brother and his kind are getting upset about – it’s the Chinese, or the Chinks, their term, not mine.

China is imperialistic and evil, the message goes out; the Chinese are a danger to the ‘pure blood’ of Mongolia. Just how is this danger manifested, you may wonder? Well, you see, the Chinese have a lot of money, allowing them to come and ‘take’ Mongolian women.

This fear of deracination is not simply the fantasy of a fringe; it feeds on wider prejudices among the nation. One of the most popular urban myths in Ulan Bator is that the Chinese government has a secret policy of encouraging its male citizens to come and have sex with Mongolian women. A popular hip-hop track regularly played the capital’s bars and clubs is called Don’t Go Too Far, You Chinks, with a chorus of “shoot, shoot them all.”

There have been attacks on some foreigners, something that the US State Department has warned potential visitors about, though those in most immediate risk from this xenophobia seem to be Mongolian women themselves, threatened with head shaving if they sleep with foreigners. Tsgaaan Khass takes an altogether moderate approach here, insisting that its role is simply one of “law enforcement.” Their policy is to carry out targeted checks, going to hotels and restaurants to make sure that Mongolian girls are not involved in prostitution and foreigners are not breaking the law.

We don’t go through and beat the shit out of everyone. We check our information and make sure its right.

Now that’s a reassurance, I feel sure you will agree.

34 comments:

  1. Thanks Ana for sharing this. I did not know a bit about it.
    "Racist nationalism is often adopted by people with a deep sense of personal grievance or inferiority, people who excuse their own failings by scapegoating some minority or other."
    This is exactly what it is!

    I first need to confess that I am not an expert of Chinese history, however I know some big picture of it. I think a very big chunk of Chinese history can be called as a history of wars between Chinese - "Mongolian". I put "" because I use it to represent all ethnical groups resided along north side of China (they were not all called Mongolians, of course). And they were all better warriors than Chinese, or strictly speaking "Han". So, Hans, the main residences of China were repeatedly conquered by those people (physically), but the culture of Han (Chinese culture) repeatedly conquered her invaders. Several of these northern groups were completely mixed with Hans.
    What I am trying to say is, beside the feeling of inferior, these Big Brothers probably also represent a fear (which might exist within Mongolia) about what happened in history - physically (biologically) smeared into Hans. I think on one hand they dislike Chinese people's physical trait (Confucianism never encouraged warrior spirit) yet on other hand they fear about their strong Chinese cultural influence.

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  2. I have a cousin in Ulan Bator. She and her husband are missionaries. Her photographs are interesting, but rather bleak.

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  3. National socialism is universal, sounds like they are patrioten looking out for the welfare of their society.

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  4. Yun yi, you put it so well. Expert or not, you obviously have a good grasp of Chinese history.

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  5. Calvin, the pictures I've see do, indeed, make the place look bleak, a city totally devoid any kind of character, a Stalinist version of Milton Keynes. :-)

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  6. Anthony, I'm not so sure about that. :-)

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  7. The Chinese ambassador to Australia has recently informed the isolated and ignorant natives in these islands that China is a friendly, peaceful country which has never sought hegemony or attempted to dominate other nations. There ya go. Nothing to worry about, everything is lovely in the garden.

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  8. What excellent work you produce. Yours is one of the best blogs I have ever come across, intelligent,well presented, well written and informative. So much better than most of the ephemera one finds. I shall be reading regularly. Regards,RCP

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  9. "Virgin right" (my own translation). Ana, you would probably be interested in this, at the beginning of Qing dynasty, the last dynasty that China was ruled under "Non Han": Manchu, all new marriage within Han people had to report to Manchu officials and let Manchu men have the first night with new wives.

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  10. Ana, you probably know, that Mongolians were rulers of China during Yuan Dynasty. The Mongolian warriors made China geographically the largest empire in Chinese history, possibly in human history.
    Those Mongolians who lived in China during Yuan Dynasty were completely absolved within Han, and cultural wise completely accepted Han culture so today many Chinese people live in China especially north probably were descendants of both Han and Mongolians. So Big Brothers might have reasons to fear!

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  11. The reality is that stupid people is the majority in the world, I am not surprise see hate against others, only are pretext to find a reason to be someone in life, find an identity even that this mean be a retarded, groups make feel secure to the people and do anything to convince about the adhesion of them play an important role, the hard way fight life like a man is not a choise for losers, be a trash and go against rules is easy. You only can put the trash in the can, grab this piece of shit and throw them away. They need some kind of punishment to teach them respect to other people. Hugs. Mario.

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  12. I wonder if I have got this story right, Ana. A group of Mongolian youths have misguidedly adopted Hitler, not as a political figurehead, for they disapprove strongly of his actions, but as an example of pride in one's race ; pride in one's ancestors.

    I wonder what these remote tribesmen know of recent events in Tibet? They almost certainly know more about Tibet than they do about Hitler. And, oddly, they probably know more about what the Chinese are doing in Mongolia than we do.

    Perhaps, now that we have a cooler perspective on events in Soviet Russia, Eastern Europe, Mao's China, etc., we can begin to live without the marxist paradigm of history and humanity. Perhaps we can bring ourselves to see that pride in one's ancestors is actually no bad thing, and even that the maintenance of the associated traditions is no more evil than the marxist tradition of destroying other people's traditions on a point of principle.

    Perhaps we can extend to the people of Mongolia the same sympathy that we once extended to the Tibetans ; a sympathy with their culture which is, after all, not notably harmful.

    It will a refreshing day when marxist group-think is finally expunged from the minds of western historians and political commentators.

    Right! I'm off to buy those lads a new uniform. Something from the Charlemagne period will do very nicely, I think. ;-)

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  13. "We don’t go through and beat the shit out of everyone. We check our information and make sure its right."

    And then we beat the shit out of certain people....

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  14. "One of the most popular urban myths in Ulan Bator is that the Chinese government has a secret policy of encouraging its male citizens to come and have sex with Mongolian women."

    Oddly, I've heard much the same, but from Russians, not so much a government policy of course, but the 1 child policy has led to quite a swing towards men(girl children being killed), leaving a lot of men without much chance of a wife.

    If a million relativly wealthy chinese men go wife shopping in Mongolia (and Russia), it leaves those countries with large numbers of impoverished single young men.
    Who promptly go to war or revolt.

    Generaly speaking, the larger proportion of a population made up of unmariied young men, the more likely it is to be unstable.

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  15. That's almost as funny as Israelis skin-heads. I wonder if you can find such kind of people also around you in Cambridgeshire.

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  16. The Horst Wessel Lied ,"Die Fahne Hoch" Should have been the anthem of the European Super State.

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  17. Where architecture goes to die.

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  18. Yun yi, yes I knew about the Qing and the Yuan; I did a year long course in Chinese history as an undergraduate. Have you seen The Last Emperor, about the life of Pu Yi? If so I’m sure you will remember the scene where he is finally ejected from the Forbidden City as ‘foreign scum’. What I did not know is that Manchu men had the right to sleep with Han women before their marriage. That must have caused deep resentment, especially as any pregnancy falling in the first year would be subject to question.

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  19. I wrote this last August, Jamie. Unfortunately I can’t remember the exact source, but it was either from a report in the Telegraph or The Economist, the latter most probably.

    Honestly, you would not believe some of the places Hitler gets to, as a kind of universal avatar for discontent. As Jean Paul says, there are Nazi skinheads in Israel. When I was in Moscow I came across Nazis there, in a country that suffered more at the hands of Hitler than any other in the world.

    I agree that pride in ancestry is no bad thing, but that seems to me to be so different from modern notions of racial superiority, notions usually grasped by those who are, quite frankly, inferior in every way, socially, culturally and intellectually. Marxism, like extreme nationalism, is unremittingly wicked, on that we have no argument.

    Charlemagne – good choice. I rather see myself togged-out as a great Roman lady. :-)

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  20. Mario, thanks. I wish we could all understand that respect for others should be the first principle of humanity.

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  21. RT, that's very true. The one-child policy in China, coupled with female infanticide, looks set to be the source of a future demographic disaster, something I alluded to in the discussion on my previous blog.

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  22. Jean Paul, in the city of Cambridge itself, yes.

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  23. Anthony, no super states, thank you very much. Sadly I now hate the Ode to Joy from Beethoven's Ninth!

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  24. Calvin, Stalin's last redoubt. :-)

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  25. ana, the "virgin right" (actually should be "first night right") happened in Yuan Dynasty and it was Mongolians... i googled, so it is not official and also it looks highly controversial.

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  26. In Medieval Europe it was known as Droit de seigneur - the baron’s right – the supposed practice of bringing all virgin brides from his estates to him. It’s a myth but it clearly reflected deeper resentment over the perceived injustices of feudal society.

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  27. Ana,

    See links:

    http://www.berzinarchives.com/web/en/archives/advanced/kalachakra/shambhala/nazi_connection_shambhala_tibet.html

    http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/n-s/nazimyths.html

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  28. Thanks, Nobby. I'll check those out.

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  29. Nobby: These Thulish things will remind me of you . . . :)

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  30. Thank you Calvin. I am honoured.

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  31. Racism exists in every people against the other, and no ones are free from this stupidity.We are able to be, and live as Whites or Asians or Africans etc...in this Unique World, which is going to collaspe a day,sooner or later...I lived for 5 years, very closed to the Chinese Community and the Indian One also(Hindu), in Mauritius Island,which is named " a multicultural people", without any contact with my own race (white and French)...I have been accepted as I was, but they taught me :"1/You are White;2/you are French;So, be as you are, don't become a convert, you should be simply a man on Earth.Never you will be an Hindu or a Chinese, but we accept you as you are.
    In fact, when you are Hindu , it is not the same if you have a dark skin (Dravidian)or if you are a skinned...for wedding by example...etc.

    About Mongolia, I read,many years ago, a prophecy.A man, Ossendowski( a friend of Baron Uggern), during the Bolchevik revolution, travelled through Mongolia and met a Buddhist wise man. This monk told him :"A day, not far away,humanity will destroye Itself:no food, no water,people will go,and climb on mountain to escape fear and desolation,It will be a sad Time, war has destroyed everything..." It is only a prophecy, but:"SHALL WE BE ABLE TO LIVE PEACEFULLY, a day,without animosity for others on This Earth"?.
    A.S.
    Ortho.

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  32. Ortho, no, sadly we will not; the human imagination is too limited. Thank you for this super contribution.

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