L.K. Samuels Quotes

The inherent nature of complexity is to doubt certainty and any pretense to finite and flawless data. Put another way, under uncertainty principles, any attempt by political systems to ‘impose order’ has an equal chance to instead ‘impose disorder.’

The more complexity, the more unpredictability and therefore the more uncontrollability. You cannot control what you cannot predict.

When it comes right down to physical war and bloodshed, governments don’t protect people; people protect governments.

At an early meeting of a political group that eventually turned into the Nazi Party, Hitler told Friedrich Krohn, an early supporter of the party, that he preferred a type of ‘socialism’ he referred to as ‘national Social Democracy’ that was not dissimilar to nations like Scandinavia, England, and prewar Bavaria.

Under complexity science, the more interacting factors, the more unpredictable and irregular the outcome. To be succinct, the greater the complexity, the greater the unpredictability.

Proclaiming to be a ‘Left Libertarian,’ [Jeff] Riggenbach pored over the original meaning behind the seating arrangement of the 1791 French Legislative Assembly and noticed that those who favored authoritarian and dictatorial rule sat together on the right side of the aisle. So, under this interpretation, all authoritarians must be recognized as right-wingers, meaning that Communists, Nazis, and Fascists must occupy the same rows of pews even if they carry on like contentious, misbehaving siblings.

A number of die-hard Marxists have confirmed the mirroring of social totalitarian ideologies. Otto Rühle, a German Left communist and one of the founders of Second International, asserted that Bolshevism is a model for Italian Fascism and German National Socialism. In his 1939 article ‘The Struggle against Fascism Begins with the Struggle against Bolshevism,’ Rühle wrote that ‘Fascism is merely a copy of bolshevism,’ and that it was a ‘political and administrative terror system.’

Each of us must live within that reality. Forecasting is not an exact science—the future leaves no footprints. We cannot predict the future because we cannot precisely measure the present. Quantum mechanics proved that. We live in a probability-based world. We all know that the sun will rise in the morning. But even that’s just a high probability. Nothing is assured—nothing.

Whenever I came across bits and pieces of my alleged past, I wanted to puke. Apparently, I had once had an unknown life with a family. What is the point of being alive unless you can remember living it, I wondered?

The hallmark of evolution is its ability to process situations and generate order without relying on the crutch of a conscious designer. Most complex systems grow organically, solutions evolving through unguided and mindless forces, never reaching any final state.

Almost everyone in private confessed their desire for buckets of money, but they usually swore the opposite in public. They bad-mouthed the rich as low-life scumbags. I could never understand why people despised something they wanted to be.

He may be among the most notorious fascists, but Mussolini was not the first to introduce economic and political fascism to the world. After Lenin’s ‘War Communism' produced massive famine, street riots, and economic collapse, Marxist leaders searched for an alternative ‘Third Way’ between socialism and capitalism. In response, Lenin rolled out his New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921, which introduced a form of ‘market socialism’ or what he approvingly dubbed, ‘state capitalism.’ In fact, Lenin described this change as the ‘development of capitalism under the control and regulation of the proletarian state (in other words, ‘state’ capitalism of this peculiar kind) is advantageous and necessary…’ which was adopted by the Third Congress of the Communist International. This means that fascism was not the ‘last stage of capitalism’ as Marxist historians have maintained, but the first stage of a pullback from the economic and political failures of Marxism–Leninism. Lenin’s reactionary policies to mitigate the defects of absolute nationalization and communism not only spawned the NEP but also ushered in the world’s first modern fascist regime.

If socialist regimes work together, trade together, fight together, collaborate, and have fundamentally equivalent ideologies and tactics, they are genealogically related (a sort of Communist-Nazi brotherhood), which could be regarded as a Fascist-Marxist mindset. Of course, these socialist ideologues also fight each like rival siblings.

I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. Ellen had more than a relevant point. Why was I so defensive about our debased government? Why jump headlong into a meat grinder to defend those who would toss us on a flaming broiler without a second thought?

But the Nazis did more than broadcast messages to the Middle East by Arabic National Socialists. There was a drive to give students from Arab countries German scholarships, to have business firms take in Arab apprentices, and invite Arab party leaders to ‘Nuremberg party rallies and military chiefs to Wehrmacht maneuvers.’ In fact, the Nazis established an ‘Arab Club’ in Berlin as the ‘center for Palestine-related agitation and Arabic-language broadcasting.’ Some Nazi leaders, such as Heinrich Himmler, talked about the ‘ideology closeness’ of National Socialism and Islam, coming up with the concept of Muselgermanen or ‘Muslimo-Germans.’