It Can't Happen Here Until It Does
(A near-annual posting -- originally From 2016, before the Trump-Time.)
Given a time machine, if there is any single event in modern history I would travel back to and attempt to prevent, it would be the killing of the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary in the Balkan city of Sarajevo at approximately Noon on June 28, 1914. It triggered the First World War -- and the Second, and the First Cold War - now, the Second - a fractured, tribal Middle East, and a rising, hungry China.
How this moment in history occurred seems unbelievable -- a string of events, choices made by its participants, all happening in just the right order and the right moment. If it was part of the plot in a novel or film, you might say Oh that's impossible; that couldn't happen. But it did. And its echo is still resonating over a century later.
The Archduke and his wife's assassination was a 'Black Swan', rara avis moment which pulled out multiple threads that led to a collapse of the Old World of the nineteenth century -- though what the event triggered had been boiling for some time. It's how history works.
After eleven years of Trump, a worldwide pandemic, and the American Experiment in danger of being snuffed out by an armed, imbecilic 'christian' mob, we're still feeling the impact of what was set in motion on a street in Sarajevo that day in late June, 1914.
Sarajevo has a large number of unowned dogs living in the city.
Here, Cousin Ignatz, Asleep At Princip's Post: Sarajevo, 2014 (Matthew Fisher / Postmedia News)
112 years ago today, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, the Grand Duchess Sophie, were shot by Gavrillo Princip, a member of an assassination team sent to the Bosnian city by the government of Serbia.
Collectively, the team was the gang which couldn't shoot straight: armed with crude grenades, a few pistols, and carrying some form of suicide pill, they waited along the route Franz Ferdinand's car would take as it drove beside the Miljacka river, which cuts through Sarajevo (local Austro-Hungarian authorities had helpfully published the Archduke's route beforehand).
Most of the team either was poorly positioned, or chickened out at the last moment. One conspirator did throw a bomb at the Archduke's car -- which bounced off its folded-back fabric top and exploded near a second car traveling just behind. Several people in the car had minor injuries and it continued on to a local hospital.
The Archduke's driver, Leopold Lojka, continued to Sarajevo city hall. When Franz Ferdinand arrived, he effectively unloaded on the hapless administrators about the state of their local security ("I come to your city and am greeted with bombs!"). Meanwhile, back at the river, the would-be bomber had jumped into the Miljacka and swallowed his suicide pill -- which he promptly threw up. The police arrested him, barely managing to keep him from being lynched a mob of pro-Austro-Hungarian citizens, and so save him for later trial and execution.
At approximately 12:30 PM, having finally accepted the thanks of the Sarajevo city fathers, Franz Ferdinand and his wife got back into their car, planning to go to the local hospital to see those wounded in the bomb attack that morning. They used the same route, in reverse, that they had taken into the city, driving along the river. But when the Chauffeur, Lojka, came to a particular intersection -- to his left, a street; to the right, a bridge over the Miljacka river -- he was confused.
The Royal Couple (Seated, At Rear) Leaving City Hall: Fifteen Minutes Left
Believing it to be the route to the hospital, Lojka slowed and turned left. Almost immediately, he realized he'd made a mistake and stepped on the brakes. The car came to a stop a few yards into the street, and Lojka moved to put it in reverse gear.
The Intersection of Kaiser Franz Josefstrasse and Appel Quay Road, 2014:
The Archduke's Car Turned Left, Up This Street;
The Restaurant Where Princip Bought Lunch, Now A Museum (Photo: CNN)
The Restaurant Where Princip Bought Lunch, Now A Museum (Photo: CNN)
At that same intersection was a small restaurant. Gavrillo Princip, last member of the Serbian assassination squad, had gone inside to buy a sandwich, angry and dejected after the team's failure that morning. Standing on the sidewalk outside the cafe, he saw a large, dark-green automobile turn out of the boulevard and come to a stop directly in front of him.
In the rear seat were the Archduke and his wife. The heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne had been delivered, less than ten feet away, from an armed assassin who had come to the city specifically to kill him.
Consider: every event that had to happen, like a string of dominoes falling, to bring everything together to allow this moment to happen. Again, if you were writing a novel or screenplay, anything that coincidental would be branded as implausible. Impossible. No one's gonna believe that.
Princip didn't hesitate. He dropped his sandwich, pulled a pistol out of his jacket and stepped towards the car, firing several shots, managing to mortally wound both the Archduke and his wife. Lojka, the driver, was ordered to rushed the royal couple to the local military governor's residence. Sophie died on the way. A military officer in the car, checking on the Archduke's condition, asked the wounded man how he was; Ferdinand said, "Nichts (It's nothing)", and died.
Just over a month later, Europe was at war. Over the next four-plus years, the entire social fabric of the continent and much of the world changed irrevocably. Monarchies ended; millions died; the map of the world changed as the victors annexed territory from Germany and Austria Hungary, and new countries were created. New technology was developed -- and, in the Versailles Treaty, the groundwork was laid for a second, even more horrible war to begin by 1939.
(And, in 1918-19, the Spanish Influenza infected 500 million people, killing 40 million, worldwide. It was the largest number of fatalities due to pandemic disease since the 'Black Death': the coming of Bubonic Plague to Europe in the 14th century [which killed an estimated 200 million]. In the U.S., millions were made sick, and 675,000 died [0.6-plus per cent of America's population at the time, 103 million]. It's often referred to as the "forgotten epidemic" -- just one more terrible event in an ocean of violence and atrocity.)
America, ruled by Babbitry, greed and rabid delusion, retreats from the world stage; its leader is Bloated, Sick, and Raving, focused on being The Great Leader, surrounded by car-wash dilettantes -- and no one seems to be able to do much about it.
And no matter how you want to characterize it, there's a confrontation -- between those who want a globalist neoliberal world (organized around the goals of international finance and business, together with the most powerful nation-state actors), and those who don't. The balances in the old alliances created after WWII have all but unraveled. Kleiner Mann; Was Nun?
Princip didn't hesitate. He dropped his sandwich, pulled a pistol out of his jacket and stepped towards the car, firing several shots, managing to mortally wound both the Archduke and his wife. Lojka, the driver, was ordered to rushed the royal couple to the local military governor's residence. Sophie died on the way. A military officer in the car, checking on the Archduke's condition, asked the wounded man how he was; Ferdinand said, "Nichts (It's nothing)", and died.
Just over a month later, Europe was at war. Over the next four-plus years, the entire social fabric of the continent and much of the world changed irrevocably. Monarchies ended; millions died; the map of the world changed as the victors annexed territory from Germany and Austria Hungary, and new countries were created. New technology was developed -- and, in the Versailles Treaty, the groundwork was laid for a second, even more horrible war to begin by 1939.
(And, in 1918-19, the Spanish Influenza infected 500 million people, killing 40 million, worldwide. It was the largest number of fatalities due to pandemic disease since the 'Black Death': the coming of Bubonic Plague to Europe in the 14th century [which killed an estimated 200 million]. In the U.S., millions were made sick, and 675,000 died [0.6-plus per cent of America's population at the time, 103 million]. It's often referred to as the "forgotten epidemic" -- just one more terrible event in an ocean of violence and atrocity.)
Cousin Ignatz, Worn Out By All The History
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Why the history lesson? We're living through history. When we read about events in Europe during the Interwar Years (1918 - 1939), there's a feeling of being slowly pulled down into a drain of inevitability -- revolving-door failures of parliamentary governments in France; Britian's declining empire; the manic Totentanz of global capital leading to 1929; the rise and fall of Weimar. Italian, German and Japanese fascism. The Russian revolution, civil war, and mass murder of Stalin's dictatorship; the terror. The Spanish civil war.
Like the story of the Titanic or the Hindenburg, we know where the story is going. We know it will end in Nanking, Kristalnacht, Dunkirk; Auschwitz; Stalingrad; the Warsaw Ghetto; D-Day; the Führerbunker; Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But you read about the years leading up to all that with a mounting sense of horror, because we all know how it ends.
Labour is trying to hang on in the UK and defeat the New Right; the Scots still wonder about independence; Nigel dreams of being the Trump of Britain. Putin dreams of grinding Ukraine under a bootheel. China bides its time. The Middle East continues a slow-motion atrocity: Gaza, Iran, the Gulf. Europe boils. Climate deterioration is not fake news.
Like the story of the Titanic or the Hindenburg, we know where the story is going. We know it will end in Nanking, Kristalnacht, Dunkirk; Auschwitz; Stalingrad; the Warsaw Ghetto; D-Day; the Führerbunker; Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But you read about the years leading up to all that with a mounting sense of horror, because we all know how it ends.
Labour is trying to hang on in the UK and defeat the New Right; the Scots still wonder about independence; Nigel dreams of being the Trump of Britain. Putin dreams of grinding Ukraine under a bootheel. China bides its time. The Middle East continues a slow-motion atrocity: Gaza, Iran, the Gulf. Europe boils. Climate deterioration is not fake news.
America, ruled by Babbitry, greed and rabid delusion, retreats from the world stage; its leader is Bloated, Sick, and Raving, focused on being The Great Leader, surrounded by car-wash dilettantes -- and no one seems to be able to do much about it.
And no matter how you want to characterize it, there's a confrontation -- between those who want a globalist neoliberal world (organized around the goals of international finance and business, together with the most powerful nation-state actors), and those who don't. The balances in the old alliances created after WWII have all but unraveled. Kleiner Mann; Was Nun?
Hope you're not looking for an answer here. I am, after all, only a Dog, and no one listens to me.
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