Mindblowing political and economic analysis

In einem verzweifelten Versuch, die drohende Niederlage in der Ukraine zu verhindern, könnten die europäischen Regierungen zum letzten Mittel greifen: einem großen Anschlag auf die eigene Bevölkerung. Das sagt der kroatische Wirtschafts- und Politanalyst Alex Krainer. Um die öffentliche Meinung in Europa für einen allumfassenden Krieg gegen Russland zu gewinnen, braucht es Tausende oder zumindest Hunderte Tote - so wie bei Nine Eleven oder dem Massaker auf dem Maidan. Während man sich kaum vorstellen kann, dass skrupellose Machthaber die eigenen Leute opfern um ihre Ziele zu erreichen, geschieht genau das immer wieder - zuletzt am 7.Oktober 2023, als die israelische Armee die Überwachung der Grenze zu Gaza erstmals in der Geschichte völlig überraschend aussetzte. In seinem Gespräch mit Nima Alkhorshid erzählt Alex Krainer unter anderem, warum die Ukraine und Palestina zwei Schauplätze desselben Krieges sind und wer seiner Meinung nach hinter der Ermordung des Trump-Vertrauten Charlie Kirk steht. 

In einem Kommentar im April 2026 unter dem Titel “Winning history and the West's civilizing mission” legt Alex Krainer dar, wie der Westen die Vernichtung der halben Menschheit als Zivilisierung und Demokratisierung der “rückständigen Wilden” verkauft hat - lange Zeit so erfolgreich, dass es der Großteil der Welt geglaubt hat. Diese Illusion ist spätestens seit dem Iran-Krieg Geschichte.

Our school curricula gave us all a basic education and a shared understanding of our history. It frames our history as a steady, gradual advancement of humanity from our primitive roots—where life was nasty, brutish and short—to modern times which represent the zenith of civilization. It has all been a continuous upward trajectory.

We are the fortunate heirs of past generations’ hard won achievements, enjoying life in Western civilization’s most advanced state. The unstated implication of that context: we ought to be more grateful and should not question the system that gave us all these blessings.

The misery of mankind’s natural condition

Our shared understanding that life outside of Western civilization is violent and frightening was already introduced by Thomas Hobbes in his 1651 book Leviathan (Chapter XIII, “Of the Natural Condition of Mankind as Concerning Their Felicity and Misery”) where he described life in the “state of nature”:

“In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Hobbes’ argument was that, without a strong central authority (the “Leviathan” or sovereign), human life would descend into a constant “war of all against all.” People would live in perpetual insecurity, with no trust, cooperation, or progress. He wasn’t basing this argument on his (or anyone else’s) extensive experience of living in the “state of nature.”

Instead, he pulled it, as we might say in modern parlance, out of his own back end. His interpretation was perhaps corroborated by tales from Western explorer adventurers returning from the “New World” where they had fanned out in pursuit of knowledge gold and silver, but found the savages unreasonable and selfish in their unwillingness to share their wealth with the European civilized man.

White man’s burden

Reluctantly and with a heavy heart, the civilized Christian man had to wipe out most of these natives and destroy their civilizations. Stories about these events followed the voyagers as they returned to Europe with the booty, and they weren’t nice stories. The atrocities committed “below the equator,” had to be justified, which included portraying the victims as heathen savages. Western conquerors brought them the light of Christian faith and the many comforts of civilization.

Over time, such justifications framed the whole process of colonizing the world as a civilizing mission (”Mission Civilisatrice”): a noble duty to bring faith, language, education, technology, property rights and administration to the uncivilized primitives who were also known to be lazy and ungrateful in their unwillingness to work the mines and plantation jobs generously created for them by the Europeans.

As a result, the entire process of liberating the world’s resources and labour became the white man’s burden: a humanitarian and moral enterprise - a holy duty even, as Marquis de Condorcet put it - to elevate the indigenous populations by “sharing” the benefits of Western progress.

The germs did what civilized Western man never would

Given our continued progress along the upward civilizational trajectory, most people in the West today assume that we’ve transcended these violent times. We may even concede that yes, perhaps we wiped ou out six major indigenous civilizations around the world; and yes, perhaps we also completely destroyed many native populations. However, we remain unwilling to examine exactly how or why it happened: we should still not question the system that gave us all these blessings. Instead, Western scholars advanced the germ theory explaining the wholesale disappearance of native populations in pretty much all parts of the world colonized by Western imperial powers.

The natives didn’t vanish because their colonizers sought to kill or enslave them, but because they unintentionally brought pathogens against which the native populations had no immunity. The theory assumes that the natives had no immunity to “foreign” pathogens, but this is simply a narrative crutch with no scientific basis whatsoever.

Amazingly, the native populations didn’t carry any pathogens that would be able to wipe out their colonizers or colonizers’ own populations back home. The holocaust only worked in one direction, against the natives, which was extremely fortunate for the Europeans! The fact that the natives survived with such fragile immunity for tens of thousands of years before the Western man arrived, was probably due to blind luck alone!

We’re still doing it

Well, all these unfortunate things happened in the past when we were at lower stages of our steady civilizational advance. Today, we are neither as unscrupulous nor as violent as we then were. Today our sacred duty is only to very gently and sensibly encourage the backward people of other resource rich nations to improve their democracies, enhance human rights, uplift women and girls (and other genders of course), hold LGBTQ++ parades, and renounce weapons of mass destruction.

This is entirely selfless on our part; in fact, we are so selfless that we’re ready to kill them if they refuse our sensible diktat. And if they persevere in their stubbornness then, very reluctantly and with a heavy heart, we may have to wipe out their civilizations. If that were to happen, I expect that the historical narratives would again seek ways to justify or diminish the events, blame someone else or pretend like it never happened.

For example, a large percentage of Japanese students today believe that the USSR nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while most Europeans came to believe that they owe their victory over Nazi Germany predominantly to the U.S.:

The French IFOP survey asked the same question in 1945, 1994 and 2004: “Which nation contributed the most to the defeat of Germany in 1945?” In the intervening 60 years we had a complete inversion between the U.S. and USSR’s roles. In 1945, 57% of people believed the USSR did the most to defeat Nazi Germany and only 20% thought it was the Americans. Today, 58% believe Americans were responsible, while only 20% think it was the USSR.

How could this even happen? It’s straightforward: by slowly and steadily chipping away at the truth and replacing it with falsehoods. It’s done exactly so that we wouldn’t question the system or the “Leviathan” that’s driving it. If we do, we too might descend into “war of all against all,” with “perpetual insecurity with no trust, cooperation, or progress.”

If today the need to bring the evil Iranian Mullahs back to civilization requires that the free world destroys Iran’s civilization, we can rest easy that we are the good guys, the light confronting the forces of darkness… At any rate, in another 60 years everybody will know that Iranian Mullahs nuked themselves, or perhaps the equally evil Russians nuked them.

With confidence that we can ultimately win history to our side, we can afford to perpetuate an atrocity here and a little genocide there. And we never need to stop and question what the objective truths about the world and its history are, or what if all of it has been rearranged and airbrushed to ensure our consent and compliance.