1 August 2022
Vienna, VA
(MPR)
Former Intelligence Officer Gloria Pendragon, and Professor Tomas Klimacek, Professor of National Security Studies at Saint Anne’s University in Glasgow, Scotland, appeared on MPR to discuss Fifth Generation Warfare.
Pendragon: Here is Fifth Generation Warfare — you create a problem. You create a solution. You create opposition to the solution. Since you created the opposition, or co-opted the opposition, you use them. An insider, say, or a whistleblower, comes out with a story about how the opposition is controlled, and voila, no one knows who to trust. It works every time, especially with a controlled press. We just brought it home to the U.S.A.”
MPR: Why would you tell us this? Are you controlled opposition?
Pendragon: Exactly. You cannot know. So what do you do? What can you do?
MPR: Professor Klimacek, your thoughts on Fifth Generation Warfare?
Klimacek: This is how it works. You screw with their heads so much no one knows who to trust and the opposition just fades away, or better yet, goes after each other.
MPR: Is there a risk of undermining our institutions? Our democracy?
Klimacek: That’s the point — you don’t want them to trust. You want them to be afraid and not trust any leader. That leaves only one trusted source — whoever is in power.
MPR: Are you for or against this type of social control?
Klimacek: Neither.I’m just telling you how it works. And because you cannot know how it works, you are trapped because you can’t trust anyone. So it doesn’t even matter when people say “the government lies,” because if the government lies and your professors lie, and your politicians and preachers and parents lie . . . You are kind of helpless. Which is the point.”
MPR: Is there anything that can be done to get around this trap?
Klimacek: It our culture, in the advanced western diverse and secular culture? Not really. I mean, the twentieth century say some pretty horrific dictators — that would be a most unwelcome solution.
Less advanced societies can resist this, those who have direct blood allegiances and a strong core of beliefs. This is why we could never civilize or democratize the Afghanis. Their tribal structure — based on race and kinship — was virtually impenetrable. Layered with this was their fath in Islam. All of our modern conditioning techniques failed to pierce that cultural shield.
MPR: What do you see for the future?
Klimacek: It is hard to say. Are the people of the future content to live this way? My gut says ‘yes,’ as long as they are comfortable — bread and circuses, the old Romans would say. But in economic collapse? Not so much.
MPR: What would that look like?
Klimacek: Well, as always, it is a resort to blood and tradition, kinship and faith. The secular liberal order has nothing to offer other than materialism. Once that goes away, people will be forced into more organic forms of social organization just to survive, forms that have withstood the test of time. At the core of it, people have to trust others in order to survive in the pre-modern world. The modern world designed a system that obviates trust and replaces it with things. Once things go away, people will be forced to find those they can trust again, and that will mean a return to blood, and faith. Your race, your language, your land, your gods, etc. All pre-modern tools of survival. The tribes that have that core will survive. Those that don’t, won’t.
MPR: Thank you, Professor Klimacek.
Klimacek: Thank you for having me on.