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I was struck by the way that Cromwell used the power of parliament to construct his religious based dictatorship.
I really enjoyed this article. History has a way of repeating itself and the pamphleteers of that age where the internet bloggers of today. These people wrote thousands of pamphlets in the face of imprisonment.
I think the reality is a bit more complicated than that, considering that Cromwell's first aim was to undo the absolutist power of the monarchy.
Yes, he became a dictator, but I don't see much grounds at all to compare him with Stephen Harper, either in character, or in his actions. For one thing, Cromwell ruled the country in the middle of the bloodiest century in British history.
I'd say that Stephen Harper has more in common with Louis XVI than with Oliver Cromwell -- what with Harper's penchant for running up huge budget defecits from foreign wars and outlandish capital spending and whatnot.
I'd say Charles I or James II of England, actually.
Believe it or not, Louis XVI was in many things a reformer - certainly not a dictator or an idealogue.
I don't understand. Cromwell was always a hero of mine. He overthrew the monarchy. He let the Jews back into England, who had been expelled four centuries before. Stephen Harper is a monarchist. He used the crown (bootlicker M. Jean) to thwart the will of Parliament. And if he thought it would serve his purposes, he'd readily support a private member's bill to send the Jews to the gas chamber.
That's my over-the-top way of saying that I don't really get the analogy.
Cromwell was a genocidal tyrant who led a popular rebellion against a decadent, oppressive and out-of-touch monarchy.
Who said the game of thrones was simple?
Yeah, but he didn't start out as a tyrant. Plus he was a tyrant for a cause. Which, I give you, is just as fucked up in many ways, but somewhat less corrupt than other ones.
And yes.... Drogheda.
Time to do a little more research on your heroes Unionist. A campaign of genocide resulting in the death of approximately 40% of an identificable population goes a little beyond having feet of clay.
Financially, things were going too well in England for the five centuries before Cromwell. Banksters and the rich needed a stooge on the throne in order to finance a revolt against the Tudors. Harper and his predecessors in Ottawa have stooged it up fairly well for the benefit of bankers and capital. Harper is just the current successor to the throne in Ottawa where the house of impotence rules.
I'm not not going to excuse him, bagkitty, but it was civil war, and he was doing things pretty much the same as in every other military campaign of the day. What had happened in England was not much better, and the 30-Years slaughter in Germany was at least as bad as that in Ireland.
and @ Fidel
That's not quite what happened. In fact they were in the middle of a protracted revolution when he came along, and by his day it was against the Stuarts. Ironically, part of the reason why he seized dictatorship was because the rest of parliament was not committed enough to his religious and social cause. One could certainly call him a monster, but a tool? Absolutely not.
It wasn't the first time, nor the last. that that happened. But Unionist is right in that he was made of much different stuff that our current PM.
His real name was Williams and only changed it to Cromwell in tribute to Thomas Cromwell. The fake Cromwells became rich as a result of Henry's dissolution of monasteries. Cromwell was just another Catholic hater and pawn of the money lenders. He had to hate the Church and biblical teachings against usury and debt servitude. The tally system worked for centuries until Cromwell the puppet was installed.
Later our American friends would try to distance themselves from this setup and create the first constitutional democracy not ruled by a European financier oligarchy. As we can observe today, they've failed.
Where do you dig this up, Fidel? Monty Python?
Pawn of the money lenders? Well he is believed to have been a mason, if that's the cabal you are refering to.
(edit)
And having gone to a site, which I won't link to, I expect your source material refers to a different cabal.
Henry VIII forced his great grandfather to take that name because Williams was a foreigner, and it wouldn't do to be hanging around with a Welsh name. And Oliver's brother is the one who got all the money. He was not himself that wealthy.
And as for the Americans, never mind that the people running that revolution were the wealthiest people in the colonies, their revolution was bankrolled by the Dutch, and by the King of France (from whom they also got a military attache). They were a financier oligarchy all their own.
Okay, nobody was made wealthy by destruction of the monasteries and redistributions of the Church's properties.
They must have earned it then. I think Marx referred to this tendency for the rich and powerful to transform themselves from murderers and thieves to persons of high quality and of riches as 'primitive accumulation.' The Crumwells surely earned it, and Oliver benefited not by his family's connections.
Pull the other leg, Smith, it's got bells on.
The Brits under crazy George, the Americanos last official imperial ruler, were attempting to levy taxes without representation against the colonies. The idea was Roman in that the colonies of the peripheries should pay for the empire's military expansions.
There was some semblance of democracy in the original 13 colonies. Farmers travelled miles to gather together in townhall meetings and vote on which of them would be financed for expansions. It could have been the beginning of something good. Instead they have become the thing which they tried to escape from in jolly old Ingerland: a vicious empire debt-ridden by too many wars financed by taxpayers for the benefit of a few.
Cromwell did come from a wealthy family, Fidel. It's just that he didn't really get any of it. He did have some properties, but sold them and moved to a farm.
And as for the church holdings, you might remember that Henry started closing monestaries because he was himself bankrupt, and he continued spending those riches like water until he died. You might also remember that Henry died 100 years before English Civil War, and there were three monarchs between his death and the time of Charles I.
The colonies were no more democratic or free than England, which was itself run by a democratic parliament. As for that war, sure it was the beginning of something good, if you were on the right side, or not a slave or Native. People who questioned the war were attacked, murdered, had their businesses and newspapers burned, and were forced to flee the country. You might want to read up on what happened when the Americans tried to bring their revolution to Montreal.
In fact, a 1772 court decision in Britain, which freed the slave of a Boston merchant who came to England, probably made more than a few Americans question their allegiance to the old country.
Yes, that is the thing which I was trying to get at. Oliver Crumwell was the beginning of rule by a financier oligarchy in England. And King Billy of stinky Oranges borrowed a million quid to finance his war against France. The treacherous 1000 year-old Venetian-Dutch-Anglo banking cabal have been power brokers and king-makers at various key times in Europe.
And for 200 years the private money lenders fought for control of money creation and credit in America. They achieved that end with the 1913 Federal Reserve Act. It was an issue long fought over in America, and it was the beginning of absolute rule in America by banksters and financiers. They became a full-fledged military-financial dictatorship with the signing of the National Security Act in 1947. Truman decided after the war that America would simply stay armed all of the time. But unlike fascist Europe today, the Americans still retain some powers of money creation albeit the republic remains overthrown by a Wall Street oligarchy.
And Canada was overthrown by a banking monopoly and marauding international capital by 1991 with Mulroney's amendments to the Bank of Canada Act rammed through Parliament without any debate or fanfare. Most Canadians still don't realize what happened under that particular phony-majority dictatorship in Ottawa.
Fidel, All of the sites I have gone to that talk about "money lenders" and British history are anti-semitic, white supremacist sites, talking about an international Jewish conspiracy. I don't know where your sources got their sources (not from any history book I ever read), but it all sounds suspiciously like the tale being spun on these sites. You might want to do a bit of checking.
Here's a somewhat less dangerous and offensive conspiracy to sink your teeth into: Cromwell mysteriously not destroying a secret Masonic temple in Scotland during the civil war:
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/merovingians/rosslyn_chapel01.htm
I'm sorry that you have had to resort to smearing me with false association to anti-semitic rhetoric. I find it offensive and despicable.
I am sorry that this mini-debate is now spoiled with your fallacious argument masqueraded as having relevance to what I wrote.
It's too bad. I thought I was dealing with adults here.
I guess I was wrong.
Your off-topic smear against me is now flagged for moderators to deal with.
Fidel, I only found this out because I did some googling to find out what you were talking about, because it had no relation to the history I am familiar with.
I didn't ask to have David Icke, Stromfront, and a host of other sites pop up with a story that is surprisingly similar to yours.
I did not say you got your information there. I did not call you anti-semitic, but I strongly advise you to check your sources, and their sources.
Or just tell me where you got your information from.
I have no idea what you are talking about or why you would even bother to read any of those people you are trying desperately to associate with what I have said.
You are the only one here who has pointed us to anti-Semitic references.
Are you absolutely sure that it is not you who are anti-Semitic? If not, you should be more careful.
No I am not an anti-Semite. Every western country has groups of ordinary people and committees for economic and monetary reform calling for the nationalisation of money creation and credit. Canada is not an exception.
The CCF included nationalisation of money creation in the party constitution in the 1930s.
Why am I having to defend myself like this in a progressive forum?
I've read a lot about England from time to time, One of my parents was born there. And I lived there for brief periods when I was young.
Ellen Brown's site: Web of Debt. And have a look at http://comer.org (Canadian) Also, http://michael-hudson.com (U.S.)
One question for you: Who cuts your hair?
Fidel, I didn't call you an anti-semite, in fact I did not question your intent at all.
Now if you don't mind I'll wait for a mod to sort this out, seeing as it isn't something we can't actually discuss.
And Canadian Bill Krehm has some information about the Bank for International Settlements and that organizations links to Hitler and the Nazis in fascist Europe. Keynes called for that illegit clique of international central bankers to be disbanded in 1946. That's real history, too.
There are all kinds of rich and powerful people of ALL ethnicities who pretend to wield financial influence over our democratically elected governments. None of us voted for those friends of the property party, either. They are pretenders to a throne that does not actually exist.
The truth is that the banks have no power over us. Not any democratic power over us, anyway. They would certainly like each and every one of us to believe it's true, but it's not. Greeks are demonstrating that basic truth on behalf of us all today.
Obviously the Harper -- Louis XVI analogy needs some more explanation.
For starters, both Harper and Louis XVI presided over the largest expansion of public debt that either country had seen up to that point, and both became obsessed with bringing down this debt while managing to maintain spending on their pet projects.
There is a clear parallel between Louis the XVI's intervention in the Amercian Revolutionary War on the side of the 13 colonies -- a large source of France's debt at the time -- and the Harper governments military spending increases and military adventures in Afghanistan and Libya -- a major source of the Harper government's debt. The Libya mission is even more of a direct parallel to Louis XVI's intervention in the American Revolutionary war in that both were interventions in struggles to overthrow governments.
There's also a clear parallel between Louis XVI's excessive spending on his court at Versailles -- the other major contributor to French debt in the period -- And the Harper government's unaccountability on the gross overspending and cost overruns on things such as the F-35 fighter jets, the use of G20 security money for unrelated infrastructure projects in Tony Clement's riding, Bev Oda's extravagant junket to London, ect.
On the economic front, Harper and Louis XVI both presided over booming resource sector economies -- Mining and metallurgy in the case of France; oil and gas in the case of Harper-- while significant other sectors of the respective economis suffered badly as a result, and the poor suffered increasing immiseration.
I agree that Harper does have major parallels with Charles I and James II on matters relating to the criminalization of dissent, and these are important parallels; but I would argue that Harper's criminalization of dissent are the means to his ends, and those ends look a lot more like the parallels with Louis XVI.
Let's test your claim. Googling with search terms: British history + money lenders produces this web site address first and foremost in the results: British Banking History Society
I don't see David Icke or any white supremacist orgs listed in the first page results. I think you're exaggerating. I think you may have made special effort to locate the anti-Semitic wacko sites you accuse me of being in league with.
In fact if you google on just the search terms money lenders , Google spits back 8, 000, 000+ results and none on the first page link to anti-Semitic or white supremacist web sites.
Can you reproduce your own Google results for us here and demonstrate how what I wrote is as easily traceable to that which you accuse me of? Try Googling 'ice cream + anti-Semitism' It's good for more than 6,000, 000 hits and your cue for a reverse inquisition. Go forth now in the name of the bloodthirsty butcher Cromwell and his roundheads.
@ Left Turn
That is the popular conception.
In fact, there are a number of ways why Louis was nothing like our current PM. In the first place, he was a reformer, and tried to bring in laws to end torture, serfdom, to promote religious and cultural tolerance, and to shift the tax burden so that the upper class would pay tax. Problem is, he did not have the power to do very much.
And in fact, most of the anger at the time was focused on what the people saw as his foreign queen and his advisers. Many of those calling for reform still supported the king right up until he and his family tried to flee the country.
Absolutely, France at the time was a badly broken society, but the image of Louis as a powerful, right-wing dictator is false. If anything, he sped up change because of his weakness, and because he himself opened the door of power to the people through his reforms, and by calling the Estates General - the equivalent of parliament - and going cap-in-hand for more taxes.
At one point, when the members of the assembly refused to take their hats off in his presence, he removed his own hat in deference to them. Not the sort of behaviour one would associate with an arrogant tyrant.
@ Fidel
You just called in the mods. Do you maybe want to wait for one of them to show up and deal with your complaint?
Too me Cromwell led the Reform Party of his day. Like the Reform with their Trojan horse citizens rights platform he wanted the power of the parliament to be supreme so that he could institute a religious based tyranny. Like his laws that outlawed the wearing of makeup in public.
I actually posted the article as much for the Levelers being the response to the Cromwell tyranny. Then like now the people were producing their own pamphlets to give voice to the resistance. The Puritans who fled England for America were fleeing for their lives because they had been oppressors when in power.
@ Kropotkin
Yes, regarding the Levellers, and insofar as Cromwell was coming from a social conservative angle, I'd agree with him being in some ways like the Reform party.
Although the Puritans weren't actually fleeing for their lives. They left because they wanted to set up their own theocratic dictatorship. Ironically, it was Charles II, after Cromwell's death, who revoked their charter, sent in a governor, and forced them to observe tolerance and stop executions.
The Puritans were very much like American-style right-wing Christians. Even in Elizabeth's day they had a reputation for barging into other peoples' churches, turning over the altar and ranting about them being no better than papists. On the other hand, Francis Walsingham, her spymaster, was a puritan, so not everyone was so inclined.
The puritan reforms that made Cromwell most unpopular were banning church weddings and Christmas.
Mods ignore me most of the time anyway. And besides, that was half a day ago. I'm prepared to forgive if you are.
Use the google force, jedi Smith. But don't let it overpower you.
You are probably right about the cavalry.
I have no complaint about you, Fidel, and I don't feel I have done anything that requires forgiving, so I think we're square.
But here's the deal. I didn't even start with googling "money lenders" because that is obvious short hand for the International Jewish Conspiracy.
What I googled was : financiers Cromwell, and I went from there to various combinations, including "money lenders".
There were a few sites regarding a finance company in Connecticut, but anything that had to do with Oliver Cromwell and financial backing was some pseudohistory about how he was controlled by Jewish financiers and had Jewish spies, just like King Billy, and everyone else who has ever run things in Britain. Feel free to check it out for yourself.
Why are the only sites that I found racist religious and political propaganda? Because according to any real historical research Cromwell didn't listen to anyone other than what he thought was his god talking to him.
I am not questioning that you may have gotten this from somewhere else, but the fact is it wouldn't be the first time that I have seen things like this passed on innocently by people who weren't aware of the source.
Again, I do no blame you or question your motives, but I really want to avoid amping this up to the point where we are actually comparing notes on this shit that is not worth talking about.
It's not obvious, no. That's the point you certainly tried to make and fell somewhere short of succeeding.
So what secret combination of search terms did you actually use to link me with anti-Semitism, Winston Smith?
It's obvious to me that you weren't scouring the web hard enough to find linkages between money lenders and ice cream is my guess. And there are many.
All I said was that England was generally better off in the few centuries before Cromwell and the introduction of predatory lending to the monarchy in financing royal bloodbaths of conquest.
Some European bankers were Jewish, yes. But not all and certainly not all of their investors. That fact nullifies your feeble attempt to link me with the pseudo-historical revisionism of the David Ickes and ignorant white supremacist sources you insist I am sourcing. Medici bankers, for instance, were not so corrupt and actually did invest loans for infrastructure expansion, the arts and cultural endevours and were generally a positive force in Italy and Europe at the time.
Europe would have prospered in medieval times if Lombard-Dutch-Anglo bankers not had a hand in crippling economies with oppressive levels of debt and creating a second dark ages situation similar to the collapse of capitalism part whatever its at now since 2008.
Smith wrote:
The Puritans were very much like American-style right-wing Christians. Even in Elizabeth's day they had a reputation for barging into other peoples' churches, turning over the altar and ranting about them being no better than papists. On the other hand, Francis Walsingham, her spymaster, was a puritan, so not everyone was so inclined.
The puritan reforms that made Cromwell most unpopular were banning church weddings and Christmas.
In fairness to the Puritans, it should be pointed out that most governments in Europe prior to the Enlightement, while not theocracies per se, were in the business of enforcing their own religious orthodoxies at sword-point. Catholics, Anglicans, the various other protestants etc, pretty much all persecuted each other(not to mention Jews etc) when they got the upper hand in a particular jurisdiction.
Furthermore, at least in North America, the Puritans directly evolved into the Congregationalists, who in Canada merged into the United Church and in the USA often became Unitarians, two of the currently most progressive religious bodies on the continent(Unitrians back in the UK have evolved from a somewhat different lineage, though share a broadly common outlook with their trans-Atlantic cousins).
Though you can still sense a strong Puritan drift in these liberal groupings. It was Unitarian-driven censorship which made the phrase "banned in Boston" common parlance for decades, and the UCC had a strong contingent of "temperance people" for a long time(Presbyterianism also played a role there). I was involved with a UCC-oriented youth group in the 80s, and one of the big arguments they had was over some fundraising plan that involved gambling, since the UCC was supposed to be against that.
The Watch And Ward Society