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THE STRATEGY AND TACTICS OF SPIRITUAL WARFARE

We social crediters habitually think of ourselves in militant terms, as people at war with an enemy. There is some truth in the analogy, but also danger, because the 'war' in which we are engaged differs fundamentally from any other conflict, which is called by that name.
What we are engaged in is a spiritual warfare, that is, a conflict of purpose, or as we have learnt to call it, of policy. In a sense, all wars are about policy, but they are conflicts of the same policy - each trying to damage the other, to attack and enlarge the weak points in the other and to impose its will by fear upon the other - even though the war may have started (as did World War II) with aggression on one side, defence on the other, it ends with 'unconditional surrender', and the 'Atom Bomb' inaugurating a new era of mass-intimidation.
Such warfare is an expression of Monopolism - perhaps its ultimate expression - whether in the form of Monopolo-theism (belief in a unitary Dictator-God, as in Judaism and Islam) or in the form on Monopolo-humanism (Man is the Ultimate power, which is wielded by the Top Men). But it is of the nature of Monopolism that it generates Dualistic conflict. For if 'We' (the Monopolists) alone are 'good' and have a sacred right to power, any others who challenge us are 'evil' and must be destroyed. In a monopoly there is room for only one at the top.
Hence the focus of militant monopolism in the near East between the Chosen People of Allah and of Jehovah, each with its 'sacred right' to impose its will on others (as, in former times between monopolistic forms of Christianity). But since
these conflicts are about human power, the divine pretext for them can easily be dropped in favour of pure humanism, of which the most organised form is Marxist-Leninist communism - a religion of human power, based upon a philosophy of conflict as the means of human advance - essentially Dualistic or Manichaean.
TRINITY OR MONOPOLY
Now let us look at our own religion of Trinitarian Christianity, with its doctrines of Creation, of Original Sin, of the Incarnation and Resurrection, and of Divine Grace. One of these, Creation, we share with the other monotheisms, while some of the others may be claimed (especially by religious Jews) but are not a consistent part of their faith.
To start with, the Blessed Trinity saves us from the Manichaean view of life as a conflict (even though conflict inevitably occurs in life as a means of survival). For instance, the Family can be seen as a unity-in-trinity of three natures; fatherhood, motherhood and childhood, the unity not to be disrupted, the natures not to be confused, rather than as an eternal battle of the sexes, spewing out disposable embryos as a by-product.
The essence of the Christian Doctrine of Creation is that God is good and his works are good - that is, what we call reality and goodness are the same thing.
As a consequence it follows that God did not create evil. The nature of evil is most clearly conveyed by the great myth (or story) of Lucifer, the greatest of the angels, created good by God, who fell through pride (the same pride as that of men who set themselves up as God) as set forth in that great poem Paradise Lost and summed up in the Bible in that lovely flowing hexameter: "How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, Son of the Morning."
NO BAD THINGS: ONLY BAD USES
In other words, evil is not a power in itself though it sets itself up as such. It is goodness, fallen, an intention which perverts or inverts reality from which it draws all its strength. There are no bad things, only bad uses of things.
Douglas quite often quoted the Latin tag: Daemon est Deus inversus as a useful indicator of the way evil often completely inverts reality, turning, for instance, Life more abundant into death more abundant. But the phrase is capable also of a Manichaean interpretation: that the Devil is God, upside down, that there are two rival forces or realities, of Good and of Evil, in eternal conflict, that Evil can incarnate itself in reality, as can Good, that Evil can create, and not merely twist reality.
Does this really matter to the ordinary man, or is it just a bit of theological theory of no practical significance?
Indeed, it does have enormous practical significance in all dealings with evil, that is, in the major strategy of our spiritual warfare; for if evil is a twist given to reality, what we have to look for in combating it is the reality, which has been twisted. You cannot 'fight' distortion without reference to the thing distorted; you are merely fighting an abstraction.
The Doctrine of Original Sin tells us the same thing, but about people, that they were created good, but are corruptible (and how!). Some Christians have been much troubled by statements in some of Douglas's earlier writings that he did not believe in original sin. But it is clear from his explanation (e.g. in the World after Washington, p.4) that he was not using the term in its correct theological sense, but as a popular synonym for Puritanism: the general attitude "Go and see what Johnny's doing and tell him not to!" In his last book: The Realistic Position of the Church of England (p.9) he states clearly: "It is not necessary to go outside the experience of an ordinary lifetime to learn that the doctrine of original sin has a real meaning . . . ".
That same booklet contains the tremendous sentence: "It must be insisted that Christianity is either something inherent in the very warp and woof of the Universe, or it is just a set of interesting opinions . . . ". Notice that he, typically, puts it as a choice for the reader, not merely an assertion.
PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES
'Reality' or 'opinion' - which? The choice has massive practical consequences.
In that excellent little book, Introduction to Social Credit by the late Dr. Bryan Monahan, you will find the following Statement in the last chapter: "The Tao is the transcendental Good. But there is also the transcendental Evil, with the same possibilities of Incarnation." This is an assertion of Manichaeanism, not of Christianity, and explains much, especially that preoccupation with evil, which dominates our minds and appears to bestride the World, mainly through our wholly symbolic money system and the sounds, symbols and images of the public 'media'.
Unlike some of the oriental religions, which hold matter to be a coarse and evil burden upon the pure spirit, the Incarnation has shown us that matter is, in itself, good and holy. All evil is in the spirit, which is why this is a spiritual war. The only thing which conquers evil is good, that is, reality. In all war the winning tactic is always to bring greater force to bear at the time and place of contact with the enemy.
What I learnt during my sojourn, during World War II, at Toynbee Hall, one of the cradles of the Fabian Socialist Welfare state was that it is not the evil in our opponents which is defeating us, but their good qualities, their courage, intelligence, persistence and single-mindedness in pursuit of their objectives.

WE SEEK INTEGRITY
It is no good 'fighting' these good qualities. Our strategy is to seek that integrity which will perceive when and how the good aims which engaged these qualities have been perverted, and so engage them upon 'our' side, since they are also ours, in so far as we also have integrity and have not allowed our aims to be perverted from reality.
In this connection it is worth remembering that the people who first accepted the truth of Douglas's ideas and gave them the publicity which enabled them to spread, were the Fabian Socialists of the New Age journal under the great editor A.R. Orage, who had the integrity to see where State Socialism was leading.
Socialists are in the vanguard of the human mob, rushing towards slavery and disaster. Conservatives are in the rearguard, but all heading the same way. The way to head off a mob, whether of people or cattle, is to divert the leaders, not the tail end. When we get involved in confrontation, still more in actual conflict, we are fighting the good in our opponents, the truth which has been twisted round against us. When such conflicts have been forced upon us we may have to fight for survival, but the Enemy has already won a victory, and such conflicts should never be sought. "Truth", as has been well said, "is the first casualty in War."
OUR MAJOR STRATEGY
So now, what is our major strategy as Christians in the spiritual war?
It is resolution, not revolution, or confrontation.
We have our orders: "Love your enemies! Do good to them that harm you!" This is often dismissed as impracticable idealism, but it is the very reverse. It is hardheaded, practical common sense. It is the only thing that actually works and defeats evil provided, of course, that is bound back to reality in practical detail every time.
For instance, how can we love our enemies if we do not identify them, meet them, mix with them, and discover what sort of people they are, why they are our enemies, and what truth as well as falsehood there may be behind their enmity? We do not have to like them, though it helps if we can; but to join in the game of mutual denunciation by groups of people beating the air with spoken or written words of fury at the evil of others mostly directed at those who agree with them, divides the truth, and gets us nowhere except into a morass of futility.
"Doing good" does not mean "do-gooding", a perverted word for a horrible perversion of the instinct of compassion, meaning the denial of sin and therefore of forgiveness and the indulgence of corruption, taking away free will and responsibility. On the contrary, it means appealing to and stimulating the qualities of integrity, responsibility, intelligence and courage. It means sympathising with and sharing other people's real aims and helping them to achieve what they want, in the world of reality, rather than what we want.
This being our strategy, let us now try to apply its principles to the tactics of our actions in the current world. If we think it over we find that, as social crediters, we have something vital and constructive to offer to the resolution of practically every 'problem', which besets our fellow men, and once this is realised we soon find we have very little time for anything else.
EVENTS - AND DOUGLAS
The best-known contribution we have to offer is, of course, in the economic field. Douglas's analysis of over 60 years ago can no longer be dismissed with any credibility as 'a fallacy', mistaking temporary fluctuations of the trade cycle for a permanent feature, etc. The permanent and growing time-lag between incomes and prices, as demonstrated in his A + B Theorem and rejected with ridicule, is now an inescapable fact, established on a vast scale by the essential part played by various forms of consumer credit in the economy without which it would collapse. Such a thing had barely been heard of when Douglas first published; it came in only gradually during the 1930's under the name of 'hire purchase'. Inflation, as a permanent, built-in feature of the World Monetary System, as seen to be logically inevitable, is now a dreary fact of everyday life, while the accelerating displacement of human labour by technology, as perceived by Douglas, himself a pioneer in automation (the Post Office Tube, 1914) is at last forcing itself upon public awareness, and intensifying the economic war for export markets in a World in which international debt is perennially at crisis level.
All the Douglas chickens have now come home to roost, and all the consequences of ignoring his insights, in labour troubles, strikes, violence and social division, have now more than fulfilled the logical expectations of his many sane and intelligent followers, whose knowledge of at least some of the means of resolution of these miseries, inherited as a legacy from Douglas, places upon them a duty to make them known - to ensure that they have currency and give people a choice of a better alternative.
But how can we do this if we ensure rejection by starting with a wholesale condemnation of prevailing aims and policies, (commonly called socialism) including, or not excluding, those genuine objectives which induce people to become socialists, and which have a historical basis?
THE HISTORICAL ROLE OF SOCIAL CREDIT
In an earlier talk, which has appeared in The New Times I, stressed the historical role of Social Credit in the main stream of the advance of Christian civilisation. Among other things it offers, at last, a rectification of that great social injustice which in the 18th and early 19th Centuries allowed a major increase in wealth and productivity to deprive people of their independent subsistence on the land and in their home industries, and drive them into the towns to become a property-less, money less, employer-dependent proletariat. It was a combination of paper debt-money (available only to employers) with Puritanism in its meaner aspects which inflicted this new form of serfdom upon 'the lower orders', henceforth to be called 'the working class' (born to be hirelings) and which gave rise to the policy of 'employmentism' which is the essence of socialism.
THE TWO DIRECTIONS
But there are two directions in which to move from this injustice of growing poverty and dependence in the face of growing wealth and independence. The normal, sane, direction is surely to insist that, in the face of growing abundance this dependent proletariat should be abolished by their inclusion in our common inheritance of cultural and technological advance. This satisfies all the legitimate demands of the Left, which are compatible with our Christian civilisation: for social justice, for equality (since work or merit does not come into it) for the dignity of labour and the right to work by choice rather than the compulsion of poverty. It satisfies also the requirement for a true, free market in labour, from which the wholly job-dependent are at present excluded, as well as the desire of both employer and employed for freedom of association in work, i.e. both the right to sack as well as the right to contract out, without the direst penalty of poverty.
The other direction is that taken by the Maxists: to glorify the status of dependent hired underlings; to maintain that it is 'unfair' that any should be independent, that for a 'worker' to have a choice of employers, or to make his own contract and decide for himself when to work or to withdraw his labour, is to be a 'scab', a traitor to the working class. All should be totally dependent upon the one employer, the State.
There are many socialists, and others too, who follow this line simply because the alternative has never occurred or been put to them. As the great St. Thomas Aquinas said: "It is useless to argue or discuss with opponents except on tenets that they accept." If we discuss anything with socialists, it should always be from the Left, with Conservatives, from the Right, of their position, appealing to those who are sincere in their aims. The rest will expose themselves.
REAL SOCIAL JUSTICE
Rather than attacking the concept of 'social justice' because of its perverted use, we should ask: "Where is the social justice in taxing the workers to supply the non-workers when technology can now supply more than enough for all?" Where is the 'fairness' in refusing the right to work and supplement their income to the unemployed and pensioners? Where is the 'dignity of labour' in insisting that it takes thousands of forced and intimidated units of the hired-underling class to bargain with one employer? Would not a national dividend, providing access to the wealth and productivity now wasted or sabotaged because human labour and wages are being replaced by electronic devices provide everything that any genuine champion of the poor and the oppressed could hope for?
In many public controversies the social crediter will find himself aligned with the genuine aims of both sides, those which attracted people in the first place to join a Group or a Party, and in such cases it betrays our own duty of resolution wholly to take sides, though of course there are false 'controversies' promoted by the media for purposes of sensation in which, in a sane world, there are not 'two sides' (e.g. drug-pushing, child-sex, political murder) and it is fatal to accept the pretence that there are.
RACE, SEX AND PERVERTED VERBIAGE
For instance, the howling confusion of perverted verbiage about race and sex is particularly susceptible to resolution in the light of Social Credit analysis. In the matter of race it is our awareness of the cultural and genetic inheritance, which is applicable. It is obvious that the word 'discrimination' in its correct meaning of the accurate and loving discernment and appreciation of the essential differences between things, and especially between people, is the key to all social, and especially to racial harmony. The first step, therefore, is to re-invert the word 'discrimination' from its viciously, and even legally, inverted sense of its precise opposite (action based on prejudice, i.e. lack of discrimination) to its proper and traditional sense; and having done so, to draw attention to the fact that at least 90 percent of the racial prejudice which is being promoted on the media is being done under the cover and excuse of 'anti-racism'.
Consider, for instance, the frequency with which 'race' is dragged into the human consciousness by our opinion-manipulators in an antagonistic way, crudely flogging up racial prejudice on the widest possible scale by constant, undiscriminating reference to human beings in bulk as 'blacks', 'whites', etc. as if skin-colour, and nothing but skin-colour, was the only important characteristic of men and women. Compare the quantity and publicity given to hate-propaganda against hate-propaganda, with that of its alleged hate-object; the frequency with which the ordinary citizen hears genuinely felt abuse of other races as against the wholesale broadcasting of it by its alleged opponents, so that something that might perhaps have offended one person now offends a million, with all its massive repercussions.
While at the core of this 'anti-racists' racism are those who enjoy the power that it gives, who seek to extend the sense of grievance on one side and of guilt on the other and even encourage the making of complaints and complain when there are not enough of then, the vast majority who go along with it do so because, like ourselves, they instinctively dislike racial prejudice, but have been confused by perverted language. These people are our natural allies in restoring a sane and discriminating attitude to race, or perhaps it is better to say, we are theirs.
Much of this racial question is concerned with the denial of freedom of association in work - the basis of all social credit - and with the glorification of State-forced contact and friction (backed by threats of fines and prisons) between people who are incompatible or even may detest each other This has now reached the ridiculous stage of making it a crime to advertise for the sort of person one prefers or feels one can work with (even, in New Zealand, for a fellow-Christian) In this matter we social crediters have a special background and duty to expound the truth.
The extension of this fanatic dictatorship to cover that half of the human race which is female in an attempt to deprive them of such independence as they have in the home and enslave them to 'the labour market', just when human labour is being displaced by a technology which can make use of machine operators, is a subject which requires separate treatment as a special aspect of Social Credit. Again, the national dividend would provide all the legitimate objectives of the 'Women's Lib.' movement: the financial independence, the equality, the freedom of choice between the home and the care of children and the external work or career.
PEACE AND EMPLOYMENT
The 'Peace Movement', which has so exploited the natural instincts and emotions of women even more than those of men, is another example where Social Credit provides the clue. Of course all sane people desire peace and fear nuclear war, but mere verbal protests or demonstrations are futile so long as 'employmentism' rules our minds. So long as we insist that, in this age of technological abundance, access to the bread-and-butter of living shall be obtained (directly, or indirectly through taxation of others) only through 'jobs', there is only one solution to the demand for 'jobs for all' and that is the wholesale destruction provided by war and the wholesale waste provided by the preparation for it. It is an illusion to suppose that, without infringing the 'sacred' convention that all new purchasing power must be provided as debt, any sane production of wealth could distribute its products.
Those who are really concerned with peace will tackle this subject, and those who are concerned mainly with expressing their emotions regardless of the consequences, will not.
Another controversy in which it is inadvisable to take sides is that about nuclear power. It may well be that the immediate dangers associated with the production of coal or oil are both greater and more obvious than those associated with nuclear power, which are potentially so devastating as well as being undetectable without instruments that they require far greater and more intricate precautions. But the one thing about nuclear power which should strike a social crediter is that it expresses in physical terms the ultimate limit in 'time-lag' or 'debt' economics: consume now; pay later - landing upon future generations the 'debt' of having to cope almost indefinitely with the potential radiation-danger of 'hot waste'.
THE 'ECOLOGISTS' AND THE LAND
The capture and perversion of the 'Green', 'Ecology' or 'Conservationist' Movement by the dictatorial, Marxist Left for lack of understanding of the part played by Money Power and bureaucracy in the squandering of the Earth's resources, should not be allowed to precipitate head-on conflict between farmers and land-owners on the one hand and the genuine Conservation Movement itself, as if there were no case for sane and economical use of resources or the protection of the variety of life; as if also land-owners and agriculturalists under money-stress were guiltless of the misuse of the land. It is quite apparent that there is truth as well as falsehood on both sides, and that the conflict can be resolved only by an understanding of the impact of our debt-and-employment structure upon the use made of the land, with its living and non-living resources. The attempt to counter this overwhelming pressure by bureaucratic regulations, arbitrary acts of preservationism, and forced dispossession and exclusion of those who actually live upon and know the land, is absurdly doomed to failure, while a mere 'confrontational' approach to it is self-defeating.
Scale is the clue to all human operations on the land, which needs permanent, detailed, personal knowledge and attention, as shown, for instance, by the English countryside at its best, the product of centuries of personal care by innumerable people. This is in contrast to large-scale land-planning by a few bureaucratic or academic brains, whose assessment at the very best must be crudely vague and generalised, whether it results in vast damming, flooding or irrigation schemes, monster collective farms of wild inefficiency, or the allocation of huge areas to Parks or Untouched wilderness.
FLUORIDATION AND THE NATURE OF DEMOCRACY
The fluoridation issue offers a relatively simple opportunity for demonstrating in practical terms the negative nature of any genuine democracy (the right to contract out) and the importance of sticking to policy and not being involved in technical arguments in the political sphere. It shows also the need for 'a civil service of policy', i.e. of a few people with enough technical knowledge to expose the use of phoney or irrelevant technical arguments to cover the imposition of an unwanted policy on the public.
Fluoridation is, to date, the most extreme example of practical communism or collectivism so far inflicted upon human beings. It is described, even by 'Conservative' Mrs. Thatcher as 'a community measure' requiring the State-nominated 'Health Authority' to decide whether the alleged 'advantages' (to teeth) balance the loss of individual freedom by objecting water consumers. That is to say, the most vital and fundamental question in all politics - that of personal choice as against State dictatorship even in the extreme case of what one takes into one's own body - is to be decided on a technical basis of the interpretation of dental statistics, by an unelected body having no brief or competence even to consider the basic questions of politics.
The toxic qualities of fluoride have no relevance except in so far as they provide a reason for objection to having increased intake force upon one, and the endless wrangling of opinions as to whether fluoridation is associated with a statistical increase in cancer or other diseases among the units of population betrays the real issue by implying that if it cannot be convincingly shown to cause such effects there can be no objection to treating people in bulk, as farmers do crops or poultry.
Since the whole thing has been forced upon the public and their representatives on the grounds that 'Health Authorities; act upon 'expert advice' from dentists and doctors not available to the rest of us, it is important to realise that no 'expert' or specialist of any profession whatever recommends fluoridation on grounds within his technical competence. No water supply expert recommends fluoride as a water treatment additive, no 'health' professional of any sort can prescribe an increased fluoride intake for unknown people on 'health' grounds, no dentist can recommend more fluoride for unknown water consumers irrespective of their age, state of health, or intake from other sources, whether or not they have artificial dentures.
The 'expert' argument is therefore a piece of nonsense used to cover an act of political collectivism, and the correct tactic is to expose to our political representatives the fact that their function is being usurped under cover of technical advice and to identify the officials concerned. Whatever the outcome the growth in understanding of the workings of democracy will be valuable, and essential for further action.
In our warfare of policy as in all other forms of war, it is essential to keep a constant eye on our opponents' reaction, rather than blasting off into the void without noting and adjusting the fall of shot. An example is the continued use of the word 'conspiracy' which has now been strongly defended so that it has a negative effect. In any case, what we are now up against is a blatant and obnoxious tyranny, which should be labelled as such.
JUDAEO - CHRISTIANITY
The Jewish Question is more than a heavily mined site. It is a trap into which it is foolish to blunder without careful preparation, location of the mines, and weighing of the advantages to be gained, if any. The word 'Jew' itself should not be used without precise definition of its meaning: ethnic, national, or religious: Biblical or Talmudic; for or against Christ and the prophets. As we know, 'anti-Semitism' is mainly a device of the Anti-Christian Overjews and their numerous allies in policy, not only to defend their policy, but to control the 'Underjews' within a rig of gentile fear and resentment; and it is uncharitable lightly or unnecessarily to activate it.
It was in this rather specialised sense of a policy group that Douglas frequently referred to the Jewish element in Finance, in bureaucracy, in Communism, and in the media, in order to point the contrast with the policy of Trinitarian Christianity with which it is entirely incompatible. In so far as the Christian Churches are now being linked with Judaism under the title Judaeo-Christianity and are being invaded by a form of Liberal Judaism which rejects or confuses the Incarnation, this issue is vital and cannot be evaded, even in the face of smears of anti-Semitism, provided there is no truth in them. But there is nothing but loss and confusion to be had from mere confrontation.
Our general strategic order to love our enemies makes it perfectly clear that the Jewish Question should never be touched on lightly or ignorantly, or dragged in unnecessarily. It should always be treated on a religious policy basis, where it provides an opportunity to expound the binding back of Christian doctrine in the world of today in contrast to the policy, which at present dominates the scene, and reflects man of the beliefs of Judaeo-Christians.