Saturday, March 27, 2010

Book Review: War Cycles Peace Cycles - by Richard Kelly Hoskins

So my dad was loaned this book by a neighbor, and since my dad has a phonebook sized EMT textbook to memorize, he passed on 'Cycles' to me.
This book is an economic history of the world, emphasizing historical causes for economic collapse and what individual Americans can do to prepare for the next crash.
My recommendation: Do not read this book!
It was written with engaging style and confidant authority. It does have some interesting ideas about economics that would be worth researching elsewhere. Anywhere else. But the only reason to read this book is to have a look at the reasoning of one of the respected sages of the White Supremacist movement. I started reading 'Cycles' with no knowledge of who Hoskins was. I as just judging the book by its cover, which is black with a bold font and a crashing stock market graph. The text of the book is a fixed width font, printed by some process that looks like a copy of typewriter pages, and somewhat blurry at that. It was a glue bound paperback. This styling portrayed genuine underground publication, cheaply done in someones basement with outdated equipment. Probably was, since no publisher would put there name on this.
Growing up here in the inland northwest there may be few colored peoples, but there is a population of White Supremacists. Even so, they are portrayed as violent nuts who hate Black people. I had not thought about their reasoning for believing themselves supreme. 'Cycles' holds a lot of that reasoning. Based mainly on warped interpretation of the Bible and inability to get over past grievances (mainly the civil war), Hoskins explains how Whites are really God's chosen race, how the current Jews are not. He also claims that the Jewish bankers know the system is flawed and use it to maintain power and get rich off the wars and revolutions they instigate.
The only point worth pursuing is that lending at interest always leads to economic collapse. I found Hostkin's explanations for this lacked rigor. What was engaging was his detailed account of how large scale borrowing-at-interest had caused the collapse of nations throughout history. Not sure if he was accurate about that, but it was interesting.

'War Cycles Peace Cycles' was too full of 'trying to prove a point' to be a valid source of economic education, but it is a detailed read if you want to understand the thinking of White Supremacists.

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