“…the creation and solidification of the Executive Branch agencies and their onerous regulations. Those taxes and regulations have immensely burdened small businesses and family farms, destroying America’s yeomen population and forcing it under the yoke of corporate employment.” 💯
Great breakdown and article. I'm Kenyan and I'd really appreciate it if you'd do a breakdown of the Kenyan situation and history on race relations and politics especially as you alluded to somewhere in this article. All we get here is terrible, shallow neo Marxist, critical theory, post colonial indoctrination and propaganda and it's incredibly hard to get real facts and history of your own country. I appreciate the west and see the benefits of colonialism while also accepting the cultural, artistic, philosophical and moral supremacy of the west and fully take it as my humanistic and anglo heritage but you can't say that to anyone and can't read about the nuance and historically accurate facts of your own countries past without being patronized or ostracized by ideologues and people who thrive on the very Idiocracy that has led Africa and Kenya to where it is.
I am fully against communism/marxism but there's a huge hole in the argument of this piece. The aristocratic hierarchical structure of European societies led by the monarchical/peerage classes were fully responsible for World War I which is without a doubt the most horrific conflict in the history of the world and resulted from the internal rot of this structure. WWI and its disastrous post-conflict period was most responsible for the rise of the awful ideologies like marxism and nazism that came in the decades leading up to WWII. The idea that this classical societal structure is superior to modern day America, for example, where literally anyone can work their way into being an influential millionaire regardless of social class or background isn't true at all. The way that Italians and Irish have worked their way up into the elite of American society post-WWII is an example for all the world of the superiority of American social organization. It's not an accident that so many members of the Supreme Court are Catholic right now. I'm also a huge opponent of inherited wealth and the general rot that occurs with it (see: Soros or Disney fortunes) which is perhaps the biggest weakness of all in the old aristocratic structure and why I believe it was largely rejected by the new world order following the wars. Each generation should have to earn their place in a society, not have it handed to them because of their last name. I'm not trying to attack the piece as there are a lot of other good points, so if you've addressed this elsewhere I'd love to follow up and read it as well.
This is my attempt at writing about hereditary wealth: https://www.theamericantribune.news/p/the-old-world-mindset-be-a-grosvenor. The short of it is that the Soros family is evil and the Disney kids were badly raised. The problem there is not inherited wealth, which is a good thing in that it lets the next generation focus on better things than the accumulation of assets, as that's already done, but that the people involved are awful. Johann Kurtz of becoming noble has a good series on this, his "Raising Sons Worthy of Empires" is one of the better discussions of the topic. Finally on this point, inherited landed wealth is very different than inherited fortunes of liquid assets, as the former ties people to a place and its people (a la the still funcitonng and generally popular British peerage) whereas liquid fortunes more frequently lead to overspending, cosmopolitanism, etc.
As to WWI, I think it's a mistake to blame the aristocracy. The UK's government at the time was the Liberal one under Lloyd George, and it was extremely hostile to inherited wealth and privilege, hence the death duties and Parliament Bill of 1911. France was democratic as well, and its aristocrats were marginalized politically. Russia and Austria Hungary had weak aristocracies. Prussia's junkers had been on the rocks for years, but were admittedly still influential to a larger degree than in the other countries. If the argument is that democratic government and monarchs have too much power and got themselves into a horrible spot, that is much more corrrect of an argument than that the hereditary aristocracies were to blame. Finally on this point, aristocratic wars (the war of Spanish Succession is the best example, as that was the last time "dukes were dukes," to quote Churchill, but the parts of the 7 Years War that took place in Europe is probably another) remain limited, whereas democratic wars escalate into Total Wars as they pull in the whole of society, and thus are far worse. WWI and II are modern examples, the Wars of Religion are another
I think you're also overestimated how hard it was for new families to enter the aristocratic milleu, and the worst of the old ones to fall out. The British landed elite did a reasonably good job of pushing away the brokes and degenerates, as they lost their estates and faded into oblivion, while the best of the new men bought those estates and their kids or grandkids were treated no differently than the sons of a longtime gentleman. The Prussian system was different, and much more rigid, I think to its detriment, which is why I tend to focus on the Anglosphere
Very nice article, although one thing is missing. If WW1 and WW2 are deemed pivotal moments to our current demise (a position I agree with), then we should also be factoring in the role of jewish power on Western governance. Especially after WW2, jewish finance and its consequent power to infiltrate western governments has had a dominating influence in shaping our downfall. So, too, with regard to the jewish roots of communism, liberalism, and 'cultural marxism'. Obviously, this is not to place all weight of blame on jews, and I agree with your central tenet that there is an inner rot within the frame of the western mind that is of paramount importance. But the point is that, especially after WW2, the jews have weaponized this inner weakness to their advantage, and to our disadvantage.
It seems to me that the interpretation of historical events presented by the article maybe misleading. A popular critic of Cultural Marxism is the politicisation of high art and history and I think that article falls prey to this malaise albeit on different political grounds. My disagreements with the article are at first general and then specific. The general part is the misunderstanding of the West’s “greatness” and the causes of it. Western history proper starts in circa 10th to 11th century. Nearly a millennium of history events and processes have occurred to be where we are today. And in different times, people contemporary to those have faced challenges and have sufficiently responded to those challenges for our civilisation to remain living. These creative individuals who have solved problems and propagated our culture were not always of “social hierarchy” (I still do not know what that means), but were commoners. Chaucer. Shakespeare, Goethe, da Vinci, Newton, Mozart, Beethoven, Washington, Riemann, Cantor, Tesla, Krupp, Emerson, Whitman etc. I could go on. These fountainheads can by no means of the imagination be said to be of “social hierarchy”, only perhaps if one means economic hierarchy which would perhaps leave only Krupp, Washington and maybe Shakespeare. And you are also not thinking of spiritual creative geniuses such as Martin Luther, St Francis of Assisi, and John Calvin. For whatever reasons, these individuals have been inspired by something and have innovated. When it comes to our own times, we too have our own challenges to respond to, challenges specific and unique to our own times. Rhodes did not have the internet, Napoleon knew not what a nuclear bomb is, Einstein did not anticipate artificial intelligence. Our technical supremacy has come with new challenges and I think it’s a fruitless task to look to the past and try to copy and paste solutions. At best we can sympathise with the past, but times moves on and history moves on, and soon people will be writing of our on age, perhaps how we even fixed the problems we inherited from the past or failed to respond to them. Rhodesia represented an ancient institution past its time. As slavery was or western theocracies were. The French have a lovely word for this: Ancien Régime. The beauty of history is that a solution in one age becomes a problem in another. That’s what Rhodesia had become. In fact if there’s anything we can learn from it is that we ought to better read contemporary times and situations. Smith’s regime failed to do so.
And now to the specifics. I will mention one: Marxism is not a threat to America. One may disagree with this statement, which is fair, but a revision of this is hard to refute: Since the inception of Marxism in Western consciousness, if one were to take the periods of 1990 to our present day, The West is in the least danger from communism as it has ever been in communism’s history. I still need to understand how the American mind comprehends life through rhetoric, I am European, but Marxism is ghost from the past being summoned by political elites to scare the electorate whilst they conduct nefarious activities. They are the same ones who call China communism because the ruling party name has “communist” in it.
Cortes was a monster. That the Aztecs were also monsters in many regards is absolutely no justification of Cortes's barbarity and duplicity in his efforts to dethrone Montezuma II and destroy the Aztec civilization, not to even mention the multiple massacres he perpetrated. While you get a few things marginally correct, this piece is largely pining for a past that never existed. Liberal democracy (represented in its most beneficial form as American democratic republicanism) and capitalism are the primary impetus behind dragging the world out of the aristocracy/serf sensibilities that did nothing but relegate the majority of humanity to indigence and suffering for millennia.
This piece is nothing but the anti-liberal (in the classical meaning of that term) "conservative" temper tantrum that has arisen on the right over the last decade, represented most astutely with the ascension of the absolute reprehensible character, Donald Trump, to lead the "conservative" movement. Much like your misattribution of Cortes as some sort of savior because the Aztecs were brutal and corrupt in their own right, the demagoguery of Donald Trump and MAGAism (Christian nationalism) can be--and is--caustic to the Western Enlightenment values at the heart of the American experiment, at the exact same time that Wokeism from the left attempts to tear down our liberal Enlightenment social order.
It is as depressing as it comes that so many on the right are embracing equal-and-opposite illiberal tactics in response to the illiberalism of social justice and postmodernism from the left. Mindless is as mindless does, I suppose.
Maybe you could offer some solutions rather than just pontificating, guzzling the good gin, and dropping cigarette ashes on the shag carpet. I think your taxi's out front. I hear honking and it's not you. By the way, you still owe us for that last antimacassar cleaning bill.
I am a white Rhodesian male of 64 years. Rhodesia was financed by Rothschilds Bank. I served in the military in a unit whose motto was Pamwe Chete and then after the ZanuPF victory went to study in RSA.
Oh ja I am also an Afrikaaner although I speak the taal badly.
This may surprise you,but I do not see any moral justification for invading the region and continuing to hold it after UDI. There was a huge financial reason of course.
If I had been black I would have been the first to go to Mozambique or Zambia to train to fight against the Smith government. But I wasn't so I got called up by the RF government.
The war fucked the whole country up, poisoned race relations forever and resulted in the Zanu PF government which still runs the show in a fantastically corrupt, ignorant and incompetant fashion.
If you treat people like shit then you'll pay for it one way or another.
Great breakdown and article. I'm Kenyan and I'd really appreciate it if you'd do a breakdown of the Kenyan situation and history on race relations and politics especially as you alluded to somewhere in this article. All we get here is terrible, shallow neo Marxist, critical theory, post colonial indoctrination and propaganda and it's incredibly hard to get real facts and history of your own country. I appreciate the west and see the benefits of colonialism while also accepting the cultural, artistic, philosophical and moral supremacy of the west and fully take it as my humanistic and anglo heritage but you can't say that to anyone and can't read about the nuance and historically accurate facts of your own countries past without being patronized or ostracized by ideologues and people who thrive on the very Idiocracy that has led Africa and Kenya to where it is.
“…where anyone could vote, black or white, who had the requisite amount of property that showed them to be responsible and productive, and so trustworthy enough to have a hand in running the state.”
the insidious secret of 15a. property. literacy. responsible. productive. trustworthy.
"As a reminder, the Old World, and much of the New World, namely South America and the Cavalier South were ruled by hierarchy: landed aristocrats, whether titled or gentry, handed down their wealth and prestige from generation to generation.21
At the top of the hierarchy were the monarchs. Below them was the peerage, or aristocracy, which had its own internal hierarchy: dukes, marquesses, earls, discounts, and barons. Then came the gentry, which also had its own hierarchy: baronets (a hereditary title but not part of the peerage), knights, esquires, and gentlemen. Below them was everyone else, with the middle class entitled to some respect but not much. Yeomen farmers and large tenant farmers were typically allowed to vote and had similar interests to the peerage and gentry, but no one doffed their hat at a tenant farmer. At the bottom of the social pyramid were the agricultural laborers and industrial workers.
The hereditary nature of wealth and the responsibilities that were thus attached to it meant that wealth was largely controlled by an elite few. Those few were the ones who, largely, were the ones best suited to responsibly nurture it in the manner of a garden."
The piece romanticizes the old hereditary aristocratic structure which is my biggest issue with it. WWI exposed all its flaws.
By the time of WWI France and England were firmly democratic in government, and Russia and Austria had weak aristocracies. Aristocrats were massacred in it, but it was a democratic war. The War of Spanish Succession was an aristocratic war and what such a thing looks like, not the Great War
Where did you get this idea that World War I was a war between aristocrats? Exactly none of the Western belligerents at the time thought of the war that way. Woodrow Wilson marketed the war to his fellow Americans as a war to "make the world safe for democracy". The British and French both understood their cause to be liberty and the defeat of autocratic, illiberal Germany. Germany understood its fight to be against the forces of degeneracy and inferior culture in the Western democracies. They even managed to convince the German Socialist party (!!), the SPD, to support the war and for this among other reasons. AH understood democracy as primarily a front for nationalism and this reason started the Great War to defeat those existential threat to the Hapsburg's dynasty.
Only the Eastern powers, Russia and the Ottomans, saw the purpose of the war differently.
Fantastic article
Thank you!
“…the creation and solidification of the Executive Branch agencies and their onerous regulations. Those taxes and regulations have immensely burdened small businesses and family farms, destroying America’s yeomen population and forcing it under the yoke of corporate employment.” 💯
Glad you agree! I think this is part of the change that people really don't realize, but need to
Great breakdown and article. I'm Kenyan and I'd really appreciate it if you'd do a breakdown of the Kenyan situation and history on race relations and politics especially as you alluded to somewhere in this article. All we get here is terrible, shallow neo Marxist, critical theory, post colonial indoctrination and propaganda and it's incredibly hard to get real facts and history of your own country. I appreciate the west and see the benefits of colonialism while also accepting the cultural, artistic, philosophical and moral supremacy of the west and fully take it as my humanistic and anglo heritage but you can't say that to anyone and can't read about the nuance and historically accurate facts of your own countries past without being patronized or ostracized by ideologues and people who thrive on the very Idiocracy that has led Africa and Kenya to where it is.
Thanks! I will look into it
A declining civilisation that is destroying itself through weakness and stupidity. What a catastrophe.
Indeed
Incredibly well articulated
Thank you!
I am fully against communism/marxism but there's a huge hole in the argument of this piece. The aristocratic hierarchical structure of European societies led by the monarchical/peerage classes were fully responsible for World War I which is without a doubt the most horrific conflict in the history of the world and resulted from the internal rot of this structure. WWI and its disastrous post-conflict period was most responsible for the rise of the awful ideologies like marxism and nazism that came in the decades leading up to WWII. The idea that this classical societal structure is superior to modern day America, for example, where literally anyone can work their way into being an influential millionaire regardless of social class or background isn't true at all. The way that Italians and Irish have worked their way up into the elite of American society post-WWII is an example for all the world of the superiority of American social organization. It's not an accident that so many members of the Supreme Court are Catholic right now. I'm also a huge opponent of inherited wealth and the general rot that occurs with it (see: Soros or Disney fortunes) which is perhaps the biggest weakness of all in the old aristocratic structure and why I believe it was largely rejected by the new world order following the wars. Each generation should have to earn their place in a society, not have it handed to them because of their last name. I'm not trying to attack the piece as there are a lot of other good points, so if you've addressed this elsewhere I'd love to follow up and read it as well.
This is my attempt at writing about hereditary wealth: https://www.theamericantribune.news/p/the-old-world-mindset-be-a-grosvenor. The short of it is that the Soros family is evil and the Disney kids were badly raised. The problem there is not inherited wealth, which is a good thing in that it lets the next generation focus on better things than the accumulation of assets, as that's already done, but that the people involved are awful. Johann Kurtz of becoming noble has a good series on this, his "Raising Sons Worthy of Empires" is one of the better discussions of the topic. Finally on this point, inherited landed wealth is very different than inherited fortunes of liquid assets, as the former ties people to a place and its people (a la the still funcitonng and generally popular British peerage) whereas liquid fortunes more frequently lead to overspending, cosmopolitanism, etc.
As to WWI, I think it's a mistake to blame the aristocracy. The UK's government at the time was the Liberal one under Lloyd George, and it was extremely hostile to inherited wealth and privilege, hence the death duties and Parliament Bill of 1911. France was democratic as well, and its aristocrats were marginalized politically. Russia and Austria Hungary had weak aristocracies. Prussia's junkers had been on the rocks for years, but were admittedly still influential to a larger degree than in the other countries. If the argument is that democratic government and monarchs have too much power and got themselves into a horrible spot, that is much more corrrect of an argument than that the hereditary aristocracies were to blame. Finally on this point, aristocratic wars (the war of Spanish Succession is the best example, as that was the last time "dukes were dukes," to quote Churchill, but the parts of the 7 Years War that took place in Europe is probably another) remain limited, whereas democratic wars escalate into Total Wars as they pull in the whole of society, and thus are far worse. WWI and II are modern examples, the Wars of Religion are another
I think you're also overestimated how hard it was for new families to enter the aristocratic milleu, and the worst of the old ones to fall out. The British landed elite did a reasonably good job of pushing away the brokes and degenerates, as they lost their estates and faded into oblivion, while the best of the new men bought those estates and their kids or grandkids were treated no differently than the sons of a longtime gentleman. The Prussian system was different, and much more rigid, I think to its detriment, which is why I tend to focus on the Anglosphere
Appreciate the sincere rebuttal, I'll take a look at the piece.
Very nice article, although one thing is missing. If WW1 and WW2 are deemed pivotal moments to our current demise (a position I agree with), then we should also be factoring in the role of jewish power on Western governance. Especially after WW2, jewish finance and its consequent power to infiltrate western governments has had a dominating influence in shaping our downfall. So, too, with regard to the jewish roots of communism, liberalism, and 'cultural marxism'. Obviously, this is not to place all weight of blame on jews, and I agree with your central tenet that there is an inner rot within the frame of the western mind that is of paramount importance. But the point is that, especially after WW2, the jews have weaponized this inner weakness to their advantage, and to our disadvantage.
It seems to me that the interpretation of historical events presented by the article maybe misleading. A popular critic of Cultural Marxism is the politicisation of high art and history and I think that article falls prey to this malaise albeit on different political grounds. My disagreements with the article are at first general and then specific. The general part is the misunderstanding of the West’s “greatness” and the causes of it. Western history proper starts in circa 10th to 11th century. Nearly a millennium of history events and processes have occurred to be where we are today. And in different times, people contemporary to those have faced challenges and have sufficiently responded to those challenges for our civilisation to remain living. These creative individuals who have solved problems and propagated our culture were not always of “social hierarchy” (I still do not know what that means), but were commoners. Chaucer. Shakespeare, Goethe, da Vinci, Newton, Mozart, Beethoven, Washington, Riemann, Cantor, Tesla, Krupp, Emerson, Whitman etc. I could go on. These fountainheads can by no means of the imagination be said to be of “social hierarchy”, only perhaps if one means economic hierarchy which would perhaps leave only Krupp, Washington and maybe Shakespeare. And you are also not thinking of spiritual creative geniuses such as Martin Luther, St Francis of Assisi, and John Calvin. For whatever reasons, these individuals have been inspired by something and have innovated. When it comes to our own times, we too have our own challenges to respond to, challenges specific and unique to our own times. Rhodes did not have the internet, Napoleon knew not what a nuclear bomb is, Einstein did not anticipate artificial intelligence. Our technical supremacy has come with new challenges and I think it’s a fruitless task to look to the past and try to copy and paste solutions. At best we can sympathise with the past, but times moves on and history moves on, and soon people will be writing of our on age, perhaps how we even fixed the problems we inherited from the past or failed to respond to them. Rhodesia represented an ancient institution past its time. As slavery was or western theocracies were. The French have a lovely word for this: Ancien Régime. The beauty of history is that a solution in one age becomes a problem in another. That’s what Rhodesia had become. In fact if there’s anything we can learn from it is that we ought to better read contemporary times and situations. Smith’s regime failed to do so.
And now to the specifics. I will mention one: Marxism is not a threat to America. One may disagree with this statement, which is fair, but a revision of this is hard to refute: Since the inception of Marxism in Western consciousness, if one were to take the periods of 1990 to our present day, The West is in the least danger from communism as it has ever been in communism’s history. I still need to understand how the American mind comprehends life through rhetoric, I am European, but Marxism is ghost from the past being summoned by political elites to scare the electorate whilst they conduct nefarious activities. They are the same ones who call China communism because the ruling party name has “communist” in it.
Cortes was a monster. That the Aztecs were also monsters in many regards is absolutely no justification of Cortes's barbarity and duplicity in his efforts to dethrone Montezuma II and destroy the Aztec civilization, not to even mention the multiple massacres he perpetrated. While you get a few things marginally correct, this piece is largely pining for a past that never existed. Liberal democracy (represented in its most beneficial form as American democratic republicanism) and capitalism are the primary impetus behind dragging the world out of the aristocracy/serf sensibilities that did nothing but relegate the majority of humanity to indigence and suffering for millennia.
This piece is nothing but the anti-liberal (in the classical meaning of that term) "conservative" temper tantrum that has arisen on the right over the last decade, represented most astutely with the ascension of the absolute reprehensible character, Donald Trump, to lead the "conservative" movement. Much like your misattribution of Cortes as some sort of savior because the Aztecs were brutal and corrupt in their own right, the demagoguery of Donald Trump and MAGAism (Christian nationalism) can be--and is--caustic to the Western Enlightenment values at the heart of the American experiment, at the exact same time that Wokeism from the left attempts to tear down our liberal Enlightenment social order.
It is as depressing as it comes that so many on the right are embracing equal-and-opposite illiberal tactics in response to the illiberalism of social justice and postmodernism from the left. Mindless is as mindless does, I suppose.
Hey Lance,
Maybe you could offer some solutions rather than just pontificating, guzzling the good gin, and dropping cigarette ashes on the shag carpet. I think your taxi's out front. I hear honking and it's not you. By the way, you still owe us for that last antimacassar cleaning bill.
Well said. Such tragedy and by our own hand, as we now watch those very same processes accelerating the demise of our very own country itself.
Indeed, it is quite tragic and it's coming to America
I am a white Rhodesian male of 64 years. Rhodesia was financed by Rothschilds Bank. I served in the military in a unit whose motto was Pamwe Chete and then after the ZanuPF victory went to study in RSA.
Oh ja I am also an Afrikaaner although I speak the taal badly.
This may surprise you,but I do not see any moral justification for invading the region and continuing to hold it after UDI. There was a huge financial reason of course.
If I had been black I would have been the first to go to Mozambique or Zambia to train to fight against the Smith government. But I wasn't so I got called up by the RF government.
The war fucked the whole country up, poisoned race relations forever and resulted in the Zanu PF government which still runs the show in a fantastically corrupt, ignorant and incompetant fashion.
If you treat people like shit then you'll pay for it one way or another.
Happy Easter Zimbabweans.
Great breakdown and article. I'm Kenyan and I'd really appreciate it if you'd do a breakdown of the Kenyan situation and history on race relations and politics especially as you alluded to somewhere in this article. All we get here is terrible, shallow neo Marxist, critical theory, post colonial indoctrination and propaganda and it's incredibly hard to get real facts and history of your own country. I appreciate the west and see the benefits of colonialism while also accepting the cultural, artistic, philosophical and moral supremacy of the west and fully take it as my humanistic and anglo heritage but you can't say that to anyone and can't read about the nuance and historically accurate facts of your own countries past without being patronized or ostracized by ideologues and people who thrive on the very Idiocracy that has led Africa and Kenya to where it is.
Very good article and very unfortunate truth. Thank you.
Visited Zim from SA a few times in early 90s, can attest to the culture then. A wonderful place on its way down. Great article.
Great article. One tiny typo though - viscounts not discounts.
Although with the penurious state of the British upper class, perhaps discounts is more apt?
Thanks!
Oops, thanks for catching that, I will fix it ASAP
“…where anyone could vote, black or white, who had the requisite amount of property that showed them to be responsible and productive, and so trustworthy enough to have a hand in running the state.”
the insidious secret of 15a. property. literacy. responsible. productive. trustworthy.
"As a reminder, the Old World, and much of the New World, namely South America and the Cavalier South were ruled by hierarchy: landed aristocrats, whether titled or gentry, handed down their wealth and prestige from generation to generation.21
At the top of the hierarchy were the monarchs. Below them was the peerage, or aristocracy, which had its own internal hierarchy: dukes, marquesses, earls, discounts, and barons. Then came the gentry, which also had its own hierarchy: baronets (a hereditary title but not part of the peerage), knights, esquires, and gentlemen. Below them was everyone else, with the middle class entitled to some respect but not much. Yeomen farmers and large tenant farmers were typically allowed to vote and had similar interests to the peerage and gentry, but no one doffed their hat at a tenant farmer. At the bottom of the social pyramid were the agricultural laborers and industrial workers.
The hereditary nature of wealth and the responsibilities that were thus attached to it meant that wealth was largely controlled by an elite few. Those few were the ones who, largely, were the ones best suited to responsibly nurture it in the manner of a garden."
The piece romanticizes the old hereditary aristocratic structure which is my biggest issue with it. WWI exposed all its flaws.
By the time of WWI France and England were firmly democratic in government, and Russia and Austria had weak aristocracies. Aristocrats were massacred in it, but it was a democratic war. The War of Spanish Succession was an aristocratic war and what such a thing looks like, not the Great War
Where did you get this idea that World War I was a war between aristocrats? Exactly none of the Western belligerents at the time thought of the war that way. Woodrow Wilson marketed the war to his fellow Americans as a war to "make the world safe for democracy". The British and French both understood their cause to be liberty and the defeat of autocratic, illiberal Germany. Germany understood its fight to be against the forces of degeneracy and inferior culture in the Western democracies. They even managed to convince the German Socialist party (!!), the SPD, to support the war and for this among other reasons. AH understood democracy as primarily a front for nationalism and this reason started the Great War to defeat those existential threat to the Hapsburg's dynasty.
Only the Eastern powers, Russia and the Ottomans, saw the purpose of the war differently.