Epstein investigators say that the novel written by Donald Barr, a former OSS agent and father of two-time Attorney-General William Barr, is rife with sexual slavery of children. Snopes calls this story mostly false. I acquired a copy of the book to check for myself.
And the Man-Inhabited Planets Treaty is the founding of the MIPTO… Man-Inhabited Planets Treaty Organization (i.e NATO). Craig desperately and apparently irrationally wants Kossar in the MIPTO. He wants them to hold off the ant-empire (Gotta let the arch slavers into NATO if you want to fight the communist hordes from Asia!!)
Craig scoffs at sending a “doddering old narcissist who thinks himself a master of Realpolitik and would sell off” their prized principles. Maybe a snipe at Kissinger?
I live in order that I may understand. You try to do it backwards, and you never make it. I’m a Trad. You’re a Prog.
~Donald Barr
I wonder if Kossar is supposed to be South Africa?
During his first mission to Kossar, John Craig ‘s ship was attacked by pirates. He and the rest of the passengers were immediately sold into slavery. They all get tattooed on their left forearm with a serial number.
There was already a 14 year old violently raped on page 37. But the main character is constantly quipping about the rapes and beatings and murders on the slave ship like he’s some kind of BDSM Spiderman
I mean this is plainly smut it is meant to be enjoyed by the reader. Having established that, I’m not going to belabor the examples of sadistic horniness unless it is some real 👁 shit.
Page 52-54 Craig seduces a guard by implying he wants to go down on him, then just as he is about to do it he slices the femoral artery.
This is so fucking horny and not at all sci Fi. There’s nothing about this society or narrative that really needs a sci-fi trapping. It would make as much sense if it was set in the 18th Century Caribbean. This is just BDSM-based political intrigue.
In chapter 39 he’s describing the “Planned Parenthood Center” which is the most horrifying imaginable parody of what you would expect under that name. It is where the slaves are forced to reproduce.
In chapter 40 John Craig (age 31) enthusiastically takes part in the program with a 19 year old girl who absolutely does not want to be involved.
I’ve been skimming a lot because it is straight schlock for many chapters. But that all seems to be narrative bridging for the sake of intensely eroticized scenes of torture and abuse.
And lots of poetry:
🤮
This answers the question of his colleague at the start of the book, “why do you want to get these fucking slavers into space NATO so badly.” It’s because he has space Stockholm Syndrome. And again, Craig is a Trad.
In which he tries to resist a truth drug by telling a “fantasy” to try and trick himself.
He actually LOVES slavery but wrote an anti slavery clause for reasons of political economy — it is too expensive to maintain a burgeoning and flourishing slave state against revolutionaries.
And he has discovered a second alien race that is scary and assumed hostile, so the slavers need abolition in order to survive. Not for any moral reason. In fact, Craig believes that it is bad that abolition is necessary.
Craig wants to meet the offspring of a previous scene in which he was a stud in a slave breeding farm
He is proud that the slave owner chose this newborn to be raised to be her sexual conquest at age 15.
His former(?) owner has narrowly escaped capture by the slave revolt and Craig explains that “the line between idealism and insanity is vague” and that he has a battalion of Ukrainian idealists under command of Ihor Muraschenko. Unusual detail…
In which John Craig finds the leader of a group of slaves, offers to hype up the crowd for him, and instead co-opts the crowd to condemn him.
In the next chapter the narrator writes in great technical detail how Craig knocks a rebel guard unconscious, cuts his throat in the most effective way, and then idly wonders if his victim had possessed free will. The dude is not even human to him.
In which we meet General Muraschenko, Major Nestor Kiril’ch Hreshevsky, and Corporal Makhno of the Ukrainian Idealists.
Where Craig marries the woman who has been grooming his six year old son from birth
The end
Fuuuuuuuck
Commentary
Craig doesnt believe the slaves have free will and so he doesnt see them as human. He cannot believe that their revolts are about gaining freedom, which he believes is impossible for them.
Craig does not want to abolish slavery, he wants to abolish slaves and slaveowners. He believes that the slaves are inherently incapable of governing themselves and must be ruled by those they serve. But he believes that slavery is politically crude and economically inefficient. He actually sees slavery as a beautiful relationship, to be enjoyed by both parties. So he wants to preserve slavery in a society which is politically “free” but economically enslaved: he wants wage laborers toiling under bourgeois capitalism. Craig offers to teach the slaveowners of Kossar how to engage in class war… so that they can emerge from it as a renewed, bourgeois ruling class.
Kossar is an interesting place. It makes allusions to the Confederate States of America with its chattel slavery, Morgan Stanley’s grey uniform, and the 13th Amendment written into the MIPTO treaty. It is easy to see the enemy of MIPTO, the “ant-empire,” as a cypher for communism. It consists entirely of ancient racist tropes that depict the peoples of Asia as barbaric, mindless drones in a vast hivemind, ready to overrun the west.
Within the overarching conflict of Humans versus Insects, the contradictions between Kossar and MIPTO are easily overcome. Craig goes to great pains to separate “slavery” from “slaves and slaveowners” as social structures. He laments the loss of Kossar’s Traditionalist elites and his romanticized idea of chattel slavery. But he carries out this transition with an eye to keeping the freedmen servile and the former slavers in command. Reforms which, under the military protection of MIPTO, would preserve the overall structure of Kossar society and prevent revolution.
This also has obvious parallels to the “military colony” of NATO which had been forced to abandon its system of racial slavery: the Federal Republic of Germany.
The author has left these clues which draw parallels between Kossar, the Confederacy, and the Third Reich. He gives apologia for the necessity of destroying their beautiful systems of subjugation and mastery. He emphasizes the need to unite against a common enemy, the hive-minded alien masses: he urges them to study and master Class Warfare so that they can defeat the Revolutionaries. And his proposal for the preservation of the ruling class is to grant political freedom to the masses without releasing any economic power. The author’s solution to the class struggle on Kossar is to instate a bourgeois democracy in which real power is held by an oligarchic elite and the masses must struggle to survive.
The author’s snipe at Henry Kissinger is curious. Kissinger was Secretary of State at the time this book was written and Barr, a former OSS agent, appears broadly critical of him. Barr questions “the Secretary’s” mastery of “Realpolitik” in this book. We can hardly doubt that Kissinger was a master of Realpolitik at the time Barr wrote this; the snub seems to be directed at Realpolitik itself. John Craig makes decisions that appear irrational to his Liberal colleagues. He implies that his Secretary would sell out the principles of MIPTO, yet it is Craig who betrays the antislavery clause that he himself wrote. This is excused by the semantic finger-crossing John engages with at the beginning of the book: he never meant to abolish slavery, only the economic dependency on it. The Liberals are implied to be ideologically blind to the reality of human nature, with Craig explaining that they believe that humans engage in slavery and cruelty because of social institutions. Craig, on the contrary, believes that it is human nature to desire the enjoy the savage pleasure of slavery.
Donald Barr’s son, William Barr, once described him as “More Catholic than the Catholics.” In the pages of his book this Tradcath OSS agent describes the efforts of a “Traditionalist” disguised as a Liberal, someone who entirely believes in the biological and social necessities of slavery and mastery. His mission is to bring vicious slavers into a bourgeois military alliance in order to suppress revolutionaries and stand against a collectivist enemy. He ensures that the traditional elites of those slave societies are able to maintain control of the superficially liberated society.
Some questions I am left with:
How much of this book is autobiographical?
Who is Lady Morgan Stanley based on?
Does the name Kossar mean something?
What is the purpose of including the Ukrainian Idealists, Nestor and Makhno?
If you have read this far then I would like to congratulate you on your endurance. It is not easy material! This man was a schoolmaster for years, a secret agent in World War II, and the referee who brought Jeffrey Epstein into the Dalton School in New York. To keep all of these things in mind while reading this book is an ordeal.
If you would like to show gratitude for the psychic damage I endured from this book then please donate to my therapy fund:
Liminal States 