Category: totalitarianism

  • We speak with the acclaimed Russian American writer M. Gessen, who says Donald Trump has entered his second term prepared to enact his radical Project 2025 agenda, including a crackdown on LGBTQ rights and dissent. Gessen, who has spent decades writing about authoritarianism at home and abroad, argues that while he was something of an “accidental president” in his first term…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.


  • This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Seg2 gesson trump2

    We speak with the acclaimed Russian American writer M. Gessen, who says Donald Trump has entered his second term prepared to enact his radical Project 2025 agenda, including a crackdown on LGBTQ rights and dissent. Gessen, who has spent decades writing about authoritarianism at home and abroad, argues that while he was something of an “accidental president” in his first term, “Trump has been transformed by power” and is now increasingly “imperialist” and “totalitarian.”


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Traditional totalitarianism conjures images of jack-booted stormtroopers, death camps and gulags. In recent years a new variety of totalitarianism has emerged. Noted political theorist Sheldon Wolin calls it “the inversion of totalitarianism” and that it “represents the coming of age of corporate power and political demobilization of the citizenry. Unlike classical totalitarian systems which openly boasted of their intentions to force their societies in a preconceived totality, inverted totalitarianism is not expressly conceptualized as an ideology, nor is it objectified in public policy.” Corporations have de facto power and have carried out a slow-motion coup d’état. How to resist? Wolin says it starts at the local level.


    This content originally appeared on AlternativeRadio and was authored by info@alternativeradio.org.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • What you smell is the stench of a dying republic.

    Our dying republic.

    We are trapped in a political matrix intended to sustain the illusion that we are citizens of a constitutional republic.

    In reality, we are caught somewhere between a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) and a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens).

    For years now, the government has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the American people, letting us enjoy just enough freedom to think we are free but not enough to actually allow us to live as a free people.

    In other words, we’re allowed to bask in the illusion of freedom while we’re being stripped of the very rights intended to ensure that we can hold the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law, the U.S. Constitution.

    We’re in trouble, folks.

    This is no longer America, land of the free, where the government is of the people, by the people and for the people.

    Rather, this is Amerika, where fascism, totalitarianism and militarism go hand in hand.

    Freedom no longer means what it once did.

    This holds true whether you’re talking about the right to criticize the government in word or deed, the right to be free from government surveillance, the right to not have your person or your property subjected to warrantless searches by government agents, the right to due process, the right to be safe from militarized police invading your home, the right to be innocent until proven guilty and every other right that once reinforced the founders’ commitment to the American experiment in freedom.

    Not only do we no longer have dominion over our bodies, our families, our property and our lives, but the government continues to chip away at what few rights we still have to speak freely and think for ourselves.

    My friends, we’re being played for fools.

    On paper, we may be technically free.

    In reality, however, we are only as free as a government official may allow.

    We only think we live in a constitutional republic, governed by just laws created for our benefit.

    Truth be told, we live in a dictatorship disguised as a democracy where all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do—our very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle. And now the government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.

    With every court ruling that allows the government to operate above the rule of law, every piece of legislation that limits our freedoms, and every act of government wrongdoing that goes unpunished, we’re slowly being conditioned to a society in which we have little real control over our lives.

    As Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone and an insightful commentator on human nature, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”

    Indeed, not only are we developing a new citizenry incapable of thinking for themselves, but we’re also instilling in them a complete and utter reliance on the government and its corporate partners to do everything for them—tell them what to eat, what to wear, how to think, what to believe, how long to sleep, who to vote for, whom to associate with, and on and on.

    In this way, we have created a welfare state, a nanny state, a police state, a surveillance state, an electronic concentration camp—call it what you will, the meaning is the same: in our quest for less personal responsibility, a greater sense of security, and no burdensome obligations to each other or to future generations, we have created a society in which we have no true freedom.

    Freedom, or what’s left of it, is being threatened from every direction.

    The threats are of many kinds: political, cultural, educational, media, and psychological. However, as history shows us, freedom is not, on the whole, wrested from a citizenry. It is all too often given over voluntarily and for such a cheap price: safety, security, bread, and circuses.

    This is part and parcel of the propaganda churned out by the government machine.

    That said, what we face today—mind manipulation and systemic violence—is not new. What is different are the techniques used and the large-scale control of mass humanity, coercive police tactics and pervasive surveillance.

    We are overdue for a systemic check on the government’s overreaches and power grabs.

    By “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

    Where we find ourselves now is in the unenviable position of needing to rein in all three branches of government—the Executive, the Judicial, and the Legislative—that have exceeded their authority and grown drunk on power.

    If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.

    So, what’s the answer?

    For starters, stop tolerating corruption, graft, intolerance, greed, incompetence, ineptitude, militarism, lawlessness, ignorance, brutality, deceit, collusion, corpulence, bureaucracy, immorality, depravity, censorship, cruelty, violence, mediocrity, and tyranny. These are the hallmarks of an institution that is rotten through and through.

    Stop holding your nose in order to block out the stench of a rotting institution.

    Stop letting the government and its agents treat you like a servant or a slave.

    You’ve got rights. We’ve all got rights. This is our country. This is our government. No one can take it away from us unless we make it easy for them.

    You’ve got a better chance of making your displeasure seen and felt and heard within your own community. But it will take perseverance and unity and a commitment to finding common ground with your fellow citizens.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we’re making it way too easy for the police state to take over.

    So, stop being an accessory to the murder of the American republic.

    The post The Political Matrix Sustains the Illusion of Freedom first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • So, my second trial for alleged thoughtcrime-tweeting is going ahead as planned on August 15 in Berlin Superior Court (Das Kammergericht). Full-blown anti-terrorism security protocols will be in effect in the courtroom. Yes, that’s right, the Berlin Superior Court denied my attorney’s motion to rescind their special Security Order, so the German authorities will be putting on an elaborate official show of force, which everyone is welcome to attend!

    Or, actually, according to the Security Order, only 35 people are welcome to attend. That’s one of the anti-terrorism security protocols. Also, if you do attend, you’ll have to surrender all your personal possessions (i.e., notebooks, phones, wallets, pens, pencils, other writing instruments, wristwatches, hats, and other head coverings, etc.) and any outwear (i.e., jackets, scarves, etc.) and totally empty your pockets of all items, presumably into a plastic bin like the ones they use at airport security, which the Court’s security personnel will carry away and store somewhere while you attend the trial, and which the Superior Court expressly denies any liability for (i.e., for your items). Once you have surrendered all your possessions, and have been body-scanned and metal-detected, and possibly physically patted down, you will be admitted into Room 145a, where you will have to sit in the rear five rows of the gallery, behind a presumably bullet-proof security barrier, so that the security staff can monitor you during the proceedings.

    OK, I know what you’re probably thinking, but the Superior Court’s Security Order is not at all intended to prevent members of the press from attending and reporting on the trial. Members of the press are absolutely welcome! It’s just that they will have to surrender their cameras and phones and their pens and other writing instruments to the security staff before they enter the courtroom. But they are welcome to attend and report on the trial! The security personnel will even provide them with pencils — presumably those little child-sized pencils, which are harder to use as Jason-Bourne-style stabbing weapons — and sheets of paper that they can position on their knees and attempt to make notes on during the trial.

    Same goes for all you members of the public. This Security Order is not in any way intended to discourage you from attending the trial, or to intimidate or humiliate you by subjecting you to pointless “security protocols” and treating you like suspected terrorists. No, you are absolutely welcome to attend! You just might want to think about what you bring with you. Sharp objects are probably not a good idea. Likewise anything the Court might construe to be a camera or an audio-recording device. The Security Order is clear about that … there is to be no photographic or audio record of the proceedings.

    Oh, and, definitely do not bring any state-of-the-art terrorist “wiretapping technology” with you. The Court is particularly worried about that stuff. Hence the need to subject everyone to TSA-style body-scanning, and pat-downs, and to confiscate their personal possessions, i.e., to ensure that no one smuggles in some sort of remotely-activated wiretapping technology that will infect the judges’ smartphones with some kind of untraceable surveillance software that will secretly record everything they say and transmit it to Tehran, or Moscow, or wherever.

    You probably think I’m joking. I’m not. Here’s how one of the Superior Court judges justified the Court’s Security Order in his denial of our motion to have the Order rescinded …

    I cannot see the unreasonable restriction of the press and your defense that you are concerned about, nor any violation of the guarantee of a fair trial. I admit that the restrictions imposed by the Security Order are quite significant; however, they are by no means unreasonable. They are objectively required both by the overall tense security situation (e.g. publicly announced threats of attacks against judges of the Superior Court) and the increased special security requirements in at least one criminal trial conducted in the same courtroom. Since only the courtroom in question is assigned to the Criminal Division (and the other divisions) as a permanent courtroom, and a regular search of the courtroom following every session using suitable technology for recently introduced wiretapping technology represents an objectively unjustifiable burden, its introduction must be prevented from the outset if possible.

    Yes, you read the judge’s explanation right. Apparently, the Court is worried that my readers, or maybe members of the German independent press, might be planning to launch an “attack” on the judges, presumably with their phones and writing instruments, and possibly their head coverings and outerwear (for example, their scarves, which I suppose, in the hands of trained terrorist assassins, could be used to strangle them). In any event, they clearly believe that an “overall tense security situation” exists, one which necessitates these anti-terrorism security protocols at the trial of a 62-year-old playwright, author, and political satirist.

    OK, I probably should have mentioned that earlier for the benefit of anyone not familiar with my case. I’m not a terrorist, or in any way terrorist adjacent. I’m just an author and a political satirist. The German authorities are prosecuting me because I criticized them and their Covid mask mandates.

    As I explained in my most recent column

    The German authorities have been investigating and prosecuting me since August 2022. My case has been covered in The Atlantic, Racket News, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Multipolar, and many other outlets … Basically, I am being prosecuted for ‘spreading pro-Nazi propaganda’ because I criticized the Covid mask mandates and tweeted the cover artwork of one of my books, The Rise of The New Normal Reich. Here’s the cover artwork of that book. The other two images are recent covers of Der Spiegel and Stern, two well-known mainstream German magazines, which are not being prosecuted for spreading pro-Nazi propaganda.

    My punishment for doing that (i.e., criticizing the Covid mask mandates, not spreading Nazi propaganda) has been … well, here I am, on trial, again, in The People’s Court of New Normal Germany. The German authorities had my Tweets censored by Twitter. They reported me to The Federal Criminal Police Office, which is kind of the German FBI. They reported me to The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic Intelligence agency. My book is banned in Germany. They have damaged my income and reputation as an author. They have forced me to spend thousands of Euros in attorney’s fees to defend myself against these blatantly trumped-up charges. And now they are going to subject me, and my attorney, and anyone who attends my trial, to this humiliating, ham-fisted, official show of force.

    If you’re an American (or a Brit, or Australian, or whatever), and you’re thinking this is just a story about Germany, or the EU … well, I’m sorry, but it isn’t. My case is just one of countless examples of the criminalization of dissent that is happening throughout the West. A lot of Americans don’t realize it, but freedom of speech is protected in the German constitution.

    My story is not about the differences between the German and American freedom-of-speech protections. It is about the authorities prosecuting government critics like me on fabricated charges, banning our books, and censoring our political speech.

    Once a government starts doing that, the protections in its constitution no longer matter. You are no longer dealing with questions of law. You are dealing with the exercise of authoritarian power. That is what my story is about. Any Americans (and any other non-Germans) who have been paying attention to recent events will recognize what I’m talking about.

    As I’ve been saying, repeatedly, for the last four years or so, the global-capitalist power system (or the “corporatocracy,” or “The Powers That Be,” or whatever other name you need to call it) is going totalitarian on us. It dominates the entire planet, so it doesn’t have anything else to do. It is conducting a global “Clear and Hold” op. It is neutralizing internal resistance … any and all forms of internal resistance. The criminalization of dissent is an essential part of that. I’ve been documenting this process in my columns and in my books, and specifically in The Rise of the New Normal Reich — which you can read, unless you live in Germany — so forgive me if I don’t rehash it all here.

    The point is, we’re not in Kansas anymore. All that democracy and rule of law stuff is over. It is being gradually, and not so gradually, phased out.

    I get that most people don’t believe that. Most people won’t, until it’s too late. That’s how these transitions generally work. Most people can’t see what is coming until it gets here. I see it, but not because I’m a prophet. I’m just a loudmouth, and the loudmouths get crushed first.

    Anyway, if you are in Berlin on August 15, and would like to observe The People’s Court of New Normal Germany in action, or just get groped by a German law enforcement officer, the trial is scheduled to start at 10:30AM. Seating is on a first-come-first-served basis. So you may want to show up a little early, given all the scanning and screening and groping, and the “overall tense security situation.”

    The address is Elßholzstraße 30-33.

    The post The People’s Court of New Normal Germany (Part Two) first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Just when I thought things could not possibly get more shockingly totalitarian in New Normal Germany, where I’m being prosecuted in criminal court (for the second time) for tweeting, the German authorities have gone and surprised me again. No, they haven’t established an actual Nazi-style People’s Court (pictured above) yet, and, of course, there is absolutely no similarity between the current German justice system, which is totally fair and democratic and a paragon of impartial justice and the rule of law, and The People’s Court of Berlin during the Nazi era, nor is there any similarity between Nazi Germany and New Normal Germany (i.e., modern-day Germany), and I would never, ever, suggest that there was, as that would be intellectually lazy, and tasteless, and completely inaccurate, and illegal, and … well, let me fill you in on the latest.

    The Berlin Superior Court has set a date for my next thoughtcrime trial. As regular readers will probably recall, my first thoughtcrime trial in January ended with my acquittal. So, the German authorities are putting me on trial again. Yes, they can do that in Germany. But, wait, that’s not the best part.

    The best part is, at my new thoughtcrime trial — this time in Berlin Superior Court — full-scale Anti-Terrorism Security protocols will be effect in the courtroom. Everyone will be subjected to TSA-style scanning and screening, and will have to surrender all their personal possessions and hats and coats and head coverings to the Security Staff, and completely empty their pockets of all items, before entering the courtroom. No computers, phones, smart-watches, or any other potential recording devices will be allowed in the courtroom. Pencils and sheets of paper will purportedly be provided to members of the press by Security Staff. Members of the press and public will be limited to 35, and, after they have successfully passed their “security screening,” they will be cordoned off in the last five rows of the gallery in the very back of the courtroom, “for security reasons,” and monitored by the armed Security Staff.

    For the benefit of any new readers unfamiliar with me and my case, I am not a terrorist. I’m an award-winning American playwright, novelist, and political satirist. I have lived here in Berlin for 20 years. The German authorities have been investigating and prosecuting me since August 2022. My case has been covered in The Atlantic, Racket News, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Multipolar, and many other outlets, so I won’t reiterate every little detail again here. Basically, I am being prosecuted for “spreading pro-Nazi propaganda” because I criticized the Covid mask mandates and tweeted the cover artwork of one of my books, The Rise of The New Normal Reich.

    Here’s the cover artwork of that book. The other two images are the recent covers of Der Spiegel and Stern, two well-known mainstream German magazines, which are not being prosecuted for “spreading pro-Nazi propaganda.”As anyone (even the German authorities) can see, the Spiegel cover artwork uses exactly the same concept as the cover artwork of my book. The only difference is, the Spiegel swastika is covered by the German flag, whereas the swastika on my book is covered by a medical mask.

    Both artworks are obviously intended as warnings of the rise of a new form of totalitarianism. Der Spiegel was warning about the Alternativ für Deutschland party (AfD) — as was Stern with its swastika floating in a champagne glass. I was warning about what I dubbed “The New Normal Reich,” the new nascent form of totalitarianism that emerged during 2020-2023, which is still very much on the rise, and which is thoroughly documented and analyzed in my book (which book was banned by Amazon in Germany at the same time the German authorities launched a criminal investigation of me and instructed Twitter to censor my Tweets, which Twitter did).

    The pretext the Court is citing for ordering these Anti-Terrorism Security protocols at my trial is ridiculous, and infuriating. The Court claims that the courtroom in which my trial is to take place is occasionally used for a certain “high-security” trial. Therefore, according to the Court, my trial must also be subjected to Anti-Terrorism Security protocols. Seriously, the Court sent my attorney a fax setting forth this “explanation,” which is, of course, a load of horseshit. The Berlin Superior Court is a huge building containing multiple courtrooms, one or two which are probably not subject to such Anti-Terrorism Security protocols when “high-security” trials are not taking place within them.

    No, the imposition of these Anti-Terrorism Security protocols is clearly a cynical ploy intended (a) to suppress coverage of the trial, (b) to discourage the press and public from attending, and (c) to intimidate and harass me and my legal counsel, and any members of the press and public who nevertheless attend the trial in spite of the “security procedures” they will be subjected to.

    This cynical tactic — which is not an official press blackout, because journalists can still attend and attempt to scribble notes on their knees with the pencils and sheets of paper provided by the Security Staff — comes as no real surprise. As I mentioned above, my case and my first trial got a fair amount of attention from the international press, enough to put the Court on notice that my prosecution was being watched. So, it’s no mystery why the German authorities would want to discourage any reporting on my “do-over” trial in Superior Court.

    Also, the gallery was filled to capacity at my original trial in January, where I delivered a rather unusual closing Statement to the Court, which was then published and disseminated widely in Germany. So, again, it is no real mystery why the Superior Court wants to discourage members of the public from attending this new trial by threatening to subject them to these humiliating “security” protocols, and why it has limited the gallery size to only 35 seats.

    I assume the German authorities — and by “authorities” I mean the Berlin District Prosecutor’s office, the Berlin Superior Court (Der Kammergericht), and whatever other authorities are intent on punishing me, and making an example of me, for daring to criticize the government’s edicts during 2020-2022, i.e., suspension of the constitutional rights, mask mandates, segregation, the banning of protests, etc. — I assume these authorities are particularly motivated to prevent the press from covering this second trial in Superior Court, because, from what I understand of the German legal system, they are going to “do” me (i.e., convict me) this time.

    The way the German legal system works, if they want to do you, is (1) you are acquitted in the lower Criminal Court, (2) the District Prosecutor appeals the verdict to the Superior Court, (3) the Superior Court overturns your acquittal, and (4) the prosecution goes back to the original Criminal Court, which stages a new trial, at which you will be found guilty, because, once the Superior Court has overruled your acquittal, the Criminal Court will convict you based on the Superior Court’s ruling. At which point you will appeal. And on and on and on it will go, until you are broke, or until you give up fighting because you are just so fucking exhausted.

    I’m not making this up. This is how The People’s Court of New Normal Germany (i.e., the post-Covid German justice system, which, again, bears no resemblance whatsoever to The People’s Court of Berlin in Nazi Germany, or to the courts in the Soviet Union during the Stalin era, or any other totalitarian “justice” system) … this is how it works in New Normal Germany if you are a critic of the authorities and refuse to meekly accept whatever punishment they want to summarily dish out for whatever they deem to be your thoughtcrimes.

    But, hey, at least they’re not going to take me out and put me up against a wall and shoot me, like they did with political criminals in Nazi Germany, and the USSR, so I suppose I should be grateful. I’ll have to work on that.

    If you think my case is an aberration, it isn’t. There are many, many other people — critics of the government’s “Covid measures” during 2020-2023 — who are being persecuted and made examples of. Most of these people do not have the financial resources to pay lawyers to fight these prosecutions, so they plead guilty to the charges and pay the fines, which are typically much less than what they would face in attorney’s fees. Being somewhat of a public figure, I thought it was my responsibility not to do that. I’m extremely grateful to everyone who has donated to my legal defense fund, which is how I have been able to cover my legal expenses. There’s enough left in that fund to cover this next trial in Superior Court, so I’m OK for now, financially. I mention that because people are already asking how they can send me money.

    What people can do, if they want to do something helpful, is make as much noise as possible about what is happening, not just in Germany, but all throughout the West. Because what is happening is, well, what I tried to capture and analyze in my book. The Powers That Be are going totalitarian on us. They are gradually, and not so gradually, phasing out the so-called “liberal” or “democratic” rights and principles that it was necessary to placate the Western masses with during the Cold War era, which it is no longer necessary to do beyond a certain superficial point.

    I have published three books of essays documenting this transition to a new global-capitalist form of totalitarianism, so I’m not going to go on and on about it here. But that’s what all the censorship is about. That’s what all the manufactured hysteria, fomented hatred, fanaticism, the permanent state of “emergency” and “crisis,” the “culture wars,” the cults of personality, the bombardment of our minds with absolutely meaningless nonsense, the naked displays of force, the blatant instrumentalization of the justice system to punish political dissidents, not just here in Germany, but throughout the “democratic” West … that is what all this is about.

    I’ll keep my readers posted on the details of my upcoming trial in Berlin Superior Court. My attorney is objecting to these “security protocols,” of course. We’ll see how that goes. In the meantime, instead of sending me money this time, maybe try to step back from all the mass hysteria and hatred that we are being inundated with and see the big picture. It isn’t pretty.

    Help spread the word about the new totalitarianism, about the phasing-out of our democratic rights. I don’t care which “side” of whatever you are on — Trump, Biden, Palestine, Israel, the culture wars, the cancel campaigns, Covid, Elon Musk, Russia, whatever — and neither do The Powers That Be. Take a step back and try to see the bigger picture … the forest, instead of just the trees. And then make as much noise about it as you can.

    We are heading somewhere very ugly … somewhere most of us can’t imagine. Some of us will get there first, but all of us will be there, together, eventually. My story is just one example of what it will be like there, in that ugly place. It isn’t really a story about Germany. It is a story about the end of the myth of democracy, and the rule of law, and all that good stuff. As Frank Zappa once so eloquently explained …

    The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.

    It’s something to behold, that brick wall is, especially up close and personal. You’ll see when you get here. I’ll save you a seat.

    The post The People’s Court of New Normal Germany first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The U.S. government is working to re-shape the country in the image of a totalitarian state.

    This has remained true over the past 50-plus years no matter which political party held office.

    This will remain true no matter who wins the 2024 presidential election.

    In the midst of the partisan furor over Project 2025, a 920-page roadmap for how to re-fashion the government to favor so-called conservative causes, both the Right and the Left have proven themselves woefully naive about the dangers posed by the power-hungry Deep State.

    Yet we must never lose sight of the fact that both the Right and the Left and their various operatives are extensions of the Deep State, which continues to wage psychological warfare on the American people.

    For years now, the government has been bombarding the citizenry with propaganda campaigns and psychological operations aimed at keeping us compliant, easily controlled and supportive of the government’s various efforts abroad and domestically.

    For example, in 2022, the U.S. Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group, the branch of the military responsible for psychological warfare, released a recruiting video that touts its efforts to pull the strings, turn everything they touch into a weapon, be everywhere, deceive, persuade, change, influence, and inspire.

    Have you ever wondered who’s pulling the strings?” the psyops video posits. “Anything we touch is a weapon. We can deceive, persuade, change, influence, inspire. We come in many forms. We are everywhere.”

    This is the danger that lurks in plain sight.

    Of the many weapons in the government’s vast arsenal, psychological warfare may be the most devastating in terms of the long-term consequences.

    Aided and abetted by technological advances and scientific experimentation, the government has been subjecting the American people to “apple-pie propaganda” for the better part of the last century.

    Consider some of the ways in which the government continues to wage psychological warfare on a largely unsuspecting citizenry in order to acclimate us to the Deep State’s totalitarian agenda.

    Weaponizing violence in order to institute martial law. With alarming regularity, the nation continues to be subjected to spates of violence that terrorizes the public, destabilizes the country’s ecosystem, and gives the government greater justifications to crack down, lock down, and institute even more authoritarian policies for the so-called sake of national security without many objections from the citizenry.

    Weaponizing surveillance, pre-crime and pre-thought campaigns. Surveillance, digital stalking and the data mining of the American people add up to a society in which there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence. When the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies.

    Weaponizing digital currencies, social media scores and censorship. Tech giants, working with the government, have been meting out their own version of social justice by way of digital tyranny and corporate censorship, muzzling whomever they want, whenever they want, on whatever pretext they want in the absence of any real due process, review or appeal. Digital currencies, combined with social media scores and surveillance capitalism, will create a litmus test to determine who is worthy enough to be part of society.

    Weaponizing compliance. Even the most well-intentioned government law or program can be—and has been—perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate purposes once profit and power are added to the equation. The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on COVID-19, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.

    Weaponizing behavioral science and nudging. Apart from the overt dangers posed by a government that feels justified and empowered to spy on its people and use its ever-expanding arsenal of weapons and technology to monitor and control them, there’s also the covert dangers associated with a government empowered to use these same technologies to influence behaviors en masse and control the populace.

    Weaponizing desensitization campaigns aimed at lulling us into a false sense of security. The events of recent years—the invasive surveillance, the extremism reports, the civil unrest, the protests, the shootings, the bombings, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the lockdowns, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the fusion centers, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, the distribution of military equipment and weapons to local police forces, the government databases containing the names of dissidents and potential troublemakers—have conspired to acclimate the populace to accept a police state willingly, even gratefully.

    Weaponizing politics. Fear is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government and control a populace, dividing the people into factions, and persuading them to see each other as the enemy. This Machiavellian scheme has so ensnared the nation that few Americans even realize they are being manipulated into adopting an “us” against “them” mindset.

    Weaponizing the dystopian future. With greater frequency, the government has been issuing warnings about the dire need to prepare for the dystopian future that awaits us. For instance, the Pentagon training video, “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” predicts that by 2030 (coincidentally, the same year that society begins to achieve singularity with the metaverse) the military would be called on to use armed forces to solve future domestic political and social problems. What they’re really talking about is martial law, packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security. The chilling five-minute training video paints an ominous picture of the future bedeviled by “criminal networks,” “substandard infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,” “open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” a “growing mass of unemployed,” and an urban landscape in which the prosperous economic elite must be protected from the impoverishment of the have-nots. “We the people” are the have-nots.

    The end goal of these mind control campaigns—packaged in the guise of the greater good—is to see how far the American people will allow the government to go in undermining our freedoms.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the facts speak for themselves.

    Whatever else it may be—a danger, a menace, a threat—the U.S. government is certainly not looking out for our best interests, nor is it in any way a friend to freedom.

    The post Project Total Control: Everything Is a Weapon When Totalitarianism Is Normalized first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Like the proverbial boiling frogs, the government has been gradually acclimating us to the specter of a police state for years now: Militarized police. Riot squads. Camouflage gear. Black uniforms. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Surveillance cameras. Kevlar vests. Drones. Lethal weapons. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Stun grenades. Arrests of journalists. Crowd control tactics. Intimidation tactics. Brutality.

    This is how you prepare a populace to accept a police state willingly, even gratefully.

    You don’t scare them by making dramatic changes. Rather, you acclimate them slowly to their prison walls. Persuade the citizenry that their prison walls are merely intended to keep them safe and danger out. Desensitize them to violence, acclimate them to a military presence in their communities, and persuade them that only a militarized government can alter the seemingly hopeless trajectory of the nation.

    It’s happening already.

    Yet we’re not just being acclimated to the trappings of a police state. We’re also being bullied into silence and subservience in the face of outright injustice and heavy-handed political correctness, while simultaneously being groomed into accepting government tyranny, corruption and bureaucratic ineptitude as societal norms.

    What exactly is going on?

    Whatever it is, this—the racial hypersensitivity without racial justice, the kowtowing to politically correct bullies with no regard for anyone else’s free speech rights, the violent blowback after years of government-sanctioned brutality, the mob mindset that is overwhelming the rights of the individual, the oppressive glowering of the Nanny State, the seemingly righteous indignation full of sound and fury that in the end signifies nothing, the partisan divide that grows more impassable with every passing day—is not leading us anywhere good.

    Certainly, it’s not leading to more freedom.

    This draconian exercise in how to divide, conquer and subdue a nation is succeeding.

    It must be said: the various protests from both the Right and the Left in recent years have not helped. Inadvertently or intentionally, these protests have politicized what should never have been politicized: police brutality and the government’s ongoing assaults on our freedoms.

    We may be worse off now than we were before.

    Suddenly, no one seems to be talking about any of the egregious governmental abuses that are still wreaking havoc on our freedoms: police shootings of unarmed individuals, invasive surveillance, roadside blood draws, roadside strip searches, SWAT team raids gone awry, the military industrial complex’s costly wars, pork barrel spending, pre-crime laws, civil asset forfeiture, fusion centers, militarization, armed drones, smart policing carried out by AI robots, courts that march in lockstep with the police state, schools that function as indoctrination centers, bureaucrats that keep the Deep State in power.

    The more things change, the more they stay the same.

    How do you persuade a populace to embrace totalitarianism, that goose-stepping form of tyranny in which the government has all of the power and “we the people” have none?

    You persuade the people that the menace they face (imaginary or not) is so sinister, so overwhelming, so fearsome that the only way to surmount the danger is by empowering the government to take all necessary steps to quash it, even if that means allowing government jackboots to trample all over the Constitution.

    This is how you use the politics of fear to persuade a freedom-endowed people to shackle themselves to a dictatorship.

    It works the same way every time.

    Strangely enough, in the face of outright corruption and incompetency on the part of our elected officials, Americans in general remain relatively gullible, eager to be persuaded that the government headed up by their particular brand of political savior can solve the problems that plague us.

    We have relinquished control over the most intimate aspects of our lives to government officials who, while they may occupy seats of authority, are neither wiser, smarter, more in tune with our needs, more knowledgeable about our problems, nor more aware of what is really in our best interests.

    Yet having bought into the false notion that the government does indeed know what’s best for us and can ensure not only our safety but our happiness and will take care of us from cradle to grave—that is, from daycare centers to nursing homes—we have in actuality allowed ourselves to be bridled and turned into slaves at the bidding of a government that cares little for our freedoms or our happiness.

    The lesson is this: once a free people allows the government inroads into their freedoms or uses those same freedoms as bargaining chips for security, it quickly becomes a slippery slope to outright tyranny.

    Nor does it seem to matter whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican at the helm anymore. Indeed, the bureaucratic mindset on both sides of the aisle now seems to embody the same philosophy of authoritarian government, whose priorities are to milk “we the people” of our hard-earned money (by way of taxes, fines and fees) and remain in control and in power.

    Modern government in general—ranging from the militarized police in SWAT team gear crashing through our doors to the rash of innocent citizens being gunned down by police to the invasive spying on everything we do—is acting illogically, even psychopathically. (The characteristics of a psychopath include a “lack of remorse and empathy, a sense of grandiosity, superficial charm, conning and manipulative behavior, and refusal to take responsibility for one’s actions, among others.”)

    Indeed, we are no longer operating under a constitutional republic. Instead, what we are experiencing is a pathocracy: tyranny at the hands of a psychopathic government, which “operates against the interests of its own people except for favoring certain groups.”

    We are walking a dangerous path right now.

    No matter who wins the presidential election come November, it’s a sure bet that the losers will be the American people.

    We have been saddled with a two-party system and fooled into believing that there’s a difference between the Republicans and Democrats, when, in fact, the two parties are exactly the same. As one commentator noted, both parties support endless war, engage in out-of-control spending, ignore the citizenry’s basic rights, have no respect for the rule of law, are bought and paid for by Big Business, care most about their own power, and have a long record of expanding government and shrinking liberty.

    Never forget, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, that the lesser of two evils is still evil.

    The post Mission Creep: How the Police State Acclimates Us to Being Modern-Day Slaves first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • The spirit of the Constitution, drafted by men who chafed against the heavy-handed tyranny of an imperial ruler, would suggest that one’s home is a fortress, safe from almost every kind of intrusion.

    Unfortunately, a collective assault by the government’s cabal of legislators, litigators, judges and militarized police has all but succeeded in reducing that fortress—and the Fourth Amendment alongside it—to a crumbling pile of rubble.

    We are no longer safe in our homes, not from the menace of a government and its army of Peeping Toms who are waging war on the last stronghold of privacy left to us as a free people.

    The weapons of this particular war on the privacy and sanctity of our homes are being wielded by the government and its army of bureaucratized, corporatized, militarized mercenaries.

    Government agents—with or without a warrant, with or without probable cause that criminal activity is afoot, and with or without the consent of the homeowner—are now justified in mounting virtual home invasions using surveillance technology—with or without the blessing of the courts—to invade one’s home with wiretaps, thermal imaging, surveillance cameras, aerial drones, and other monitoring devices.

    Just recently, in fact, the Michigan Supreme Court gave the government the green light to use warrantless aerial drone surveillance to snoop on citizens at home and spy on their private property.

    While the courts have given police significant leeway at times when it comes to physical intrusions into the privacy of one’s home (the toehold entry, the battering ram, the SWAT raid, the knock-and-talk conversation, etc.), the menace of such virtual intrusions on our Fourth Amendment rights has barely begun to be litigated, legislated and debated.

    Consequently, we now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed, corralled and controlled by technologies that answer to government and corporate rulers.

    Indeed, almost anything goes when it comes to all the ways in which the government can now invade your home and lay siege to your property.

    Consider that on any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears.

    A byproduct of this surveillance age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency is listening in and tracking your behavior.

    This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.

    Stingray devices mounted on police cars to warrantlessly track cell phones, Doppler radar devices that can detect human breathing and movement within in a home, license plate readers that can record up to 1800 license plates per minute, sidewalk and “public space” cameras coupled with facial recognition and behavior-sensing technology that lay the groundwork for police “pre-crime” programs, police body cameras that turn police officers into roving surveillance cameras, the internet of things: all of these technologies (and more) add up to a society in which there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence—especially not when the government can listen in on your phone calls, read your emails, monitor your driving habits, track your movements, scrutinize your purchases and peer through the walls of your home.

    Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide: this is the mantra of the architects of the Surveillance State and their corporate collaborators.

    Government eyes see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet.

    Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to amass a profile of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.

    Cue the dawning of the Age of the Internet of Things (IoT).

    In the not-too-distant future, “just about every device you have—and even products like chairs, that you don’t normally expect to see technology in—will be connected and talking to each other.”

    It is estimated that 127 new IoT devices are connected to the web every second.

    These Internet-connected techno gadgets include smart light bulbs that discourage burglars by making your house look occupied, smart thermostats that regulate the temperature of your home based on your activities, and smart doorbells that let you see who is at your front door without leaving the comfort of your couch.

    Given the speed and trajectory at which these technologies are developing, it won’t be long before these devices become government informants, reporting independently on anything you might do that runs afoul of the Nanny State.

    Moreover, it’s not just our homes and personal devices that are being reordered and reimagined in this connected age: it’s our workplaces, our health systems, our government, our bodies and our innermost thoughts that are being plugged into a matrix over which we have no real control.

    It is expected that by 2030, we will all experience The Internet of Senses (IoS), enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), 5G, and automation. The Internet of Senses relies on connected technology interacting with our senses of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch by way of the brain as the user interface. As journalist Susan Fourtane explains, “Many predict that by 2030, the lines between thinking and doing will blur… By 2030, technology is set to respond to our thoughts, and even share them with others.”

    Once technology is able to access and act on your thoughts, not even your innermost thoughts will be safe from the Thought Police.

    Thus far, the public response to concerns about government surveillance has amounted to a collective shrug.

    Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, when the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies.

    The post Virtual Home Invasions: We’re Not Safe from Government Peeping Toms first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Nothing is real,” observed John Lennon, and that’s especially true of politics.

    Much like the fabricated universe in Peter Weir’s 1998 film The Truman Show, in which a man’s life is the basis for an elaborately staged television show aimed at selling products and procuring ratings, the political scene in the United States has devolved over the years into a carefully calibrated exercise in how to manipulate, polarize, propagandize and control a population.

    Take the media circus that is the Donald Trump hush money trial, which panders to the public’s voracious appetite for titillating, soap opera drama, keeping the citizenry distracted, diverted and divided.

    This is the magic of the reality TV programming that passes for politics today.

    Everything becomes entertainment fodder.

    As long as we are distracted, entertained, occasionally outraged, always polarized but largely uninvolved and content to remain in the viewer’s seat, we’ll never manage to present a unified front against tyranny (or government corruption and ineptitude) in any form.

    Studies suggest that the more reality TV people watch—and I would posit that it’s all reality TV, entertainment news included—the more difficult it becomes to distinguish between what is real and what is carefully crafted farce.

    “We the people” are watching a lot of TV.

    On average, Americans spend five hours a day watching television. By the time we reach age 65, we’re watching more than 50 hours of television a week, and that number increases as we get older. And reality TV programming consistently captures the largest percentage of TV watchers every season by an almost 2-1 ratio.

    This doesn’t bode well for a citizenry able to sift through masterfully-produced propaganda in order to think critically about the issues of the day.

    Yet look behind the spectacles, the reality TV theatrics, the sleight-of-hand distractions and diversions, and the stomach-churning, nail-biting drama that is politics today, and you will find there is a method to the madness.

    We have become guinea pigs in a ruthlessly calculated, carefully orchestrated, chillingly cold-blooded experiment in how to control a population and advance a political agenda without much opposition from the citizenry.

    This is how you persuade a populace to voluntarily march in lockstep with a police state and police themselves (and each other): by ratcheting up the fear-factor, meted out one carefully calibrated crisis at a time, and teaching them to distrust any who diverge from the norm through elaborate propaganda campaigns.

    Unsurprisingly, one of the biggest propagandists today is the U.S. government.

    Add the government’s inclination to monitor online activity and police so-called “disinformation,” and you have the makings of a restructuring of reality straight out of Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Truth polices speech and ensures that facts conform to whatever version of reality the government propagandists embrace.

    This “policing of the mind” is exactly the danger author Jim Keith warned about when he predicted that “information and communication sources are gradually being linked together into a single computerized network, providing an opportunity for unheralded control of what will be broadcast, what will be said, and ultimately what will be thought.”

    You may not hear much about the government’s role in producing, planting and peddling propaganda-driven fake news—often with the help of the corporate news media—because the powers-that-be don’t want us skeptical of the government’s message or its corporate accomplices in the mainstream media.

    However, when you have social media giants colluding with the government in order to censor so-called disinformation, all the while the mainstream news media, which is supposed to act as a bulwark against government propaganda, has instead become the mouthpiece of the world’s largest corporation (the U.S. government), the Deep State has grown dangerously out-of-control.

    This has been in the works for a long time.

    Veteran journalist Carl Bernstein, in his expansive 1977 Rolling Stone piece “The CIA and the Media,” reported on Operation Mockingbird, a CIA campaign started in the 1950s to plant intelligence reports among reporters at more than 25 major newspapers and wire agencies, who would then regurgitate them for a public oblivious to the fact that they were being fed government propaganda.

    In some instances, as Bernstein showed, members of the media also served as extensions of the surveillance state, with reporters actually carrying out assignments for the CIA. Executives with CBS, the New York Times and Time magazine also worked closely with the CIA to vet the news.

    If it was happening then, you can bet it’s still happening today, only this collusion has been reclassified, renamed and hidden behind layers of government secrecy, obfuscation and spin.

    In its article, “How the American government is trying to control what you think,” the Washington Post points out “Government agencies historically have made a habit of crossing the blurry line between informing the public and propagandizing.”

    This is mind-control in its most sinister form.

    The end goal of these mind-control campaigns—packaged in the guise of the greater good—is to see how far the American people will allow the government to go in re-shaping the country in the image of a totalitarian police state.

    The government’s fear-mongering is a key element in its mind-control programming.

    It’s a simple enough formula. National crises, global pandemics, reported terrorist attacks, and sporadic shootings leave us in a constant state of fear. The emotional panic that accompanies fear actually shuts down the prefrontal cortex or the rational thinking part of our brains. In other words, when we are consumed by fear, we stop thinking.

    A populace that stops thinking for themselves is a populace that is easily led, easily manipulated and easily controlled whether through propaganda, brainwashing, mind control, or just plain fear-mongering.

    This unseen mechanism of society that manipulates us through fear into compliance is what American theorist Edward L. Bernays referred to as “an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”

    To this invisible government of rulers who operate behind the scenes—the architects of the Deep State—we are mere puppets on a string, to be brainwashed, manipulated and controlled.

    Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it’s time to change the channel, tune out the reality TV show, and push back against the real menace of the police state.

    If not, if we continue to sit back and lose ourselves in political programming, we will remain a captive audience to a farce that grows more absurd by the minute.

    The post Divide and Conquer: The Government’s Propaganda of Fear and Fake News first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Previously, Part 6, I stated that weakening, cancelling Russia’s presence in the world, planning to partition it, or even destroying it has been a fixed U.S. objective. I also stated that U.S. anti-Russian hostility predates the events in Ukraine by decades. For that purpose, I gave two examples out of four. The following are the other two.

    Example 3: Under the headline: Revelations from the Russian Archives, The Library of Congress outlines U.S. stance toward Russia in clear terms. I’m citing here two consecutive paragraphs.

    Paragraph A: “The United States government was initially hostile to the Soviet leaders for taking Russia out of World War I and was opposed to a state ideologically based on communism … The totalitarian nature of Joseph Stalin’s regime presented an insurmountable obstacle to friendly relations with the West. Although World War II brought the two countries into alliance, based on the common aim of defeating Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union’s aggressive, antidemocratic policy toward Eastern Europe had created tensions even before the war ended.”

    Comment: If one wants to analyze U.S. motives for persistent enmity toward Russia without recourse to tiring research, paragraph “A”could provide invaluable insight.

    1. The phrase “Taking Russia out of WWI …” This is true. Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet State, took Russia out of that war because he did not want Russians to die for internecine capitalistic wars and colonialistic rivalry. He stressed his views in Imperialism, The highest Stage of Capitalism published during the war.

    Further, Russia’s withdrawal from that war was a sovereign decision—considering its colonialist motives, and coupled with the discovery of the Sykes-Picot Agreement between Britain and France to divide among them the Arab land in Western Asia. Was that withdrawal the true cause for the U.S. hostility toward Russia as stated? No. Most likely, U.S. resentment of Russia was due to the missed hope that a protracted war with Germany and the Ottoman Empire may lead to the collapse of Russia and the newly established Communist system.

    1. The phrase, “Totalitarian Nature of Joseph Stalin’s Regime, etc.”: The writers of the “revelations” appear to be claiming that aside from opposing Communism, the U.S. also opposed Stalin’s “totalitarianism”. The argument is: preposterous, irrelevant, justificatory, and insidious.
    • It is preposterous because, ideally, no nation is entitled to preach, demand, or impose any form of government on other nations. For example, in the British settlers’ experience in what is now the United States, Britain had to bow to the will of George Washington and his lieutenants to form a republic thus detaching the aspired-for state from the British monarchy. During those times, did Spain, for example, intervene to abort the new republic because had reservations about it? Equally, then and now, the United States has no right to tell Russians how to choose their political system. Invariably, political systems are determined by historical circumstances and national events pertinent to each nation—except when imperialist forces impose them as it happened in Iraq consequent to the U.S.-British invasion.
    • It is irrelevant because the nature of Stalin’s government was in relation to his application of the Marxian theory of socialism through the “dictatorship of the proletariat” paradigm—not in relation to how the United States thinks of Marxism and Russia. Regardless of how one thinks of this paradigm, the fact is, this is how the forces of history work—by waves, currents, tumults, and uprisings; by philosophical, social, and political theories; and by dynamic social changes in all forms including revolutions.
    • It is justificatory: the United States was not opposing Russia under the premise that Communism posed a mortal danger to the U.S. capitalistic system. (If the foundations of capitalism are that strong, why the fear for their failure?) From the start, that opposition had a factual origin. With a huge landmass, diverse but cooperative nationalities, and bountiful natural resources, the Soviet model of equality among the constituent socialist states posed potential challenge to the U.S. imperialist model of domination.

    Further, the U.S. never proved that the USSR of Stalin was a threat to the United States. It is a well-known fact that prior to WWII, Stalin’s focus was set on one exclusive target: Socialism in one country—the Soviet Union. He knew that the West would not sit idle while seeing a socialist experiment (the collective ownership of means of production) unfolding. Knowing the perils of possible wars because of it, Stalin had no interest in expanding his socialist model beyond Russia. He even ferociously fought Leon Trotsky who was advocating Permanent Revolutions across the world.

    • It is insidious because it wants to spread the notion that the United States is the sole authority in charge of how the world must function.

    To close, Stalin neither urged the United States to convert to Communism nor proposed military action to force it upon any other country. However, with WWII knocking on all doors, and seeing the U.S.’s continuing hostility (the U.S. recognized the USSR in 1933—16 years after the Communist revolution) the formation of the Socialist bloc at the end of war can be seen as response to defend the USSR from Western adventurism and declared intent to attack it—Churchill’s was an example.

    In all cases, being a major world power does not qualify the United States to impose on Russia any form of government or to fight Communism just because (a) it is antithetical to Capitalism and its notions of private property, and (b) it did not fit its world agenda. (Note: discussing the speculative concept of totalitarianism (coined by the anti-Communist and anti-Russian Hanna Arendt) goes beyond the scope of this work.)

    Of special interest: why did the United States feel compelled to oppose totalitarianism but not Europe’s dehumanizing colonialism? As for its own colonialism and imperialism, the United States purposely does not see itself in that way.

    Another argument: U.S. unipolarity in world relations, as well as its oversized pressure on all nations resisting subjugation is a form of totalitarianism—the same concept they purport to oppose. Without a doubt, the accusation of totalitarianism (selectively applied to others) is a ruse to justify adversarial political decisions versus the accused.

    • The phrase, “The Soviet Union’s Aggressive, Antidemocratic Policy”: I discussed the notion of “democracy” as defined by the United States in the upcoming parts. As for the claim of “Soviet aggressive policy”, this is worn projection psychology. Even if the Soviet Union was aggressive, its aggressiveness pales by comparison with that of the Union States. For one, the Soviet Union did not exterminate the population of its republics. But the United States nearly exterminated all Original Peoples to make space for European settlers.

    To close, accusing others of aggressions and aggressive behavior while dismissing own aggression and aggressive behavior is a tactic that the United States has been practicing since foundation.  It does not matter whether people point to that fact or not. What matters for U.S. ruling circles is the continuation of the practice as a tradition, and as a means for public relations.

    Paragraph B: “Beginning in the early 1970s, the Soviet regime proclaimed a policy of détente and sought increased economic cooperation and disarmament negotiations with the West. However, the Soviet stance on human rights and its invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 created new tensions between the two countries. These tensions continued to exist until the dramatic democratic changes of 1989–91 led to the collapse during this past year of the Communist system and opened the way for an unprecedented new friendship between the United States and Russia, as well as the other new nations of the former Soviet Union.”

    Comment

    • The United States, the primary violator of human rights around the world, is not qualified to speak of human rights—it is like a criminal and a thief who insists to give solemn sermons against crime and theft. Besides, the proverbial crocodile tears shed on the question of human rights as violated by Russia could never cover up U.S. criminal conduct around the world—the ongoing U.S.-Israeli genocidal war on Gaza is a case in point.
    • Claiming that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan created “new tensions between the two countries” is so preposterous that one cannot help but recalling U.S. voluminous history of invasions and interventions. Playing the virtuous preacher has been constantly a game that the U.S. could never master because of its venality and the ease with which it can be seen. The following limited references can corroborate my charge: (1) A Chronology of U.S. Military Interventions From Vietnam To the Balkans; (2) Foreign interventions by the United States; (3) S. Launched 251 Military Interventions Since 1991, and 469 since 1798.
    • Legions of American politicians, ideologues, think tanks, writers, media owners, and smattering opinion makers have joined in the relentless campaign to vilify and oppose Russia. When the USSR was alive and kicking, the pretext was Communism. When Russia became capitalist, the pretext was authoritarianism. This strongly suggests that America’s former anti-Communist policy was no more than a ploy to (a) weaken and destabilize Russia, and (b) establish the United States as an arbiter of its fate.

    Example 4: is there an origin to U.S. hostile attitudes toward Russia in post -WII environment? Yes. It is called McCarthyism. McCarthyism, in its vast anti-communist ideological and psychotic contexts, has been invariably understood by U.S. imperialists and public alike as being anti-Russian—is the matrix to U.S. official enmity toward Russia.

    Joseph McCarthy’s campaign against intellectuals, artists, writers, actors, and politicians is known. His role in creating stable anti-Russian hysteria and policies could never be overlooked for two reasons. First, from his time through present, his anti-Communist campaign (anti-Russian by association) and the ideology behind it kept reincarnating in different ways through countless personalities. Second, he left deep marks on U.S. political attitudes in the context of international and Russian relations. (Writing for Middle Tennessee State University under the headline: “The First Amendment Encyclopedia: McCarthyism,” Marc G. Pufong gives an incisive review of Joseph McCarthy and his American world)

    Before everything, McCarthy, as a politician, is a product of U.S. ideologized imperialism. Meaning, whatever that system represents in terms of political cultural, party line, government policy, and worldview are necessarily imbued in him. Proving this, the Senate website published an article on McCarthy dated June 9, 1954. The opening paragraph is quite telling. It states,

    “Wisconsin Republican senator Joseph R. McCarthy rocketed to public attention in 1950 with his allegations that hundreds of Communists had infiltrated the State Department and other federal agencies. These charges struck a particularly responsive note at a time of deepening national anxiety about the spread of world communism.” [Italics added].

    The meaning is self-evident: the system has already created an atmosphere of “of deepening national anxiety about the spread of world communism”. All what McCarthy had to do was to dip into that anxiety and amplify what the system wanted him to do. In essence, he played according to preset rules including the anti-Russian rule. As such, he was (a) the leading promotor for building the future American hostility toward Russia, and (b) the ideological progenitor to countless clones who followed his example without mentioning his ideological influence.

    The point: high profiles anti-Russian figures—without McCarthy’s theatrics and hearings—across U.S. political spectrum, followed the basic ideological stance of McCarthy vs. Russia. Examples: John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Henry Jackson, Barry Goldwater, Paul Nitze, Alfonse D’Amato, Ronald Reagan, Harold Brown, Madelaine Albright, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Nikki Haley, Victoria Nuland, her husband Robert Kagan and Robert’s brother Frederick, Antony Blinken, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and countless others.

    Discussion: I maintain that U.S. foreign policy conduct vis-à-vis Russia never recovered from Kennanism and McCarthyism. Both currents had origins in and found inspirations in Woodrow Wilson’s stance on Russia after the October Revolution and his intervention on the side of forces fighting Communism. Proving this are the multiple ideologies copied from Wilson—Nixon-ism is the highest example. With his many hyper-imperialist books, Nixon, the mass destroyer of Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Laos set the tones on how to hate Russia while appearing “normal”, “cool”, and “knowledgeable”.

    In the end, American anti-Russian currents inserted themselves deep inside the American political culture, pop culture, policymaking, and legislation. The anti-Russia plan moved along two axes. The first owes its existence to the original thinking patterns of empire. That is, the United States would do anything to assert itself as a world power that accepts no challenges. The second is McCarthyism, Kennanism, and all their derivations. By dint of this configuration, all traits, principles, and paradigms of acute ideological determinism related to Russia embedded in those currents have become the distinguishing marks and modus operandi of the United States.

    From February 2022 (the day in which Russia intervened in Ukraine) forward, McCarthyism and Kennanism (with the added benefits of Nulandism, Bidensim, Blinkenism, Schumerism, and Grahamism) came out of their momentary hibernation after Gorbachev and associates dismantled the Soviet Union. The nouveau McCarthysts and Kennanists intimidate that if you do not side with the U.S. against Russia, then you are siding with Russia— and that would make of you a Putin-loving anti-American.  Lindsay Graham has recently applied his brand of McCarthyism to his own party. Zero Hedge reports that Graham suggests. “If Conservatives Want Border Security They Will Have To Support Funding For Ukraine”. This reminds us of fascist Israel: either you support the Zionist settler state in killing the Palestinians and annex their lands, or you are “anti-semitic”.

    To close, turning Russia into an enemy because of its intervention in Ukraine was never spontaneous or empathic. In his article, “McCarthyism Re‐​Emerging Stronger than Ever in Ukraine Policy Debates,” Ted Galen Carpenter, a former senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute (no lover of Russia), summarized the revival of McCarthyism as a political discourse vis-à-vis Russia as follows:

    “A troubling pattern has developed over the decades in which foreign policy hawks smear their opponents and thereby seek to foreclose discussion of questionable U.S. policy initiatives…. Zealous anti‐​Russia voices are actually demanding that anyone opposing their views be silenced, and even criminally prosecuted.

    In reviewing the history, aims, and details of U.S. foreign policy since WWI, it would not take long to conclude that self-serving rationalizations are effectively driving its world policy aiming at subduing or vanquishing any country out of U.S. control. Now that Russia has been re-baptized as America’s perennial enemy, how did all this start? A quick glance at the origin and successive stages of the United States can tell many things about current U.S. global posture and operational mentality. Early signs marking the U.S. forming character includes:

    • George Washington’s vision to expand the boundaries of his 13 colonies,
    • Slave owner Thomas Jefferson’s belief in the doctrine of discovery,
    • The near extermination of the Original Peoples, black and native slavery, violent colonialist expansions,
    • Manifest Destiny,
    • Monroe Doctrine,
    • Andrew Jackson wars against the Original Peoples and his Indian Removal Act (compare with the fascist Israeli plan to remove the Palestinians from Gaza).
    • James Polk’s doctrine,
    • Wars with Mexico and Spain,
    • McKinley’s annexation of the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico,
    • William Walker’s push into Nicaragua and becoming its president,
    • Annexation of the Hawaiian Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, U.S. Virgin Island,
    • S. control of the Panama Canal Zone, and
    • Supremacism as a tool of domestic and foreign policies,

    With each stage of the U.S. development as a state, the quest for an expanded empire and world domination has developed its self-perpetuating mechanisms. Meaning, whoever aspires to become a member of U.S. ruling establishment, must adopt them and defend their objectives. For instance, one cannot run for an elective office on any platform that is antagonistic to the doctrines of the dominant politico-ideological structures of the American state.

    In defense of this assertion, consider the following question. Do you know of any candidate who ran and won on a platform calling for (a) ending U.S. military interventions, (b) ending U.S. control of the United Nations, and (c) ridding the United States from the policies and ideologies that underpin its world policy—specifically imperialism and Zionism?

    For the record, in the immensely grim, Zionist-controlled American political landscape, courageous and principled politicians showed their moral sinews, stood against the imperialist system, and even sought to bring it to justice. I’m referring to former Representative and presidential candidate Denis Kucinich. Kucinich tried and failed to impeach George W. Bush for his crimes in Iraq (House Resolution: 258). Sixteen years later, could any Congress member today dare to challenge the Biden regime’s actions in Ukraine, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Yemen?

    Thoroughout this article, I repeatedly used the term “doctrine”. Do doctrines have any relevance in the building of ideological attitudes, foreign policy culture, and political decision-making? How doctrines work in relation to the U.S. posture in Ukraine?

  • Read Part 12, 3, 4, 5, and 6.
  • The post Imperialism and Anti-imperialism Collide in Ukraine (Part 7) first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Tyrants don’t like people who speak truth to power.

    Cue the rise of protest laws, which take the government’s intolerance for free speech to a whole new level and send the resounding message that resistance is futile.

    In fact, ever since the Capitol protests on January 6, 2021, state legislatures have introduced a broad array of these laws aimed at criminalizing protest activities.

    There have been at least 205 proposed laws in 45 states aimed at curtailing the right to peacefully assemble and protest by expanding the definition of rioting, heightening penalties for existing offenses, or creating new crimes associated with assembly.

    Weaponized by police, prosecutors, courts and legislatures, these protest laws, along with free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws, and a host of other legalistic maladies have become a convenient means by which to punish individuals who refuse to be muzzled.

    In Florida, for instance, legislators passed a “no-go” zone law making it punishable by up to 60 days in jail to remain within 25 feet of working police and other first responders after a warning.

    Yet while the growing numbers of protest laws cropping up across the country are sold to the public as necessary to protect private property, public roads or national security, they are a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a thinly disguised plot to discourage anyone from challenging government authority at the expense of our First Amendment rights.

    It doesn’t matter what the source of that discontent might be (police brutality, election outcomes, COVID-19 mandates, the environment, etc.): protest laws, free speech zones, no-go zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws, etc., aim to muzzle every last one of us.

    To be very clear, these legislative attempts to redefine and criminalize speech are a backdoor attempt to rewrite the Constitution and render the First Amendment’s robust safeguards null and void.

    No matter how you package these laws, no matter how well-meaning they may sound, no matter how much you may disagree with the protesters or sympathize with the objects of the protest, these proposed laws are aimed at one thing only: discouraging dissent.

    This is the painful lesson being imparted with every incident in which someone gets arrested and charged with any of the growing number of contempt charges (ranging from resisting arrest and interference to disorderly conduct, obstruction, and failure to obey a police order) that get trotted out anytime a citizen voices discontent with the government or challenges or even questions the authority of the powers-that-be.

    Journalists have come under particular fire for exercising their right to freedom of the press.

    According to U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, the criminalization of routine journalism has become a means by which the government chills lawful First Amendment activity.

    Journalists have been arrested or faced dubious charges for “publishing,” asking too many questions of public officials, being “rude” for reporting during a press conference, and being in the vicinity of public protests and demonstrations.

    It’s gotten so bad that merely daring to question, challenge or hesitate when a cop issues an order can get you charged with resisting arrest or disorderly conduct.

    For example, college professor Ersula Ore was slammed to the ground and arrested after she objected to the “disrespectful manner” shown by a campus cop who stopped her in the middle of the street and demanded that she show her ID.

    Making matters worse, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in Nieves v. Bartlett that protects police from lawsuits by persons arrested on bogus “contempt of cop” charges (ranging from resisting arrest and interference to disorderly conduct, obstruction, and failure to obey a police order) that result from lawful First Amendment activities (filming police, asking a question of police, refusing to speak with police).

    These incidents reflect a growing awareness about the state of free speech in America: you may have distinct, protected rights on paper, but dare to exercise those rights, and you risk fines, arrests, injuries and even death.

    Case in point: Tony Rupp, a lawyer in Buffalo, NY, found himself arrested and charged with violating the city’s noise ordinance after cursing at an SUV bearing down on pedestrians on a busy street at night with its lights off. Because that unmarked car was driven by a police officer, that’s all it took for Rupp to find himself subjected to malicious prosecution, First Amendment retaliation and wrongful arrest.

    The case, as Jesse McKinley writes in The New York Times, is part of a growing debate over “how citizens can criticize public officials at a time of widespread reevaluation of the lengths and limits of free speech. That debate has raged everywhere from online forums and college campuses to protests over racial bias in law enforcement and the Israel-Hamas war. Book bans and other acts of government censorship have troubled some First Amendment experts. Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments about a pair of laws — in Florida and Texas — limiting the ability of social media companies such as Facebook to ban certain content from their platforms.”

    Bottom line: what the architects of the police state want are submissive, compliant, cooperative, obedient, meek citizens who don’t talk back, don’t challenge government authority, don’t speak out against government misconduct, and don’t resist.

    What the First Amendment protects—and a healthy constitutional republic requires—are citizens who routinely exercise their right to speak truth to power.

    Yet there can be no free speech for the citizenry when the government speaks in a language of force.

    Unfortunately, this is how the government at all levels—federal, state and local—now responds to those who choose to exercise their First Amendment right to speak freely.

    Remember, the unspoken freedom enshrined in the First Amendment is the right to challenge government agents, think freely and openly debate issues without being muzzled or treated like a criminal.

    As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, by muzzling the citizenry, by removing the constitutional steam valves that allow people to speak their minds, air their grievances and contribute to a larger dialogue that hopefully results in a more just world, the government is creating a climate in which violence becomes inevitable.

    The post The Language of Force: How the Police State Muzzles Our Right to Speak Truth to Power first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Matt and Sam talk to Jacob Heilbrunn about his new book, America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • What’s to stop the U.S. government from throwing the kill switch and shutting down phone and internet communications in a time of so-called crisis?

    After all, it’s happening all over the world.

    Communications kill switches have become tyrannical tools of domination and oppression to stifle political dissent, shut down resistance, forestall election losses, reinforce military coups, and keep the populace isolated, disconnected and in the dark, literally and figuratively.

    In an internet-connected age, killing the internet is tantamount to bringing everything—communications, commerce, travel, the power grid—to a standstill.

    In Myanmar, for example, the internet shutdown came on the day a newly elected government was to have been sworn in. That’s when the military staged a digital coup and seized power. Under cover of a communications blackout that cut off the populace from the outside world and each other, the junta “carried out nightly raids, smashing down doors to drag out high-profile politicians, activists and celebrities.”

    These government-imposed communications shutdowns serve to not only isolate, terrorize and control the populace, but also underscore the citizenry’s lack of freedom in the face of the government’s limitless power.

    Yet as University of California Irvine law professor David Kaye explains, these kill switches are no longer exclusive to despotic regimes. They have “migrated into a toolbox for governments that actually do have the rule of law.”

    This is what digital authoritarianism looks like in a technological age.

    Digital authoritarianism, as the Center for Strategic and International Studies cautions, involves the use of information technology to surveil, repress, and manipulate the populace, endangering human rights and civil liberties, and co-opting and corrupting the foundational principles of democratic and open societies, “including freedom of movement, the right to speak freely and express political dissent, and the right to personal privacy, online and off.”

    For those who insist that it can’t happen here, it can and it has.

    In 2005, cell service was disabled in four major New York tunnels, reportedly to avert potential bomb detonations via cell phone.

    In 2009, those attending President Obama’s inauguration had their cell signals blocked—again, same rationale.

    And in 2011, San Francisco commuters had their cell phone signals shut down, this time, to thwart any possible protests over a police shooting of a homeless man.

    With shutdowns becoming harder to detect, who’s to say it’s not still happening?

    Although an internet kill switch is broadly understood to be a complete internet shutdown, it can also include a broad range of restrictions such as content blocking, throttling, filtering, complete shutdowns, and cable cutting.

    As Global Risk Intel explains:

    Content blocking is a relatively moderate method that blocks access to a list of selected websites or applications. When users access these sites and apps, they receive notifications that the server could not be found or that access was denied by the network administrator. A more subtle method is throttling. Authorities decrease the bandwidth to slow down the speed at which specific websites can be accessed. A slow internet connection discourages users to connect to certain websites and does not arouse immediate suspicion. Users may assume that connection service is slow but may not conclude that this circumstance was authorized by the government. Filtering is another tool to censor targeted content and erases specific messages and terms that the government does not approve of.

    How often do most people, experiencing server errors and slow internet speeds, chalk it up to poor service? Who would suspect the government of being behind server errors and slow internet speeds?

    Then again, this is the same government that has subjected us to all manner of encroachments on our freedoms (lockdowns, mandates, restrictions, contact tracing programs, heightened surveillance, censorship, over-criminalization, shadow banning, etc.) in order to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, preserve the integrity of elections, and combat disinformation.

    These tactics have become the tools of domination and oppression in an internet-dependent age.

    It really doesn’t matter what the justifications are for such lockdowns. No matter the rationale, the end result is the same: an expansion of government power in direct proportion to the government’s oppression of the citizenry.

    In this age of manufactured crises, emergency powers and technofascism, the government already has the know-how, the technology and the authority.

    Now all it needs is the “right” crisis to flip the kill switch.

    This particular kill switch can be traced back to the Communications Act of 1934. Signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Act empowers the president to suspend wireless radio and phone services “if he deems it necessary in the interest of national security or defense” during a time of “war or a threat of war, or a state of public peril or disaster or other national emergency, or in order to preserve the neutrality of the United States.”

    That national emergency can take any form, can be manipulated for any purpose and can be used to justify any end goal—all on the say so of the president.

    Given the government’s penchant for weaponizing one national crisis after another in order to expand its powers and justify all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security, it’s only a matter of time before this particular emergency power to shut down the internet is activated.

    Then again, an all-out communications blackout is just a more extreme version of the technocensorship that we’ve already been experiencing at the hands of the government and its corporate allies.

    In fact, these tactics are at the heart of several critical cases before the U.S. Supreme Court over who gets to control, regulate or remove what content is shared on the internet: the individual, corporate censors or the police state.

    Nothing good can come from techno-censorship.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, these censors are laying the groundwork to preempt any “dangerous” ideas that might challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.

    Whatever powers you allow the government and its corporate operatives to claim now, whatever the reason might be, will at some point in the future be abused and used against you by tyrants of your own making.

    By the time you add AI technologies, social credit systems, and wall-to-wall surveillance into the mix, you don’t even have to be a critic of the government to get snared in the web of digital censorship.

    Eventually, as George Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act.

    The post Digital Kill Switches: How Tyrannical Governments Stifle Political Dissent first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • So, my trial for thoughtcrimes in New Normal Germany takes place next Tuesday, January 23rd. It will likely be a one-day affair. It’s open to the public, so, if you’re in Berlin, you can come and watch at the Berlin District Court, Turmstraße 91, Room 371. The proceedings are scheduled to begin at 12:00 noon.

    Yes, that’s right, the German authorities are actually putting me on trial for my thoughtcrimes. I stand accused of criminal tweeting because I mocked the New Normal German authorities and pointed out one of their many lies. Here are the two thoughtcrime Tweets at issue.

    The one on the left reads, “The masks are ideological-conformity symbols. That is all they are. That is all they have ever been. Stop acting like they have ever been anything else, or get used to wearing them.” The one on the right is a quote by Karl Lauterbach, who, believe it or not, is still the Health Minister of Germany. It reads “The masks always send out a signal.”

    The image is from the cover art of my book The Rise of the New Normal Reich: Consent Factory Essays, Vol. III (2020-2021), which was banned in Germany by Amazon, Inc. two days after I tweeted those Tweets … which was also when the German authorities launched the criminal investigation that led to my prosecution and instructed Twitter to censor the Tweets.

    Let me back up a bit, and tell you the whole story.

    What happened is, I tweeted those two Tweets, and they came to the attention of the Hessen CyberCompetenceCenter (“Hessen 3C”), a department of another department of the Interior Ministry of the Federal State of Hesse. The Hessen CyberCompetenceCenter then reported my Tweets to Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office, the Bundeskriminalamt, which opened a criminal investigation of me.

    Also, the Hessen CyberCompetenceCenter instructed Twitter to censor my two Tweets, which Twitter did, and sent me this notice on August 30, 2022.

    One day earlier, on August 29, Amazon had banned my book in Germany. I don’t have hard evidence of communication between the German authorities and Amazon yet, but … well, it’s obvious what happened, isn’t it?

    The Hessen CyberCompetenceCenter is an official “partner” of the German “National Cyber Defense Center” (Cyber-AZ), based in Bonn, which, according to the Federal Criminal Police Office website, “is not an independent authority, but represents a common, cross-agency and cross-institutional platform.” Cyber-AZ was founded in 2011 as part of the implementation of the Federal Government’s Cyber Security Strategy (CSS).

    The “core authorities” of Cyber-AZ are as follows:

    • Federal Office for the Military Shielding Service
    • Federal Criminal Police Office
    • Federal Office for Information Security
    • Federal Office of the Constitution Protection
    • Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance
    • Bundeswehr command Cyber Cyberand Information Space
    • Federal Police
    • Federal Intelligence Service

    The Federal Office of the Constitution Protection (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, or BfV) is essentially the German FBI. And the Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst, or BND) is … well, just what it sounds like. Here’s a little tidbit from the BfV website …

    [The BfV’s] main tasks are to monitor and analyse anti-constitutional activities by right- and left-wing extremists and extremist foreigners in Germany and to prevent espionage activities by other countries … The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution works closely with its counterparts at state level and with the other German intelligence services (i.e., the Federal Intelligence Service and Military Counterintelligence Service) as necessary.

    This is the formidable “security” apparatus that has been brought to bear against my Tweets, which allegedly threaten the German constitution by pointing out the German government’s lies about masks and mocking the Minister of Health.

    Look, I know what you’re probably thinking, that is, if you’re one of my non-German readers. You’re thinking this Orwellian apparatus is uniquely German and has nothing to do with you. And, OK, you kind of have a point, and you don’t. The structures in Germany and the USA, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere, are different, but the game is the same. If you don’t believe me, I suggest you read up on the reporting of this story by Matt Taibbi at Racket News, and Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag at Public (yes, I am persona non grata at Public, but that has nothing to do with the value of their work).

    Matt, Mike, and Alex have mostly reported on what Mike dubbed the “Censorship Industrial Complex,” i.e., the US “Thought Police” apparatus, which is natural, as they’re writing for an American audience. But this is not just an American story. And it isn’t a story about Red/Blue politics. And it isn’t a story about “Cultural Marxism,” or “Wokeness,” or “Libtards,” or other such distractions. It’s a story about the evolution of the global ideological/power system that came into being about 30 years ago, and that is gradually going totalitarian on us.

    I’ve been covering this story for many years now, satirically and sometimes not so satirically. I’m not going to reiterate all that here. You can read my essays on my blog and my Substack (that is, until Substack is destroyed, like Parler), or you can read my books, unless you live here in Germany. The point is, the global-capitalist system that controls the entire planet we live on is going totalitarian on us, conducting a global “clear-and-hold” operation, cracking down on internal resistance — any and all forms of internal resistance — and it wants us to know this is what it is doing. The system — no, not a conspiracy of bad guys — the system has been broadcasting this message, loud and clear, for a number of years.

    The message is, “We, The Powers That Be, are done playing grab-ass. Get in line. Shut the fuck up and follow orders, or we will rain All Holy Hell down on you.” The message is, “Screw Your Freedom!” The message is, “Screw Your Democratic Rights! Screw the Rule of Law! This is the New Normal! We will do whatever we fucking want, and there is nothing you can do about it.”

    If you’re having trouble hearing the message, you might want to have a look at this incredibly long thread I compiled, for some reason, in March and April of 2020 …

    Or maybe just ask the people in Gaza …

    … I think they’re probably getting the message.

    Or ask Julian Assange, or Donald Trump, or anyone else that The Powers That Be have decided they need to make an example of … yes, even a little fish like me.

    Anyway, I’ll be writing more about that, all that global-capitalist totalitarian stuff, perhaps in my German prison cell. According to the original “Order of Punishment” (I kid you not, that’s what it is called), I was sentenced to 60 days in jail or a fine of 3,600 Euros, but now, because I demanded a trial, the judge can come up with a whole new sentence.

    We’ll see how things play out next Tuesday.

    Whatever happens, one thing I am looking forward to at my trial is hearing the Berlin State Prosecutor explain how what I did in my Tweets (i.e., displaying a swastika for one of the purposes expressly allowed in Germany) was a “crime,” but when German newspapers do exactly the same thing, which they frequently do, the exceptions to the swastika-ban apply.

    See, that’s the funny thing about global-capitalist totalitarianism … the authorities can’t go openly fascist. They are forced to at least attempt to appear to pay lip service to democratic principles, and the rule of law, and all that good stuff, which is why they so often sound like idiots who can’t even mount a coherent argument or make an intelligible public statement.

    OK, I need to go read some German legalese.

    Seriously, though, if you are in Berlin and have nothing better to do next Tuesday, come on down to the Berlin District Court and meet some of the German Thought Police in person. If things go smoothly, perhaps we can all go out and get a coffee afterwards. And if not … well, maybe bring me a carton of cigarettes and a jar of Vaseline.

    The post Meet the Thought Police first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • 1. The overview

    If you often ask yourself “How can people believe those lies and deceptions?” when facts clearly indicate them to be untrue, you are not alone.  If you ask how so-called leaders can get away with a policy that guarantees disastrous, anti-human consequences, you are not alone either.

    In order to examine these questions, let us look at how our minds operate.  We have the conscious part of our minds and the unconscious part of our minds. Both operate together. They can be separated into an instinctual part, a daily operational part, and the part that guides us with set principles. Freud described these as id, ego and superego. As we live in our given social framework, all parts of our minds operate within the imperatives of the social formation. As our minds develop, our instincts are trained to fit what we perceive as reality. Reality, our social interactions, and the ideas and rules generated by society condition and shape our daily thoughts and routines.

    Our idealistic principles are ultimately formed according to the prevalent ideas of good and bad, how things should be and so on. This transfers a collective sense of ideal notions into the guiding principles of individual minds. This basic mechanism allows us to be social beings working together to achieve the goals and objectives of the society. We are individuals with our own ideas and interests, but we are also parts of an entity we perceive as our society. We are individual entities, but we also exist as a collective, as a species in a vast geological time frame.

    But what if our social relations are subservient to the values, norms, and beliefs of the ruling class? What if social institutions are dominated by wealthy and powerful people? What if our society is flooded by their propaganda?

    Our society is highly hierarchical based on financial power. It forms a caste-like system, with social mobility bound by conditions set by ruling class imperatives. No kingdoms in the past achieved the degree of accumulation of wealth we observe today.  Social media platforms are built to facilitate divisions and commodify collective power within the capitalist framework.  Digitalization allows corporate entities to cultivate certain public opinions while excluding others.  AI technology can effortlessly steal collective ideas while reinforcing prevalent ideas firmly within the acceptable range of the authority. The advent of the Internet, AI, and financialization of the economy have strengthened the ways to condition people according to the rules stipulated by the money dominated social institutions. All of these are manifesting in new ways to place our thoughts, our ideas, and our social relations within the acceptable range of the ruling class.

    The capitalist social formation has an inherent contradiction that leads to periodic crises: The capitalists– the ruling class– get too much money and the rest of the people stop having purchasing power, while unsold products pile up. This has been the primary cause of the major predicaments of our times.

    The ruling class shifts its mode of exploitation and subjugation in order to keep the basic structure intact, generating new ways to profit and maintain its dominance. The actual crisis of capitalism is constantly replaced with distorted and narrowly defined prepackaged “crises” which provide pretexts for the economic and social restructuring necessary to float the economy.

    For example:

    The deprived living conditions, poverty, and destruction of inner-city communities—all stemming from the crisis of capitalism—were portrayed as an emergence of inner-city criminal youth, “superpredators.” The demonization, along with the slogan “tough on crime,” exacerbated the momentum for gentrification, militarized police and school-to-prison pipeline, contributing to enriching associated industries.

    Muslim populations have been demonized as “terrorists” as their leaders are called dictators, allowing embargoes, economic blockade, proxy wars, and military assaults against them, ultimately resulting in western corporate powers restructuring their societies to accommodate western corporate interests.

    Legitimate environmental activism has been shaped to narrowly focus on CO2,  which has created a myriad of environmental issues of its own. This has destroyed the momentum for real environmental activism based on actual damages and accountabilities, while creating a momentum for “green capitalism” for profits.  The CO2 focus has also created the carbon trade pyramid scheme for the rich while punishing those developing countries without the capacity to invest in new technologies and infrastructures.

    We are flooded with crisis after crisis—“war on terror,” “global warming,” “pandemic,” “Russian threat,” and etc. And the pace of the cycle accelerates as the crisis of capitalism continues to be insolvable, and the western hegemony faces the economic as well as military powers of countries which have been defying the western colonial trajectory.

    Meanwhile, our minds, facing obvious manipulations and deceptions, struggle to maintain their integrity by keeping certain things conscious and others unconscious in order to exist within the given social formation. This has been facilitated by active propaganda, educational indoctrination, political rituals, and structural violence against the oppressed. We are given false narratives to swallow in exchange for keeping our positions in the social hierarchy while our livelihoods and well-beings are at gunpoint. This conscious/unconscious process of swallowing the status quo by omission of facts ties us to an invisible cage of the ruling class imperatives. Our minds are forced to employ various psychological defense mechanisms to further disassociate ourselves from the root of the problem.

    This has resulted in an enormous decrease of our abilities to perceive ourselves, our relationships to others and the social formation.  It has also been eliminating facts and our history from our minds. Our minds and bodies are conditioned to go along with the social imperatives, and the process diminishes our capacity to grow as human beings.

    This parallels the increased powers of those who profit from our collective labor and our collective knowledge. The acute concentration of wealth allows the rich and powerful to dominate social institutions.  This allows them to impose their agendas and policies through many layers of conditions and extortion regimes against those who are trapped in the social hierarchy.

    One might not keep his job or social position if he holds disagreeable opinions about the authority. Or those with disagreeable ideology could be excluded from various social networks.

    Let’s say that you hold a position in a community organization, and you are an anti-war activist. Your position can be taken away easily by a few wealthy donors with political motives. They effectively blackmail the organization, saying that so and so is on the side of the enemy country, advocating terrorism, and etc. They threaten to boycott the organization unless you are removed. The little organization, which you have been part of, has struggled so hard to serve the community with no resources of its own. The organization has no choice but to ask you to step down. And having struggled together with the organization for years, you can’t risk damaging the organization by making the event public. The anti-war activism suffers, and you are traumatized by the expulsion. In the process, the organization is shaped to stay within the imperial framework.

    Similar dynamics are at work against all individuals who hold views which are unacceptable to the authority. Under the current social formation, our individual productive activities can be exploited by profiteers who set the goals and the objectives, while those who engage in actual activities are deprived of access to the actual collective results. The pattern of domestication of ideas and social relations is not restricted to those who sign contracts with their employers. The fact that social institutions are dominated by the ruling class means that our social relations in general are under the guiding hands of the ruling class.

    For example:

    -Even though they might have good intentions, volunteers for NGOs can be guided to perform activities within the framework of the ruling class, since the NGOs rely on funding from the wealthy. Even if the NGOs survive co-option by the wealthy, their policies and agendas can always be limited by obstacles presented by capitalist dominated social institutions.

    -Grass roots activism can also be at any point co-oped by the interests of the ruling class or neutralized by corporate backed institutions.

    -If you happen to be good at anything and garner popularity among the people, sooner or later, your activities can also be forced to conform to the imperatives of corporate entities.  Or, you could be excluded from one social network or another as your world view collides with money dominated entities along the way, until you find it unsustainable to be in your field.

    This is basically the same mechanism observed by Robert Owen in the 19th century as noted by Frederic Engels in Utopian and Scientific. Owen noted “If this new wealth had not been created by machinery, imperfectly as it has been applied, the wars of Europe, in opposition to Napoleon, and to support the aristocratic principles of society, could not have been maintained. And yet this new power was the creation of the working class.”

    This fundamental dynamic of exploitation and subjugation and use of the collective power of the people to shift the course of society for the interests of the ruling class has evolved for the past two centuries, fully normalizing the hidden mechanism, while cultivating layers and layers of protective mechanisms to prop up the basic structure. Our social relations are filtered through so many layers, constantly being scrutinized to fit the current social formation. In exchange for contributing to the harvesting of the collective power, we receive money which can only be used within the economic markets which are dominated by the capital. We are deprived of our powers and in exchange we receive smaller powers which can be used to support the economic structure, which is controlled and manipulated by various institutions.  What suffers in the process are things we can’t buy with our tokens: love, friendship, community, culture, nature and etc.

    The strength of colonization through the economic structure can be observed as we see how a regional economy in the global south can lose its tradition, sustainable local economy, and communities with the introduction of Wall Street style economy. As the economy shifts to a winner-takes-all, profit oriented structure, social relations shift to conform to the interests of the rich. This goes along with importation of media, where entertainment commodities are geared toward imperial propaganda. Hollywood movies are filled with western-centric narratives. How many of the movies that we see have Russian villains and Muslim terrorists? Mainstream media outlets, now owned by a mere 6 corporate entities, have been serving the corporate and military interests of the west for generations. Western NGOs can also operate with western funding to spread narratives friendly to the west while demonizing the local authority, which defies the infiltration of western propaganda, cultural imperialism and economic restructuring favorable to western corporate interests.

    2. The Hierarchy 

    Here it should be strongly noted that there is a real sense of community, warmth of togetherness and potentially sustainable social relations among those who are engaging in building community momentum. No one can deny those feelings and the actual benefits. This is obvious when we see people finding the real sense of belongingness, pride, and meaning in the communities they build. This can even be said about institutions more obviously facilitated by the intentions of the ruling class —religious, political, military and so on. However, the point here is that our nature to be social and find collective goals to survive can be systemically and structurally co-opted by the structural arrangement of exploitation and subjugation. This should be noted throughout this text, especially as we discuss the inner workings of individuals. Accountability for inhumanity should be squarely placed against the system and its beneficiaries. The purpose of unfolding the mechanism here is not to blame the people who are victims of the domestication. Doing so would bring us to the cynical conclusion that it is human nature to be exploited and brutally attack each other. We must not equate the nature of humanity, however we term it, with the conditions created by the current social formation that allows the ruling class to domesticate the rest of us while depriving us of our humanity and causing devastating consequences to the environment.

    The difficult part, of course, is that we can say with certainly that slave owning landlords or those who appeared in lynching post cards smiling right next to black men hanging from a tree probably had happy families and friendships amongst themselves. But as soon as you stepped out of the stipulated boundaries of the community, the smiley faces of your fellow humans could turn into the faces of terrifying perpetrators of lynching. The happiness one gained by belonging to the community had dual functions: ensuring your livelihood and well-being while augmenting the then legitimate social institution of slavery. The enormous sacrifices paid by the enslaved people co-existed right next to the happy families of “good old times.”

    When the values, norms and beliefs of the collective are subservient to the ruling class imposed framework of the social hierarchy, it automatically normalizes the most brutal and inhumane discrimination and biases in institutionalized forms throughout the “democratic” sphere.  This is the true nature of the notion of “rule by the majority”– a prominent feature of western democracy today.

    This mechanism is at the core of US imperialism. When western corporate entities restructure a country with their neoliberal economic policies, it expands its “democratic” sphere, normalizing exclusion and discrimination, which, in turn, facilitates the exploitation and subjugation.

    In this regard, the age-old colonial view of “others” still dominates the underlining momentum of western colonialism.  The most important psychological element of colonizing is to define the subject population as inferior to the colonizers.  The sub-humans must be helped so that their lives can rise to the level of the colonizers, or more precisely, modified to serve the colonizers.

    The sense of mission allows the colonizers to do whatever necessary, regardless of the actual well-being of the subject population.  All sacrifices among the population are worth it in the end for their own good.

    A military action against them is always justified but the resistance against it is always denied as “inhumane”, “barbaric” and “brutal” because ultimately the counter action does not serve the subject population according to the colonizers. Countless lives of the subject population simply do not weigh the same as the lives of colonizers in the imperial minds.

    This sense of mission is also very useful in exploiting and subjugating oppressed people within the country engaging in the colonizing. The grievances and dissenting voices against the ruling class are set aside in order to instead fight the “barbaric people.” Those who oppose this would be defined as traitors, terrorist supporters and so on.

    In this broader overview, it is clear that the problem is not the “barbaric people who need help” or “terrorist supporters”.  The problem is clearly with the colonizers.

    The social hierarchy, with its very bottom tier, the very top and everything in between, is the clear manifestation of the social formation of exploitation and subjugation. The political institution of so-called western democracy manifests itself somewhere between social democracy and fascism. In either case, the political parties are backed by capitalists. Their policies and agendas stay within the interests of the owners of the political parties. The constant move between “left” and “right” within acceptable politics creates the sense of political struggle and progress, but in reality, all is restricted within the corporate interests.

    However, capitalist hierarchy as a whole doesn’t only shift itself between its fascist mode and social democracy mode in perpetuating itself. The class analysis of the social formation reveals the elements of fascism and socialism within the existing social formation.

    The effect of the corporate domination and measures implemented against the people can be felt severely among the most oppressed people while the benefits of state protection and favoritism are felt by the rich. The elements of fascism–authoritarianism, social hierarchy, suppression of opposition, censorship, militarism, and so on—are literally the reality among the oppressed without waiting for the fascist dictatorships to come along. For the rich the state functions tremendously to forward their interests. The political notion of fascism to describe political opponents by the “left” only appears when the interests of the privileged class are threatened, while the political notion of socialism to describe political opponents by the “right” only appears, again, when the interests of the privileged class are threatened. The true liberation of the people can only be possible if we grow out of the hierarchical social formation based on money and violence.

    Extreme suffering equivalent to suffering under a fascist dictatorship is inherently present for the oppressed population structurally at all times. The incarceration rate in the US is by far the highest globally. In particular, the rate of incarceration for black people has been higher than apartheid South Africa. Every major city in the US contains tent cities where people are subjected to life without basic human rights. One out of five children is facing hunger in the US. The number goes up twice as much for minority children. Without universal healthcare, the cost of major illnesses would easily bankrupt the average household. Three people are killed by police officers every day on average in the US. Meanwhile, the wealthy people often avoid jail time with their political connections, better lawyers, and ability to pay bail. The richest among the US population pay less tax than the average household. The overwhelming favoritism for the rich in the social layers has been institutionalized in various ways, allowing three people in the US to own more wealth than the bottom half of the US population. “Socialism” only for the wealthy is well functioning for the ruling class at all times.

    In order to fully perceive and appreciate life for the benefits for all,  we must recognize the overwhelming role of ruling class imperatives in the formation of collective values, beliefs and norms among us.  The class hierarchy and the process of “othering” based on the dominant world view play significant roles in determining our perceptions.

    3. The Minds

    Now, getting back to our minds, the fact that we internalize the authority as our guiding principle in order to form society creates an unintuitive phenomenon—our thoughts and behaviors follow the ruling class imperatives automatically. All commonly known psychological defense mechanisms are fully employed by individual minds to cling onto the existing social formation. Instead of recognizing the exploitive nature of the system as a whole, our minds are forced to blame “others” for not following unjust laws and ruling class-centric ideas. For example, economic insecurity and poverty due to austerity measures, job exports to overseas, lower wages and etc. would be blamed on immigrants, who are forced to migrate to the US due to the US imperial policies within their home countries. Inconvenient contradictions and world shattering facts stemming from the systemic exploitation are simply repressed as individuals face cognitive dissonance. Accountability for imperial war crimes, colonial policies, and brutal oppression by the authority are projected onto propagandized characters of “enemies.” Unsolvable contradictions lead to regression, resulting in violent behavior against others.

    The social structure is not forcefully activated by top-down coercion only. Each individual plays a significant role in helping to mobilize the entire structure. This is the secret of “western democracy” managing to reign as an imperial power in the name of “freedom,” “justice” and “humanity” and exploiting and subjugating the global south for so long. The collective power of the imperial mind acts like a power steering wheel, allowing a handful of the ruling class to set their goals and objectives in how to use the stolen collective power of the people.

    This is facilitated by the fact that the social formation, which doesn’t allow social relations based on one’s own interests, deprives one of the ability to perceive their surroundings correctly. Instead, “the reality” is projected onto the people as prepackaged corporate narratives through the media industrial complex, educational industrial complex, political industrial complex and so on. One is either forced to swallow a prepackaged social framework or one develops a personal world view based on one’s own position in the social hierarchy.  For those who embrace the prepackaged world view, dissenting opinions become threats to their very own existence—an attack against the authority literally is an attack against a part of their psyche, the internalized authority. For example, the dissident voices against the US proxy wars and the military actions against other countries would appear unpatriotic, “terrorist supporting” and so on in their minds.

    For those who develop personal world views based on their own position within the hierarchy, it also creates a desperate struggle to embrace that position, instead of offering to understand the view which derives from a different circumstance and work together to eliminate the root cause.  The legitimate grievances of minority groups to access job markets, social safety nets, equal rights and so on are seen as threats among the rest of the already struggling population. This results in divisions amongst the subject population and lack of understanding amongst the people, while augmenting the social hierarchy as a whole.

    Dissident groups often split or disappear as emerging crises reveal their narrow interests within class hierarchy, resulting in infighting. For example, some among those who have vehemently opposed measures forwarded by the medical industrial complex—forced “vaccination,” profit oriented Covid measures, the associated media censorship and etc.—have been quick to side with the establishment in Israel and its allies’ settler colonial violence after the 10/7/23 Palestinian military operation against Israel. Those who oppose losing their human rights within the imperial framework have failed to recognize over 75 years of colonial occupation, apartheid policies and genocide against Palestinian people by the US imperial project in the Middle East. This has resulted in devastating divisions among activists. The power which should be directed against the thieves of the collective power is directed toward one another, within the hierarchy.

    Quite often a social mobilization is expressed as “war”–war on drugs, war on crime, and so on. A state of war does not allow discussion, alternate views, or reconciliation on a personal basis or collective basis without the commander in chief saying so. Instantly, dissenting actions are deemed “treason.” The urgency and seriousness of “war” is orchestrated by media propaganda, educational indoctrination, political measures, legal restrictions, and so on. The internalized authority in people’s minds creates a massive storm of self-censorship, infighting amongst families, friends and communities under the notion of absolute allegiance to the authority.  A McCarthyism-like social atmosphere appears every time we are subjected to this sort of mobilization.

    Without understanding the structural mechanism as well as the psychological mechanism, one can also develop a warped abstract notion of a collective enemy—Jewish bankers, globalists, Illuminati, and so on. These prepackaged enemies can serve the system by preventing people from seeing the actual mechanism of exploitation and subjugation, while depriving them of the actual measures to dismantle the system.

    For many, these processes involving psychological defense mechanisms are unconscious, while the framework of the society where they belong is upheld unconditionally. The cage of capitalism stays invisible to the subject population. Also, the fact that we are deprived of access to facts and history due to the domination of social institutions by capital adds to the confusion while making the authority a single entity to obey.

    For those who manage to be conscious about the contradictions and unjust policies coming out of the authority, the situation is very difficult. Most of us do not wish to fight a systemic mafia enterprise operating in our neighborhood. If they demand a protection fee, many will simply pay instead of having their houses burned down at night.  In this case, we are talking about the entire system colluding with institutions to run its operation. It is unlikely that any legal system, any media outlets, and so on, will take your side. In most cases the idea gradually subsides into unconsciousness, turns into cynicism, or creates various sorts of mental dysfunctions amongst the subject population.

    Yet, conscious efforts to point out the problem of this social formation have been with us for centuries. Unfortunately, history is abundant with violent repression against dissidents with anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist views. The degree of the use of violence is unimaginable to ordinary people. The brutality and scope of the violence defines the  determination and criminality of the ruling class to perpetuate its dominance over the subject population. Assassinations, imprisonment, systemic eradication of dissident organizations by state violence, various war crimes committed by its military and so on have created an aspect of the authority as an invincible “mafia enterprise.” This notion lurks on the border between the unconscious and the conscious as we wonder about the legitimacy of the authority and the grave violence committed by it in the name of “democracy,” “freedom,” and “humanity,” as it quietly demands compliance by its threatening presence. This is far from how a “free country” is said to run its business.

    The internalization of the authority is a colonization of the mind in each and every one of us. Trauma creating events due to economic oppression, lack of social safety nets, destruction of communities and so on strengthen the presence of the internal authority, just like victims of domestic abuse cling onto the abusers. Pain and suffering are a firmly integral part of the social formation.

    The collective wounds of a trauma—racism, sexism and so on—can also be utilized to augment capitalist measures and imperial measures. These create opportunities for the same system which institutionalizes trauma-inducing discriminations to effectively enlist people of stigmatized identities who are willing to collaborate in exploitation and subjugation.  The first black President Barak Obama came in with a thundering popularity.  He managed to bomb seven countries, effectively working with corporate entities to install neoliberal restructuring regimes in many areas, while protecting the interests of the criminal banking system.  The legitimate criticisms against him were termed racist, while the actual deep seated racist sentiment amongst the population muddied the aim of the legitimate criticisms as well. A similar mechanism is at work in Israel’s brutal imperial settler colonialism.  The Israeli government, along with the western establishment, has been openly equating opposition to Israel’s apartheid policies and settler colonial violence against Palestinians with anti-semitism. This has created a vicious cycle of anti-imperial momentum advertised as “anti-semitism” through corporate media, adding to the escalating violence against Palestinians with impunity. This has allowed Israel to function as a military base for the US empire in the middle east and beyond for generations. The US financial aid to Israel surpasses the aid to any other country, amounting to over $317 billion since 1946. The vast majority of the aid goes to the military.

    Moreover, social activism for equality and justice has become strategized tokenism within the system instead of a struggle to eliminate class hierarchy and ruling class abuses. This trajectory has been openly supported by the establishment in the name of “diversity.” The corporate backed “diversity” firmly operates within the structural imperatives of the established order. Those with minority backgrounds who embrace corporate policies and imperial agendas are chosen for their diverse backgrounds; however, in reality, their corporate orientations and their subserviency toward imperialism reinforce the actual capitalist hierarchy and contribute in exacerbating actual sufferings of the oppressed.

    As we grow as humans, we grow in this mold, thinking and acting so that you won’t offend the authority and the internalized authority. Dissenting voices are structurally excluded, deprived of facts, of history and resources and constantly forced to make deals with the establishment to keep themselves alive.

    When we shift our attention to the mental states of agents of the ruling class — politicians, bureaucrats, establishment backed “experts,” and super rich individuals — one can’t avoid witnessing psychopathic qualities present in how the interests of the ruling class are blatantly forwarded at the expense of a vast suffering majority. We saw president Obama joking about killing people and joking about drone bombing. We saw Hilary Clinton laughing about assassinating Gaddafi. We heard Madeline Albright stating it’s worth killing half million Iraqi children. Some remarks by president Trump certainly belong to this category as well.

    The wealth driven social structure requires leaders who can ruthlessly forward the interests of the ruling class. Psychopathic characteristics are necessary parts of this social formation.

    In a society which operates based on the interests of the population in harmony with nature and life forms,  psychological repression is a defense mechanism that protects individuals from devastating traumas. Psychopathic behaviors are treated as unsuitable personal traits for responsible positions in society. However, defense mechanisms are an integral part of the dynamics of the collective mobilization and they are crucial in making the capitalist cage invisible in this social formation. The social formation also utilizes psychopathic individuals in forwarding inhumane exploitive measures.

    Suffering and pain create infighting amongst the oppressed, while hopelessness and cynicism turn into self-harm or random violence. The internalized authority in the subject population’s minds directs their attention to their fellow humans, to themselves, or forces them to regress into committing violent actions. These tendencies have been drastically augmented by the prevalent use of mind-altering pharmaceutical drugs in recent decades. Researchers have been noting the devastating consequences brought out by drugs with side effects such as suicidal ideation, psychopathy and so on. (Big pharma makes money, and again, suffering caused by the exploitive environment has created opportunities for industry.)

    Where is a formation like this heading in the geological time frame, let alone the development of a few centuries?

    4.  The Social Institutions

    Our social lives revolve around certain networks in our careers, our interests, our backgrounds and so on. This allows us to find livelihoods and meaning in our daily lives away from the structural issues devastating parts of our population. However, the measures and the policies of the ruling class are also imposed through those networks within the social formation as well. Social institutions, under the strict control of capital and backed by the internalized authority of individuals, quietly guide us to the imperial framework. In a functioning society, a social institution allows facts and history to accumulate in a given field, creating collective assets of knowledge and wisdom. This is a column supporting what we perceive as “civilization.” But what is the implication of it functioning as an element to divide people and impose draconian measures under the umbrella of the ruling class authority? What are the consequences of such oppression for those who are eager to protect the integrity of the institution? And how do we understand our surroundings, facts and history when those change according to the agendas? We lose our common ground to stand on. Our communities are destabilized and ultimately forced to stand on official narratives.

    Religious institutions, political institutions, science and etc. often play such a role.  For example, the political institution has been reduced to a machine to form and legitimize ruling class agendas in the name of “democracy” in which money dominated corporate parties meticulously choose and curate problems that will give opportunities for corporate entities. Narratives, slogans and talking points are provided to party members according to their affiliations. The parties, backed by corporate interests, encourage party members to engage in this controlled competition in which rules and objectives are set by corporate interests. This effectively eliminates an actual political process for the interests of the people while giving an illusion of “democracy.” Participation becomes a ritual in which the collective power of the people is stolen in the name of ensuring the betterment of the people.

    Just as the collectivity of indoctrinated individual minds acts as a power steering wheel for capitalist agendas, social institutions have become an integral part of the driving force of ruling class agendas.  In particular, corporate funded NGOs, think tanks, academic institutions, research institutions and so on, play a crucial role in formulating effective measures and policies for achieving lucrative goals at the expense of the exploited and subjugated population.

    5. Perpetual Now

    The depth of the colonization of minds is reflected by how we perceive major events of our time. For example, the people who desperately screamed “Stand with Ukraine” are nowhere to be seen as we are forced to swallow the new slogans on the Palestinian conflict. The 500,000 Ukrainian deaths resulting from the US proxy war do not appear anywhere.  We clearly remember the images of 9/11. But there is no accountability for the deaths of millions of innocent people in the Middle East. The non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction, “dead incubator babies,” “viagra supplied soldiers,” and other emotionally charged accusations against the “brutal dictators” do not find any reasoned connections to the actual events and their consequences at all. We are forced to consume incoherent segments of the broken dreams of the ruling class, with ample excuses and justifications, as if we are watching a series of rationalization dreams of the ruling class mind with our wide awake minds.  In this collective process, we are totally detached from history and material reality as we are forced to embrace the fictitious notion of “perpetual now.”  This colonization of our perception, with forced consumption of incoherent propaganda narratives, leads us, sleep walking, into colonial projects of war, colonialism, and neoliberal restructuring.

    Our lives count on the healthy functioning of social institutions and social relations based on our interests. We internalize the imperatives of the collective as guiding principles. We naturally build respect and trust for those who protect social institutions with their wisdom and knowledge. We build communities to build social relations based on our interests. Our internal sense of the collective manifests as tradition, myths, culture and so on. We learn to organize ourselves so that we can live harmoniously with ourselves, with each other, with other life forms and with nature. We create art to reflect who we are while also reflecting how things can be, reaching out to the vastness of the universe.

    The capitalist hierarchy and its beneficiaries replace these dynamics with imperatives that keep their order intact. Our psychological traits, our collective social mechanism, how we perceive, and the actual facts themselves and history are being manipulated, altered, and abused. They have been taken apart and put back together to form an invisible cage of caste-like social hierarchy which is constantly being shaped and maintained through the process of trauma and conditioning. Our species is being domesticated by the ruling class, which is harvesting our collective powers to pursue this destructive path.

    6. Growing Out of the Social Formation

    In this writing I have attempted to lay out the psychological aspect, as well as the structural mechanism, of collective mobilization of the people under capitalist domination.

    All these processes clearly indicate structural as well as active efforts by the ruling class to impose policies and agendas against the subject population. This particular social formation is extremely inefficient and unproductive in terms of realizing the potential of the collective power of humanity since the captured power has been largely used to concentrate the power of humanity in the hands of a few without regard to the ultimate trajectory of the species as well as our real potential to actualize our capabilities in harmony with our surroundings. The process diminishes our capability to perceive ourselves, each other, and our environment, while depriving us of our abilities to create and grow as human beings. We have yet to see the real potential of our species at this point. Continuation of this trajectory will deprive us of it.

    To end this writing, I must add one thing. I find many people in the US to be friendly, kind, and extremely sophisticated in their areas of specialization. I have seen so many of them displaying great ingenuity, relentlessness and creativity in what they achieve. As an artist, I do feel waves of corporate pressure against creative freedom and the structural impediments of co-optation. But I also do feel the resilience of artists quietly but surely spreading roots in examining what it is to live and what it is to be humans. The sense of freedom and optimism which has overcome slavery does shine through the spirits of the people. The progress we make for the betterment of all people must stem from the historical reality and the characteristics of the people. Yes, slavery has morphed into current forms of exploitation and subjugation. Yes, the accumulation of wealth and the disparity among haves and have-nots has been exacerbated.  We could see these facts as proving the strength and resilience of the capitalist formation. However, we could also see them as evidence proving the criminality of the social formation as a vast pyramid scheme imposed on the majority. As the list of criminal acts continues to expand, our yearning for life and nature also expands.

    It is very difficult to understand the mechanism of exploitation and subjugation which involves many layers of our social structure as well as that of our minds.  Our examination makes it clear that the social formation consists of many elements working together in highly complex ways. The ultimate solution cannot be narrowly defined by one magic bullet.   Although focused measures are necessary to counter immediate risks and impediments to well-being, a narrowly focused solution will ultimately allow the system to morph and absorb that measure into the existing system. The transformation of society from a ruling class-centric one to a people-centric one requires a fundamental shift of social power to the hands of the people.

    The discussion leads to new questions:

    The system cannot function without the help of the internalized authority in every one of us.  Our understanding of the system and our role in it helps us to do away with the spell put on us by the system, allowing us to have opportunities to refuse to act against our own interests which, in turn, can stop the momentum of the system.  How do we educate ourselves?

    The system attempts to commodify love, friendship, community, culture, nature and so on.  All of those have been shaped and defined by the capitalist society to be sold and bought, only to be seen less and less among us.  If we make right choices for ourselves and for others, not for the interests of the ruling class, we can cultivate truly meaningful social relations by valuing what really matters to us, which could lead us to building social institutions which function for us.  Social institutions which work for the interests of the people are the basis of a well-functioning social structure for the people.  How can we achieve that?

    We are social beings by nature.  We can achieve by working together what we cannot achieve by working alone.  This collective power belongs to us all. How do we ensure that our power serves the livelihoods and well-beings of us in harmony with nature and other life forms?

    Countless people in the US and across the globe have raised their voices against this social formation from various angles. We have much to learn from the successes and failures of people who live under the socialist form of government. We have a vast wealth of knowledge and wisdom going all the way back to the beginning of our species examining how to be as a collective and how to be as individuals. We are one with those people from the past, from now and from the future in our path to outgrow the current social formation.

    The post Social Formation first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.


  • Girl holds improvised white flag, to tell Israel to respect Geneva Conventions and spare her fleeing family.
    Photo credit: Yasser Qudih

    We have both been reporting on and protesting against U.S. war crimes for many years, and against identical crimes committed by U.S. allies and proxies like Israel and Saudi Arabia: illegal uses of military force to try to remove enemy governments or “regimes”; hostile military occupations; disproportionate military violence justified by claims of “terrorism”; the bombing and killing of civilians; and the mass destruction of whole cities.

    Most Americans share a general aversion to war, but tend to accept this militarized foreign policy because we are tragically susceptible to propaganda, the machinery of public manipulation that works hand in hand with the machinery of killing to justify otherwise unthinkable horrors.

    This process of “manufacturing consent” works in a number of ways. One of the most effective forms of propaganda is silence, simply not telling us, and certainly not showing us, what war is really doing to the people whose homes and communities have been turned into America’s latest battlefield.

    The most devastating campaign the U.S. military has waged in recent years dropped over 100,000 bombs and missiles on Mosul in Iraq, Raqqa in Syria, and other areas occupied by ISIS or Da’esh. An Iraqi Kurdish intelligence report estimated that more than 40,000 civilians were killed in Mosul, while Raqqa was even more totally destroyed.

    The shelling of Raqqa was the heaviest U.S. artillery bombardment since the Vietnam War, yet it was barely reported in the U.S. corporate media. A recent New York Times article about the traumatic brain injuries and PTSD suffered by U.S. artillerymen operating 155 mm howitzers, which each fired up to 10,000 shells into Raqqa, was appropriately titled A Secret War, Strange New Wounds and Silence from the Pentagon.

    Shrouding such mass death and destruction in secrecy is a remarkable achievement. When British playwright Harold Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, in the midst of the Iraq War, he titled his Nobel speech “Art, Truth and Politics,” and used it to shine a light on this diabolical aspect of U.S. war-making.

    After talking about the hundreds of thousands of killings in Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile and Nicaragua, Pinter asked:  “Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes, they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy,”
    “But you wouldn’t know it,” he went on.”It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”
    But the wars and the killing go on, day after day, year after year, out of sight and out of mind for most Americans. Did you know that the United States and its allies have dropped more than 350,000 bombs and missiles on 9 countries since 2001 (including 14,000 in the current war on Gaza)? That’s an average of 44 airstrikes per day, day in, day out, for 22 years.

    Israel, in its present war on Gaza, with children making up more than 40% of the more than 11,000 people killed to date, would surely like to mimic the extraordinary U.S. ability to hide its brutality. But despite Israel’s efforts to impose a media blackout, the massacre is taking place in a small, enclosed, densely-populated urban area, often called an open-air prison, where the world can see a great deal more than usual of how it impacts real people.

    Israel has killed a record number of journalists in Gaza, and this appears to be a deliberate strategy, as when U.S. forces targeted journalists in Iraq. But we are still seeing horrifying video and photos of daily new atrocities: dead and wounded children; hospitals struggling to treat the injured; and desperate people fleeing from one place to another through the rubble of their destroyed homes.

    Another reason this war is not so well hidden is because Israel is waging it, not the United States. The U.S. is supplying most of the weapons, has sent aircraft carriers to the region, and dispatched U.S. Marine General James Glynn to provide tactical advice based on his experience conducting similar massacres in Fallujah and Mosul in Iraq. But Israeli leaders seem to have overestimated the extent to which the U.S. information warfare machine would shield them from public scrutiny and political accountability.

    Unlike in Fallujah, Mosul and Raqqa, people all over the world are seeing video of the unfolding catastrophe on their computers, phones and TVs. Netanyahu, Biden and the corrupt “defense analysts” on cable TV are no longer the ones creating the narrative, as they try to tack self-serving narratives onto the horrifying reality we can all see for ourselves.

    With the reality of war and genocide staring the world in the face, people everywhere are challenging the impunity with which Israel is systematically violating international humanitarian law.

    Michael Crowley and Edward Wong have reported in the New York Times that Israeli officials are defending their actions in Gaza by pointing to U.S. war crimes, insisting that they are simply interpreting the laws of war the same way that the United States has interpreted them in Iraq and other U.S. war zones. They compare Gaza to Fallujah, Mosul and even Hiroshima.

    But copying U.S. war crimes is precisely what makes Israel’s actions illegal. And it is the world’s failure to hold the United States accountable that has emboldened Israel to believe it too can kill with impunity.

    The United States systematically violates the UN Charter’s prohibition against the threat or use of force, manufacturing political justifications to suit each case and using its Security Council veto to evade international accountability. Its military lawyers employ unique, exceptional interpretations of the Fourth Geneva Convention, under which the universal protections the Convention guarantees to civilians are treated as secondary to U.S. military objectives.

    The United States fiercely resists the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC), to ensure that its exceptional interpretations of international law are never subjected to impartial judicial scrutiny.

    When the United States did allow the ICJ to rule on its war against Nicaragua in 1986, the ICJ ruled that its deployment of the “Contras” to invade and attack Nicaragua and its mining of Nicaragua’s ports were acts of aggression in violation of international law, and ordered the United States to pay war reparations to Nicaragua. When the United States declared that it would no longer recognize the jurisdiction of the ICJ and failed to pay up, Nicaragua asked the UN Security Council to enforce the reparations, but the U.S. vetoed the resolution.

    Atrocities like Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the bombing of German and Japanese cities to “unhouse” the civilian population, as Winston Churchill called it, together with the horrors of Germany’s Nazi holocaust, led to the adoption of the new Fourth Geneva Convention in 1949, to protect civilians in war zones and under military occupation.

    On the 50th anniversary of the Convention in 1999, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which is responsible for monitoring international compliance with the Geneva Conventions, conducted a survey to see how well people in different countries understood the protections the Convention provides.

    They surveyed people in twelve countries that had been victims of war, in four countries (France, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S.) that are permanent members of the UN Security Council, and in Switzerland where the ICRC is based. The ICRC published the results of the survey in 2000, in a report titled, People on War – Civilians in the Line of Fire.

    The survey asked people to choose between a correct understanding of the Convention’s civilian protections and a watered-down interpretation of them that closely resembles that of U.S. and Israeli military lawyers.

    The correct understanding was defined by a statement that combatants “must attack only other combatants and leave civilians alone.” The weaker, incorrect statement was that “combatants should avoid civilians as much as possible” as they conduct military operations.

    Between 72% and 77% of the people in the other UNSC countries and Switzerland agreed with the correct statement, but the United States was an outlier, with only 52% agreeing. In fact 42% of Americans agreed with the weaker statement, twice as many as in the other countries. There were similar disparities between the United States and the others on questions about torture and the treatment of prisoners of war.

    In U.S.-occupied Iraq, the United States’ exceptionally weak interpretations of the Geneva Conventions led to endless disputes with the ICRC and the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), which issued damning quarterly human rights reports. UNAMI consistently maintained that U.S. airstrikes in densely populated civilian areas were violations of international law.

    For instance, its human rights report for the 2nd quarter of 2007 documented UNAMI’s investigations of 15 incidents in which U.S. occupation forces killed 103 Iraqi civilians, including 27 killed in airstrikes in Khalidiya, near Ramadi, on April 3rd, and 7 children killed in a helicopter attack on an elementary school in Diyala province on May 8.

    UNAMI demanded that “all credible allegations of unlawful killings by MNF (Multi-National Force) forces be thoroughly, promptly and impartially investigated, and appropriate action taken against military personnel found to have used excessive or indiscriminate force.”

    A footnote explained, “Customary international humanitarian law demands that, as much as possible, military objectives must not be located within areas densely populated by civilians. The presence of individual combatants among a great number of civilians does not alter the civilian character of an area.”

    UNAMI also rejected U.S. claims that its widespread killing of civilians was the result of the Iraqi Resistance using civilians as “human shields,” another U.S. propaganda trope that Israel is mimicking today. Israeli accusations of human shielding are even more absurd in the densely populated, confined space of Gaza, where the whole world can see that it is Israel that is placing civilians in the line of fire as they desperately seek safety from Israeli bombardment.

    Calls for a ceasefire in Gaza are echoing around the world: through the halls of the United Nations; from the governments of traditional U.S. allies like France, Spain and Norway; from a newly united front of previously divided Middle Eastern leaders; and in the streets of London and Washington. The world is withdrawing its consent for a genocidal “two-state solution” in which Israel and the United States are the only two states that can settle the fate of Palestine.

    If U.S. and Israeli leaders are hoping that they can squeak through this crisis, and that the public’s habitually short attention span will wash away the world’s horror at the crimes we are all witnessing, that may be yet another serious misjudgment. As Hannah Arendt wrote in 1950 in the preface to The Origins of Totalitarianism.

    We can no longer afford to take that which was good in the past and simply call it our heritage, to discard the bad and simply think of it as a dead load which by itself time will bury in oblivion. The subterranean stream of Western history has finally come to the surface and usurped the dignity of our tradition. This is the reality in which we live. And this is why all efforts to escape from the grimness of the present into nostalgia for a still intact past, or into the anticipated oblivion of a better future, are vain.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • So, I’ve been excommunicated from Michael Shellenberger’s global anti-censorship movement. It’s my own fault. I was sowing dissension. I engaged in harmful speech in the group chat. I was making people feel uncomfortable. I was not playing ball. I was not with the program.

    The program, as you may recall, was launched in Westminster, London, in June, when Mike and Matt Taibbi and Russell Brand exposed the Censorship Industrial Complex …

    … for 35 pounds sterling a head.

    My readers may recall this piece I published about the secret gathering of journalists, authors, artists, academics, and activists that took place after that public event. I couldn’t say too much about it at the time, as we were operating under strict OPSEC protocols, and had taken oaths of silence, and so on, which, being excommunicated, I am no longer bound by. I’m still going to be a little cagey, however, as there are a lot of people involved in Mike’s movement who I like and respect, and I don’t want to harm them with my dissension-sowing any more than necessary.

    Also, before I make fun of Mike, and share my somewhat more serious thoughts about how not to launch “a free-speech movement,” I want to make it clear that I still support this campaign, and any other anti-censorship campaign, regardless of how flawed or supercilious it may be.

    All right, let’s get down to it, shall we?

    Mike’s movement is preparing to publish a declaration. It’s a good declaration. I contributed to it. I signed it, although my name will not appear on it now, as Mike has threatened to remove it if I published a piece like this. Mike is an extremely smart guy, but he doesn’t seem to get that I don’t respond well to threats … or, rather, that this is how I respond to threats. Or, who knows? Maybe he actually wanted me to publish this piece, and goaded me into it, which, I can see how that could be a shrewd PR move.

    In any event, it’s a good declaration (or it was the last time I had access to it). There is nothing wrong with the declaration. What has taken up most of the last three months of the coalition’s time and energy, and has led to my excommunication, is the hunt for Very Important Persons to be included as signatories when the declaration is released.

    Apparently, the way it works with such declarations and “open letters,” and so on, is that you write up your declaration or letter and then you try to get selected big shots to sign it in order to make it look more impressive to … well, whoever you’re trying to impress. The character of your big-shot signatories is critical, because the media, and “the court of public opinion,” and your potential major philanthropic backers, are going to judge you by the company you keep.

    Mike’s anti-censorship coalition has been carrying out this process by “consensus,” under the watchful eye and firm hand of Mike. Mike is not the “leader” of this coalition, which is totally leaderless and democratic, of course. He is just the “facilitator,” who explains the objectives, makes the final decisions, polices people’s speech, and excommunicates suppressive persons whose dissension-sowing threatens to disrupt the “atmosphere of mutual respect” that Mike feels he needs to “maintain” in the group chat.

    Yes, Mike has a little control-freak problem. Many non-leader leaders of “movements” do. If you’ve ever been involved in political activism, you know what I mean. If you haven’t, count your blessings.

    Anyway, the Hunt for VIP Signatories has been awkward, due to (a) the need to maintain the appearance of “decision-by-consensus” in the coalition’s totally non-hierarchical group chat, (b) concern among various coalition members about including “divisive” VIPs, and (c) Mike’s behind-the-scenes machinations.

    For example, at one point, I offered to contact one of the only VIPs I know to ask him for help with further VIP outreach. Mike jumped into the chat and quashed that idea, as I had made it clear that I was not willing to try to dictate to this Very Important Person who he should and shouldn’t reach out to for us. Days or weeks later — I can’t remember exactly — one of Mike’s employees wrote to me sub rosa and gave me the secret go-ahead from Mike. So, I reached out to this VIP, who then reached out to some other VIPs, many of whom were happy to sign, and some of whom offered to help with further outreach.

    Panic broke out at Coalition HQ. Some of the Very Important Persons that my Very Important Person had invited were potentially Divisive Persons, who hadn’t been vetted by consensus on the coalition’s VIP-vetting spreadsheet. (I kid you not, there’s an actual spreadsheet.) So, I was asked to reach out to my VIP and instruct him to cease and desist with further outreach before he reached out to further Divisive Persons, who might reach out to further Divisive Persons, at which point, everything might spin out of control! Needless to say, I declined to do that.

    If you’re wondering about exactly who qualifies as a “Divisive Person” in the coalition … well, certainly not Very Important Persons like Richard Dawkins, who in 2021 compared folks who “refused” the Covid “vaccines” to “faith-heads releasing rattlesnakes in supermarkets”…

    But later admitted that “mistakes may have been made”

    Or fanatical New Normalist Slavoj Žižek …

    You can watch Slavoj getting extremely worked up in support of Covid “vaccine” mandates, and mocking people who care about “silly” things like their personal bodily autonomy, with Briahna Joy Gray in 2021, if you think you have the stomach for it …


    VIPs like Dawkins and Žižek are not “divisive.” They are very important A-list persons who are committed to universal human rights, and freedom of speech, and all that kind of stuff, unless, of course, the authorities announce that they need to go full-blown totalitarian and lock down and segregate and censor everyone because of a virus with a 99.8% survival rate, in which case, you know, “Sieg fucking Heil!”

    Russell Brand, however, is definitely “divisive.” You remember Russell Brand from that poster above advertising the big event in London, don’t you? Here’s our friend Russell Brand today …

    The Russell-Brand-cancellation op was what sealed my fate with Mike’s free speech movement. I had been holding my nose for quite a while — for example, I never opposed having people like Dawkins and Žižek on the signatories list, as I understood the PR logic — and I was praying that none of the coalition members would bring up “the revelations” (as one of them put it), but the odds of that not happening were poor. Sure enough, someone brought Brand up, and someone checked, and he had been asked to sign on, but as of Saturday he hadn’t responded, at least not according to the VIP-vetting spreadsheet. So that was obviously a huge relief. However, what if he responded now (i.e., post-“revelations”) and wanted to sign? Should he still be allowed to? A “risk assessment” was suggested.

    And, OK, I got a little snarky and proposed that we skip the “risk assessment” and all the other PR-strategizing bullshit and just uphold the principles we are claiming to defend.

    Whereupon Mike Shellenberger needed to reach me, urgently, presumably to shout at me and threaten me again. I’d had an earlier such phone call from Mike, when I criticized his sucking up to Elon Musk and suggested that it made us look not quite neutral. Mike called me at home, apoplectic, that time, and threatened to kick me out of the club if I didn’t toe the line, which I found sort of funny, and a bit disturbing, but nothing I couldn’t handle. I have known a lot of control freaks in my day. And Mike has done, and is still doing, a lot of great work. And we all have our character flaws, don’t we?

    Anyway, I wasn’t in the mood for another screaming, threatening conversation with Mike, as I was still at my friend’s converted monastery in Italy, and I finally had a peaceful day to myself. (The Italian workmen who are jackhammering big holes in the monastery walls don’t work on the weekends.) I decided I would call him back later.

    Next thing I knew, I was excommunicated.

    I’m not a professional movement builder, but I’m pretty sure this is not how you do it. I don’t mean my excommunication. I mean the suffocating top-down micromanagement, and the PR-strategizing, and the VIP-idolatry, and the paranoia about alienating mainstream people who are going to be alienated anyway, regardless of how many Hollywood celebrities and Harvard professors you dangle in their faces. The simple fact is, playing by the rules of the system and the “reality” you claim to be opposing a recipe for failure. Or, worse than failure, a diversion, the simulation of success. Which is where I’m afraid Mike’s “movement” is headed.

    Movements are not PR campaigns. Yes, of course, some PR is involved, but the masses are not your employees. And they aren’t CGI extras in your narcissistic movie. They are actual living, breathing people, people who do not need us to lead them. Basically, the masses don’t give a shit what Richard Dawkins and Slavoj Žižek endorse. The editors of “respected” publications like The New Yorker and The New York Times give a shit, but the masses don’t give a shit about them. If you are going to “build a movement” to oppose the Censorship Industrial Complex (which Mike claims he wants to do), at some point, you’re going to have to alienate some of your friends and colleagues in NormalWorld and get your hands dirty and connect with the masses, or the “people that no one has ever heard of,” as Mike calls them.

    The people that no one has ever heard of are not stupid. They know the difference between a serious anti-censorship campaign and a vanity project. There’s still time for Mike to turn this thing around, let go of the reins, stop sucking up to the mainstream establishment, and reach out to the masses. Honestly, I hope he will. I wish him and the London gang success. There are millions of people out there who would get on board with a grassroots campaign opposing the Censorship Industrial Complex, but, to get them on board, you have to let go of the wheel and let them steer the ship.

    The irony is, when you’re “building a movement,” when you know you are succeeding is when you lose control of it, when the movement doesn’t need you to “lead” it, when it starts moving in directions you never imagined and starts doing things you never intended. But you can’t get there if you suffocate it in its infancy, if you are so obsessed with maintaining control that you snuff out every idea and impulse that doesn’t conform to your vision of it.

    Mike means well. He’s got a good heart. And he’s a fighter. All of which I respect. I hope he can learn that lesson, quickly. Perhaps the thing he has set in motion will teach it to him as things progress. We could certainly do with an actual global grassroots anti-censorship movement. I hope Mike and the gang can unclench their anal sphincters a bit and help get us there.

    Oh, and regarding Russell Brand. I don’t know Russell Brand. I have absolutely no idea what he has or hasn’t done. Neither do you, probably. Which is not the point. The point is the current global-capitalist crackdown on dissent, which is in full-swing. Russell Brand is just the latest head on a spike, alongside the heads of Assange, Snowden, Trump, Corbyn, Carlson, et al. They are greasing up a spike for Bobby Kennedy’s head, and the head of anyone else who challenges them, even people that no one has ever heard of, like me.

    I think Max Blumenthal made the point succinctly …

    … but, you know, Max is a Russian-sponsored, Covid-denying, conspiracy-theorizing, Trump-loving, transphobic, anti-Semitic Jew, who raped his neighbor’s hamster … or whatever. But then, who among us isn’t, these days?

  • It’s been well over a year now since the health scare dubbed the Covid-19 pandemic has had any widespread impact upon the lives of the vast majority of humanity. Since the “fog of war” has lifted, so to speak, there has been very little introspection regarding the knee-jerk authoritarianism imposed upon humanity in the liberal press or mainstream academia. Eerie parallels connect the panic stirred up during the health crisis with the reaction to 9/11. There is also plenty of circumstantial evidence of prior knowledge and pre-planning for both of these events. In their wake, mass hysteria, government propaganda, tyranny, censorship, and irrational belief systems spawned out of each, supported by ruling class interests and mass media mouthpieces.

    Although many policies related to the global war on terror and the pandemic certainly have fascistic and totalitarian impulses, there are key differences. Whereas the fascist and totalitarian rely on a single despot, and the marginalization of minority groups, postmodern tyranny operates according to the flows of late capitalism: diversity and inclusion are encouraged; power is spread through a corporate oligarchy, as well as political, military, and now medical hierarchies; and devastating economic and social effects are engendered by “absent causes”; i.e., abstract engines of capital: stock fluctuations, algorithms, financial instruments and various Finance/Insurance/Real Estate (FIRE) sector bubbles and scams. The public is predictably bewildered by a revolving cast of bureaucrats and elites with varying amounts of sociopathic and narcissistic traits; however, the personal attributes of the cast members are extraneous to capital accumulation, imperialism, and the liquidation of nature. It is fine to use phrases like fascist or totalitarian in response to government policies for rhetorical effect; however, most Americans do not feel that way or use that terminology, which harkens back to a simpler era of boot stamping. We are rather enmeshed in a dictatorship of capital.

    A related aspect of what we may call postmodern tyranny is the absence of metanarratives. The establishment props up whatever narrative suits their interest in the moment, but is able to cast them off at the first serious grumblings from the public. From about 2001-2011, the global war on terror dominated; from 2011-2016, it was “regime change” in Syria and Libya with a little ISIS and feigned horror at Russia taking Crimea sprinkled in; from 2016-2020, the overblown Russiagate connection; from 2020-2022, Covid-19; and now the Ukraine-Russia war, in which we are told NATO and the US are completely innocent allies who did not start, provoke, and manipulate the geopolitical chessboard going back decades, and who only want to assist the helpless Ukrainians.

    Yet after two years of being subjected to the tyrannical orders of an authoritarian medical panic orchestrated by the ruling classes, transnational political puppets, as well as the establishment medical “experts” who espoused fraudulent and laughable claims over and over, people worldwide are waking up to the health scare as well as the US proxy war in Ukraine. There are many striking similarities between the 9/11 false flag attack and the Covid-19 global health freak-out. Both events led to mass hysteria and a globalized form of ostrich syndrome, where denial and collective hallucination became the norm, paving the way for deeper imperial tyranny and mass obedience. Recently, many who supported government policies and narratives including lockdowns, travel bans, vaccine mandates, and health passports are asking for “Pandemic Amnesty” regarding their panic-inducing and tyrannical behavior; and admitting they were dead wrong, even as they championed ridiculous and deadly policies and demonized anyone who tried to stand in their way.

    Revisiting the “Catalyst”

    The parallels between government reactions to 9/11 and the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic are uncanny. Prior to 9/11, a sizable chunk of US citizens would not have put up with domestic mass surveillance. Similarly, prior to the health crisis of 2020, populations would have been very skeptical of mandatory lockdowns, absurd masking rules, and coercive vaccine mandates and propaganda; as well as blocking off access to travel, public spaces, and businesses with vaccine passports. Most interpret this as government exploiting a crisis, rather than governments’ prior knowledge and pre-planning of the events. However, from the start, the ready-made, manufactured hysteria and propaganda suggests a collusion of military-intelligence, industrial, financial, and medical forces of industry and government.

    The economic indicators had been blinking red for months before even January of 2020, going back to the repo crisis of September 2019. Quoting an investor in CNBC from March 2020:

    The virus was the catalyst but it’s not the cause,’ said Christopher Whalen, founder of Whalen Global Advisors. ‘Both bonds and equities were inflated rather dramatically by our friends at the Fed. You’re seeing the end game for monetary policy here, which is at a certain point you have to stop. Otherwise you get grotesque asset bubbles like we saw, and the engine just runs out of fuel.’ [Emphasis mine]

    Reuters concurs, with a major figure at the Fed blurting the quiet part out loud: “Pandemic aid was also ‘banking bailout‘”. The liberal/left site The Intercept sums up the game quite well, explaining that the CARES Act of March 2020 allows for:

    Direct purchases of corporate debt — the first nongovernment bond-buying in the Fed’s history — would now be allowed. Companies have swelled their borrowing in recent years, and experts have identified this as a source of serious economic risk. A sudden shock like the pandemic that wiped out revenues would not only cause bankruptcies, but also accelerate bond defaults, broadening stress throughout the financial system.

    Further on in the piece, the author notes how the CARES Act calls for an “Exchange Stabilization Fund”. Worth 454 billion, the money is leveraged just like a major bank, allowing for:

    A $4.5 trillion slush fund would be created, equity markets ballooned. The total value of the stock market cratered to 103 percent of GDP, about $21.8 trillion, on March 23. By April 30 it was back to 136.3 percent of GDP, or $28.9 trillion. By that metric, $7.1 trillion in stock market wealth has been created in that period.

    In other words, the US saw the writing on the wall coming from China: the economic slowdown and shuttering of factories which began in January 2020 was finally affecting the US stock market, which had cratered by mid-March 2020. Only the exaggeration of a pandemic, a sloughing off of millions of jobs, and new spigots opening for the banking sector, would allow for corporations to maintain profitability. Debt restructuring was inevitable and the only way to accomplish this was to railroad legislation through Congress, not a difficult task considering our lawmakers are essentially lobbyists for major multinational corporations. Large companies got billions in aid while workers and small businesses fell into ruin.

    Once the medical agenda was set, panic set in, and it turns out overcrowding nursing homes, firing one million medical workers and 40 million total US workers, blaring apocalyptic propaganda non-stop, censoring any talk of vitamin and supplement use, imposing stressful lockdowns, and turning patients away from doctors can have an effect on worldwide mortality. Hardly anyone in the medical community was willing to confront those inconvenient truths, and those that did were censored further.

    It was known very soon after March 2020 what the infection fatality rate would be: a very low percentage, perhaps twice the rate from seasonal influenza. World elites did not care- they had an agenda in hand.  Regardless of the seriousness, capitalist elites wouldn’t have put 40 million Americans out of work and imploded the economy without a plan. And they had one ready-made: a 5 trillion dollar plan. Later on, US elites would not have advocated for coercive vaccine mandates – get the shot or lose your job – unless the word came down from the very highest echelons of the elite, and although many, if not most, of the establishment bought it wholesale, it’s clear that the federal government was not going to leave states to make decisions based off the inputs of local county and state health officials. The word came down from on high; there certainly was obvious collusion to centralize and organize the Covid dogma, yes, a “conspiracy”, because asking the public to “trust the science” only takes you so far when conflicting and contradictory data about the danger of the virus is staring them right in the face.

    Given the unreliability of the initial tests for Sars-CoV-2, the deliberate use of too many PCR cycles per test, and the simple fact that it’s quite probable that multiple benign strains and variants of coronaviruses resulted in positive tests, it’s easy to see how a global pandemic was manufactured at the outset. From the very beginning, government propaganda emanating from the medical, military, and intelligence establishments were obviously coordinated, centralized, and directed to coerce and cow citizens into submission to a globalized, medical cult. Local and national news all parroted the same line, and a global groupthink biosecurity agenda was pushed to the forefront of society. It’s important to remember that before the declared emergency, to “quarantine” involved restricting access to the sick, not the whole of society.

    The language was not only Orwellian, but was written from scripts in the Department of Defense and Intelligence community. We were told to “shelter in place”, and doctors and nurses were on the “frontlines” of the fight. These were certainly designed to conjure images of war and create an impassioned atmosphere where dissent was marginalized, repeating the lockstep ideological conformity that occurred after 9/11. Phrases like social distancing and contact tracing entered the lexicon with barely a grumble. Hilariously, after more than a year of putting up with absurd and ever-changing laws, Britain toyed with the idea of offering its citizens “Freedom Passes” for those compliant enough to test frequently, their reward being the “freedom” to leave their own home.

    Canadian and British reporting confirms the unethical propaganda to coerce, scare, and guilt-trip civilian populations. One UK psychologist dubbed their government program “totalitarian”. Every mainstream news outlet in the US from March 2020 to February 2022 resembled a liberal version of the Sinclair broadcasting scandal from 2018, where the media conglomerate, which has a known right-wing bias, made 193 local news anchors repeat the same minute-long script, word-for-word, warning of “false news” and “fake stories” proliferating on social media and mainstream news, echoing Trump’s rhetoric at the time.

    Natural immunity was scoffed at, gathering in public was outlawed, visitors to households were forbidden, a vaccine was deemed to be the only response to the threat, and even health advocates who gave common-sense reminders to take vitamins and supplements were derided as unserious crackpots.

    A pertinent question to think about is this: given the uptick in supposed deaths from Sars-CoV-2 around March 2020, was a global upheaval of lockdowns, travel restrictions, limited movement outside one’s home, and caps on gatherings justified? With hindsight, many if not the majority of Americans now say no. However, the fact remains that many astute observers were calling the bluff of the World Health Organization, the CDC, and the medical and national security establishments from the beginning. Those voices were censored and silenced by a corporatist oligarchy bent on imposing pain on small business and the average citizen. Millions lost their livelihoods and small businesses never recovered.

    Another related question: how and why was the medical establishment so driven to combat an acute health threat caused by the virus Sars-CoV-2, but lies dormant when global poverty is clearly the number one cause of death in the world, followed by cancer and heart disease? We were led to believe the world could be turned upside down to fight a virus, yet nothing can be done to alleviate the leading causes of death, poverty: structural, chronic health issues are off the table, as they are caused by capitalism’s inexorable drive to profit, pollute, and impoverish the majority of the Earth’s inhabitants.

    Even the WHO admits that ¼ of total deaths today are attributable to “unhealthy environments”; i.e., conditions of extreme poverty, preventable disease, starvation, and malnutrition. In 2012 that was 12.6 million deaths per year, but the total is undoubtedly higher today, probably about 20 million.  The WHO also concedes about 2 million people in China alone die from air pollution every year, with about 6.7 million deaths per year worldwide. Where is the outcry and global mobilization to stop these much deadlier problems?

    Could there have been a more rational path, where people over the age of say, 60 or 65, the most likely to be affected, could have been shielded with voluntary plans to restrict interpersonal contact, as well as given access to the best care and medicine, while the rest of the world would be allowed to carry on without draconian measures? Surely medical professionals in the US could have developed a plan in conjunction with governments which allowed for freedom of movement, as in Sweden and Japan. The path, however, was blocked by the national security state in conjunction with unelected health authorities, Big Tech, Big Pharma, and global capitalists eager to institute repressive measures and rake in trillions from a restructuring of the world economy. The global economy needed a “Great Reset” to centralize and buy-up small businesses for pennies on the dollar, and the financial system was reeling going back to September of 2019. Disturbingly, this sequence of events is reminiscent of the last time the national security state remade the world, after 9/11.

    The Mask Comes Off

    Many leftists pointed out that the work stoppage from the lockdowns would allow us time to reflect on the inhumanity, overproduction, alienation, and exploitation inherent to capitalism. No doubt this was true. What most overlooked, however, was the ridiculousness of having the poor and working classes keep on working while the remote-working, white-collar privileged classes were offered a respite from the grind of work culture. There was, and is, an inherent inequality and power imbalance in having restaurants and drivers deliver packages and food to one’s doorstep while chastising those same people who refused to mask (even outdoors, absurdly).

    The middle and upper class guilty pleasures of living in a consumerist society cocooned at home with streaming TV and take-out overwhelmed the need for solidarity with the poor and working classes, who were in many cases unable and unwilling to shelter or get an experimental injection from a government that has treated the poor and minorities as human guinea pigs or worse for the entirety of its history.

    The felt need for security against an acute contagion, while resisting to grapple with the complexities and culpability of being part of a global-imperial-capitalist death machine, epitomized the Western Left position. Other than the obvious responses: “This is why we need universal health care!” etc., there was barely anyone talking about the number one cause of real pandemics: our proximity to inhumane and unsanitary animal agriculture. The collective, fear-based knee-jerk response was to inhumanely slaughter tens of millions of animals: estimates suggest more than 10 million hens, perhaps 5-10 million pigs, and 17 million mink were killed due to “overproduction”, and in the case of mink, to the possibility of the spread of Sars-CoV-2.

    A Brief Recap of our 21st Century Dystopia

    Twenty three years ago, many people around the world had high hopes as a new millennium dawned. The year 2000 was ushered in, and to untrained eyes, the global outlook looked rosy. The Fukuyaman “end of history” narrative still dominated after nearly a decade of unopposed US dominance in world financial markets and military and political hegemony. There were no major wars among world powers and the global economy provided new avenues of wealth for the middle classes around the world.

    The party didn’t last long. It turned out that globalization, that catch-all term trotted out over and over by both liberal internationalists and conservative realists to defend the seemingly interminable reign of capitalists, had plenty of cracks in the foundation. The notion that Western states were “democratic republics” caring for citizens’ interests began to crumble. The diminishing returns of capitalism as well as brazen corporate and government corruption began to disrupt the confidence of the global middle classes. The consent of the governed could no longer be assured; and as the façade of democratic legitimacy collapsed, Western governments, headed by the US, began to look for a new ideological force to justify neoliberal capitalism.

    World events took a swift turn for the worse starting from the very first months of the new millennium. In March 2000 the dot-com bubble burst, with losses eventually reaching 1.75 trillion in the US alone; this rippled through the world economy. The total loss in market capitalization was estimated to be 5 trillion by the end of the recession in 2002. Over 2.2 million jobs were lost in the US and unemployment continued to climb into mid-2003.

    In November of 2000 the contested Bush-Gore election ran into a stalemate. A judicial coup in the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Bush 5-4, effectively stopping the recount. There was relatively little public push-back, and the lack of any real resistance from the Democratic party machine solidified the coup, and the “Bush-Cheney junta”, as the late Gore Vidal called it, steamrolled into power.

    The true events of September 11th, 2001 may always remain partially shrouded in mystery, yet some tell-tale signs point to the obvious: a conspiracy in which the US government played an active role in orchestrating the sequence of events we call 9/11. Any cursory look at the “conspiracy theories” and the 9/11 truth movements’ findings shows the glaring holes in the official story. Examining and absorbing all the evidence leads to the inevitable conclusion- the events of 9/11 was a false flag, orchestrated by our own government, and the perpetrators are still at large, much like the JFK assassination.

    Most everyone over thirty remembers what came next, even though most are loath to recall. The Bush regime blamed Al Qaeda before the end of the night, news broadcasts showed the towers falling non-stop, and color coded terror alerts became our “new normal” (we’ll get to the next iteration shortly). An axis of evil was rolled out; any country who vaguely opposed US imperialism was put on the naughty list, and a new “crusade” was decreed, with explicit threats “if you’re not with us, you’re against us.” Shortly after, the mysterious anthrax attacks swept the nation, and captivated the US, even as it became crystal clear that the type of anthrax used was a highly weaponized version coming from a US biolab, which could only mean it was deliberately stolen and released by high elements within our own government.

    The state of emergency became normalized immediately. A new surveillance state was constructed, the Patriot Act and AUMF allowed for extra-judicial assassination, torture, and spy programs began to expand globally. Officially war was declared against Iraq and Afghanistan; unofficially, Special Forces and black ops spread to approximately 130 nations. The empire was expanding and on the move- especially in the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa, where control over access to fossil fuels alongside the continuing supremacy of the petrodollar is paramount in maintaining global hegemony today.

    The Permanent State of Emergency/Exception

    Power loves catastrophe: the running theme here being that when non-natural disasters occur, Western governments quickly rally and conspire in order to procure quick profits, maintain control, and flex power over weaker nations.

    In our era, authoritarian regimes have argued for the permanent suspension of the rights of their own citizens, as well as human rights and international law. This concept was popularized by Giorgio Agamben in his 2005 book, State of Exception. Agamben uses the example of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt’s definition of sovereignty: the sovereign is the one who decides on the exception. By abrogating the rights of their own citizens in response to an emergency, both nominally democratic and dictatorial regimes can use the threat of future catastrophes to install permanent police states, declare martial law, and normalize what used to be considered extralegal into the framework of law in the name of national security.

    The imperial core settled on a tried and true model: programming the public to accept that every catastrophe caused by the capitalist global system is an emergency that must be responded to with an increasingly authoritarian society. Police state tactics, lifted from Nazi Germany, became normalized as the economic, political, and ideological forces backing the War on Terror saw little resistance from a mystified and fearful citizenry. This process is known as a state of exception, originally codified in law by the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt. A succinct definition can be found here:

    [The state of exception] defines a special condition in which the juridical order is actually suspended due to an emergency or a serious crisis threatening the state. In such a situation, the sovereign, i.e. the executive power, prevails over the others and the basic laws and norms can be violated by the state while facing the crisis.

    Nearly every major significant political flash point of the last twenty two years was used as an excuse to broaden and deepen the national security state and corporate rule. This process has effectively disempowered the western masses to such a degree that the majority of Western populations, including many in the middle classes, have effectively neo-feudal, debtor relationships to state and market forces.

    The author Naomi Klein described the new, globalized, neoliberal model quite well in her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine, where disaster capitalism becomes a force for “creative destruction”, leading entire continents into debt spirals with World Bank and IMF loans while at the same time militarizing and financializing Western economies to serve the interests of Wall Street and the Pentagon while destroying small businesses and parasitizing off the working classes.  Soon after, President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, said the quiet part out loud discussing the financial crisis, when he referred to the trillions in public money used to prop up our unregulated banking system. He blurted out:

    You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that [is] it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.

    How can we define our time? Again, the phrase postmodern tyranny fits better than describing the present moment as totalitarian or fascist. Those two words have become so overused, interchanged, that they’ve lost much meaning and luster for people today. Although many of the various government responses to 9/11 and Covid certainly have elements of totalitarian, fascist, and dictatorial regimes, the terminology is outdated in a sense. It no longer fits the historical moment and hardly anyone really sees Joe Biden or Emmanuel Macron as totalitarian leaders. No single despot is necessary for the system to continue. We are facing is a dictatorship of money, an oligarchy dedicated to ensuring the smooth movement of capital. We live in a pyramid scheme, economically and socially: a system of petty tyrants consisting of your boss, your mayor, your landlord, your HOA president, etc. In fact, added together there are millions of petty tyrants in the US alone; the bourgeoisie and their millions of enforcers: judges, the police and military, politicians, lawyers, all who serve private property, an unjust hierarchy of labor, and, as we’ve seen, most doctors who were eager to impose and rubber-stamp the petty diktats we’ve enshrined into law.

    2019: Global Protests Mushroom

    Besides well-documented evidence such as US funding of coronavirus research, Event 201, and many other suspicious activities, there is one other piece of circumstantial evidence that ties into prior knowledge and pre-planning the pandemic. In 2019, global protests reached a height unsurpassed in modern history, with one commentator dubbing that year “The Age of Mass Protests”. On December 30, 2019, Robin Wright published a column in The New Yorker entitled: “The Story of 2019: Protests in Every Corner of the Globe”. One highlight from the piece claims:

    “‘People in more countries are using people power than any time in recorded history. Nonviolent mass movements are the primary challenges to governments today,’ Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard, told me. ‘This represents a pronounced shift in the global landscape of dissent.’”

    The Washington Post dubbed 2019 “The year of the global street protest”. Bloomberg proclaimed that “A Year of Protests Sparked Change Around the Globe“. Massive disruptions to governments occurred in Iraq, Iran, Hong Kong, Sudan, Algeria, Chile, and many other nations. Ordinary people were becoming a nuisance to the smooth movement of capital. Governments were forced to face challenges they’d been ignoring for decades, as rising food, housing, heating, and materials costs skyrocketed globally. All of a sudden, in January 2020, the looming specter of a “global pandemic” put a stop to all of it, instantaneously.

    The positives for governments were obvious. No more protests. No public gatherings. No more pesky citizens demanding lower prices on goods, for more social programs, and protesting unjust taxes and authoritarian rulers. Without any in-person organizing, the momentum of people power from 2019 quickly died out.

    Shifting the Goalposts: From “Two Weeks to Flatten the Curve” to Biosecurity State

    Similar to 9/11, the justification for and continued adherence to official government propaganda rested on total obedience and social conformity: peer pressure at the familial, community, workplace, and public levels all contributed to an atmosphere of hysteria, panic, and paranoia. Shortly after 9/11, the US government shifted priorities from an invasion of Afghanistan and ousting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, to an invasion of Iraq in 2003 which cost perhaps 1 million Iraqi lives, then to a global war on terror (remember US General Wesley Clark’s admission that the Pentagon’s intention was to invade nation’s dubbed as the “axis of evil” and take out “seven countries in five years”). Torture and mass surveillance was sanctioned and cheered, the Patriot Act and AUMF rammed through Congress.

    As soon as the pandemic was announced in March 2020, the goalposts kept moving, from a period where we were told two weeks of isolation would be enough to flatten the curve of infection to nearly two years of absurd rules for masking, lockdowns, public gatherings, household gatherings, vaccines, and passports. The hokum kept piling up, as increasingly illogical “expert opinions” were rolled out to “protect” us, or so we were told. It soon became clear that the lockdowns themselves were killing plenty of people. Many credible “medical experts” who believed in the seriousness of the pandemic were blunt about the lockdowns: they were a form of democide”, with many estimating that approximately one-third of the excessive deaths were caused by the lockdowns. Routine checkups were avoided, nursing homes were overcrowded, the elderly were being neglected, and unnecessary, and over a million healthcare workers were laid off precisely when they would have been most useful, at least according to the official narrative.

    The irrational masking mandates were completely unscientific, especially the outdoor masking requirements in major cities, and, ludicrously, beaches as well as various outdoor recreation areas. Regardless, it wasn’t until December 2021 that a major mainstream medical figure admitted the obvious: “cloth masks are useless” and little more than facial decorations. The mask was the signifier of the good citizen for two years; anyone who disagreed was tarred and feathered without regard for the actual science. Many analyses of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were done with previous viruses. Not to mention the basic fact that the infection and fatality rates were basically the same for the 39 US states that imposed mask mandates versus the 11 that did not.

    The conflation of case fatality rate (CFR) with infection fatality rate (IFR) in the mainstream media made the disease appear far more deadly than it actually was. The actual chance of young and healthy adults dying from Covid-19 was minuscule.

    Social distancing became de rigueur among the ruling classes, as well as the upper-middle chattering class effete liberals (and sadly, many leftists) even as the chance of moderate to severe illness in health young or even middle-aged people was almost nil. The specter of the postmodern alienated, affluent Western subject, with all their bundles of anxieties and neuroses, began to unspool, implode; a process of involution nurturing the solipsistic narcissism inherent in late capitalism.

    The sociopathic tendencies of our elites, heightened and distilled through centuries of class war in Western culture, spilled out into the open. The upper-middle professional classes, alert to the tendencies of their overlords’ desires to distance themselves from the rabble, were eager to parrot the diktats of their rulers. The upper-class winners condemned themselves to a path of neo-Victorian purity politics. The clean must be segregated from the dirty. The educated believers in “science” are clearly rational; the anti-vax hordes certainly must be acting out of pure self-interest and resentment.  Needless to say, little to no self-examination was made of the panicked overreaction of the well-to-do liberal authoritarians, which frankly fell within a spectrum of agoraphobic and hypochondriac behavior.

    The death rates were complete junk science, overestimated for the sake of juicing up the atmosphere of pandemonium, not to mention the monetary rewards for hospitals and healthcare corporations. As many know by now, “dying with” Covid became conflated with “dying from” the virus, with doctors pressured to include Sars-CoV-2 on death certificates.

    Pushing the experimental vaccine onto healthy children and young adults was completely unnecessary, and harmful. The risks of heart problems outweighed the negligible benefits of the vaccine for the young. This was obvious from the beginning and the medical establishment continued its role as a propaganda arm of Big Pharma rather than objectively viewing the facts. One study showed a laughable, embarrassing efficacy of 12% for 5-11 year olds.

    UN Estimate of Extreme Hunger, Food Insecurity, and Starvation

    Shortly after the lockdowns began in March 2020, the UN World Food Program put out a warning:

    The number of people facing acute food insecurity (IPC/CH 3 or worse) stands to rise to 265 million in 2020, up by 130 million from the 135 million in 2019, as a result of the economic impact of COVID-19, according to a WFP projection. The estimate was announced alongside the release of the Global Report on Food Crises, produced by WFP and 15 other humanitarian and development partners.

    In effect, the government and private architects of lockdowns were fully prepared to sacrifice hundreds of millions of younger, poorer minorities in less-developed countries to shield older, richer, whiter populations in developed nations from the very low potential of sickness, and yes, possible death. While many leftists are quick to point out economic “sacrifice zones” where labor violations are the norm and economic exploitation is rampant, they were mainly silent regarding the potential of mass death, starvation, and the explosion of extreme poverty due to lockdown policies. In fact, many leftists gleefully supported lockdowns and restrictions against the unvaccinated; and were either completely unaware or feigned ignorance of the economic devastation they unleashed.

    The Africa  Paradox

    The obvious data sets to look at regarding the efficacy of the experimental vaccines would be the West, with very high levels of vaccination, versus Africa, which had extremely low percentages. While obviously many countries had incomplete information due to lack of resources, it becomes obvious that the vaccines had zero effect on transmission or reduction in deaths. In fact, the mortality rates in African nations are so low that experts simply shrug them off. A holistic view would put the excess deaths from “Covid-19” squarely on the unhealthy lifestyles, toxic food supply, the unregulated chemical industries, and stressful conditions endemic to Western living.

    Agamben’s Laments

    Right off the bat, Giorgio Agamben questioned the motives behind the lockdowns, rightly pointing out that the fear of death and the elevation of science as the new religion had reduced communities and governments to quantifying basic survival – “bare life” – as more valuable than tangible human freedoms. As he put it in a March 2020 blog post:

    Fear is a bad advisor, but it brings up many things you pretended not to see. The first thing that the wave of panic that has paralyzed the country clearly shows is that our society no longer believes in anything but bare life. It is clear that Italians are willing to sacrifice practically everything, normal living conditions, social relationships, work, even friendships, affections and religious and political convictions at the risk of falling ill. Bare life – and the fear of losing it – is not something that unites men, but blinds and separates them.

    In May 2020, Agamben expands on the notion of medicine as a modern cult- and its many parallels with Christian dogmas.

    It is immediately evident that we are dealing here with a cultic practice and not with a rational scientific requirement. By far the most frequent cause of mortality in our country is cardio-vascular disease and it is known that these could decrease if a healthier lifestyle were practiced and if one adhered to a particular diet. But it had never occurred to any doctor that this form of life and diet, which they recommended to patients, would become the subject of legal legislation, which decreed ex lege [as a matter of law] what one must eat and how one must live, transforming the whole existence into a health obligation. Precisely this has been done and, at least for now, people have accepted as if it were obvious to give up their freedom of movement, work, friendships, love, social relationships, their religious and political convictions.

    Even the mealy-mouthed World Health Organization was forced to admit in October 2020 that lockdowns were extremely detrimental to poor and minority communities globally and should be used as a “very, very last resort”. This did not stop governments and medical advisors from clamoring for more restrictions and shutdowns for seventeen more months, even as Agamben and many others, including many experts who signed the Great Barrington Declaration, were speaking out against political overreach.

    Latour’s Dress Rehearsal: Right for the Wrong Reasons

    In a widely cited article from March 2020, French sociologist Bruno Latour asked an interesting question regarding the lockdowns: “Is This a Dress Rehearsal?” The problem in his formulation, of course, is that he believes governments innocently imposed the lockdown protocols in response to a clear and present danger; as well as his belief that governments will, in the future, impose lockdowns in response to climate change with reductions in carbon emissions in mind. Rather, we should realize that governments, colluding with the mega rich and multinational corporations, imposed lockdowns in order to profit off the collapse and resurgence of the stock markets, discipline the public in order to accept draconian “new normal” policies, and accelerate the process of biometric IDs, all-encompassing surveillance, a drop in living standards, and advance a social credit system based on rewards and punishments.

    The old panem et circenses method of distracting the masses can no longer hold together an increasingly polarized society breaking into “post-truth” enclaves where distrust and paranoia spawn out of late-capitalist alienation and exploitation. A society in which two of the biggest overarching political narratives are as ridiculous as Q-Anon and Russiagate has no business dismissing the obvious conspiracy and collusion involved in promulgating an exaggerated and manufactured pandemic.

    Latour is correct in claiming that this is a sort of dress rehearsal. Sadly, like many a typical liberal, he assumes governments had our best interest at heart, and are reacting to objective facts and medical realities. In the near future, governments will probably enact travel restrictions and lockdowns not only to reduce carbon emissions, but rather to train citizens to accept food rations, lack of fossil fuels due to high prices and supply issues, lower living standards, and lack of goods and provisions. In this process of disciplining and punishing masses, many will be forced to accept whatever government edicts are enacted, at the risk of job loss, social isolation, or worse, just as we witnessed during the pandemic. The next lockdown could be designed and pre-planned precisely to stave off protests, rebellions, and revolutions which will spring up as the rot in capitalism deepens.

    Medical Tyranny? WHO’s asking?

    A recent report shows that a private foundation set up to finance the World Health Organization, called the WHO Foundation, explains that 40% of donations came from anonymous donors. The potential for conflicts of interest is inevitable, as obviously only individuals and groups connected to Big Pharma would want to anonymize where their slush funds go to.

    A global Pandemic Treaty is being formulated by the WHO in order to force nations to accept the next pandemic, if global elites are so foolish as to try and institute another round of medical authoritarianism.

    Much like 9/11, the lead-up to the Covid-19 “event” as well as its early stages remain clouded in secrecy, misinformation, and a web of lies. We were all shown images of dead Chinese citizens lying in the streets, although it’s unclear if this was from the virus, or even from the city of Wuhan or Hubei province in some cases. We were told the virus originated in a wet market in the city center, although now we know that link has never been proven, and was most likely thrown out as a hypothesis to satisfy public opinion, but more likely was a cynical intelligence ploy, a classic case of misdirection, especially since we know now that a secretive US medical intelligence unit admitted to tracking Covid in November 2019, and possibly much earlier.

    When a global pandemic was declared by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020, there were around 118,000 global cases and under 5,000 declared deaths. Relatively speaking those numbers were quite low and there was no reason to declare Sars-CoV-2 a public health emergency based on the figures. The estimated death rates were pulled completely out of thin air by a complete fraud, Neil Ferguson of the Imperial College of London, who broke lockdown rules which he helped to implement.

    PCR tests were declared the gold standard even though Kary Mullis, one of its inventors, declared publicly that the tests were not made to prove the existence of active infections. Further, the cycling for the tests was deliberately set too high, which resulted in untold amounts of false positive cases. Death rates miraculously shot up for “Covid-19” because doctors and coroners were pressured to list the disease as a cause of death even without a positive test; any “suspected case” could be listed. Flu, pneumonia, and every other respiratory disease magically disappeared and Covid filled in the gap, boosting the figures.

    Not to mention, the effect of declaring a global pandemic necessarily induced a stress response from the global population, which, along with the late-winter (March-April) time frame in the northern hemisphere, definitely contributed to the excess deaths. In fact, many established medical organizations freely admit that the lockdowns were responsible for a significant percentage (many say up to one third) of excess deaths, yet somehow have managed to absolve themselves of responsibility for clamoring for the lockdowns like trained seals. Along with the loss of jobs, home confinement, and lack of community, it should be noted that just as yelling fire in a crowded movie theater is almost certain to cause some sort of violent event, screaming “pandemic” through a 24/7 news cycle will do the same.

    Much like the daily reporting in the aftermath of 9/11, with nightly news explaining the nation’s risk of terror attacks as red, orange, or yellow, the daily cases, hospitalizations, and deaths; we all remember the 24/7 circus designed to frighten the population and maintain obedience. In this deliberately instilled, panic-stricken environment, the ruling class fundamentally altered the landscape: following a short downturn in the stock market, the digital economy and tech firms quickly rebounded and boomed- the tech sector, Big Pharma, web services companies, and basically all major corporations tangentially related to providing services on the internet struck gold.

    Within weeks, the need for a vaccine was trotted out. Many seasonal viruses come and go within months, yet somehow the medical establishment was able to figure out that only a vaccine would be able to stop this disease. The pharmaceutical companies were simply trying to profit off a new media-hyped and establishment-protected exaggerated pandemic. The fact that so many corners were cut, with no long-term studies, all to market unproven mRNA technology did not seem to faze at least half of the public, who openly clamored for lockdowns, vaccines, passports, and authoritarian measures which would be unthinkable a few years prior.

    Ridiculous masking mandates came into effect- masking outdoors was mandatory in many cities globally. No scientific basis was ever presented. Vaccine passports were likewise implemented even though natural immunity was found to be 27 times greater in some instances. Were health authorities simply trying to be overly cautious, or were there more sinister agendas at play? Were institutional medical practices imposed simply to make profits for pharmaceutical corporations?

    The simple fact that an unproven, dangerous vaccine was pushed and mandated at various levels- and that it was swallowed so comfortably by so many- simply shows how effective modern propaganda can be. No guns were needed- but you could lose your job, standing in the community, your friends, family, and social relations. A vast social experiment was conducted and anyone who dared to question “the science”, instead of blindly placing trust in a capitalist health system where profits have always taken precedence over people’s interests, was demonized.

    The frenzy around Covid-19 may indeed have had a bit of luck, at least here in the US. It was, of course, President Trump that downplayed the virus at the start. Therefore, anyone else aligning with his views on Covid was seen as a repugnant narcissist, an uncaring dullard willing to put corporate profits over human life. Imagine an alternate universe where Trump or a right-wing, authoritarian, US presidential figure like him took the virus extremely seriously, with Chinese-style lockdowns. Would people still have clamored for mandatory shots, and for friends, family, and co-workers to be excommunicated from society? Probably not, but we’ll never know.

    Vaccine passports threatened to segregate society based on a frankly fascist vision of the clean versus unclean. Anti-vaccine activists and regular people who refused to take an experimental injection were wrongly vilified. As many pointed out, the lack of reduction of transmission in the vaccinated made the whole prospect of compulsory vaccination pointless, unscientific, counterproductive, and just plain wrong.

    In November 2021, the conflict came to a head as Biden, speaking to the unvaccinated, remarked: “We’ve been patient. But our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us.” He proposed a plan for weekly testing or vaccination of all workers in every US company with over 100 employees, as well as a mandate for around 17 million health care workers.

    The Postmodern Subject: Manufacturing the Hyperreal

    The parallels between 9/11 and Covid-19 go far beyond their initial propaganda campaigns. Ultimately, part of the reason contemporary propaganda is so effective lies in the psychological structure of postmodern consciousness. Safety, stability, and security are seen as the final end products of mass civilization. Even one of the great charlatans of the 1990s, Francis Fukuyama, was astute enough to note the parallels between the postmodern subject and Nietzsche’s notion of the “last man”.

    Today, the veneer of idealistic concepts such as freedom, democracy, and equality which were supposed to undergird and inspire the collective to greater heights is wearing off in the face of massive global inequality, environmental disasters, climate catastrophe, and vicious media propaganda campaigns. As material living standards stagnate and crumble even in the developed world, increasing numbers of people are forced to compete for the same resources, perpetuating a scarcity-based mindset in the populace. Nearly all socioeconomic questions are framed as zero-sum, binary, black-and-white contests between good and evil where little nuance or questions of morality are allowed into the public arena.

    In this fragile social environment, it’s not surprising that citizens flock to ready-made narratives and propaganda campaigns. Ruling class propaganda is swallowed uncritically, precisely because it obfuscates, masks, and numbs the pain of living in late-stage capitalist collapse. One of the reasons Western liberals and even most of the “Left” fell for the farce that was the over-hyped, medical global Psy-op we call the Covid-19 pandemic is because the postmodern subject has now delved so far into the hyperreal; where symbols, social relations, and even science become cheap imitations of themselves. This is precisely why so many people, at the beginning of the lockdowns in March 2020, remarked that they “felt like they were living in a movie.” Media-induced pseudo-events can no longer be distinguished from severe medical emergencies today, just as twenty two years ago the mass panic after 9/11 produced the same fog of war and irrational hatred of the other.

    Imbued with meaning and purpose, the mask-wearing, jab-taking, “papers-please”, vaccine passport-bearing citizen could now feel a common cause with others in the community; artificially induced feelings of well-being conjured up through media organs and distilled into catchy slogans like “trust the science”. The sign-value of “doing the right thing” became a potent force; and this was weaponized by the establishment to suit various agendas.

    Many of these agendas were, in fact, actual conspiracies to: establish a permanent biosecurity state; set up a soft version of martial law where people’s movements are restricted and tracked; manufacture a false narrative of safe vaccines to bankroll a new industry for mRNA technologies, create a pathway to health passports, digital IDs, central bank digital currencies, and social credit systems; destroy the working class and middle class small businesses, and psychically prepare the global populace for a fall in living standards, a fall in access to goods, services, and resources, as well as rationing; provide an excuse to ban protests; continue the broad militarization of society, as well as the implementation of a global regime of ideological compliance and obedience.

    Big Pharma, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and the military and intelligence communities were colluding to fleece the poor and working classes- the fact that one can’t find a smoking gun for each of these interlocking and moving parts of the economy and government doesn’t refute this basic fact. All the while, corporate America continued enriching the one percent who gained trillions during the pandemic. Medical-authoritarian edicts were issued without any actual science behind them. Surveillance and population control have always been at the forefront of elite agendas for managing 21st century life. Global flows of people, information, goods, and revolutionary thought can no longer be stage-managed by tyrannical capitalist elites as conditions deteriorate around the planet. A show must be put on every ten to twenty years.

    The many faces and branding strategies of the global elite come into full view: the “new normal”, “own nothing and be happy”, “mask up”, “follow the science”, and the “lockstep” scenario for implementing planetary tyranny are seen by the ruling class as necessary steps to secure profits and control in increasingly unstable economic and political landscapes. Their techno-feudal dreams are our nightmares as the drudgery of capitalist labor and the vagaries of imperial war continue on. Our masters offer little respite for the masses of humanity, as they’ve imposed a totalizing spectacle. Cult-like behavior dominated after 9/11; overblown fears of terrorism and anti-Muslim racism permeated the country, just as a year or two ago, overblown fears of the virus and authoritarian-based dislike and instant dismissal of anyone skeptical of Big Pharma and the government continued to dominate.

    Even as the narrative has shifted, and the farce that was the reaction to a relatively mild virus receded, the potential for propaganda and fear campaigns against the global collective remains. It is precisely the qualities of postmodernity, such as the end of meta-narratives, de-realization of the subject, hyperreality, the nature of the spectacle, and pseudo-events, guided by ruling class interests, and imposed on us by capitalism, which allow for the recurrence of these paradigm-shifting forces to dominate social life. The parallels of two of the biggest geopolitical events of the 21st century, 9/11 and the Covid-19 health scare, reveal the foundations of global regimes of cruelty, domination, and oppression. And there certainly isn’t much “new” or “normal” about any of it.

  • So, the Germans are putting me on trial for my thoughtcrimes, and, apparently, I’ve already been found guilty and sentenced. Bear with me and I’ll try to explain.

    The Berlin District Court has issued a so-called “penalty order” or “order of punishment,” in which I am advised that I am now officially a criminal in Germany, for tweeting two Tweets. According to my attorney, a trial will now be scheduled, at which my attorney will argue the case before the judge that just issued the “order of punishment.” At this trial, the judge will listen attentively to the arguments my attorney has already made in writing, consider them carefully, and find me guilty, again. Then the judge will reaffirm the “order of punishment.”

    Go ahead, read that paragraph again.

    After my Kafkaesque trial has concluded, my attorney will file a series of appeals, which will fail, at which point I will have to decide whether to pay a fine of 3,600 Euros or go to German prison for 60 days.

    This process will take months, if not years, and will cost me God knows how much money in attorney’s fees, court costs, and then the €3,600 fine. Yes, I’m going to pay the fine. I am not going to German prison for 60 days. Life is too short, and I am getting older, and it wouldn’t really accomplish anything except making a narcissistic spectacle of myself.

    However, what will accomplish something (I don’t know how much, but something) is if I see the whole process through to the end, and shine as much light on it as I possibly can, because my case is just one of many such cases, and the real story here is not about me, it is about the crackdown on political dissent that is being carried out, not just here in Germany, but also in other countries all throughout the West.

    There are not many outlets reporting this story, not outlets with any significant reach. If you are reading this column, you’re probably aware of various alternative media outlets that are, but most of these outlets are quarantined off where “normal” people never have to see them, and are delegitimized as “unreliable sources” and purveyors of “misinformation,” and so on.

    There are a few bigger sources covering the story, which are also increasingly being branded “illegitimate,” Matt Taibbi’s Racket News, Michael Shellenberger’s Public, Glenn Greenwald’s Locals operations, and I’m sure I’m forgetting a few more, forgive me.

    The point is, unless you’re a charter member of the “science-denying, conspiracy-theorizing, hate-speech-speaking, anti-vaxxing, misinforming left or right extremist” club — i.e., people who read weird “malinformationist” publications like The Grayzone, OffGuardian, ZeroHedge, Dissident Voice, and Unlimited Hangout, and who are planning to vote for Bobby Kennedy, or, God help them, Donald Trump — you probably have no idea what I mean when I refer to “the crackdown on dissent” … or you do, and you think it’s just hunky-dory.

    I won’t mince words. The folks who think it’s hunky-dory are totalitarians. They’re fascists. They applaud the crackdown on dissent. They applaud the criminalization of dissent. They applaud the censorship of political speech, of any speech they do not agree with. They want their political opponents in prison. They want everyone who disagrees with them punished. They want people who offend them cancelled. They want anyone who refuses to conform to their official ideology erased.

    I have been calling these people “totalitarians” and “fascists” for a number of years now. I do not enjoy doing that. I’m not doing it gratuitously. Some of these people were my friends. I’m doing that, calling these people “fascists,” and comparing the nascent totalitarianism that is erupting all throughout the West to other, earlier totalitarian systems, like Stalinism (sorry, Marxist friends), and, yes, to fucking Nazi Germany, because, despite the fact that there are numerous differences, a lot of it is textbook totalitarianism. Naked textbook totalitarianism. There isn’t another, nicer word for it … or for those who are enthusiastically embracing it.

    I’m not going to present the evidence for that assertion again. I have done that ad nauseam, much of it in my latest book, which is banned by Amazon in several countries, and which bears a warning on other Amazon sites to “visit the WHO, the CDC,” or your local national health authority, “for the latest information on Covid-19 and vaccines” before you consider buying it, and the cover art of which is about to make me an official “hate criminal,” with a criminal record.

    That’s right, as I explained at greater length in a previous column, the pretext for this so-called “hate crime” prosecution is two Tweets I tweeted almost exactly one year ago of the cover art of that very same book, which just happens to document the rollout of the “New Normal” (i.e., the new totalitarianism) in 2020 and 2021.

    Here are the two Tweets that constitute my “hate crimes.”

    The one on the left reads, “The masks are ideological-conformity symbols. That is all they are. That is all they have ever been. Stop acting like they have ever been anything else, or get used to wearing them.” The one on the right is a quote by Karl Lauterbach, the Minister of Health of Germany. It reads “The masks always send out a signal.” The image is the cover art of my book.

    Say what you want about me and my writing. I can be “provocative,” and some of my political satire is bombastically over-the-top, but, as Matt Taibbi put it in a recent Racket News piece

    No amount of drugs exist that if consumed would allow a rational person to conclude that the writing of C.J. Hopkins furthers ‘the aims of a former National Socialist Organization.’ Agree with him or not, and I increasingly do, he used his imagery to compare the sweeping declarations of emergency power that were common around the world during the pandemic (and were particularly authoritarian in Germany) to Nazi tactics.

    And that is what I am being accused of, and “punished” for doing, by the German authorities; i.e., “furthering the aims of a National Socialist Organization” … basically, promoting Nazism, for tweeting those two Tweets above.

    There is no complex legal issue here. Yes, swastikas are banned in Germany if you’re a Nazi or promoting Nazism or Fascism, but they are permitted for the purposes of “civic education, countering anti-constitutional activities, art, science, research and education, coverage of historic and current events,” and similar purposes, according to German law. Do you seriously believe that the German hate-crime police and the prosecutor and the judge do not understand that? Of course, they understand that. They’re not complete imbeciles. They know the charges are just a pretext. And they know we know the charges are just a pretext. They do not care. They do not have to. They don’t even have to pretend to be following the rule of law. Not anymore. Because they know the majority of the masses are with them.

    The point of prosecutions like this (and much more serious and significant prosecutions, like that of Julian Assange, for example) is to send a message. The naked disregard for the rule of law, the blatant absurdity of the charges, the open contempt for democratic principles, is all part of the message. It’s not a message about the law. It’s a message about power. Who has it, and who doesn’t. And what happens to those who refuse to bow down to it.

    The message is not intended for me, or for more important figures like Julian Assange, or the many other less well-known dissidents that are being made examples of currently. We’re just the medium that conveys the message. The message is, and always has been, for you.

    I’m pretty sure you’re getting the message. The question is … how are you going to respond?

    I do not mean by “storming” your capitol. Please do not go out and get yourself shot. I mean, are you going to help shine a light on where we are headed, because it’s pretty fucking dark. Folks are offering to send me money to help with my legal costs, and I’m extremely grateful, because I’m going to need it (and here’s how to do that), but what I think we need to do is a little harder, and costs more, and is much more important.

    We need to talk to the totalitarians … yes, the ones who wanted to put us in camps. If we can’t get through to them, we’re probably screwed. And there is a window of opportunity to do that now. It’s not 2020 or 2021. The mass hysteria has worn off for a lot of people. I know, not all of them, but for some of them, a lot of them. Some of them are finally reachable.

    Take a chance, talk to them, the ones you know, or used to know. Try to get through to them. Not the bug-eyed, fanatical, foaming-at-the-mouth types who can’t wait for the return of the “emergency measures.” The other ones … you know the ones I mean. The ones who want out. You can see it in their eyes. Take a chance. Talk to these people. Totalitarianism, fascism, it is not an identity. It’s a mindset. No one is born a fascist. People can be deprogrammed. Some of them can. And, at this point, we need all the help we can get.

    So, if you’re one of the kind and generous folks who have been asking what you can do to help and offering to send me money, sure, go ahead and send me the money — thank you, I’ve been overwhelmed by your messages, and I’m sorry that I can’t personally respond to all of them — but also consider what I’m suggesting, if you can possibly bring yourself to do it. If you can’t, I completely understand. Trust me, I am still just as angry as you are. I am hurt. I feel betrayed and abandoned. I have a feeling that some of you feel that way too. So I know what I’m asking when I ask you to talk to the New Normal totalitarians, the ones who are reachable.

    Don’t try to convince them that you were right and they were wrong. Just shine a light on the road we’re on. Try to get them to recognize where we’re headed. Regardless of who was right and who was wrong about whatever, we are all going down this road together.

    Personally, I’d rather not ride it all the way to the end and face what is down there this time.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • It’s never a very enjoyable experience, facing the fact that you’ve been bamboozled. Realizing that you’ve fallen prey to an elaborate con, or PYSOP, is painful. It’s embarrassing. People feel ashamed. No one likes to see themselves as a sucker. It’s humiliating. It makes people angry. It makes them want to lash out at someone.

    The funny thing is, it usually isn’t the person who conned them that they want to lash out at. Doing that would only make them feel more ashamed. No, typically, who people want to lash out at, when they finally realize that they’ve been bamboozled, are the people who didn’t get bamboozled along with them, and who tried to warn them that they were being bamboozled.

    This phenomenon is occurring right now. I know this, because a certain sector of my readers are angrily unsubscribing from my Substack, and unfollowing me on Twitter, and so on. This happens more or less every time that people start to realize I was right about some PSYOP or con that I warned them about … Russiagate, Covid, and now “free-speech Twitter,” or “X,” or whatever we’re calling it today.

    Yes, that’s right, the jig is up. The bloom is off the rose. The cat is out of the bag. The party is over. The thrill is gone. Folks are finally starting to realize that “free-speech Twitter” was an elaborate con (or a PSYOP, depending on how paranoid you are), and they’re none too happy about this realization.

    So, they’re taking it out on blasphemers like me who tried to warn them about The Emperor Elonicus, and how the Twitter Files was a textbook limited hangout, and who pointed out how Musk shut it down as soon as it had served its purpose, and who referred to some of them as “Musk cultists,” and “suckers,” and who tweeted sarcastic Tweets like this …

    But I’m not writing this column to whine about that. It’s part of human nature. I get it.

    I’m writing this column because, maybe, now that folks are starting to face the fact that the whole “free-speech Twitter” thing was an elaborate con, or a trap, or a PSYOP, maybe, now, they can knock off the “Elon is our savior!” crap and try to pay attention to what is actually happening.

    Here’s an example of what is actually happening …

    Here’s a link to that Tweet with a recording of the Spaces thing. It’s Linda Yaccarino, X CEO, explaining how the new censorship system works. And here’s my favorite Yaccarino quote:

    Since acquisition, we have built brand-safety and content-moderation tools that have never before existed at this company. And we’ve introduced a new policy to [address?] your specific point about hate speech, called “Freedom of speech, not reach.

    What she’s talking about is the future of Internet censorship. Not the ham-fisted government-initiated censorship that people tend to think of when they think about censorship. Corporate censorship. “Free-market” censorship. What she’s talking about is the virtually imperceptible moment-by-moment manipulation of social-media content, search engine results, “reference” platforms like Wikipedia, everything most people see on the Internet. The corp-speak term is “visibility filtering.”

    From now on, instead of being suspended or deplatformed — which is bad PR, and only draws more attention to the deplatformed party — dissident voices will be “deamplified.” We will be “free” to post whatever we like, but we will be talking to no one, in a digital void, which most people won’t even know exists. “Red/blue” culture-war mud-slinging content, and other such harmless entertainment that keeps the masses infuriated and at each other’s throats, will of course be allowed, and will be “amplified” and “monetized.” But any serious form of political dissent or deviation from official narratives will be labelled “hate speech,” “disinformation,” “malinformation,” or simply “unhealthy.” Corporations like X, Meta, Alphabet, and Tencent will decide what is “healthy.” They will do so with algorithms, but not only with algorithms.

    Here’s Linda Yaccarino again, talking to CNBC this time …

    … X is committed to encouraging healthy behavior … 99.9% of all impressions are healthy … and we have an extraordinary team of people who are overseeing, hands on keyboards, monitoring, all day, every day, to make sure that that 99.9% of impressions remain at that number.

    I don’t know how much clearer she could make it. A team. Of people. Monitoring everything. Moment by moment. Every day. Not some badly-written algorithm. Not some secret cabal of mutinous Wokesters sabotaging Elon’s vision. Not the FBI. Not the CIA. Not the WEF. Not the Rothschilds. Just Twitter. Just X.

    This isn’t one of my “conspiracy theories.” There is absolutely nothing secret about it. It’s all explained right here, and here, and here, and here, on the Twitter Safety blog.

    Here’s one of the interstitial labels that Twitter might put on your “unhealthy” Tweet before they “deamplify” it into oblivion.

    See! Twitter is, like, totally committed to transparency!

    Of course, you have nothing to worry about if you are tweeting (or Xing?) “healthy” content. That “extraordinary Twitter-Safety team” that is monitoring everything “all day, every day,” would never “deamplify,” or “visibility-filter,” or otherwise censor political speech that isn’t “hate speech,” or … you know, use one of those interstitial labels to maliciously defame some troublesome author by deceiving people into thinking he was tweeting child pornography or graphic violent content, like bestiality, or necrophilia, or some other type of “age-restricted adult content,” as Twitter was doing to me until May of this year.

    I’m just joking, of course. They’re going to keep doing that. Not to me anymore, not that way. (After I embarrassed Ella Irwin publicly, they removed the fake labels and just deamplified me.) But they are going to keep doing it to other people. And not just X. All the corporations. They are going to keep “visibility filtering,” and “deamplifying,” and vaporizing dissent, and there is currently nothing we can do about it.

    Meanwhile, we (i.e., the “Free Speech Movement”) will be celebrating our “victory” over the bad apples in government who were forcing the poor, helpless global corporations to censor everyone until we took them to court and made them stop with our democratic rights! Then we’ll all live happily ever after!

    I don’t mean to shit on my friends and colleagues who are fighting hard against government censorship. At least they’re actually achieving something, while I’m just sitting here running my mouth. And the fight against government censorship is important. It is vitally important. And it has to be fought. I support it wholeheartedly, and I applaud them for fighting it. But it isn’t going to change what’s happening.

    What’s happening is, GloboCap, or Corporatism, or whatever you want to call the network of global corporations, governments, media, non-governmental governing entities, investment banks, global health authorities, academia, the culture industry, and other such entities that together comprise the decentralized system of power and ideology that is currently running the entire planet … whatever you want to call that, it’s going totalitarian.

    It has been going totalitarian, more or less openly, for the better part of the last three years. I’ve been covering this transition for quite a while now, and I have reiterated my analysis in many of my essays, and I published a book about it, which is possibly going to get me sent to prison here in Germany, so I’m not going to rehash it all again here (which should come as a relief to my regular readers). If you’re new to my work, you can read the book, or my essays, which are all on my blog and my Substack.

    For now, trust me, we are going totalitarian. That’s what all the “visibility filtering” is about. That’s what the “cancel culture” is about. That’s what all the mindless mass hysteria and the demonization and criminalization of dissent is about.

    It’s what the “Free-Speech Twitter” PSYOP is about. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether Elon Musk even knows what he is doing. The system that he is an integral part of is evolving. Musk will help it evolve or he will be replaced by someone who will help it evolve. Musk, Yaccarino, Zuckerberg, Pichai, Gates, Klaus Schwab, Wang Zhonglin, or pick your evil mastermind! These people, notwithstanding their very real power, are just components of a system, a global system, a system that is evolving toward totalitarianism, because it doesn’t really have anything else to do.

    I do not know how to stop this from happening, this evolution of global capitalism into a new form of totalitarianism, but one thing that occurs to me is, it might help matters if we slowed down a bit and tried to actually understand what is happening, like in the broader, historical, systemic sense, and maybe didn’t chomp down on every little piece of red-meat bait that gets dangled in our faces, and then whipped up into a frenzy over whatever the visibility-filtering team at Twitter, or X, or Meta, or Alphabet, or some other corporation, wants us whipped up over.

    Oh, and, maybe, next time some self-aggrandizing global-capitalist military contractor comes riding into town like Billionaire Jesus to save us from his buddies in the proverbial Big Club — you know, the one that you ain’t in — maybe folks could take a moment and at least hear me out before they start prostrating themselves at his feet.

    I’m not right about everything, of course, but I seem to be doing OK with this PSYOP stuff.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Get ready for the next phase of the government’s war on thought crimes: mental health round-ups and involuntary detentions.

    Under the guise of public health and safety, the government could use mental health care as a pretext for targeting and locking up dissidents, activists and anyone unfortunate enough to be placed on a government watch list.

    If we don’t nip this in the bud, and soon, this will become yet another pretext by which government officials can violate the First and Fourth Amendments at will.

    This is how it begins.

    In communities across the nation, police are being empowered to forcibly detain individuals they believe might be mentally ill, based solely on their own judgment, even if those individuals pose no danger to others.

    In New York City, for example, you could find yourself forcibly hospitalized for suspected mental illness if you carry “firmly held beliefs not congruent with cultural ideas,” exhibit a “willingness to engage in meaningful discussion,” have “excessive fears of specific stimuli,” or refuse “voluntary treatment recommendations.”

    While these programs are ostensibly aimed at getting the homeless off the streets, when combined with advances in mass surveillance technologies, artificial intelligence-powered programs that can track people by their biometrics and behavior, mental health sensor data (tracked by wearable data and monitored by government agencies such as HARPA), threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, pre-crime initiatives, red flag gun laws, and mental health first-aid programs aimed at training gatekeepers to identify who might pose a threat to public safety, they could well signal a tipping point in the government’s efforts to penalize those engaging in so-called “thought crimes.”

    As the AP reports, federal officials are already looking into how to add “‘identifiable patient datan,’ such as mental health, substance use and behavioral health information from group homes, shelters, jails, detox facilities and schools,” to its surveillance toolkit.

    Now, through the use of red flag laws, behavioral threat assessments, and pre-crime policing prevention programs, the groundwork is being laid that would allow the government to weaponize the label of mental illness as a means of exiling those whistleblowers, dissidents and freedom fighters who refuse to march in lockstep with its dictates.

    Of course, this is all part of a larger trend in American governance whereby dissent is criminalized and pathologized, and dissenters are censored, silenced, declared unfit for society, labelled dangerous or extremist, or turned into outcasts and exiled.

    Red flag gun laws (which authorize government officials to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others), are a perfect example of this mindset at work and the ramifications of where this could lead.

    As The Washington Post reports, these red flag gun laws “allow a family member, roommate, beau, law enforcement officer or any type of medical professional to file a petition [with a court] asking that a person’s home be temporarily cleared of firearms. It doesn’t require a mental-health diagnosis or an arrest.

    With these red flag gun laws, the stated intention is to disarm individuals who are potential threats.

    While in theory it appears perfectly reasonable to want to disarm individuals who are clearly suicidal and/or pose an “immediate danger” to themselves or others, where the problem arises is when you put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police.

    Remember, this is the same government that uses the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.

    This is the same government whose agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports using automated eyes and ears, social media, behavior sensing software, and citizen spies to identify potential threats.

    This is the same government that keeps re-upping the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the military to detain American citizens with no access to friends, family or the courts if the government believes them to be a threat.

    This is the same government that has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state.

    For instance, if you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you could be at the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.

    Moreover, as a New York Times editorial warns, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the police if you are afraid that the government is plotting to confiscate your firearms, if you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law, or if you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car.

    Let that sink in a moment.

    Now consider the ramifications of giving police that kind of authority in order to preemptively neutralize a potential threat, and you’ll understand why some might view these mental health round-ups with trepidation.

    No matter how well-meaning the politicians make these encroachments on our rights appear, in the right (or wrong) hands, benevolent plans can easily be put to malevolent purposes.

    Even the most well-intentioned government law or program can be—and has been—perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate purposes once profit and power are added to the equation.

    The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, the war on COVID-19: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the government’s hands. For instance, the very same mass surveillance technologies that were supposedly so necessary to fight the spread of COVID-19 are now being used to stifle dissent, persecute activists, harass marginalized communities, and link people’s health information to other surveillance and law enforcement tools.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we are moving fast down that slippery slope to an authoritarian society in which the only opinions, ideas and speech expressed are the ones permitted by the government and its corporate cohorts.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Our descent into City Airport was like the drop-ship scene in the movie Aliens. The BA CityFlyer Embraer 190, a narrow-body twin-engine airliner, rolled over into a 40-degree bank and started bucking like a mechanical bull. Simulated “chimes” began chiming frantically. Flight attendants bolted for their seats. The German businessman in the seat beside me, obviously a nervous flyer, immediately adopted the “brace” position. I gripped his shoulder reassuringly and shouted into his ear like a drunken redneck, “WE’RE ON AN EXPRESS ELEVATOR TO HELL! GOING DOWN!”

    And so began my latest trip to London. This time, I wasn’t there to talk to “the Left” or to hunt down endoparasitoid xenomorphs. I was there on Serious Conspiracy Theorist Business, which I explained to the chirpy MI6 operative posing as a “survey taker” that followed me out of Border Control asking questions about my “nation of residence” and my “experience with the passport scanners,” and so on. She was wearing one of those rubber “Mission Impossible” masks that made her look like a middle-aged British woman. I waited for an opportunity, head faked, juked right, and lost her in the crowd. As I entered the “Arrivals” lobby, I turned and shouted in her general direction, “NOT MY FIRST RODEO, MR. PHELPS!”

    I don’t know what was up with all the shouting. I’ve been experimenting with different types of medication for this sinus condition I’ve had for months. My Sinus Specialist diagnosed me with “long” or possibly “permanent Covid,” or some yet-to-be-named debilitating syndrome caused by some other bio-weapon that produces cold-and-flu-like symptoms and has a survival rate of 99.8 percent. So, maybe it was bad reaction to my meds. Whatever it was, I was feeling jumpy.

    And the climate-change apocalypse didn’t help. Emerging from the Tube in Westminster was like walking into an enormous open-air sauna. Bodies were lying all around on the sidewalks. AFP photographers in hazmat suits were taking pictures of the carnage. Herds of corpulent American tourists staggered through the streets in semi-fugue states sweating profusely and thumbing their phones like an invasion of alien albino hippos trying to call up to their UAPs and arrange for immediate emergency extraction. I pushed and shoved and elbowed my way down Tothill Street to my pod hotel, checked in, and proceeded to get hopelessly lost in the maze of identical Kubrickian hallways that eventually led me to my luxury pod, and cleaned myself up for the night’s festivities.

    What was I doing back in London in the middle of a heat wave? Well … OK, I’m allowed to tell you about it now. As you are probably aware, Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Russell Brand were doing this public event last Thursday …

    … but that’s not what I was really there for.

    Not that the Thursday event wasn’t fun. It was. Despite the rather pricey tickets, there was a good size house and spirits were high. Russell Brand was in top form, pouring out torrents of intellectual free-association like an English Neal Cassady and nailing the punchlines of all the jokes. Michael was also firing on all cylinders. He worked the house like a seasoned politician, whipping the crowd into a veritable frenzy of anti-totalitarian fervor. Stella Assange took the stage at one point and briefed us on the official crucifixion of her husband, which, sadly, now looks like a fait accompli. Matt, who had just made it to London that morning, and so was jet-lagged and delieriously sleep-deprived, dispensed with the speech he had rewritten on the plane, and just winged it, and somehow pulled it off … because that, as they say, is show biz.

    Here’s the money part of Matt’s speech, which he paraphrased in London (emphasis mine):

    What Michael and I were looking at was something new, an Internet-age approach to political control that uses brute digital force to alter reality itself. We certainly saw plenty of examples of censorship and de-platforming and government collaboration in those efforts. However, it’s clear that the idea behind the sweeping system of digital surveillance combined with thousands or even millions of subtle rewards and punishments built into the online experience, is to condition people to censor themselves.

    Early the next morning, Michael, Matt, and a secret cabal of international journalists, editors, organizers, political satirists, academics, and other Very Serious People whose names I am not at liberty to mention gathered in an undisclosed location and spent the better part of the day sharing harmful misinformation and strategizing about how to defeat (or marginally disrupt) the network of governments, Intelligence agencies, global corporations, NGOs, and so-called disinformation experts known as the Censorship Industrial Complex. There were delegates from the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, and other nominally sovereign countries.

    This heretofore clandestine meeting was conducted in what appeared to be a WWII-era air-raid shelter that had been converted into a private BDSM club under military-level OPSEC protocols (i.e., the meeting was conducted according to the protocols, not the architectural conversion). I’m not entirely sure why that was. We weren’t doing anything even remotely illegal. However, given that I’m under criminal investigation here in Germany for tweeting the cover art of my book, and the IRS’s sudden interest in Matt, and Kit Klarenberg’s recent experience in Luton, perhaps the abundance of caution was warranted. The last thing we needed was the UK Thought Police goose-stepping in like Basil Fawlty and dragging everyone off to Room 101.

    Anyway, that’s what I was actually there for. I had never met most of the people in attendance, except online on the double-encrypted Russian-backed dark-web conspiracy-theorist channels where we hatch our right-wing-extremist plots to defend people’s rights to freedom-of-speech and engage in other harmful anti-Democracy behaviors. I’m still not sure who I actually met in London, as we were all wearing identical Mickey-Mouse masks and speaking through portable voice modifiers. (In any secret meeting like this, you have to assume you’ve been infiltrated!)

    After the obligatory arguing about the agenda, we settled in and shared our country reports, which, unsurprisingly, were all variations on a theme. I won’t go into all the details. Michael Shellenberger’s non-profit has been tracking those developments. Matt Taibbi and Racket News are reporting it. Other alternative media outlets are reporting it. Millions of people all around the world are talking about it, writing about it, and arguing with each other about it. Your Twitter feed is probably full of it. Alex Gutentag just published a huge article about it.

    So, what is it, exactly, that is going on?

    The thing that was horrifying about listening to my colleagues reporting on the state of things in their countries — or, rather, the thing that should be horrifying but is becoming a mundane fact of life — is that more or less the same totalitarian program is being rolled out in countries throughout the world. The censorship. The official propaganda. The criminalization of dissent. The pathologization of dissent. The manipulation of our perception of reality. The coordinated transformation of the world into a smiley-faced neo-Orwellian police state in which politics no longer matters because society has been divided into two basic classes; i.e., “the normals,” who are prepared to mindlessly follow orders and parrot whatever official propaganda they are fed, and “the deviants,” or “extremists,” who are not.

    Seriously, all satire aside, think about the implications of that.

    As you sit there in whichever nominally sovereign country you’re sitting there reading this in, ask yourself, “how and why is this happening?” Then ask yourself, “why is it happening now?”

    If you do not have answers to those questions, it might behoove you to attempt to come up with some. That is basically what I’ve been trying to do — in a satirical and sometimes not so satirical manner — in these Consent Factory essays for the last seven years. I’m not going to summarize it all again here. I’ve done that, repeatedly, in my essays and books. I did it the last time I visited London to give a talk at the Real Left Conference.

    I did it again at this gathering in London. It did not go over all that well.

    The thing is, most of us are so laser-focused on the trees that we cannot see the forest. But our adversaries see the forest. They see the forest like fucking eagles. They own the fucking forest and everything in it. While we hop like squirrels from tree to tree, distracted from distraction by distraction, from limited hangout by limited hangout, they are building a big fucking fence around it and deploying the Forest-Ranger Sturmabteilung.

    I’m reminded of that infamous Karl Rove quote. He was referring to the USA, of course, but it was GloboCap (i.e., the Corporatocracy) that he was really speaking for whether he knew it or not …

    That’s not the way the world really works anymore … we’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors, and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.  [The New York Times Magazine]

    If we do not want to end up “studying that reality,” the global, pathologized-totalitarian reality that is being subtly and not so subtly implemented simultaneously in countries throughout the world, at some point we had better come up with some actual answers to those questions above.

    The supranational, globally-hegemonic, post-ideological system of power that runs our world — whatever you need to call it — has answers to those questions. It has a story. It is a story about a beneficent global empire governed by authoritative scientific experts who are trying to save the world from Whatever and protect everyone from “disinformation” and “harmful” speech, ideas, and so on. Like every good story, it has an antagonist. Us. We are the official enemy. Right, Left, libertarian, anarchist, Islamic fundamentalist, Christian fundamentalist … it does not make one iota of difference. There is only the Empire, and those who oppose it. The Empire does not give a shit why. It is conducting a global “Clear-and-Hold” operation, wiping out internal resistance and establishing ideological uniformity. It could not care less what you think you believe in. All it wants is mindless obedience and rote repetition of its propaganda. That’s how totalitarianism works.

    And there I go with my story again. If anyone has a different story that makes sense of the last seven years — and arguably the last 30 years — honestly, I would love to hear it. My story fills me with fear and loathing, but the only other coherent story I’m hearing at the moment is the Empire’s story, and I think we all know how that one ends.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Photo: W. Rospondek, Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp

    It feels like it’s finally over, doesn’t it, the whole “apocalyptic pandemic” thing? I mean, really, really over this time. Not like all those other times when you thought it was over, but it wasn’t over, and was like the end of those Alien movies, where it seems like Ripley has finally escaped, but the alien is hiding out in the shuttle, or the escape pod, or Ripley’s intestinal tract.

    But this time doesn’t feel like that. This time it feels like it’s really, really over. Go out and take a look around. Hardly anyone is wearing masks anymore (except where masks are mandatory) or being coerced into submitting to “vaccinations” (except where “vaccination” is mandatory), and the hordes of hate-drunk New Normal fanatics who demanded that “the Unvaccinated” be segregated, censored, fired from their jobs, and otherwise demonized and persecuted, have all fallen silent (except for those who haven’t).

    Everything is back to normal, right?

    Wrong. Everything is not back to normal. Everything is absolutely New Normal. What is over is the “shock-and-awe” phase, which was never meant to go on forever. It was always only meant to get us here.

    Where, you’re probably asking, is “here”? “Here” is a place where the new official ideology has been firmly established as our new “reality,” woven into the fabric of normal everyday life. No, not everywhere, just everywhere that matters. (Do you really think the global-capitalist ruling classes care what people in Lakeland, Florida, Elk River, Idaho, or some village in Sicily believe about “reality”?) Yes, most government restrictions have been lifted, mainly because they are no longer necessary, but in centers of power throughout the West, in political, corporate, and cultural spheres, in academia, the mainstream media, and so on, the New Normal has become “reality,” or, in other words, “just the way it is,” which is the ultimate goal of every ideology.

    For example, I just happened upon this “important COVID-19 information,” which you need to be aware of (and strictly adhere to) if you want to attend a performance at this Off-Broadway theater in New York City, where “everything is back to normal.”

    I could pull up countless further examples, but I don’t want to waste your time. At this point, it isn’t the mask and “vaccination” mandates themselves that are important. They are simply the symbols and rituals of the new official ideology, an ideology that has divided societies into two irreconcilable categories of people: (1) those who are prepared to conform their beliefs to the official narrative of the day, no matter how blatantly ridiculous it is, and otherwise click heels and follow the orders of the global-capitalist ruling establishment, no matter how destructive and fascistic they may be; and (2) those who are not prepared to do that.

    Let’s go ahead and call them “Normals” and “Deviants.” I think you know which one you are.

    This division of society into two opposing and irreconcilable classes of people cuts across and supersedes old political lines. There are Normals and Deviants on both the Left and the Right. The global-capitalist ruling establishment couldn’t care less whether you are a “progressive,” or a “conservative,” or a “libertarian,” or an “anarchist,” or whatever you call yourself. What they care about is whether you’re a Normal or a Deviant. What they care about is whether you will follow orders. What they care about is whether you are conforming your perceptions and behavior and thinking to their new “reality” … the hegemonic global-capitalist “reality” that has been gradually evolving for the last 30 years and is now entering its totalitarian stage.

    I’ve been writing about the evolution of global capitalism in my essays since 2016 — and since the early 1990s in my stage plays — so I’m not going to reiterate the whole story here. Readers who have just tuned into my political satire and commentary during the last two years can go back and read the essays in Trumpocalypse (2016-2017) and The War on Populism (2018-2019).

    The short version is, back in 2016, GloboCap was rolling along, destabilizing, restructuring, and privatizing the planet that it came into sole unchallenged possession of when the Soviet Union finally collapsed, and everything was hunky-dory, and then along came Brexit, Donald Trump, and the whole “populist” and neo-nationalist rebellion against globalism throughout the West. So, GloboCap needed to deal with that, which is what is has been doing for last six years … yes, the last six — not just two and a half — years.

    The War on Dissent didn’t start with Covid and it isn’t going to end with Covid. GloboCap (or “the Corporatocracy” if you prefer) has been delegitimizing, demonizing, and disappearing dissent and increasingly imposing ideological uniformity on Western society since 2016. The New Normal is just the latest stage of it. Once it gets done quashing this “populist” rebellion and imposing ideological uniformity on urban society throughout the West, it will go back to destabilizing, restructuring, and privatizing the rest of the world, which is what it was doing with the “War on Terror” (and other “democracy”-promoting projects) from 2001 to 2016.

    The goal of this global Gleichschaltung campaign is the goal of every totalitarian system; i.e., to render any and all deviance from its official ideology pathological. The nature of the deviance does not matter. The official ideology does not matter. (GloboCap has no fixed ideology. It can abruptly change its official “reality” from day to day, as we have experienced recently). What matters is one’s willingness or unwillingness to conform to whatever the official “reality” is, regardless of how ridiculous it is, and how many times it has been disproved, and sometimes even acknowledged as fiction by the very authorities who nonetheless continue to assert its “reality.”

    I’ll give you one more concrete example.

    After I happened upon the “Covid restrictions” (i.e., the social-segregation system) still being enforced by that Off-Broadway theater, I stumbled upon this article in Current Affairs about the oracle Yuval Noah Harari, the writer of which article mentions in passing that somewhere between 6 million and 12 million people have “died of Covid,” as if this were a fact, a fact that no one in their right mind would question. Which it is, officially, in our new “reality,” despite the fact (i.e., the actual fact) that — as even the “health authorities” have admitted — anyone who died of anything in a hospital after testing positive was recorded as a “Covid-19 death.”

    This is how “reality” (i.e., official “reality,” consensus “reality”) is manufactured and policed. It is manufactured and policed, not only by the media, corporations, governments, and non-governmental governing entities, but also (and, ultimately, more effectively) by the constant repetition of official narratives as unquestionable axiomatic facts.

    In our brave new totalitarian global-capitalist “reality,” anyone who questions or challenges such “facts” immediately renders oneself a “Deviant” and is excommunicated from “Normal” society. Seriously, just for fun, try to get a job at a corporation, or a university, or a part in a movie or a Broadway play, or a book deal, or a research grant, etc., while being honest about your beliefs about Covid. Or, if you’re a “respectable” journalist, you know, with literary and public-speaking agents, and book deals, and personal managers, and so on, go ahead, report the facts (i.e., the actual facts, which you know are there, but which you have been avoiding like the plague for the last two years), and watch your career get violently sucked down the drain like a turd in an airplane toilet.

    That last bit was meant for “urban professionals,” who still have careers, or are aspiring to careers, or are otherwise still invested in remaining members in good standing of “Normal” society; i.e., not you folks in Florida and Idaho, or my fellow literary and artistic “Deviants.”

    We have pretty much burned our bridges at this point. Unless you’re prepared to mindfuck yourself, and gaslight yourself, and confess, and convert, there’s no going back to “normal” society (which we couldn’t go back to anyway, on account of how it doesn’t exist anymore).

    I realize that a lot of folks have probably been looking forward to that … to the day when the Normals finally “wake up” and face the facts, and truth prevails, and we return to something resembling normality. It’s not going to happen. We’re not going back. The Normals are never going to “wake up.” Because they’re not asleep. They’re not hypnotized. They’re not going to “come to their senses” one day and take responsibility for the damage they have done. Sure, they will apologize for their “mistakes,” and admit that possibly they “overreacted,” but the official narrative of the Covid pandemic and the new “reality” it has ushered into being will remain in force, and they will defend both with their lives.

    Or, rather, they will defend both with our lives.

    If you think I’m being hyperbolic, well, consider the epithets GloboCap has conditioned the Normals to use to demonize us … “conspiracy theorist,” “science denier,” “insurrectionist,” “extremist,” “violent domestic terrorist.” None of which signify a political ideology or any political or critical position whatsoever. They signify deviation from the norm. Any type of deviation from the norm. They are tactical terms, devoid of meaning, designed to erase the political character of the diverse opposition to global-capitalism (or “globalism,” if you are touchy about the word “capitalism”), to lump us all into one big bucket of “deviance.”

    It is usually not a very good omen when nations — or totally unaccountable, supranational global-power systems — suddenly break out the “deviance bucket.” It is usually a sign that things are going to get ugly, ugly in a totalitarian fashion, which is precisely what has been happening for the past six years.

    Back in July of 2021, at the height of the fascistic New Normal hate frenzy, with the military enforcing “Covid restrictions,” a global segregation system being implemented, and people threatening to decapitate me for refusing to get “vaccinated,” I published a piece called The Road to Totalitarianism. We are still on that road. Both the Normals and we Deviants. We’ve been on that road for quite some time, longer than most of us probably realize. The weather has improved, slightly. The scenery out the window has changed. The destination has not. I haven’t seen any exits. Let me know if you do, will you?

    The post The Road to Totalitarianism (Revisited) first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Well, gosh, this is kind of embarrassing. For approximately the last two and a half years, I have been documenting, analyzing, and occasionally satirizing the so-called “New Normal,” i.e., the new, pathologized, official ideology that has been rolled out all across the planet by the global-capitalist ruling classes under the pretext of combating an apocalyptic pandemic … or at least that’s what I thought was going on.

    As it turns out, I was totally wrong.

    Apparently, the global-capitalist ruling establishment (or “GloboCap,” as I often refer to the unaccountable, supranational network of global corporations, banks, governments, and non-governmental governing entities that unaccountably govern our world) has not been rolling out a new official ideology, or pathologized form of totalitarianism, or not intentionally in any event.

    No one has been methodically gaslighting anyone, or terrorizing anyone with propaganda, or censoring or segregating anyone, or coercing anyone to get needlessly “vaccinated” with any sort of dangerous experimental drugs, or consciously conspiring with anyone to do anything.

    Everyone has simply been suffering from Mass Formation Hypnosis Disorder!

    I know, you probably find this hard to believe, especially because I have been making precisely the opposite case for over two years now, but I saw it on the Alex Jones show! Mattias Desmet, a professor from Belgium, and “the world’s leading expert” on this new disorder, explained it all in meticulous detail.

    According to Desmet, the way this disorder works is, people feel “lonely and isolated,” which makes them feel angry, but they don’t have anything or anyone to unleash their anger on, so they form a mass and hypnotize each other, and invent a new fanatical ideology that they all fanatically hypnotically believe in, which, at that point, their rulers, who are also hypnotized, have no choice but to go full-totalitarian, and hypnotize everyone even more, because that is what the hypnotized mass demands, so that they can finally unleash their anger on someone; i.e., those who have managed to avoid being hypnotized (one assumes with some special anti-hypnosis technology, but I don’t think Professor Desmet explained that part).

    And, OK, before you hypnosis deniers start sending me emails denying the power of hypnosis to totally totalitarianize society, listen to Professor Desmet explain how surgeons in Belgium are routinely performing open-heart surgery on hypnotized patients without any anesthetic whatsoever! They just saw right through their breastbones with a sternum saw, ratchet open their rib cages with a sternal retractor, and start slicing into the patients’ hearts … and these patients don’t even flinch or anything! He has witnessed this with his own two eyes!

    Or, all right, it seems he hasn’t actually witnessed this with his own two eyes. It seems he was actually just lying when he said that, which he confessed to in a lengthy Facebook post (after people pointed out that he had lied) in which he publicly wondered why he had lied, and then rationalized his lie with various excuses, and posted several misleading links in an attempt to suggest that he hadn’t actually lied, despite the fact that he had just admitted he did, and just generally tried to muddy the waters with a lot of awkward psychobabble.

    But I don’t mean to cast aspersions. Professor Desmet is, after all, “the world’s leading expert” on “Mass Formation Psychosis” or simply “Mass Formation” or whatever you want to call this fairy tale that he and others have been peddling, not just on clown shows like Alex Jones’, but to massive audiences like Tucker Carlson’s

    Seriously now, I have been aware of Desmet’s theory for some time, but I had mostly held my tongue about it because (a) I considered it relatively harmless, and (b) I’m generally reluctant to tear another vocal opponent of the New Normal a new asshole. We get enough of that from the New Normal “fact checkers.” However, unfortunately, this “mass hypnosis” gibberish has gained enough traction that it has now become dangerous, so I need to do a little new-asshole-tearing. (Fanatical fans of Professor Desmet will probably want to navigate away at this point.)

    Ready? OK, here we go.

    What we’ve been experiencing for the past two and a half years — and arguably the last six and a half years — is not the result of “mass hypnosis.” The global-capitalist ruling establishment is destabilizing and restructuring societies, globally. The people that staged and published this photograph in January 2020 and lied to the masses about the Covid death rate (i.e., 3.4%) a few months later were not mass-hypnotized. They knew what they were doing.

    Likewise, the people who went New Normal (i.e., the vast majority of most societies) were not “mass hypnotized” or in some kind of trance. They were simply looking out for themselves by conforming to the new official “reality.” This is standard behavior in totalitarian systems, and cults, and even non-totalitarian systems. I explained it this way in a recent interview

    Totalitarianism can be imposed on any society if the government, or whatever structure rules it, controls the essential elements of power (i.e., the military, the police, the media, the culture industry, etc.). Once the transition to totalitarianism begins, you can count on roughly two thirds of the society either embracing it or acquiescing to it, not because they are in some vulnerable psychological state, but rather because they correctly perceive which way the wind is blowing and they don’t want to challenge the totalitarian regime and be punished for doing so. They are not hypnotized or under any other kind of spell. It’s pure survival instinct. … Not to put too fine a point on it, but most people are either perfectly content to conform to whatever type of society those in power impose on them as long as their basic needs are met, or they are not content [to do so], but they are cowards, so they stand by in silence. I don’t mean that as a judgment or an insult. Cowardice and the ability to abandon one’s principles (or not having any principles in the first place) are very positive traits to have if your goal is survival. When a society goes totalitarian or is otherwise occupied and radically transformed, it’s the rebels and dissidents who get lined up against the wall and shot, not the cowards and collaborators.

    I realize how harsh that sounds. It’s meant to, and at the same time, it isn’t. We are, all of us, capable of such cowardice and betrayal of our fundamental principles, given the right set of circumstances. Everyone has a breaking point. If you haven’t experienced yours yet … well, I hope you never do.

    The point is, we are dealing with questions of power, not a psychological condition. Desmet’s theory pathologizes the political essence of totalitarianism, just like the official New Normal narrative pathologizes and displaces its political character, rendering it immune to political opposition, and rendering its opponents “conspiracy theorists,” or “paranoid,” or otherwise divorced from “reality,” thus stripping us of political legitimacy.

    In this “Mass Formation” fairy tale, the political conflict disappears. The totalitarian system and those who resist it are replaced by a psychiatrist and a psychiatric patient. In this story, there is no one and nothing to fight. We just need to find a “cure” or a “treatment” for this bizarre new psychiatric disorder that keeps causing the masses to hypnotize each other and invent some new fanatical totalitarian ideology in order to alleviate the pent-up frustration caused by their loneliness and isolation by unleashing their rage on unhypnotized persons!

    Or whatever … maybe I don’t understand the nuances of “Mass Formation” theory. I’m not a professional psychologist or anything. I’m sure one or two of Professor Desmet’s fans will be happy to explain it all to me, if they’re not too busy undergoing open-heart surgery without anesthetic. I wouldn’t want to interfere with that!

    The post Mass Formation Hypnosis Disorder first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • On 1 September, 1941, Chief of Reich Security Reinhard Heydrich, one of the most fanatical, mass-murdering Nazis, issued a now notorious decree ordering Jews above the age of six to wear an identifying badge in public. The Jewish Badge, a yellow Star of David with the word “Jew” inscribed inside the star, was meant to stigmatize and humiliate the Jews and was also used to segregate them and monitor and control their movements.

    Nothing like that is happening currently, especially not in New Normal Germany.

    What is happening currently in New Normal Germany is the fascist fanatics in control of the government are rewriting the “Infection Protection Act,” again — as they have been doing repeatedly for the last two years — in order to allow themselves to continue to violate the German constitution (the “Grundgesetz) and rule the nation by arbitrary decree under the guise of “protecting the public health.”

    This repeatedly revised “Infection Protection Act” — which has granted the government of New Normal Germany the authority to order lockdowns, curfews, the outlawing of protests against the New Normal, the mandatory wearing of medical-looking masks, the segregation and persecution of “the Unvaccinated“, etc. — is, of course. in no way remotely comparable to the “Enabling Act of 1933,” which granted the government of Nazi Germany the authority to issue whatever decrees it wanted under the guise of “remedying the distress of the people.”

    There is absolutely no similarity whatsoever between these two pieces of legislation.

    I mean, look at this “Autumn/Winter Plan” for the new revision of the “Infection Protection Act,” which will remain in effect from October until Easter, and which government officials and state propagandists (a/k/a the German media) are likening to “snow chain ordinances.”

    There is absolutely nothing creepily fascistic or remotely Nazi about this plan.

    Sorry, it’s in German. Allow me to translate.

    On planes and trains and at the airports and train stations, everyone will be forced to wear doggy-snout masks — i.e., FFP2 “Filtering Face Pieces” as defined by the EN 149 standard — except for the staff of the airports and train stations, and the flight attendants, conductors, etc., who will only be forced to wear “medical-looking masks.” In hospitals, clinics, doctors’ offices, nursing homes and other healthcare facilities, everyone, including the staff, will not only be forced to wear the dog-snout masks but they will also be forced to submit to testing, unless they can provide proof of “vaccination” (or recovery, which also means being tested) within the previous three-month period. On the premises of private companies; i.e., offices, factories, warehouses, and so on, the previously rescinded Arbeitsschutzverordnung (“Corona Occupational Safety Ordinance”) — masks, tests, forced “vaccinations,” “social distancing,” plastic barriers, etc. — will go back into effect in October and will remain in effect until the Easter holidays.

    The individual federal states will be empowered to impose other senseless “restrictions,” like general mask mandates in shops, restaurants, and every other type of “interior spaces,” limits on the number of people who can gather publicly or in their homes, and mandatory masks for kids in schools and testing in kindergartens and daycare facilities. In restaurants, bars, theaters, museums, sports facilities, and pretty much everywhere else in society, the federal states can demand that people show proof of recent “vaccination” or recovery to be exempted from having to wear a mask.

    OK, allow me to translate again.

    What that last part means is that anyone who refuses to submit to repeated “vaccination” or testing will be forced to wear a mask in public to identify themselves as “Unvaccinated” (i.e., the New Normal Reich’s official “Untermenschen”).

    So, OK, maybe it’s a little creepily fascistic and not as non-Nazi as I suggested above. I put it this way in a recent tweet …

    Needless to say, this could get confusing, as the New Normals are extremely attached to their masks, which they’ve been wearing — like Nazis wore swastika lapel pins — to publicly signal their “solidarity” (i.e., mindless conformity to the new official ideology) for going on the last two and half years. And now the masks will function like the “Jewish Badges” with the Star of David that the Nazis forced the Jews to wear, except on public transportation, and planes and trains, unless the federal states decide to force everyone to wear masks everywhere, in which case … well, you get the general idea.

    Still, the fact that everyone will have to present their “vaccination papers” (or their “recovery papers”) to enter a restaurant, or a bar, or go to the cinema or the theater, and, basically, to do anything else in society, should make up for the mask confusion. I mean, what kind of a fascist society would it be if you didn’t have to show your “papers” to some beady-eyed goon to get a cup of coffee?

    Now, before you report me to the BfV; i.e., Germany’s federal domestic intelligence agency, for “relativizing the Holocaust” and “delegitimizing the democratic state,” both of which are crimes here in Germany, I want to say, again, for the record, that I do not advocate using the yellow Star of David to protest the New Normal (as in the photo in the tweet above). I think it is foolish, and counterproductive. The New Normal has nothing to do with the Holocaust, or the Jews, or even Nazism, per se.

    But let’s be clear about what’s happening in Germany.

    What is happening is, a new official ideology is being imposed on society. It is being imposed on society by force. And now, those of us who refuse to conform to it will be ordered to walk around in public wearing visible symbols of our non-conformity.

    I’m sorry, but the parallels are undeniable.

    This new official ideology has nothing to do with a respiratory virus or any other public health threat.  At this point, I do not have to repeat this argument.  The majority of countries around the world have finally rescinded their “emergency measures” and acknowledged the facts that we “conspiracy theorists” have been citing for the past two and a half years, and that we have been relentlessly demonized and censored for citing.

    Not even Germany’s recent independent evaluation of its “Corona Measures” could produce any evidence supporting their effectiveness. Seriously, the New Normal German authorities are basing their claim for the efficacy of mask mandates on “the Golden Syrian Hamster Model.” (You probably think I’m joking, but I’m not.) And Karl Lauterbach, the fanatical Minister of Health, has openly stated that forcing “the Unvaccinated” to wear masks in public is a “motivation” tactic to harass them into following orders and submitting to a “vaccination” that even the German government now admits has killed or seriously injured tens of thousands of people, at minimum, in Germany.

    No, this new official ideology, the New Normal — which is still very much in effect in places like Germany, China, Canada, Australia, New York, California, etc. — is nakedly, undeniably, purely ideological. It is based, not on facts, but belief. It is a belief system, as is every other ideology. It is essentially no different than an official religion … one which demonizes and persecutes all other religions, and non-religions, and all other belief systems.

    According to this new official belief system, those of us who maintain different beliefs, and refuse to convert to the new official beliefs (or pretend to convert to the new official beliefs), are dangerous, foreign elements in society. And thus, from now on, in New Normal Germany, we will be forced to wear a visible symbol of our different beliefs (our “otherness”) in public, so that the authorities and the Good German masses will be able to identify us.

    Is any of this sounding vaguely familiar?

    I’m fairly certain that someone will read this (and see the tweets I included above) and report me for “relativizing the Holocaust.” For the record, I am not “relativizing the Holocaust.” I’m comparing one totalitarian system to another. Yes, Nazi Germany and New Normal Germany are two very different totalitarian systems, and I have outlined their essential differences and similarities, but, come on, this is not that fucking hard. In Nazi Germany, the Jews were the scapegoats. In New Normal Germany, it’s “the Unvaccinated.”

    How much more blatant does it have to get before people stop pretending that this isn’t what it is? Do the authorities have to literally put us in camps? How many more people have to die or be seriously injured by “vaccinations” they did not need but were forced to submit to? I’m not talking to the New Normals now, nor to the people who have been fighting this all along. I’m talking to the people who see what is happening, and are horrified by what is happening, but, for whatever reasons, have refused to speak out … and, yes, I know there are very good reasons. Some of you have families to support, and careers to protect, and, seriously, I get it. But how far does it have to go? At what point do you feel you have to speak out regardless of the personal and professional consequences?

    Maybe take some time and meditate on that.

    Oh, and here’s a little visual aid that might help folks with their meditations. It’s some graffiti that someone painted on the wall of a courtyard here in New Normal Germany, in the Autumn of 2021, I think. I posted it back then, but it didn’t make much of an impression. Perhaps it will make one now.

    I’ll translate. It reads “GAS THE UNVACCINATED.”

    The post The Unvaccinated Question (Revisited) first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • I know, you’re probably sick and tired of hearing about the Rise of the New Normal Reich. You want it to be over. So do I. It isn’t over … not by a long shot. It might seem like it’s over where you are. I imagine it does if you live in Florida, or in Texas, or the UK, or Sweden, or Croatia, or in some other country or state in which the majority of the “Covid restrictions” have been lifted, or perhaps were never introduced in the first place. If that’s the case, I’m happy for you.

    I happen to live in New Normal Germany, the current tip of the New Normal spear, or one of the tips of one of its spears (or mRNA-laced hypodermic needles), the others being countries and states like Canada, China, Australia, New York, California, and assorted other hotbeds of New Normalism. If you live in one of these New Normal strongholds, as I do, you are acutely aware of how it is not over.

    Yes, the Covidian Cult is kaput. The spell has been broken. Only the most insanely fanatical New Normal cultists continue to walk around in public in their plague masks and homemade hazmat suits. But the New Normal Reich is not kaput. The New Normal Reich is being … well, normalized. The masses are being systematically conditioned to accept the biosecurity police state that the global-capitalist ruling classes have been implementing for the last three years. Despite the now irrefutable evidence that the “vaccines” do not prevent transmission of the virus, “the Unvaccinated” are still being segregated, banned from working, attending school, competing in major sporting events, and so on. People are still being forced to wear masks — the symbol of the New Normal Reich — on planes, trains, public transport, in doctors offices, hospitals, et cetera. Here, there, and everywhere, New Normal symbols and social rituals are being permanently integrated into everyday life.

    These symbols and rituals are more than just the window dressing of the New Normal Reich. They are how our new “reality” is being created and maintained. The masses are like actors being forced to emotionally invest in the “reality” of an absurdist stage play. The more they repeat the performance, the more convincing the fictional “reality” becomes, regardless of how patently absurd it is … and it is becoming more and more absurd.

    For example, at the airports in New Normal Canada, citizens attempting to enter their own country without the so-called “ArriveCAN” app on their smartphones to provide proof of their “vaccination status” (including octogenarians who do not own smartphones) are subjected to extended absurdist harassment by imbecilic New Normal clowns in red vests. Here in New Normal Germany, the government is preparing to force everyone to wear medical-looking masks in public every Autumn and Winter, not just on account of the “Apocalyptic Plague” but also on account of the normal Winter flu. The pretext doesn’t really matter anymore. The point is the display of ideological uniformity.

    Meanwhile, Germany’s Federal Ministry of Health was forced to publish a limited hangout regarding “vaccination” injuries and deaths. They did it classic Goebbelsian fashion.

    Apparently, they didn’t like the actual data on the number of serious adverse effects, so they decided to just lie about them on Twitter. (Serious adverse effects were reported in roughly 1 in 5,000 doses, not 1 in 5,000 “vaccinated” people. Approximately 184,000,000 doses have been administered to people in Germany and … well, you can do the math.) Naturally, the Twitter Corporation has been slapping its fake “misleading” warning on retweets pointing out the Ministry of Health’s lie, because the truth is whatever the Corporatocracy says it is, and everything else is “disinformation.”

    If you think I’m being harsh or hyperbolic in characterizing the Ministry’s lie as a lie, keep in mind that the German Minister of Health, Karl Lauterbach, has been lying, repeatedly, to the German public for over two years now. Here he is lying about the “side-effects-free vaccines” in August 2021, right around the time he ordered the segregation of “the Unvaccinated” and fomented hatred of anyone who refused to conform to New Normal ideology …

    And now, tens of thousands of people in Germany — at minimum, as vaccine adverse-effects have always been significantly under-reported — have been seriously injured or … you know, killed, because Karl and his fascistic New Normal cronies lied to everyone, over and over, and the German media repeated those lies, and the New Normal masses repeated those lies, and the government and global corporations censored, deplatformed, and demonized those of us who challenged those lies as “far-right extremists,” “science deniers,” “anti-vaxxers,” and so on.

    And these are just a few recent examples. I don’t think I need to provide an exhaustive list. At this point, you are either well aware and capable of facing what’s happening, or you’re not, in which case you are telling yourself whatever you need to tell yourself in order to pretend that what is happening isn’t happening.

    If that is what you’re doing, I cannot help you. Nothing I write or say will get through to you. Facts will not make any difference to you. Government and health officials and media talking heads will lie to your face, over and over, and get caught lying, and you will go on adamantly repeating their lies, not because you do not understand that they are lies, but because you do not care that they are lies. You do not care that you are killing and injuring countless people with your officially-approved lies, with your cowardice, with your mindless obedience. Your goal is to remain within the bounds of “normality,” and not get called a lot of names and get ostracized from your social circle, and if a lot of people have to die and you have to abandon any semblance of integrity and intellectual honesty to achieve that, so be it.

    As for the rest of us, those who are aware of what’s happening and are doing our best to face what’s happening, even if we don’t understand what’s happening, or disagree about why it’s happening, I wish I had something clever to offer in terms of how to make it stop happening.

    I don’t, other than what I’ve been advocating; i.e., organized, non-violent civil disobedience, like what the Canadian truckers did in Ottawa, like what the Dutch farmers are doing in The Netherlands. Columns like this, social media memes, sporadic Sunday mass demonstrations, and individual acts of non-compliance are not going to stop the New Normal juggernaut. The normalization of the New Normal will continue, the pathologization of society will continue, the destabilization and restructuring of the global economy will continue, unless something truly historic happens and the workers of the world unite (or if the sovereign individuals of the world unite if “workers” sounds too Commie to you) and jam a monkey wrench into the New Normal machinery.

    The chances of that happening are slim. In my 60 years of corporeal existence, I have never experienced a time when people were this alienated, hopeless, and at each other’s throats. I can’t recall a time when people were this humorless, sanctimonious, and vicious … and I am talking about the people who could make a difference, not the order-following New Normal masses. If there was ever a time when the working classes needed to set aside their political differences and flex their collective muscles, this is it, but most of us are too busy pissing on each other to score cheap points on Twitter, or Gettr, or Telegram, or, you know, wherever.

    I’m sorry to end on such a pessimistic note … I’m recovering from the Apocalyptic Plague, so perhaps I’m just feeling overly gloomy. Probably everything will be just fine, and people will eventually come to their senses, and the global-capitalist ruling classes will cancel the whole New Normal thing, and no one needs to organize any kind of international non-violent civil-disobedience campaign, and, one day, we’ll wake up and check our phones and discover that there was no New Normal Reich, and that no one ever died because of a vaccine, and we will check our social credit status, and tell our smart-kitchens to start cooking our crickets, and pull up the War-of-the-Day on our ViewScreens so we can root for whoever we were told to root for … and everything will finally be “normal” again.

    The post The Normalization of The New Normal Reich first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • It’s truly amazing that the capitalists see the end of the world — human species, I suppose — way before they can imagine the end of capitalism. You know, that perfect system of slavery then, slavery now, and even more draconian slavery for the future. That sort is not based on whips, 15 hours a day toiling, not run by the masters of the Anglo Saxon variety raping and starving. The new-new slavery is capitalism on a digital bender. Food, water, activities, housing (not a house, but housing in the very generic term such as tents or mini-sheds), where one can live, jobs, the like. All will be dictated, and you and I will own nothing!

    If the mRNA vax dance has its way, more and more dead bodies, warped minds, sterilized wombs, dropping sperm counts, and zygotes from hell might end humanity, and, well, capitalism will live on in the metaverse, in the global computer. That old eugenics drama — corona bioweapons — but masked up with the Fauci’s and the Gates and those presidents and dictators following the jab jab lies will do it by death through 2 billion jabs.

    It’s amazing the lies fed us, and amazing how incredibly stupid we are as a collective. As if this SARS-CoV2 wasn’t/isn’t a fix, isn’t a messed with and serialized and gain of function facilitated “virus.” As if all those true ways to stop viral loads building up in the mucous cavities, in the lungs, in the cells are suddenly treated like snake oil. Imagine that, all the naturopathy and preventative potients, all thrown out the window. How can you get your pudding if you don’t eat your media meat (propaganda)?

    Daily, it is me meeting people who have zero idea about world history or about the USA, and I am not just talking about Ukraine and that part of the neighborhood. We are talking about our own neck of the woods, lands stolen by the white man, man. So much mind bleaching occurs in k12. And in higher education!

    Native Land.

    I hear people talking to me about the visitors here, the vacationers, who just have that entitled disease of myopia. “Yeah, I talk to my customers that not all is rosy here on the coast, that there are homeless people big time. They say, ‘What homeless people? I don’t see any.’ They say that while looking out the window at the bay where several men are hanging out smoking and just chilling. Homeless men. These tourists are looking right through them.”

    That’s the issue, no, seeing right through or just not noticing what’s around us. Out of sight, well, this time, In Plain Sight, Out of Mind. What did the original people of Mexico see when those ships entered the tidal shore? Nothing? Because ships were not of their culture, their natural order of things.

    (Why did Herman Cortez burn his ships when he invaded Mexico?)

    Then, another friend in Vancouver, WA, with his Handy Man service, and business is booming, as in mold and mildew mitigation and tear outs, he’s struggling to pay the taxman, to get all his bills and receipts in order. He’ll never have good credit score (sic) to buy a home. You know, AmeriKa, giving missiles and bombs and guns to Ukraine with, well, you get it, no real accounting, receipts, etc. All those things on the dark web, black market, gone. So, my friend will have taxes to pay, and fines, double taxes, penalties, late fees to pay, and weathering admonishments, threats. He finds it difficult to get young men and women to sign on for $20 an hour for all the work he undertakes. So he resorts to hiring, well, some of those very same people mentioned above: the homeless.

    Many are carless because of the fact they have had their driver’s licenses revoked for unpaid bills — child support, court fines, etc. There are almost 10 million in the USA with driver’s license revocation because of unpaid fines, or unpaid child support. Not because of driving under the influence of whatever.

    Debt-related driving restrictions make everyday life impossible. Currently, more than half of U.S. states still suspend, revoke or refuse to renew driver’s licenses for unpaid traffic, toll, misdemeanor and felony fines and fees. The result: millions of people are struggling to survive with debt-related driving restrictions.

    License suspensions are the primary way debt-related driving restrictions occur in the United States. However, many states restrict registrations, or other administrative automobile requirements, as a counterproductive means of coercing debt payments for unpaid parking, tolls and other court fines and fees. (Source)

    Check out the site,

    As I repeat incessantly — this is just one of a million things about capitalism that demonstrates the system is not for or about The People, We the People. This is just one of a million absurdities in our system. And there is always a gravy train for endless systems of oppression and bureaucracies and middle men and women. The entire systems of pain and double-pain in the USA is about debt, managing people’s pain, laying on shame and setting forth endless struggle to make it (pay for) in capitalism. So it makes sense in a sadistic way to take away the only viable thing — a car — for these people to get to work to pay these fines or child support.

    We know the fines are highway robbery, from the point of origin, to the add-ons and the endless late fees and penalties and handling fees.

    Best to listen to Michael Parenti to understand this ugly ugly system, that for many, will never die. Imagine, capitalism will never die! Over the human species dead body.

    Here: “If value is to be extracted from the labour of the many, to go into the pockets of the few, this system has to be maintained. The conditions of hegemony must constantly be refortified. And that’s something that no one IBM or General Motors could do for itself… to put it simply the function of the capitalist state is to sustain the capitalist order. And it must consciously be doing that.” Michael John Parenti is a political scientist who was raised by an Italian-American working class family in the East Harlem neighborhood of New York City. He received an M.A. from Brown University and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University.

    Here, just the essence of it all, capitalism:

    And then, my real profession, in the old days, was journalism. I’ve heard all of my life that journalists are not real, that all of it is yellow journalism, that even the earnest work of a young reporter in a small town is smeared with the Yellow in Yellow Journalism. Bullshit!

    This is, of course, a lie, a broad brush stroke lie. Not that journalists are somehow immune from the reality of American Exceptionalism and the Lie after Lie of what this country is and was about. Yes, Mom, Flag and Apple Pie.

    Yet, that is not so true, that regular ethical journalists want to lie or damage or invent fake news. When I was learning the craft of journalism, we had a code of ethics. We worked hard as college newspaper reporters and editors to get the news of the campus, publicizing some amazing students and programs and departments, and to get the bead on the city, in this case, Tucson. The neighborhood, the people, the police beat, all the unique things that newspapers can do to publicize the goings on. Yes, school boards and city councils and all the college, in this case, University of Arizona, things that make a university like this one a mini-town, we tried to cover fairly.

    We were not after smear campaigns. We were not attempting to do hit pieces on people. We had a code of ethics. Really:

    Preamble

    Members of the Society of Professional Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. Ethical journalism strives to ensure the free exchange of information that is accurate, fair and thorough. An ethical journalist acts with integrity.

    The Society declares these four principles as the foundation of ethical journalism and encourages their use in its practice by all people in all media.


    Seek Truth and
    Report It

    Ethical journalism should be accurate and fair. Journalists should be honest and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.

    Journalists should:


    Minimize Harm

    Ethical journalism treats sources, subjects, colleagues and members of the public as human beings deserving of respect.

    Journalists should:


    Act Independently

    The highest and primary obligation of ethical journalism is to serve the public.

    Journalists should:


    Be Accountable and Transparent

    Ethical journalism means taking responsibility for one’s work and explaining one’s decisions to the public.

    Journalists should:

    “The SPJ Code of Ethics is a statement of abiding principles supported by explanations and position papers that address changing journalistic practices. It is not a set of rules, rather a guide that encourages all who engage in journalism to take responsibility for the information they provide, regardless of medium. The code should be read as a whole; individual principles should not be taken out of context. It is not, nor can it be under the First Amendment, legally enforceable.”

    For an expanded explanation, please follow this link.


    Now, I know of so many other professions with codes of ethics, but so many have few ethics, or the profession is based on unethical foundations. Even as new reporters, we understood power, that is, the powers that are, and that powers that shouldn’t be. The headlines and stories about malfeasance or wrong doing, those could literally kill people. We knew the value of sources, and in our small town journalism work — we worked on a lab paper in Tombstone, Arizona, of all places — we had a duty to the people in that town. Did we want to break stories? Of course. Did we want to uncover wrong doing, or some sensational story? Yep. But our goal was simple news reporting and news writing. We had so many beats, and each beat had it’s own culture — arts, music, sports, entertainment, city, state, police, business, etc. But as students who were paid through student association money and who did not have direct oversight from the journalism department; we took our jobs seriously. We went to conferences, we did internships, we met with all sorts of people to understand the needs and wants of the small town, the big town, etc. We had advertising, and we were a big part of the community’s lifeblood: where communities get their news and information.

    We could break a story about the football coach’s unethical practice of pocketing unused travel (airline) vouchers, and we could see how much cost overruns the new engineering building was entailing. Each one of those controversial pieces we spent hours and weeks attempting to get right and not do unnecessary harm. We would report on interesting members of the community, on people who had unusual stories. The newspaper was a source of cultural connection. We strived for accuracy.

    We highlighted authors, authors, orators, movers and shakers, community enterprises, members of the community who were unique.

    We covered crime and punishment, codes and planning, and took many beads on the life of people, organizations and the community.

    Yet, even back in 1977, we knew how some newspapers were bending too close to the leanings and yearnings of big business, or at the owners’s whims. We were concerned about newpapers dying, concerned about editorial decisions that hurt our code of ethics listed above. We believed in newspaper ombudsmen, and we always wanted to learn what other newspapers and what other parts of the country were doing to enhance the community.

    Indeed, that was the goal of newspapers, and while everything is bastardized in capitalism and media, and while we knew the CIA infilitrated newspapers decades earlier, and we know that now, newspapers are in most cases, skeletons, and many cities and towns have no newspapers, we still took our roles seriously. We knew that on-line / WWW publications would eat at the soul of newsprint dailies and weeklies. We knew that once lively newspapers or magazines would get bought up by large and mid-sized media groups. Then decimated and sold.

    In the end, we still wanted to know. We wanted fairness and accuracy in journalism. We did want to do the stories that few were doing.

    Just listen to these three folk. It shows you the robust work of thinkers. In my other professions –education, planning and social work — we do have that level of scrutiny, and self-examination. But here, the journalists look really hard at themselves. I do not find this hard look into my other professions as robust and penetrating.

    Virtually nobody trusts what they read any more. The United States ranks dead last among 46 nations surveyed in confidence in the press. Only 29% of Americans say they broadly believe what they read, see or hear in mainstream media. And more than three quarters of the public think that big outlets knowingly publish fake news.

    The term “fake news” first came into common usage around the contentious 2016 election, where both the Trump and Clinton campaigns attempted to weaponize the term against their opponents. Clinton claimed that Trump was being buoyed by false information put out by Eastern European bloggers and shared on sites like Facebook, while Trump shot back at her, claiming the likes of Clinton-supporting networks CNN and MSNBC were themselves fake news.

    But joining MintPress Senior Staff Writer Alan MacLeod today are two guests who know that fake news and false information have a long history in America. Dr. Nolan Higdon is an author and university lecturer of history and media studies at California State University East Bay. Meanwhile, Mickey Huff is professor of social science, history and journalism at Diablo Valley College in California and the director of the critical media literacy organization Project Censored.

    But, now, with the Brave New World of up being down, Nazi being Jewish President, Lies as Truth, I am both disgusted and not surprised at how terrible the propaganda is and how lock step those who follow the lies of society and government have infected so-called traditional journalism. Yes, still, in the local rags, we get news, we get entertainment, but when it comes to the stories of a lifetime — Weapons of No Mass Destruction, World Trade Center 9/11, War for Oil, Cocaine for Contras, all of it — newspapers fail. Local newspapers do not have the guts to question everything.

    That failure in journalism is tied to consumerism, capitalism, collective delusion, Stockholm Syndrome Writ Large, Collective Trauma, Agnotology, and the Comic Book Ideology of the common people and the leaders in the USA/UK/Klanda/EU.

    The first casualty of capitalism is truth. Capitalism of course relies on deception, thieving, extirpation, extinction, survival of the fittest, divide and conquor, racism, classism, poisoning mind/body/soul/soil. So we lead back to the above, to Michael Parenti. Listen to him.

    The young people of the world are not all going to hell in a hand-basket. Really. Amazing journalists blazing trails. This is just one most recent example of attacking truth, the messenger:

    “Independent Donetsk-based journalist Alina Lipp of Germany speaks to Max Blumenthal about being prosecuted by the German state for violating new speech codes through her reporting in the breakaway Donetsk Republic. As the only German reporter on the ground in Donetsk, Lipp has exposed Ukrainian forces shelling civilians, attacking a maternity ward, mining harbors, and bombing a granary filled with corn for export. She faces three years in prison if she returns to her home country.”

    Newspapers being printed in printing press.
      
    To finish this off, an HBO special, Endangered, just out, to put more arrows in our quiver,

    Journalism can be a dangerous business. Forty-two journalists and media workers have been killed around the world in 2022 alone, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Those threats to press freedom have intensified in the U.S. and abroad, which is the subject of “Endangered,” a new documentary on HBO Max.

    “If you take away people’s access to information, you wind up with uninformed, manipulable voters,” says Ronan Farrow, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist and the film’s executive producer. “You wind up with greater flexibility for repressive leaders to do that kind of repression.”

    A perfect documentary? Nah, come on. But, the reality is that most journalists looking at pollution in countries, at coup d’etats, at the injustices of despots and capitalists, at the scarring of earth and cultures, and getting into places where armed power and uneven justice prevail, they are NOT FAKE journalists. Yet, I have leftist friends who have zero idea what it is to be one, to be on the ground and to be just regular good people looking to expose wrong doing and injustice. Not FAKE journalists that Trump-Pervert announced decades ago. Remember that unholy racist?

    President Donald Trump in Greenville, North Carolina, on July 17, 2019.

    Trump has repeatedly disparaged a group of black and Latino men wrongly accused of assaulting a white female jogger in Central Park in 1989.

    Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam and Korey Wise were all boys when they were convicted of raping Trisha Meili. They were then found innocent of the crime after convicted murder Matias Reyes in 2002 confessed to raping Meili, which was confirmed by DNA evidence. The city awarded the men $41 million in 2014, a decade after some of the men initially sued the city for how it handled the case.

    In 1989, Trump, then a popular business mogul, spent $85,000 worth of ads published in The New York Times, The Daily News, The New York Post and New York Newsday in which he lamented crime in the city and claimed there was no more “law and order.”

    ‘They admitted their guilt’: 30 years of Trump’s comments about the Central Park Five

    Trump claimed the city was being “ruled by the law of the streets, as roving bands of wild criminals roam our neighborhoods, dispensing their own vicious brand of twisted hatred on whomever they encounter.”

    Trump said he hated “these muggers and murderers.”

    He has refused to back down, again calling them “muggers” on Twitter in 2013 and labeling the $41 million “a disgrace.”

    Around a month before the 2016 election, Trump stood by his opinion that the five men were guilty even though they have since been exonerated of the crime.

    Nothing coming out of Trump’s mouth is truth, and he libels and he is now part of the war criminal league, along with Biden, Obama, Bush a and b, Clinton, Carter, et al.

    Soleimani assassination feature photo

    BAGHDAD — The recent assassination of Iran’s most popular and well-known general, Qassem Soleimani, has stoked fears that a new war pitting the U.S. and its allies against Iran could soon become a devastating and deadly reality. The airstrike that killed Soleimani, conducted by the U.S. in Baghdad, was conducted without the authorization or even prior notification of the U.S. Congress and without the approval of Iraq’s government or military, making the attack flagrantly illegal on multiple levels. The attack also killed Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was an advisor to Soleimani.

    The assassination of an Iraqi military commander who holds an official position is considered aggression on Iraq … and the liquidation of leading Iraqi figures or those from a brotherly country on Iraqi soil is a massive breach of sovereignty,” Iraq’s Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi said of the attack, adding that the assassination was “a dangerous escalation that will light the fuse of a destructive war in Iraq, the region, and the world.”

    Notably, the assassination of Soleimani comes just a few months after an alleged Israeli attempt to kill the Iranian general failed and amid a well-documented and decades-long push by U.S. neoconservatives and Israeli officials for a U.S.-led war with Iran.

    While the illegality of the assassination has been noted by many since news of the attack first spread, less attention has been given to the oddities of the Trump administration’s official reasoning and justification for the attack that has brought with it renewed tension to the Middle East. Per administration officials, the attack was aimed at “deterring future Iranian attack plans” as well as a response to a rocket attack at the K1 military base near Kirkuk, Iraq on December 27. That attack killed one U.S. military contractor and lightly wounded several U.S. soldiers and Iraqi military personnel. (source)

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  • So, the government of New Normal Germany is contemplating forcing everyone to wear medical-looking masks in public from October to Easter on a permanent basis. Seriously, the fanatical New Normal fascists currently in charge of Germany’s government — mostly the SPD and the Greens — are discussing revising the “Infection Protection Act” in order to grant themselves the authority to continue to rule the country by decree, as they have been doing since the Autumn of 2020, thus instituting a “permanent state of emergency” that overrides the German constitution, indefinitely.

    Go ahead, read that paragraph again. Take a break from the carnage in non-Nazi Ukraine, the show trials in the US congress, monkeypoxmania, Sudden Adult Death Syndrome, Sudden Bovine Death Syndrome, family-oriented drag queens, non-“vaccine”-related facial paralysis, and Biden falling off his bike, and reflect on what this possibly portends, the dominant country of the European Union dispensing with any semblance of democracy and transforming into a fascist biosecurity police state.

    OK, let me try to be more precise, as I don’t want to be arrested for “spreading disinformation” or “delegitimizing the state.” Germany is not dispensing with the semblance of democracy. No, the German constitution will remain in effect. It’s just that the revised Infection Protection Act — like the “Enabling Act of 1933,” which granted the Nazi government the authority to issue any edicts it wanted under the guise of “remedying the distress of the people” — will grant the New Normal German government the authority to continue to supersede the constitution and issue whatever edicts it wants under the guise of “protecting the public health” … for example, forcing the German masses to display their conformity to the new official ideology by wearing medical-looking masks on their faces for six or seven months of every year.

    In addition to a ritualized mass-demonstration of mindlessly fascist ideological conformity (a standard feature of all totalitarian systems), this annual October-to-Easter mask-mandate, by simulating the new paranoid “reality” in which humanity is under constant attack by deadly viruses and other “public health threats,” will cement the New Normal ideology into place. If not opposed and stopped here in Germany, it will spread to other European countries, and to Canada, and Australia, and the New Normal US states. If you think what happens in Germany doesn’t matter because you live in Florida, or in Sweden, or the UK, you haven’t been paying attention recently. The roll-out of the New Normal is a global project … a multi-phase, multi-faceted project. Germany is just the current “tip of the spear.”

    Sadly, the majority of the German masses will mindlessly click heels and follow orders, as they have since the Spring of 2020. They’re all enjoying a “summer break” at the moment, but come October they will don their masks, start segregating and persecuting “the Unvaccinated,” and otherwise behaving like fascists again. I hesitate to blame it on the German character, because we’ve witnessed the same mindlessly fascistic behavior all around the world over the past two years, but, I have to admit, there is something particularly scary about how the Germans do it.

    Meanwhile, Germany’s FBI (der Bundesverfassungsschutz, or BfV) is hard at work enforcing the new Gleichschaltung. According to a report in Die Welt, the BfV is not just surveilling people who use terms like “Corona dictatorship” (and presumably a long list of other “wrongspeak” words), but it is also “surveilling people and groups that disseminate conspiracy theories, or call the democratic nature of the state into question.” Politicians are insisting that the BfV “toughen up the classification of political crime, especially regarding the Corona deniers.”

    Yes, that’s right, publicly challenging the official Covid-19 narrative, or protesting official New Normal ideology, is a political crime here in New Normal Germany. It has been since May 2021, when the Bundesverfassungsschutz established a new official category of domestic extremism … “Anti-democratic or Security-threatening Delegitimization of the State.” I covered this in one of my columns at the time (“The Criminalization of Dissent” ) as did some corporate press, like The New York Times (“German Intelligence Puts Coronavirus Deniers Under Surveillance“), but, for some reason, the story didn’t get much traction.

    “Delegitimization of the State” … let that language sink in for a moment. What it means is that anyone the New Normal authorities deem to be “delegitimizing the state” can be arrested and charged as a “political criminal.” I wasn’t entirely clear on what is meant by “delegitimizing,” so I looked the word up, and the definition I found was “to diminish or destroy the legitimacy, prestige, or authority” of something, or someone, which … I don’t know, sounds a little overly broad and subject to arbitrary interpretation.

    For example, if I, right here in this column, were to propose that the German government had no legitimate reasons whatsoever for locking down the entire population, forcing everyone to wear medical-looking masks, and demonizing and segregating “the Unvaccinated,” that might make me a “political criminal.” Likewise, if I were to describe Karl Lauterbach, the Minister of Health of New Normal Germany, as a fanatical fascist, and a sociopathic liar, that might make me a “political criminal.” Or, if I were to point out how the German state media have deceived and gaslighted the German public for over two years like the proverbial Goebbelsian keyboard instrument, that might make me a “political criminal.” Or, if I were crazy enough to publish a book of essays written over the past two years documenting The Rise of the New Normal Reich, including essays about New Normal Germany, that might also make me a “political criminal.”

    Naturally, I am a little uneasy, living in a former-Nazi country where I could be classified as a “political criminal” for my activities as an author and a political satirist … which, of course, is the point of the new classification. It is meant to scare dissidents like me into silence. Or … OK, it isn’t meant for me. It is meant for German dissidents like me. I’m an American, not a German citizen. So the chances of a heavily-armed “Special Commando” team storming my apartment in the wee hours of the morning and arresting me on trumped-up weapons charges — as they recently did to Dr. Paul Brandenburg, an outspoken opponent of the New Normal Reich — are probably (hopefully) fairly remote.

    In any event, I would never do that; i.e., attempt to diminish the prestige or authority of the Federal Republic of New Normal Germany, or in any way compare it to Nazi Germany, or any other totalitarian system, or describe it as a nascent biosecurity police state wherein the rule of law has been supplanted by the arbitrary edicts of fascist fanatics, because that would just be asking for trouble. After all, if we’ve learned anything from history, the smart thing to do during times like these is to keep one’s mouth shut and follow orders, and if you hear a train coming … well, just look the other way.

    The post The Federal Republic of New Normal Germany first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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