April 17, 2017
from CharlesHughSmith Website
The Left is morally and fiscally bankrupt, devoid of coherent solutions, and corrupted by its embrace of the Corporatocracy.
History often surprises us with unexpected ironies. For the past century, the slide to fascism could be found on the Right (conservative, populist, nationalist political parties).
But now it’s the Left that’s descending into fascism, and few seem to even notice this remarkable development.
By Left I mean socialist-leaning, progressive, internationalist/globalist political parties.
What is fascism?
There is no one tidy definition, but it has three essential elements:
- State and corporate elites govern society and the economy as one unified class.
- This status quo (i.e. The Establishment) seeks to impose a conformity of values and opinion that support the dominant narratives of the status quo via the mass (corporate) media and the state-controlled educational system.
- Dissent from any quarter is suppressed via mass-media ridicule, the judicial crushing and silencing of whistleblowers, and all the other powers of the central state: rendition, extra-legal imprisonment, political gulags (in our era, disguised as drug-war gulags), character assassination, murder by drone, impoverishing dissenters via firings and blacklists, and on and on.
The Left is now the political wing of the corporatocracy.
As Phillipe Poutou, a Ford factory mechanic from Bordeaux who is the sole working-class candidate in France’s presidential election, so deliciously pointed out, the Left and Right status quo candidates are indistinguishable in terms of their self-serving corruption and elitism:
(NY Times)
Here in the U.S., the self-serving Democratic Party elites operate within the Corporatocracy structure, in which the state protects and funds private-sector cartels; the two intertwined and self-reinforcing elites manifest and enforce state policies.
This state-corporate elite domination is fascism.
Some may claim the Left was co-opted by the Corporatocracy structure, others will blame capitalism (never mind the dominant form of capitalism is state-cartel, and it cannot exist without the central state enforcing the privileges of monopoly).
But these are simply excuses for the abject surrender of the Left to self-enrichment and power.
Since the Left has always claimed the high moral ground – and continues to do so (see my essay Virtue-Signaling the Decline of the Empire – February 28, 2017) – the Left must mask its own corruption and role in the Corporatocracy structure.
The Left accomplishes this by imposing a virtue-signaling conformity on corporate media, social media, and the state institutions under its control – higher education, government agencies, etc.
Dissent is by definition fake news or hate speech – Orwell would be so proud of the Left’s deft doublespeak.
The suppression of skeptical inquiry and alternative narratives is fascism. There is no way to sugar-coat this, so let’s not even try, shall we?
The principle of substitution reveals the underlying truth. If a Rightist state imposed a virtue-signaling conformity on corporate media, social media, and the state institutions under its control, the Left would be very quick indeed to identify this as fascist.
It’s still fascist if the Left does the same thing.
While the Left attempts to deflect a wider understanding of its descent into fascism with obsessive accusations of fake news and incessant demands for virtue-signaling conformity, the developed-world economies are circling the drain.
The Left’s obsession with meaningless speech acts is a direct result of its lack of will and intellectual firepower to tackle the erosion of working-class/middle-class income, wealth and political power.
This is the harsh reality:
wages are no longer an adequate means of distributing the dwindling surpluses of advanced economies:
The Left’s single “solution” to this profound structural trend is for central states to “fight austerity” by borrowing and blowing trillions of dollars, yen, yuan, euros, etc. – with no end in sight.
But as even the most economic illiterate Leftist understands somewhere in their muddled soul, borrowing trillions from future generations is morally and fiscally bankrupt, and the very opposite of a “progressive” policy.
Here’s the U.S. central state debt:
if the Left claims this trajectory is sustainable, what is this claim based on?
It’s based on magical thinking…
The magical thinking of the Left is that decades of slowing growth will be reversed and the clock of history magically reset to 1946 if the central state borrows even more trillions from future generations.
But there is abundant evidence (see the wages chart above) that borrowing and squandering immense sums has not boosted growth rates in a sustainable fashion – rather, the staggering debt loads are squeezing current spending and shackling future policy-makers with an ever-grimmer slate of self-reinforcing bad choices.
The Left is morally and fiscally bankrupt, devoid of coherent solutions, and corrupted by its embrace of the Corporatocracy. Its descent to fascism has too much momentum to be stopped.
Isn’t it obvious that the only way forward is to jettison boththe Left and Right flavors of state-cartel Corporatocracy and pave a ‘third way’…?
by Paul Ratner
July 18, 2018
from BigThink Website
A disturbing interview
given by a KGB defector in 1984
describes (North) America of today
and outlines four stages of mass brainwashing
used by the KGB.
- Bezmenov described this process as “a great brainwashing” which has four basic stages.
- The first stage is called “demoralization” which takes from 15 to 20 years to achieve.
- According to the former KGB agent, that is the minimum number of years it takes to re-educate one generation of students that is normally exposed to the ideology of its country.
President Trump was almost universally panned for the press conference that followed the meeting with Russia’s President Putin in Helsinki, Finland.
Trump was seen as capitulating to Russia by refusing to confront Putin on the issue of past and present interference in American elections. In fact, the American president seemed to be saying he doesn’t support the findings of his own intelligence agencies and instead prefers to take the Russian leader at his word.
Even if he’s changed his tune under the backlash.
Whether you believe Putin really has some kind of compromising material to make Trump do his bidding or if Trump is simply being nice to people who partially helped get him elected, or if you somehow still think, despite ample evidence to the contrary, that all this is much ado about nothing, the fact is President Putin is a very experienced former KGB officer.
He has both the know-how and the intelligence to carry out very far-sighted and ingenious operations.
We don’t know his endgame and neither do we know how much of his KGB training he still employs, but in light of current events, there may be a way for us to get a deeper understanding by studying the words of Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov, a former KGB agent who defected to Canada in 1970.
In 1984, Bezmenov gave an interview to G. Edward Griffin from which much can be learned today.
His most chilling point was that there’s a long-term plan put in play by Russia to defeat America through psychological warfare and “demoralization”.
It’s a long game that takes decades to achieve but it may already be bearing fruit.
Bezmenov made the point that the work of the KGB mainly does not involve espionage, despite what our popular culture may tell us.
Most of the work, 85% of it, was,
“a slow process which we call either ideological subversion, active measures, or psychological warfare.”
What does that mean?
Bezmenov explained that the most striking thing about ideological subversion is that it happens in the open as a legitimate process.
“You can see it with your own eyes,” he said.
The American media would be able to see it, if it just focused on it.
Here’s how he further defined ideological subversion:
“What it basically means is: to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite of the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country.”
Bezmenov described this process as “a great brainwashing” which has four basic stages.
1 The first stage is called “demoralization” which takes from 15 to 20 years to achieve.
According to the former KGB agent, that is the minimum number of years it takes to re-educate one generation of students that is normally exposed to the ideology of its country.
In other words, the time it takes to change what the people are thinking.
He used the examples of 1960s hippies coming to positions of power in the ’80s in the government and businesses of America. Bezmenov claimed this generation was already “contaminated” by Marxist-Leninist values.
Of course, this claim that many baby boomers are somehow espousing KGB-tainted ideas is hard to believe but Bezmenov’s larger point addressed why people who have been gradually “demoralized” are unable to understand that this has happened to them.
Referring to such people, Bezmenov said:
“They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern [alluding to Pavlov]. You can not change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information.
Even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still can not change the basic perception and the logic of behavior.”
Demoralization is a process that is “irreversible”.
Bezmenov actually thought (back in 1984) that the process of demoralizing America was already completed.
It would take another generation and another couple of decades to get the people to think differently and return to their patriotic American values, claimed the agent.
Vladimir Putin
in a KGB uniform around 1980
In what is perhaps a most striking passage in the interview, here’s how Bezmenov described the state of a “demoralized” person:
“As I mentioned before, exposure to true information does not matter anymore,” said Bezmenov.
“A person who was demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures; even if I take him by force to the Soviet Union and show him [a] concentration camp, he will refuse to believe it, until he [receives] a kick in his fan-bottom.
When a military boot crashes his balls then he will understand. But not before that. That’s the [tragedy] of the situation of demoralization.”
It’s hard not to see in that the state of many modern Americans. We have become a society of polarized tribes, with some people flat out rejecting facts in favor of narratives and opinions.
2 Once demoralization is completed, the second stage of ideological brainwashing is “destabilization”.
During this two-to-five-year period, asserted Bezmenov, what matters is the targeting of essential structural elements of a nation:
- economy
- foreign relations
- defense systems
Basically, the subverter (Russia) would look to destabilize every one of those areas in the United States, considerably weakening it.
3 The third stage would be “crisis”.
It would take only up to six weeks to send a country into crisis, explained Bezmenov.
The crisis would bring,
“a violent change of power, structure, and economy” and will be followed by the last stage, “normalization.”
That’s when your country is basically taken over, living under a new ideology and reality.
This will happen to America unless it gets rid of people who will bring it to a crisis, warned Bezmenov.
What’s more,
“if people will fail to grasp the impending danger of that development, nothing ever can help [the] United States,” adding.
“You may kiss goodbye to your freedom.”
It bears saying that when he made this statement, he was warning about ‘baby boomers’ and ‘Democrats’ of the time.
In another, somewhat terrifying excerpt, here’s what Bezmenov had to say about what is really happening in the United States. It may think it is living in peace, but it has been actively at war with Russia.
And for some time:
“Most of the American politicians, media, and educational system trains another generation of people who think they are living at the peacetime,” said the former KGB agent.
“False. United States is in a state of war: undeclared, total war against the basic principles and foundations of this system.”
Whether you think that is true may depend on your politics, but the reality of Russian active measures, as has been outlined in the recent indictments by the special counselor Robert Mueller, give Bezmenov’s words new urgency.
You can watch the full interview here below:
by Matthew Feeney
June 07, 2019
from InsideSources Website
| Matthew Feeney is the director of the Cato Institute’s Project on Emerging Technologies. |
In October 1947 Eric Blair, known today by his pen name George Orwell, wrote a letter to the co-owner of the Secker & Warburg publishing house.
In that letter, Orwell noted that he was in the “last lap” of the rough draft of a novel, describing it as “a most dreadful mess.” Orwell had sequestered himself on the Scottish island of Jura in order to finish the novel.
He completed it the following year, having transformed his “most dreadful mess” into “1984,” one of the 20th century’s most important novels.
Published in 1949, the novel turns 70 this year. The anniversary provides an opportunity to reflect on the novel’s significance and its most valuable but sometimes overlooked lesson.
The main lesson of “1984” is not “Persistent Surveillance is Bad” or “Authoritarian Governments Are Dangerous.” These are true statements, but not the most important message.
“1984” is at its core a novel about language:
how it can be used by governments to subjugate and obfuscate and by citizens to resist oppression.
Orwell was a master of the English language and his legacy lives on through some of the words he created. Even those who haven’t read “1984” know some of its “Newspeak.”
“1984” provides English speakers with a vocabulary to discuss surveillance, police states and authoritarianism, which includes terms such as,
“Big Brother”
“Thought Police”
“Unperson”
“Doublethink”,
…to name a few.
The authoritarian government of Orwell’s Oceania doesn’t merely severely punish dissent – it seeks to make even thinking about dissent impossible.
When Inner Party member O’Brien tortures “1984’s” protagonist, Winston Smith, he holds up his hand with four fingers extended and asks Smith how many fingers he sees.
When Smith replies,
“Four! Four! What else can I say? Four!”,
…O’Brien inflicts excruciating pain.
After Smith finally claims to see five fingers, O’Brien emphasizes that saying “Five” is not enough,
“No, Winston, that is no use. You are lying. You still think there are four.”
Orwell’s own name inspired an adjective, “Orwellian,” which is widely used in modern political rhetoric, albeit often inappropriately.
It’s usually our enemies who are acting Orwellian, and it’s a testament to Orwell’s talents that everyone seems to think “1984” is about their political opponents.
- The political left sees plenty of Orwellian tendencies in the White House and the criminal justice system. The political right bemoans “Thought Police” on college campuses and social media companies turning users into “Unpersons.”
But politicians can lie without being Orwellian, and a private company closing a social media account is nothing like a state murdering someone and eliminating them from history. Likewise, perceived academic conformity might be potentially stifling, but it’s hardly comparable to a conformity enforced by a police state that eliminates entire words from society.
Yet when U.S. government officials use terms such as,- “enhanced interrogation”
- “alternative facts”
- “collateral damage”
- “extremists”,
- “torture”
- “lies”
- “innocent civilian deaths”
- “political dissidents”
We see far more nefarious and barbaric distortions of language abroad. - According to reports by activists and researchers, the Chinese state has put about 1 million people including many Uyghurs – a majority-Muslim ethnic group – in “re-education” camps. Reports reveal that the camps are hardly schools. They’re brutal indoctrination sites, with inmates forced to recite Communist Party propaganda and renounce Islam.
- North Korea, the country that comes closest to embodying “1984,” has hampered its citizens’ abilities to think for themselves with a disheartening measure of success. In her memoir, North Korean defector Yeonmi Park describes discovering the richness of South Korea’s vocabulary, noting
“When you have more words to describe the world, you increase your ability to think complex thoughts.”
It’s hardly surprising that when Park read Orwell’s classic allegorical novel “
Animal Farm” she felt as if Orwell knew where she was from.
Orwell was not a prophet, but he identified a necessary feature of any successful authoritarian government.
To control you effectively it can’t merely threaten death, imprisonment or torture. It’s not enough for it to ban books and religions. As long as the state doesn’t dominate your consciousness, it’s under constant risk of overthrow.
We shouldn’t fear the U.S. turning into Orwell’s dystopian nightmare just yet, but at a time when political dishonesty is rampant we should remember 1984‘s most important lesson:
The state can ‘occupy’ your mind…
