Fear the “voices of reason.” Right now they’re the ones leading us into a complete snuffing out of freedom and independent thought. Trump’s continuations of the Bush/Obama authoritarian paradigm is ineffectual compared to the vast workings of the global oligarchy: this totalitarian presence permeates all of our major national and global institutions, and at the same time makes itself invisible to those who don’t look below the surface. It cloaks itself in a liberal and rationalistic image, but its only goal is mindless, brutal consolidation of financial and military power.
In just the last three weeks, the attacks have gotten more drastic than ever: Germany ordering social media companies to remove disfavored content; Facebook changing its algorithms to redirect users away from politics; social media companies starting a project to create an army of “content reviewers” that can censor “fake news”; numerous instances of governments and corporations around the world silencing those who speak up for truth. At this rate, dissent might be driven completely underground by the end of the year.
We’re supposed to think these are all just necessary measures to fight “Russian propaganda,” that the oligarchs orchestrating them are benevolent. But where can our minds go when Facebook, Google, and Twitter are employing an artificial intelligence psyop they call “counterspeech” to censor disfavored content? Should we disregard Julian Assange when he’s warned us this past week that humanity’s “immune system” of open discourse is being choked out by these censorship measures? When these developments follow the creation of an all-intrusive surveillance state, the establishment of a permanent war paradigm, and the deployment of vast and insidious CIA psyops, how can we not recognize them for the Orwellian fulfillments they are?
“Trump fear was used to manipulate rank-and-file Democrats into asking for this fascism, while cheering for the US intelligence community to keep fighting America’s enemies,” writes Caitlin Johnstone. “So while Trump leads his American flag-wrapped, cross-carrying supporters into consenting to more war, more domestic surveillance, more militarization of the police force, and more soul-crushing, world-killing neoliberal economic policy, the goons of the Democratic establishment are leading their rainbow flag-wrapped, pussyhat wearing base into consenting to the exact same thing. The noose gets ever tighter, the censorship gets more and more severe, the spectrum of acceptable debate gets smaller and smaller, the rule of the oligarchs grows ever more totalitarian, and neither the flag-wrapped cross carriers nor the rainbow flag-wrapped pussyhat wearers do anything about it. This was intended.”
As our crises converge, Wall Street, the U.S. military empire, and maybe our entire economic and energy systems will be next to fail. The establishment will try to use this to impose extreme repression and militarization, carried out through the resources and infrastructure that the super rich have prepared separately from the federal government. Even now, during a government standstill, the Deep State’s warfare operations remain in escalation. The theatrical “Russigate” scandal has been used this week to pressure the Trump administration into committing to Syria involvement indefinitely, while U.S./NATO aggressions against Iran, North Korea and Russia continue to mount.
Those of us who don’t comply with this takeover are on the margins. But we hold the potential to bring down the entire power structure. This is because the vast majority of the population is now living in or close to poverty, while they see their government deny them their democratic rights, wage endless war, and work to endlessly transfer wealth to the super rich. The current government shutdownexposes how dysfunctionally rotten this system had become.
Our duty is to rise up against the systems of totalitarian control before it’s too late. We can do this by working to transform our local communities through worker-owned businesses and renewable energy systems, as has happened in many American cities already. Other options include strikes, tax boycotts, blockades and occupations so as to destabilize the system the oligarchs’ operations depend on.
Even more urgently, we need to circumvent the establishment’s systems of propaganda by forming alliances between anti-war and socialist websites, as World Socialist Website called for this week. “A coalition needs to be formed to rigorously defend internet freedom, net neutrality, to organize the defense of both websites and individuals who come under attack,” said WSW’s David North in a recent livestream about organizing against online censorship. The libertarian or right-leaning anti-establishment sites are also welcome to join in this assembly against the forces that seek to crush all of us.
The state is trying to make speaking the truth more and more dangerous. But to stop speaking the truth is to betray those who desperately need us to. As Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer said during the Nazi resistance movement, “What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straightforward men.” There are millions of people who are quietly embracing this role. They’re the ones who will triumph against the power of the Deep State.
YES!
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