By Trying To Silence Dissent, The Deep State Is Sowing Its Own Demise

The irony of oppression is that the worse it gets, the bigger risk the ruling powers create of an uprising. Outlawing dissent openly tells people that they aren’t free, which makes them rebel. So as American democracy has been taken over by corporate tyranny, the ruling class has decided to keep the appearance of the old democratic republic. This inverted totalitarian system, as Sheldon Wolin calls it, is different from the past despotisms in that it makes the people feel free.

Inverted totalitarianism depends on an illusion of open discourse. People should be allowed to vote, and they should be allowed to voice their opinions, but the mainstream political conversation needs to be made so narrow that no one gets to promote ideas that threaten the rule of corporate power. When the right to free expression is taken away, though-like when an election is rigged, or when a person is censored-that makes the illusion of freedom momentarily disappear. That illusion is disappearing right now like never before.

This is the cost of the online censorship, police militarization, and authoritarian propaganda that the global oligarchy has been carrying out in the last several years. By making their rule outwardly repressive, the ruling class are exposing their own lies about society being free. Inverted totalitarianism is being abandoned for blunt totalitarian rule.

To stop a backlash against this effort, corporate politicians and pundits have often tried to portray these actions as good for democracy. The massive censorship measures from online companies has been put in the context of “fighting fake news” in media reports, as part of the general charade about how the West needs to protect itself from “Russian subversion of our democracy.”

But these measures have come with more obviously repressive actions: American police have gotten more militarized than ever; CIA torture architect Gina Haspel has been confirmed as CIA director; the government is determined to unconstitutionally jail Julian Assange and other whistleblowers. Many people have looked at these developments, and have only been able to see a creeping fascism.

So there have been some signs of a growing resistance. There’s been a growth in social movements like the resistance to oil pipelines, the socialist movement, and the movement to end the police state’s war against  the poor. Anti-war sentiments have also grown with the rise in alternative media, giving hope for some revival of an American anti-war movement. The effort to free Julian Assange and other political prisoners has strengthened as well. All of these movements go against the agenda of the corporate/military complex which is the deep state. So all of them need to collaborate with each other for each of them to keep strengthening.

As the friendly mask of Big Brother disappears, so are the partisan and ideological divisions that make us unable to confront Big Brother. Leftists, libertarians, and right-wingers are increasingly collaborating to take down the unelected power establishment. If we make this trend spread, the deep state’s attempts to destroy freedom will backfire spectacularly.