The United States of Manufactured Hysteria
RSS
Photo by Mike Licht | CC BY 2.0
Thank
God for the Charlottesville Nazis! For a moment there, it was looking
like we were actually going to have a few days to stop and reflect on
the state of America without being subjected to some
new form of
manufactured mass hysteria. Seriously, just a few short weeks ago, as the corporatist ruling classes’ ridiculous attempt to convince the world that Donald Trump is some sort of Russian sleeper agent
appeared to be finally fizzling out, a significant number of leftist
types were beginning to wonder if maybe, just maybe, the fact that the
United States government is controlled by a global corporate plutocracy
that has no allegiance to any nation, or people, or to anything other
than itself, and that is in the process of demonizing and potentially
deposing an elected president … that maybe that might be something to
focus on, not exclusively, by any means, but alongside other vital
issues, like defending the rights of transgender drone pilots and
purging syllabi of oppressive pronouns.
Fortunately,
thanks to the Nazis of Charlottesville, this dangerous moment of doubt
has now passed. If you were listening closely on August 11, you could
hear the collective sigh of relief whooshing out of Resistance quarters
like a hypnagogic idiot wind as roughly one hundred white supremacists
marched into town with their tiki torches barking N.S.D.A.P. slogans and
otherwise making asses of themselves. Corporate media apparatchiks,
mandarins of the Internet Left, professional and amateur Naziologists,
and assorted other Nazi experts immediately went to DEFCON 1, signaling
imminent Nazi invasion. Photos of bug-eyed, torch-bearing Nazis, their
mouths wide open in mid-Nazi shriek, veins bulging out of their Nazi
necks, were released to the public and circulated widely. Millions of
conflicted leftists (many of whom had been feeling uneasy about
collaborating with the corporate plutocracy in their efforts to
delegitimize Trump, and every last American who voted for him), upon
seeing glossy, color close-ups of these Nazis waved in front of their
faces, responded as every Good American
has been conditioned to respond since early childhood. They instantly
switched off their critical faculties and began reenacting the Second
World War … or rather, the mythical version of it wherein the USA
defeated the Nazis, which is one of Americans’ favorite pastimes.
Look,
I don’t mean to make light of Charlottesville. We’re talking actual
neo-Nazis, with actual Nazi flags and haircuts, shouting actual Nazi
slogans, and the Ku Klux Klan, and heavily-armed militia, and just
garden variety racist rednecks … all of which have been standard features of American life for decades, and longer,
but this is no time to reflect on history, or try to put things into
perspective. Also, one of these Nazi morons ran over people with his car
the next day, killing one woman, and injuring many others, which
renders any critical thinking about the actual size of the Nazi menace
(which remains ridiculously small, as ever) or the motives of the
corporate media in blowing it up all out of proportion tantamount to
Nazi sympathizing, and I’m already in enough trouble as it is.
Plus,
Charlottesville was just the beginning … kind of like a Nazi Tet
Offensive. Just one week later, on August 19, literally forty to fifty
Nazis (cleverly disguised as Trump supporters, libertarians, and
right-wing oddballs) occupied a public gazebo in Boston,
and were right on the verge of expressing virulent Nazi views to the
cops surrounding them. Luckily, just in the nick of time, a contingent
of approximately forty thousand anti-fascist Resistance members arrived
on the scene to deny them a platform, and chase down anyone wearing one
of those MAGA hats and verbally abuse them.
You’d
think the Nazis would have gotten the message … but no, last Sunday,
August 27, another ten or eleven Nazis (many of them posing as “Trump
supporters,” as if that didn’t make them Nazis, and some of them even
going so far as to attempt to pass themselves off as “Latinos”)
audaciously tried to assemble in Berkeley. The Resistance showed them no
mercy this time. Thousands of peaceful counter-protesters quickly
frightened the Nazis away, then squads of masked-up anti-fascists hunted
down any Nazi-looking stragglers, “apparent alt-righters,”
and nosy photographers, and stomped the living Hitler out of them. This
alarmed the more liberal Resistance, which set about branding the
anti-fascists who beat the crap out of the folks the liberals had
branded Nazis “domestic terrorists.”
Elsewhere in America, Resistance members were frantically tearing down Confederate monuments, which had suddenly become intolerably offensive, and searching through online business directories for anyone named after Robert E. Lee, or horses named after General Lee’s horse, or the horses of other racist Nazis. That, and hastily organizing the upcoming March to Confront White Supremacy
(presumably in order to make a mockery of the 1963 March on
Washington), and penning lengthy explications of the evils of racism,
white supremacy, and all other forms of Naziism associated with Donald
Trump … and otherwise whipping people up into a sputtering frenzy of
Nazi hysteria.
Now,
you have to hand it to the fake Resistance … this Nazi hysteria is good
for everyone. Not only is it an easier sell than that ridiculous
Russian hacking nonsense (because Trump really is a racist, of course),
but it’s something the broader Left can embrace, as it plugs straight
into identity politics, which is pretty much all we’ve got these days.
See,
up to now, the dilemma we’ve been facing (or some of us have been
facing, anyway) is how to respond to the ruling establishment’s
concerted campaign to “regime-change” Trump. On the one hand, Trump is a
living embodiment of everything the Left opposes. On the other hand,
going after Trump has meant carrying water for the fake Resistance,
i.e., that global corporatocracy (which, by the way, does not mean “the
Jews.” I always like to slip that in to piss off my anti-Semitic
readers.) This has been a bit awkward for some of us, restraining our
impulse to stick it to Trump (at least on whatever talking points the
Resistance is currently putting out) because in doing so we would align
ourselves with the ruling establishment’s attempt to demonize, and
eventually depose an American president who isn’t playing ball with them
properly. If we oppose regime change in other countries, shouldn’t we
also oppose it at home? Or do the ruling classes get a pass this time
because Trump is such an exceptional monster? But wait … wasn’t Saddam a
monster? And Gaddafi? And all the other “Hitlers” that wouldn’t play
ball with the corporatocracy? And Assad? Isn’t he a monster?
You
can see how confusing all this gets … when you’re trying to figure out
how to oppose both the supranational corporatocracy that is superseding
sovereign nations as the hegemonic power in the world and the
neo-nationalist reaction against it, which is essentially
fascist in nature, and which the corporatocracy also opposes … and
desperately wants you to help them oppose by buying their manufactured
hysteria about Russians, or Nazis, or whatever scary monster they wave
in front of your face. After a while, your brain starts to hurt, and you
just want someone to make things simple.
Charlottesville
Nazis to the rescue! How much simpler could it possibly get?
Corporatocracy? What corporatocracy? We got goddamned Nazis coming out
of the woodwork! Racist Nazis! Confederate Nazis! Nazi apologists! Nazi
sympathizers! This is no time to worry about who’s actually wielding
political power, or how they’re manufacturing hysteria and otherwise
manipulating people (not you, of course … other people). No, what we
need to do now is censor the Internet,
and other venues for Nazi hate speech, and round up all these racist
Nazis and subject them to anti-Nazi therapy, or anti-racist empathy programs, or just gang up on them and beat them senseless.
OK,
sure, that might sound extreme, or authoritarian, or just plain old
creepy, but keep in mind that This Is Not Normal! And racism and Naziism
is very, very bad. And Love Trumps Hate! And Scope Kills Germs! And we
never literally meant that Trump was an actual Russian agent or
anything. Forget about all that Russia stuff now. Trump is Hitler. Trump
has always been Hitler. America has always been at war with Hitler.
America will always be at war with Hitler.
Oh,
yeah, and I almost forgot, today’s edition of the Two Minutes Hate will
begin in approximately fifteen minutes. Please assemble in the usual
location. Thank you for your cooperation.
C. J. Hopkins is
an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in
Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and
Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23, is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org.
(Republished from Counterpunch by permission of author or representative)
No comments:
Post a Comment