The War on Dissent
C.J. Hopkins • January 26, 2018 •Just when you thought the corporatocracy couldn’t possibly get more creepily Orwellian, the Twitter Corporation starts sending out emails advising that they “have reason to believe” we have “followed, retweeted,” or “liked the content of” an account “connected to a propaganda effort by a Russia
government-linked organization known as the Internet Research Agency.” While it’s not as dramatic as the Thought Police watching you on your telescreen, or posters reminding you “Big Brother Is Watching,” the effect is more or less the same.
And if that’s not creepily Orwellian enough for you, Facebook has established a Ministry of Counterspeech,
manned by “a dedicated counterterrorism team” of “former intelligence
and law-enforcement officials,” to “disrupt ideologies underlying
extremism” (see Chris Hedges’ recent essay for details). The Google Corporation is systematically disappearing, deranking, and maliciously misrepresenting
non-corporate news and opinion sources, and the “thought criminals” who
contribute to them. Meanwhile, the corporate media continues to pump
out Russia paranoia propaganda like this Maddow segment on MSNBC about “the remarkable number of Russian financiers who’ll be rubbing elbows with the Trump team in Davos.”
These
are just the latest salvos in the corporate establishment’s War on
Dissent, an expanded version of the War on Terror, which they’ve been
relentlessly waging for over a year now. As you may have noticed, the
ruling classes have been using virtually every propaganda organ at their
disposal to whip up mass hysteria over a host of extremely dubious
threats to “the future of democracy” and “democratic values,” Russia
being foremost among them, followed closely by white supremacy, then a
laundry list of other “threats,” from Julian Assange to Bernie Bros to
other, lesser “sowers of division.”
This
propaganda campaign is part and parcel of the roll-out of a new
“official narrative.” If it wasn’t so completely depressing, I would say
it is awe-inspiring to watch. This full-spectrum type of mass
indoctrination, or “reality adjustment,” doesn’t happen that often. It
used to only happen on the national level, typically during times of
war, when the ruling classes of nation states needed to temporarily
unite their populaces and demonize their enemy. It is happening now on a
global level, for the second time in the 21st Century.
The
first time it happened on a global level was 2001-2002, when the War on
Terror narrative was launched to supplant the defunct Cold War
narrative that had functioned since the end of World War II. The End of
History/New World Order narrative, which had served as a kind of
ideological stop-gap from 1990 to 2001, never really sold that well. It
was far too vague, and there was no clear enemy. The global capitalist
ruling classes (which now reigned unopposed over the entire planet)
needed a new official narrative to unite, not just a nation, or region,
but everyone within the new global market. This narrative needed a
convincing enemy that would function on a global level. “Terrorism” is
that enemy.
In
the official War on Terror narrative, the term “terrorism” does not
refer to any type of actual terrorism (although of course such terrorism
does occur) as much as to “terrorism” as a general concept, an
essentially meaningless pejorative concept, one which can be expanded to
include almost anything and anyone the ruling classes need it to …
which is what is taking place at the moment. It is being expanded,
rather dramatically, to include virtually any type of dissent from
global capitalist ideology. In order to understand what’s happening, we
need to understand how terms like “terrorism” and “extremism” function
ideologically, not just as terms to dehumanize “bad guys” but to
designate a type of ur-antagonist, one that conforms to the official narrative. So let’s take a few minutes and try to do that.
The
key to understanding both the original War on Terror official narrative
and the expanded variation we are being sold currently is the fact that
terrorism is an insurgent tactic
employed by weaker militant forces against a ruling government or
occupation force. This makes it the perfect bogeyman (in essence, the only
bogeyman) for our brave new global capitalist world, where global
capitalism takes the place of that “ruling government or occupation
force.”
I’ve writtena number of essays about this,
so I won’t reiterate all that here. The short version is, we we no
longer live in a world where nation-against-nation conflict is driving
the course of political events. We live in a world where global
capitalism is driving the course of political events. The economies of
virtually every nation on the planet are hopelessly interdependent.
Capitalist ideology pervades all cultures, despite their superficial
differences. It is a globally hegemonic system, so it has no external
enemies. None. The only threats it faces are internal. Its “enemies”
are, by definition, insurgent … in other words, “extremist” or
“terrorist.”
This even holds true for the Russia paranoia the ruling classes are pumping out currently … it’s all just part of the
“reality adjustment,” and the launch of a new official narrative, not a
prelude to war with Russia. The USA is not going to war with Russia.
The notion is beyond ridiculous. Have you noticed, despite all their
warlike verbiage, that no one has put forth a single scenario in which
war between Russia and the West makes sense? That’s because it doesn’t
make sense. Not for Russia, the USA, or anyone else. This is why “the
Russian threat” is being marketed as an “attack on democratic values”
and “an attempt to sow division,” and so on. Because the war the
corporatocracy is waging is not a war against Russia, the nation. The
war they are fighting is a counter-insurgency, an ideological
counter-insurgency. “Russia” has just been added to the list of
“terrorists” and “extremists” who “hate us for our freedom.”
Thus,
our new official narrative is actually just a minor variation on the
original War on Terror narrative we’ve been indoctrinated with since
2001. A minor yet essential variation. From 2001 to 2016, the constant
“terrorist threat” we were facing was strictly limited to Islamic
terrorism, which made sense as long as the corporatocracy was focused on
restructuring the Middle East. White supremacist terrorism was not part
of the narrative, nor was any other form of terrorism, as that would
have just confused the audience.
That changed, dramatically, in 2016.
The
Brexit referendum and the election of Trump alerted the global
capitalist ruling classes to the existence of another dangerous
insurgency that had nothing to do with the Greater Middle East. While
they were off merrily destabilizing, restructuring, privatizing, and
debt-enslaving, resentment of global capitalism had grown into a
widespread neo-nationalist backlash against globalization, the loss of
sovereignty, fiscal austerity, and the soulless, smiley-face, corporate
culture being implemented throughout the West and beyond. That this
backlash is reactionary in nature does not change the fact that it is an
insurgency … just as Islamic fundamentalism is. Both insurgencies are
doomed attempts to revert to despotic social systems (nationalist in one
case, religious in the other) and so reverse the forward march of
global capitalism. The global capitalist ruling classes are not about to
let that happen.
The
corporatocracy wasted no time in dealing with this new insurgency. They
demonized and hamstrung Trump, as they’ll continue to do until he’s
well out of office. But Trump was never the significant threat. The
significant threat is the people who elected him, and who voted for
Brexit, and the AfD, and Sanders, and Mélenchon, and Corbyn, and who
just stayed home on election day and refused to vote for Hillary
Clinton. The threat is the attitude of these people. The insubordinate
attitude of these people. The childish attitude of these people (who
naively thought they could challenge the most powerful empire in the
annals of human history … one that controls, not just the most fearsome
military force that has ever existed, but the means to control “reality”
itself).
The
corporatocracy is going to change that attitude, or it is going to make
it disappear. It is in the process of doing this now, using every
ideological weapon in its arsenal. The news media. Publishing.
Hollywood. The Internet. Intelligence agencies. Congressional inquiries.
Protests. Marches. Twitter’s “advisory emails.” Google’s manipulation of its search results. Facebook’s
“counterspeech” initiative. Russiagate. Shitholegate. Pornstargate. The
ruling class is sending us a message. The message is, “you’re either
with us or against us.” The message is, “we will tolerate no dissent,
except for officially sanctioned dissent.” The message is, “try to fuck
with us, and we will marginalize you, and demonize you, and demonetize
you, and disappear you.”
The
message is, “we control reality, so reality is whatever the fuck we say
it is, regardless of whether it is based in fact or just some totally made-up story we got The Washington Post to publish and then had the corporate media repeat, over and over, for fourteen months.” If that doesn’t qualify as full-blown Orwellian, I’m not sure what, exactly, would.
I
wish I had some rallying cry to end this depressing assessment with,
but I have no interest in being one of these Twitter-based guerrilla
leaders who tell you we can beat the corporatocracy by tweeting and
donating to them on Patreon, and then going about our lives as “normal.”
It’s probably going to take a little more than that, and the obvious
truth is, the odds are against us. That said, I plan to make as much
noise about The War on Dissent as humanly possible, until they
marginalize me out of existence … or the corporate-mediated simulation
that so many of us take for existence these days. What do you say, want
to join me?
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 by permission of author or representative)
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