A Tale of Two PSYOPS

Once upon a time, on a planet called Earth, there was born a global-capitalist empire. It was the first global empire in the history of empires. It dominated the entire planet.

No one knew what to call the empire, because there had never been anything like it in history. It had no external adversaries, so it had nothing left to do but “clear and hold,” i.e., neutralize internal resistance and consolidate its domination of the planet.

So that is what it set about doing.

It did this first in the territories of its final ideological adversary, an empire called the Soviet Union, the ideology of which was known as “Communism.”

This was known as the “Post-Cold-War Era.”

It did this next in the Greater Middle East, where people were still trying to live their lives according to a religion known as “Islam.”

This was known as the “Global War on Terror.”

The Global War on Terror was originally intended to go on forever, and it would have, and it will, but it had to be temporarily suspended, and rebranded, because something unexpected happened.

One day, in the Summer of 2016 — theretofore officially “The Summer of Fear” — the global-capitalist empire noticed that a new form of resistance to its domination of the entire planet had risen up, not in the former Soviet Union, or the Greater Middle East, but throughout the West, right in the very heart of the empire.

And so the War on Terror was suspended, and the War on Populism began.

The War on Populism raged for four years, and culminated in the rollout of the New Normal, officially known as “the Covid pandemic.”

For over two years, i.e., from March 2020 to approximately December 2022, the global-capitalist empire morphed into a new form of totalitarianism, a global-capitalist form of totalitarianism, which was not like any other previous form of totalitarianism.

This period was the shock-and-awe phase of the rollout of the New Normal Reich.

The transition to the New Normal Reich was broadcast throughout the global empire. The message was unmistakeably clear. From now on, there would be a “New Normal.” It would be like a permanent state of war, a permanent state of civil war. And so, from now on everyone would need to pledge their allegiance to the New Normal Reich, and follow orders, or be labelled an “extremist,” a “science denier,” a “conspiracy theorist,” or some other type of seditious deviant.

The vast majority of the citizens of the West understood the message, followed orders, and pledged allegiance to the New Normal Reich. But a sizeable minority did not. The global-capitalist empire needed to neutralize this sizeable minority.

The majority of this sizeable minority was comprised of conservative, libertarian, and other basically right-leaning people. It contained a few old-school left-leaning people, but they were a minority within a minority, and so they weren’t really a factor when it came to neutralizing the larger minority, which the empire promptly set about doing.

The Free-Speech Twitter PSYOP

In October 2022, Elon Musk, the multi-billionaire military contractor, electric car salesman, and transhumanism enthusiast, and a coterie of serious global-capitalist entities and individuals purchased the social media platform known as Twitter, Inc. for 44 billion US dollars.

Musk walked into Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters grinning like a chimpanzee and carrying a bathroom sink, and the Free-Speech Twitter PSYOP began.

During the War on Populism and the shock-and-awe phase of the rollout of the New Normal Reich, Twitter, Inc., and every other social-media platform and mass-media outlet in the Western world, had been functioning as the empire’s Ministry of Truth, disseminating official New Normal propaganda, censoring dissent, and unpersoning anyone challenging the empire’s official narratives. And thus, it provided the perfect stage for the PSYOP the empire was about to conduct.

Musk reinstated a number of prominent, primarily conservative Twitter accounts that had been deplatformed for “posting misinformation” about Hunter Biden’s laptop and the “Covid vaccines,” and for posting “incitement” and “glorification of violence,” and bigotry and other such offensive content, among them, the account of Donald Trump, and tens of thousands of Trump supporters.

As Elon had promised, “the bird was freed”! Elon acolytes and grateful garden-variety Trumpians and other right-leaning persons poured onto Twitter to thank their savior for reversing the company’s target demographic, thus saving America from “Cultural Marxism,” and “Communism,” and the “Woke Mind Virus.”

The PSYOP continued with a textbook limited hangout known as the “Twitter Files.” Musk let a few carefully selected journalists run a few searches at Twitter HQ, which exposed how the former staff of Twitter had been collaborating with elements of the Biden administration (i.e., not the global-capitalist empire) to censor and deplatform people — mostly those in the new “red” target demographic — and was part of some strictly-USA-operated “Censorship Industrial Complex,” which was absolutely not a global operation, and had nothing to do with any global-capitalist empire, or a “New Normal Reich,” because all the censorship and “shadowbanning” — which was all in the past now that Elon was in charge — was the work of a cabal of deep-state libtard bureaucrats, who were all a bunch of “Commies.”

These revelations in the “Twitter Files” prompted Republicans in the US Congress to hold a series of subcommittee hearings into the possibly unconstitutional behavior of the Biden administration and its libtard proxies (i.e., not the global-capitalist empire), which had forced Twitter, Inc., and the other totally helpless Internet corporations to “shadowban” and censor Americans (i.e., not everyone else all throughout the empire that these corporations were also censoring in a clearly coordinated fashion).

And then, right on cue, once the story had been framed within a US-centric “red/blue” narrative, Musk shut the “Twitter Files” limited hangout down, i.e., before it could do any damage to the global-capitalist empire itself.

For the next two years, Elon and his cronies inundated their new target-demographic with “Free-Speech-Twitter” propaganda, sentimental Elon Musk-hagiography, and a never-ending series of PR-stunts. Twitter was officially rebranded as “X.” Musk went to war with Brazil’s Darth Vader, and Thierry Breton, and assorted other “Commies.” Twitter users were besieged with memes of Elon dressed up as Captain Free-Speech America. Et cetera.

And so the Musk Cult was born.

Meanwhile, X is continuing to censor and “visibility-filter” content at the behest of governments throughout the empire, as well as in furtherance of its own objectives.

If you think that fact has had a negative impact on the Free-Speech Twitter PSYOP, on the contrary, the Musk Cult has only grown broader and stronger. Like any other cult, it is impervious to facts. All that matters is loyalty to the cult, and the leader of the cult, and the cult’s official narrative. You can direct Musk cultists to the Twitter Safety pages where “visibility filtering” is explained, and cite countless examples of Musk’s hypocrisy, and it will have absolutely no effect whatsoever. Like every other successful cult leader, Elon is beyond reproach, incapable of sin, a god made flesh.

But deifying Elon was not the primary objective of the Free-Speech Twitter PSYOP.

The primary objective of the Free-Speech Twitter PSYOP was to harness, corral, and establish control over the majority of the sizeable minority of people who refused to follow orders and pledge allegiance to the New Normal Reich when it was rolled out during the “Covid pandemic.” These people needed to be herded into a manipulable mass and redirected away from the global-capitalist empire and into a harmless cul-de-sac where they could scream and shout at the empire’s designated scapegoats to their heart’s content. The Musk Cult was just a means of herding and leading them into this cul-de-sac.

“Free-Speech Twitter” is this cul-de-sac, and is a microcosm of a larger cul-de-sac.

Which brings us to the second PSYOP.

The America Made Great Again PSYOP

One of the most effective ways to neutralize an opponent is to let them win. This is especially true when you’re dealing with an opponent you can never entirely defeat.

What you do is, you lure your opponent into a battle you can afford to lose, because you need to actually lose the battle, and let your opponent actually win, i.e., not just trick them into thinking they have won, because … well, your opponent isn’t stupid.

This battle that you lure your opponent into and let them win will be a battle over a territory within a territory, but which your opponent believes is “the territory.” You can afford to lose control of this territory within a territory because you control the territory it exists within, and because your opponent doesn’t know that.

The trick is getting your opponent to believe that, by winning this battle, they have won “the war,” and that they now control “the territory,” and have destroyed you, or have otherwise removed you from power, when, actually, all that your opponent has destroyed or removed from power is a corporeal decoy, a material incarnation of an invisible, immaterial adversary, an adversary they do not know exists, or which they refuse to acknowledge the existence of … assuming, of course, that is what you are.

At which point, you have neutralized your opponent.

For example, say you’re a global empire, a supranational global-capitalist empire, and say your opponent is a populist insurgency, a potentially revolutionary mass, that you need to distract from contemplating your supranational, invisible, immaterial nature, and from the fact that the governments of nation-states are essentially administrative components of this invisible immaterial empire that you are, and thus it doesn’t really matter to you which political party administers these nation-states or who the leaders of these parties are, because they can’t really do much damage to you, because all they control are the material territories within the immaterial territory you control, which predetermines the context and the scope of their actions, and the parameters of their imaginations, and … OK, you probably see where this is going.

Or, I don’t know, maybe you don’t. So let me try to simplify it.

There is no “America” to make great again. “America” is a simulation. It is a map of a territory that does not exist. It is a dream within a dream in a film that no one can see because everyone is watching. It is a brand name for an imaginary product.

OK, that didn’t make it any simpler, did it? Let me try this one more time.

We are living in a global-capitalist empire. One big global-capitalist empire. We have been for the last thirty-something years. All of us. Americans. Canadians. The British. The French. Australians. Germans. Russians. Israelis. Palestinians. Iranians. All of us.

The global-capitalist empire is not a cabal of powerful individuals. It is a system. And that system is evolving. Metamorphosing. Transmogrifying. Evolving into a new form of totalitarianism. A global-capitalist form of totalitarianism.

It is the system, and not its servants, that is driving … driving this systemic evolution. It makes no difference whether Elon Musk, or Donald Trump, or Macron, or Starmer, or Netanyahu, or Gates, or Bezos, or Soros, or any other political “leader” or powerful figure knows what they are doing. They serve the system, as the system requires, each according to their specific role and scope of action within the system.

Elon Musk did not “save free speech” or “rescue Twitter” from a “Woke Mind Virus.” He purchased a corporation and rebranded its product for new market demographic. In so doing, he corralled and neutralized most of the conservative populist resistance to the evolution of the global-capitalist system … which is what the system needed to happen. It makes no difference whether Elon Musk understood his role. He played it perfectly. He is continuing to play it perfectly.

The Musk Cult is growing. Its apostles are preaching the Gospel of Elon throughout the empire, paving the road to The Privatization of Everything! Verily, it is the dawn of a golden age of “Freedom” ruled by global corporations and beneficent oligarchs!

However, before that golden age can begin, America must be made great again! And so the Free-Speech Twitter PSYOP has to be repeated on the macro-level. The same conservative populist resistance to the evolution of the global-capitalist system that Musk corralled and neutralized needs to be corralled and neutralized everywhere … not just in America, everywhere, all throughout the West and the rest of the empire.

Once it is corralled, and neutralized, and whipped up into a frenzy over “Wokeness,” “Cultural Marxism,” and “Communism,” it can be unleashed on the remnants of the dying age of nation-states, national sovereignty, constitutions, and so on, which will prompt the Global Powers That Be to take extreme measures to “defend democracy,” which will prompt the Other Global Powers That Be to take more extreme measures to “Rescue the Republic,” which will prompt the Global Powers That Be to take even more extreme extreme measures to “defend democracy from fascism” and … OK, this time, I do think you see where this is going.

Or, I don’t know, maybe you don’t. But I don’t think I can make it any simpler. And I don’t see any way to stop it or fix it. It isn’t an error to be corrected. It is the organic evolution of a system … a supranational system evolving into a new totalitarian form.

So, there you have it, a tale of two PSYOPS. I’m sorry that it isn’t as comforting as a story about how Donald Trump and Elon Musk and their global-capitalist investors, and their subsidiaries, agents, and assigns, are going to “make America great again.”

If it’s any consolation, one thing is certain … whatever happens, it won’t be boring.

CJ Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing and Broadway Play Publishing, Inc. His dystopian novel, Zone 23, is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. Volumes I and II of his Consent Factory Essays are published by Consent Factory Publishing, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amalgamated Content, Inc. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org.

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