The Year of the Zealot

It was the best of years, it was the worst of years, it was a year of brilliance, it was a year of buffoonery, it was a year of faith, it was a year of incredulity, it was a year of expectation, it was a year of tribulation, it was a year of uncertainty, and passionate intensity, and monomania, and paranoia, and fanatical fervor.

I’m designating it “The Year of the Zealot.”

Now, before I review the cavalcade of bug-eyed zealotry that the year comprised, let me say a few words about zealotry. Because I get it. I understand the attraction. We live in chaotic and perplexing times. We are bombarded, on a moment by moment basis, by contradictory narratives, facts, fictions, baseless accusations, insinuations, official and unofficial propaganda, exaggerations, distortions, and bald-faced lies.

Who has the time and energy to try to sift through the billion bits of bullshit blowing ceaselessly into our brains like random detritus swept up in some omnidirectional idiot wind?

Is it any real wonder that so many people are retreating to the shelter of one or another ideological redoubt, some prefab bulwark, which can at least provide them with something resembling a coherent ontological structure, a lens through which to view and make some sense of our increasingly incomprehensible world?

No. I get it. I get the attraction. I do. But…well, this year is what that leads to.

For me, the zealotry began in Room 500 of the Berlin District Court, where I was on trial for the “crime” of tweeting the cover artwork of my bestselling book, The Rise of the New Normal Reich: Consent Factory Essays, Vol. III (2020-2021). I have written about my thoughtcrime prosecution at considerable length, so I won’t go on about it again here, or reproduce the book cover art again.

The short version is, the Covid zealots currently running the German government, and Germany’s legal system, and most of its media, and comprising the vast majority of the German masses, do not appreciate being compared to the Nazis. I did that, so the authorities had my book banned, had my tweets censored, and prosecuted me for a “hate-crime.”

In January, I was acquitted by a District Court judge, who, after delivering her verdict, explained to the press and observers in the gallery that my acquittal on the obviously trumped-up charge of “disseminating Nazi propaganda” proved that Germany is not the nascent totalitarian state that I had claimed that it was, and that, really, I am the totalitarian, and a babbling, Covid-denying idiot. Then she strapped on a Covid mask and stalked out of the courtroom.

The prosecutor, who spent the proceedings behind a prophylactic “anti-Covid barrier” (like the Plexiglas panels they installed in stores to protect us from an airborne virus), and who appeared to be rather heavily medicated, was none too pleased with judge’s verdict. So, he crept back to his little prosecutorial office and started taking steps to have me tried again.

Yes, it was quite an absurd experience, my first thoughtcrime trial in Germany was. I’ll tell you all about my second trial shortly, but, first, let’s get to some of the other zealotry, of which there was no shortage this year.

Without doubt the primary source of zealotry in 2024 was the liquidation of Gaza, or Israel’s self-defense of itself (or whatever people want to call it, depending on which side they fanatically support). It was like an International Zealot Convention. Zealots were everywhere, hooting and hollering, brandishing Israeli and Palestinian flags, accusing each other of genocide, attempted genocide, and other acts of heinousness.

The Internet was awash with glossy color photographs of dead and mutilated bodies, blood-soaked kibbutzim, dismembered Gazans, inconsolable mothers clutching dead infants, terrified hostages being dragged out of their homes, sheet-covered corpses in hospital parking lots, grinning IDF soldiers posing in Palestinian women’s underwear, Palestinian militants parading the corpses of their victims around in pickup trucks, and so on, all of which is of course the fault of “the other side,” who are inhuman monsters who needed to be wiped off the face of the planet.

Here in Germany, pro-Palestinian activists staged demonstrations and other events, or attempted to, until they were descended on by the Anti-Anti-Zionist Thought Police, who were determined to protect the German public from “hate speech” (including, but not limited to, specific “hate words,” like “river” and “sea”). Immigrant neighborhoods were flooded with riot cops. Terrorist-adjacent kebab shops were raided. Goon squads went around stomping on people’s votive candles at outdoor vigils. The whole fascist “state-of-emergency” show that we were treated to during “the Covid pandemic” was back on, but the official scapegoats had been changed.

Anti-Zionist Covid zealots, who had applauded the rollout of the new totalitarianism during 2020-2022 (or stood by in silence and watched as it happened) suddenly found themselves face-to-face with the New Normal Reich they had ushered into existence. Artists were disinvited from exhibitions! Filmmakers were demonized by the media! Masha Gessen’s literary award ceremony was rescheduled! Yanis Varoufakis, banned from speaking at a “Palestine Congress” in Berlin, took to social media to alert us to the fact that “fascism is alive and well in Germany!”

Meanwhile, in the USA, mobs of medical-mask-wearing Anti-Zionists were occupying Academia, which, personally, I found unsettling, having been relentlessly harassed by fanatical mask-wearing Covidian Cultists for the preceding four years. I was foolish enough to tweet about it…

…which prompted a visit by The Anti-Zionist Inquisition!

“Are you now, or have you ever been, a Zionist?” the Inquisitors demanded to know. “Do you renounce the Zionist Entity and all its works?” And so on.

This went on for days. Swarms of ardent anti-Zionist zealots besieged my Twitter feed, accusing me of heresy, until, finally, I was declared “apostate” and excommunicated from the Church of Anti-Zionism.

For the record, I am neither a Zionist nor an anti-Zionist, nor a member of any other ideological faction or movement. I don’t believe Israel is any more or less legitimate than any other nation-state. I am no more or less horrified by its behavior than I am by the behavior of any other nation-state, for example, the United States of America, which, unlike Israel, I am a citizen of, and which has slaughtered millions of people throughout its history.

I’m not a big fan of nation-states, generally.

I’m not obsessed with the Jews, or any other religious groups. My sympathies lie with the Palestinian people, and the Israeli people, and the American people, and the German people, and the French and British and Iranian and Syrian and Russian and Ukrainian and Italian and Chinese and Greek and Irish and Australian and Canadian people, and all the other people that are being fucked over by their own or other nation-states, or by the supranational global-capitalist empire that has been destabilizing, restructuring, and privatizing the planet for going on the last twenty-five years.

But that kind of namby-pamby, old-school-lefty, both-sides bullshit doesn’t cut it with monomaniacal zealots like the The Anti-Zionist Inquisition, or the 10/7 Truthers, who claim, among other things, that, actually, it was the IDF that mass-murdered everyone on October 7, while the mostly-peaceful Hamas guys were conducting interviews with prospective Israeli hostages and handing out garbanzo-bean Slurpees to the kids.

Seriously, people propagated this fantasy … OK, not the part about the garbanzo bean Slurpees, the part about Israel “Hanniballing” everyone. As if Israel didn’t provide its critics with an overabundance of actual atrocities to report.

But this is what comes of fanaticism and zealotry. It makes no difference whether it’s Israeli propagandists lying about “40 beheaded babies” or anti-Zionist propagandists lying about Hamas. The point is not to deceive anyone. It’s just to whip your side up into a frenzy of hatred of the other side, and reinforce unquestioning allegiance to your side, because you’re the “good guys,” and the other side is “evil,” or “eviler,” or “they started it,” or whatever.

Oh, and, speaking of unquestioning allegiance, the other primary source of shameless zealotry in 2024 was the Musk Cult.

I have to tip my hat to Musk, and the formerly secret consortium of global-capitalist behemoths that took over Twitter. They saw an opportunity, and they seized it. There we were, a multiplicitous mass of opposition to the New Normal Reich, righties, lefties, inbetweenies, people of every color and creed, united in defense of our democratic rights, pushing back against a weird new form of totalitarianism, and … well, that couldn’t be allowed to continue.

It was obvious what had to be done. As Vladimir Lenin famously noted, “the best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.”

It took two years, but that multiplicitous mass of opposition has been torn asunder. It has been branded, commodified, purified, and controlled. It has been taxidermied. Its organs have been harvested. Its lifeblood has been hypodermically extracted, distilled into an innocuous elixir, and sold back to its desanguinated self. It has been zombied. Its soul has been scooped out. It has been replaced with a simulacrum of itself.

All that remains of it now is the Musk Cult.

Notwithstanding the fact that it is massive, and global, the Musk Cult works like any other cult. Cultists’ brains are relentlessly barraged with infantile AI-generated Elon memes. Elon as Ceasar. Elon as Jesus. Elon as Captain Free-Speech America. Elon as the right hand of Trump. Elon as the Martian Führer.

They are inundated with Elon’s thought-terminating clichés and mind-numbing platitudes throughout the day. “X is the only source of truth.” “The hammer of justice is coming.” And so on. Dare to post anything critical of Elon and you will be set upon by Musk-Cult zealots, or visibility-filtered into the void. Milieu control, demand for purity, loaded language, dispensing of existence, and all the other classic hallmarks of cults and operant conditioning are in effect.

God forbid you challenge the Cult’s official narrative.

You’ll be branded a “libtard,” or a “cultural Marxist,” or a “communist” or “leftist,” which are the Musk Cult’s versions of a “suppressive person” in the Church of Scientology. This is no time for division or doubt or negativity or critical thinking! Our heroes are literally rescuing the republic!

Musk and Trump and their millionaire buddies, and the stockholders of that formerly secret consortium of supranational global-capitalist entities, and Saudis, and assorted other oligarchs—that consortium I mentioned above—and Musk’s military-industrial complex associates, and the “defense” corporations they are stockholders of, and their subsidiaries, agents, and assigns, and the CEOs, CFOs, COOs, and presidents of those companies, and their attorneys, and the consultants and think-tank guys and gals they all have lunch with occasionally—not to do any actual business, of course, just to keep in touch with old friends and colleagues—and the Wall Street honchos, and the CEOs of the six corporations that own the US media, and the big five publishers that decide what you can read, and diaphoretic transhumanist billionaire tech geeks, oh, and let’s not forget the pharmaceutical industry with their miraculous mRNA vaccines, and all the other “freedom fighters” who care so much about our democratic rights, and each and every one of us, personally, that they are going to go mano a mano with the Woke Cabal and the Cultural Marxists, vanquish the Axis of Libtardism, and Make America Great Again!

Jesus, I got myself all worked up there. I was almost about to buy a subscription to X and start pumping out Elon memes on Grok, or start searching for “ghost gun” parts on eBay, or obsessing about whatever we’ve been prompted to be obsessing about by the time you read this, squirrels, drones, cat-eating Haitians, whatever Musk and his disciples decide to anesthetize their followers’ minds with today.

But, seriously, all this zealotry is exhausting. Or maybe I’m just getting old. I confess, I’m feeling slightly worn out, and disillusioned, and kind of blue these days. Maybe it was my second thoughtcrime trial, at which the Berlin Superior Court overturned my acquittal, so that now I’ve been forced to submit my case—which, remember, is about two Tweets—to Germany’s supreme court, the Bundesverfassungsgericht. Or maybe it is just being forced to watch as GloboCap’s New Normal Reich rolls on, and that curtain at the back of Frank Zappa’s theater gets pulled closed over that brick wall, again, and we retake our assigned seats, and the show continues…

If you will allow me to bastardize one of my favorite bits from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, for a moment, in early 2022, it felt like we had all the momentum again, like we were riding the crest of another high and beautiful wave, as Hunter Thompson put it. Now, almost three years later, you can scroll back through your Twitter timeline, and with the right kind of eyes you might just see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

But, whatever, as the doctor said, “buy the ticket, take the ride.”

OK, that’s it for 2024. Merry Fanatical Christmas and a Happy Zealous New Year!

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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