You will do what you are told. You will not ask questions. You will believe whatever they tell you to believe. You will believe it, not because it makes any sense, but simply because you have been ordered to believe it. They aren’t trying to trick or deceive anybody. They know their lies don’t make any sense. And they know that you know they don’t make any sense. They want you to know it. That is the point. They want you to know they are lying to you, manipulating you, openly mocking you, and that they can say and do anything they want to you, and you will go along with it, no matter how insane.
2020 was GloboCap Year Zero. The year when the global capitalist
ruling classes did away with the illusion of democracy and reminded everyone
who is actually in charge, and exactly what happens when anyone challenges
them.
In the relatively short span of
the last ten months, societies throughout the world have been transformed
beyond recognition. Constitutional rights have
been suspended. Protest has been banned. Dissent is being censored.
Government officials are issuing edicts restricting the most basic aspects of
our lives … where we can go, when we can go there, how long we are allowed to
spend there, how many friends we are allowed to meet there, whether and when we
can spend time with our families, what we are allowed to say to each other, who
we can have sex with, where we have to stand, how we are allowed to eat
and drink, etc. The list goes on and on.
The authorities have assumed
control of the most intimate aspects of our daily lives. We are being managed
like inmates in a prison, told when to eat, sleep, exercise, granted privileges
for good behavior, punished for the slightest infractions of an ever-changing
set of arbitrary rules, forced to wear identical, demeaning uniforms (albeit
only on our faces), and otherwise relentlessly bullied, abused, and humiliated
to keep us compliant.
None of which is accidental, or
has anything to do with any actual virus, or any other type of public health
threat. Yes, before some of you go ballistic, I do believe there is an actual
virus, which a number of people have actually died from, or which at least has
contributed to their deaths … but there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of
any authentic public health threat that remotely justifies the totalitarian
emergency measures we are being subjected to or the damage that is being done
to society. Whatever you believe about
the so-called “pandemic,” it really is as simple as that. Even if one accepts
the official “science,” you do not transform the entire planet into a
pathologized-totalitarian nightmare in response to a health threat of this
nature.
The notion is quite literally
insane.
GloboCap is not insane,
however. They know exactly what they are doing … which is teaching us a lesson,
a lesson about power. A lesson about who has it and who doesn’t. For students
of history it’s a familiar lesson, a standard in the repertoire of empires, not
to mention the repertoire of penal institutions.
The name of the lesson is “Look
What We Can Do to You Any Time We Fucking Want.” The point of the lesson is
self-explanatory. The USA taught the world this lesson when it nuked Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. GloboCap (and the US military) taught it again when they invaded
Iraq and destabilized the entire Greater Middle East. It is regularly taught in
penitentiaries when the prisoners start to get a little too unruly and remember
that they outnumber the guards. That’s where the “lockdown” concept originated.
It isn’t medical terminology. It is penal institution terminology.
As we have been experiencing
throughout 2020, the global capitalist ruling classes have no qualms about
teaching us this lesson. It’s just that they would rather not to have to unless
it’s absolutely necessary. They would prefer that we believe we are living in
“democracies,” governed by the “rule of law,” where everyone is “free,” and so
on. It’s much more efficient and much less dangerous than having to repeatedly
remind us that they can take away our “democratic rights” in a heartbeat,
unleash armed goon squads to enforce their edicts, and otherwise control us
with sheer brute force.
People who have spent time in
prison, or who have lived in openly totalitarian societies, are familiar with
being ruled by brute force. Most Westerners are not, so it has come as a shock.
The majority of them still can’t process it. They cannot see what is staring
them in the face. They cannot see it because they can’t afford to see it. If
they did, it would completely short-circuit their brains. They would suffer
massive psychotic breakdowns, and become entirely unable to function, so their
psyches will not allow them to see it.
Others, who see it, can’t quite
accept the simplicity of it (i.e., the lesson being taught), so they are
proposing assorted complicated theories about what it is and who is behind it …
the Great Reset, China, the Illuminati, Transhumanism, Satanism, Communism,
whatever. Some of these theories are at least partially accurate. Others are
utter bull-goose lunacy.
They all obscure the basic
point of the lesson.
The point of the lesson is that
GloboCap — the entire global-capitalist system acting as
a single global entity — can, virtually any time
it wants, suspend the Simulation of Democracy,
and crack down on us with despotic force. It can (a) declare a “global
pandemic” or some other type of “global emergency,” (b) cancel our so-called
“rights,” (c) have the corporate media bombard us with lies and propaganda for
months, (d) have the Internet companies censor any and all forms of dissent and
evidence challenging said propaganda, (e) implement all kinds of new intrusive
“safety” and “security” measures, including but not limited to the physical
violation of our bodies … and so on. I think you get the picture. (The
violation of our bodies is important, which is why they love “cavity searches”
in prison, and why the torture-happy troops at Abu Ghraib were obsessed with
sexually violating their victims.)
And the “pandemic” is only one
part of the lesson. The other part is being forced to watch (or permitted to
watch, depending on your perspective) as GloboCap makes an example of Trump, as
they made examples of Corbyn and Sanders, as they made examples of Saddam and
Gaddafi, and other “uncooperative” foreign leaders, as they will make an
example of any political figurehead that challenges their power. It does not
matter to GloboCap that such political figureheads pose no real threat. The
people who rally around them do. Nor does it make the slightest difference
whether these figureheads or the folks who support them identify as “left” or
“right.” GloboCap could not possibly care less. The figureheads are just the
teaching materials in the lesson that they are teaching us.
And now, here we are, at the
end of the lesson … not the end of the War on Populism,
just the end of this critical Trumpian part of it. Once the usurper has been
driven out of office, the War on Populism will be folded back into the War on
Terror, or the War on Extremism, or whatever GloboCap decides to call it … the
name hardly matters. It is all the same war.
Whatever they decide to call
it, this is GloboCap Year Zero. It is time for reeducation, my friends. It is
time for cultural revolution. No, not communist cultural revolution … global
capitalist cultural revolution. It is time to flush the aberration of the last
four years down the memory hole, and implement global “New Normal”
Gleichschaltung, to make sure that this never happens again.
Oh, yes, things are about to
get “normal.” Extremely “normal.” Suffocatingly “normal.” Unimaginably
oppressively “normal.” And I’m not just talking about the “Coronavirus
measures.” This has been in the works for the last four years.
Remember, back in 2016, when
everyone was so concerned about “normality,” and how Trump was “not normal,”
and must never be “normalized?” Well, here we are. This is it. This is the part
where GloboCap restores “normality,” a “new normality,” a
pathologized-totalitarian “normality,” a “normality” which tolerates no dissent
and demands complete ideological conformity.
From now on, when the GloboCap
Intelligence Community and their mouthpieces in the corporate media tell you
something happened, that thing will have happened, exactly as they say it
happened, regardless of whether it actually happened, and anyone who says it
didn’t will be labeled an “extremist,”
a “conspiracy theorist,”
a “denier,” or
some other meaningless epithet. Such un-persons will be dealt with ruthlessly.
They will be censored, deplatformed, demonetized, decertified, rendered
unemployable, banned from traveling, socially ostracized, hospitalized,
imprisoned, or otherwise erased from “normal” society.
You will do what you are told.
You will not ask questions. You will believe whatever they tell you to believe.
You will believe it, not because it makes any sense, but simply because you
have been ordered to believe it. They aren’t trying to trick or deceive
anybody. They know their lies don’t make any sense. And they know that you know
they don’t make any sense. They want you to know it. That is the point. They want you to know they are lying to
you, manipulating you, openly mocking you,
and that they can say and do anything they want to you, and you will go along
with it, no matter how insane.
If they order you to take a
fucking vaccine, you will not ask what is in the vaccine, or start whining
about the “potential side effects.” You will shut up and take the fucking
vaccine. If they tell you to put a mask on your kid, you will put a fucking mask
on your fucking kid. You will not go digging up Danish studies proving the pointlessness of putting masks on kids.
If they tell you the Russians rigged the election, then the Russians rigged the
fucking election. And, if, four years later, they turn around and tell you
that rigging an election is
impossible, then rigging an election is fucking impossible. It
isn’t an invitation to debate. It is a GloboCap-verified fact-checked fact. You
will stand (or kneel) in your designated, color-coded, social-distancing box
and repeat this verified fact-checked fact, over and over, like a fucking
parrot, or they will discover some new mutant variant of virus and put you back
in fucking “lockdown.” They will do this until you get your mind right, or you
can live the rest of your life on Zoom, or tweeting content that no one but the
Internet censors will ever see into the digital void in your fucking pajamas.
The choice is yours … it’s is all up to you!
Or … I don’t know, this is just
a crazy idea, you could turn off the fucking corporate media, do a little
fucking research on your own, grow a backbone and some fucking guts, and join
the rest of us “dangerous extremists” who are trying to fight back against the
New Normal. Yes, it will cost you,
and we probably won’t win, but you won’t have to torture your kids on
airplanes, and you don’t even have to “deny” the virus!
That’s it … my last column of
2020. Happy totalitarian holidays!
C. J. 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.