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CJ Hopkins's avatar

Gary Weglarz, a longstanding reader, wrote below, "It seems to me that what we are seeing is a sort of 'controlled demolition' of material reality itself." Which is accurate, and has prompted me to address the global-capitalist ideology thing, which I want to get into in London, a little more here. I'll do that with an excerpt from the introductory chapter of The Rise of The New Normal Reich. The penultimate paragraph, in which I describe global capitalism as "a values-decoding machine" is the key.

I didn't want to open up that can of worms in this newsletter, because it gets rather heady, but, what the hell. It's challenging for both a lot of folks on the right (who are inclined to defend any perceived attack on capitalism, and so refuse to recognize the force they are resisting) and a lot of folks on the left (who are inclined to deny their alliance with the global-capitalist ideology machine, and so refuse to recognize what folks on the right are resisting).

Anyway, here's the excerpt ...

'We are, for the first time in human history, living in a de facto "global society" under a single predominate ideology, a predominate ideology that is fast becoming reality. Intramural conflicts notwithstanding, it is one big global-capitalist world. It has been since the early 1990s, when the last ideological adversary (and impediment) to global capitalism disappeared. This brave, new, global-capitalist world is still in its early evolutionary stages -- thirty years is nothing in historical terms -- but it is developing at breakneck speed, and it is doing so along predictable lines.

After the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the credibility of communism as a viable competing ideology, the global-capitalist power network (or "GloboCap" as I like to call it) launched a global "clear-and-hold" operation, identifying and wiping out pockets of resistance, economically, militarily, and ideologically. It started in the former Soviet-bloc countries, the Middle East, and Africa in the 1990s, and expanded throughout most of the rest of the world like an aggressive metastatic cancer during the 15-year-long "Global War on Terror."

As GloboCap was conducting this clear-and-hold op in far-flung places all around the world, it was also conducting it in the heart of the empire, not as dramatically, but just as effectively, gradually, and sometimes not so gradually, destabilizing, restructuring, and privatizing society.

Which is all global capitalism really knows how to do. GloboCap isn't a conspiracy of evil individuals with a megalomaniacal vision. It's a machine. A values-decoding machine. Its function, ideologically speaking, is to eradicate any and all social values that interfere with the flows of capital and replace them all with a single value (i.e., exchange value), rendering everything a commodity, and transforming society into a marketplace.

Of course this machine is operated by people, many of whom are evil conspirators -- there has never been a dearth of evil conspirators -- but it is the structure and logic of the machine that is driving, not a clutch of globalist billionaires sitting around on one of Bill Gates' yachts, or in Klaus Schwab's castle, hatching schemes. You could shoot all these people in the head tomorrow, and they would be seamlessly replaced with other people, performing the identical functions, i.e., destabilizing, restructuring, and privatizing everything.'

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HorizonD7's avatar

It has become clear to me over the last 5-6 years that those in power have a deep understanding and command of psychology, propaganda and brainwashing. Every day, I am stunned at how many people simply believe and repeat whatever they are told. Common sense and rational thinking are rapidly fading away. Years ago, I would never have believed it, but most people are easily misled and willingly do the "dirty work" of those in power.

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