The Liberals’ New Passion for Snobbery and Censorship: An Interview & Review of The War on Populism and Trumpocalypse by CJ Hopkins

John Siman for Naked Capitalism, November 13, 2020

“I’ve been reading C.J. Hopkins for about three years, but it’s a secret which, until now, I’ve kept pretty much to myself. For I had wanted to put some kind of a limit on the number of liberal acquaintances I was alienating by my ongoing enthusiasm for free speech and free inquiry. But in just the past few months things have come to such a disquieting pass that I think it’s come time to introduce intelligent liberals — or at least the liberal-adjacent readers of Naked Capitalism— to the essays which Hopkins has been publishing for over four years now, beginning in the annus miserabilis which was 2016.

Hopkins writes from the penetralia of what he calls the Consent Factory, which is located, he told me, somewhere in der Stadt Berlin. Matt Taibbi has fittingly described Hopkins as a post-Soviet version of a самиздат writer, fearlessly self-publishing critiques of unclothed little emperors which are so insightful that they will, quite likely, sooner or later, cause both the writer and his readers to be sent to prison. A very high compliment indeed!

I, unfortunately, missed this first year of Hopkins’s Consent Factory essays, which, he told me, he, then an established fifty-five-year-old playwright, felt drawn to start writing as he observed the unexpectedly potent outbursts of angry populist “resistance” (sic!) — including Brexit and Sanders and Trump — to the inexorable global corporate capitalist Conquest of Everything.

But soon enough I came across his searing review of the year 2017, the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, which Hopkins declared to have been “The Year of the Headless Liberal Chicken.” Here is an excerpt:

“Look,” Hopkins wrote three years ago, “I know what you’re probably thinking, but it isn’t like liberals don’t actually care about fundamental liberal values like freedom of the press and speech and all that. It’s just that they desperately need the Democrats to take back the House and the Senate next year, so they can get on with impeaching Trump, and if they have to stand by while the corporations suppress a little leftist dissent, or, you know, transform the entire Internet into a massive, mind-numbing echo chamber of neo-McCarthyite corporate conformity … well, sacrifices have to be made” (from The Year of the Headless Liberal Chicken, which first appeared in CounterPunch in December of 2017).” — John Siman

You can read the rest of John Siman’s piece at Naked Capitalism, where you will also find a link to the video interview.