Making Globalism Great Again

Maybe Donald Trump isn’t as stupid as I thought. I’d hate to have to admit that publicly, but it does kind of seem like he has put one over on the liberal corporate media this time. Scanning the recent Trump-related news, I couldn’t help but notice a significant decline in the number of references to Weimar, Germany, Adolf Hitler, and “the brink of fascism” that America has supposedly been teetering on since Hillary Clinton lost the election. I googled around pretty well, I think, but I couldn’t find a single editorial warning that Trump is about to summarily cancel the U.S. Constitution, dissolve Congress, and proclaim himself Führer. Nor did I see any mention of Auschwitz, or any other Nazi stuff … which is weird, considering that the Hitler hysteria has been a standard feature of the official narrative we’ve been subjected to for the last two years.

So how did Trump finally get the liberal corporate media to stop calling him a fascist? He did that by acting like a fascist (i.e., like a “normal” president). Which is to say he did the bidding of the deep state goons and corporate mandarins that manage the global capitalist empire … the smiley, happy, democracy-spreading, post-fascist version of fascism we live under.

I’m referring, of course, to Venezuela, which is one of a handful of uncooperative countries that are not playing ball with global capitalism and which haven’t been “regime changed” yet. Trump green-lit the attempted coup purportedly being staged by the Venezuelan “opposition,” but which is obviously a U.S. operation, or, rather, a global capitalist operation. As soon as he did, the corporate media immediately suspended calling him a fascist, and comparing him to Adolf Hitler, and so on, and started spewing out blatant propaganda supporting his effort to overthrow the elected government of a sovereign country.

Overthrowing the governments of sovereign countries, destroying their economies, stealing their gold, and otherwise bringing them into the fold of the global capitalist “international community” is not exactly what most folks thought Trump meant by “Make America Great Again.” Many Americans have never been to Venezuela, or Syria, or anywhere else the global capitalist empire has been ruthlessly restructuring since shortly after the end of the Cold War. They have not been lying awake at night worrying about Venezuelan democracy, or Syrian democracy, or Ukrainian democracy.

This is not because Americans are a heartless people, or an ignorant or a selfish people. It is because, well, it is because they are Americans (or, rather, because they believe they are Americans), and thus are more interested in the problems of Americans than in the problems of people in faraway lands that have nothing whatsoever to do with America. Despite what the corporate media will tell you, Americans elected Donald Trump, a preposterous, self-aggrandizing ass clown, not because they were latent Nazis, or because they were brainwashed by Russian hackers, but, primarily, because they wanted to believe that he sincerely cared about America, and was going to try to “make it great again” (whatever that was supposed to mean, exactly).

Unfortunately, there is no America. There is nothing to make great again. “America” is a fiction, a fantasy, a nostalgia that hucksters like Donald Trump (and other, marginally less buffoonish hucksters) use to sell whatever they are selling … themselves, wars, cars, whatever. What there is, in reality, instead of America, is a supranational global capitalist empire, a decentralized, interdependent network of global corporations, financial institutions, national governments, intelligence agencies, supranational governmental entities, military forces, media, and so on. If that sounds far-fetched or conspiratorial, look at what is going on in Venezuela.

The entire global capitalist empire is working in concert to force the elected president of the country out of office. The US, the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Austria, Denmark, Poland, the Netherlands, Israel, Brazil, Peru, Chile, and Argentina have officially recognized Juan Guaido as the legitimate president of Venezuela, in spite of the fact that no one elected him. Only the empire’s official evil enemies (i.e., Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Cuba, and other uncooperative countries) are objecting to this “democratic” coup. The global financial system (i.e., banks) has frozen (i.e., stolen) Venezuela’s assets, and is attempting to transfer them to Guaido so he can buy the Venezuelan military. The corporate media are hammering out the official narrative like a Goebbelsian piano in an effort to convince the general public that all this has something to do with democracy. You would have to be a total moron or hopelessly brainwashed not to recognize what is happening.

What is happening has nothing to do with America … the “America” that Americans believe they live in and that many of them want to “make great again.” What is happening is exactly what has been happening around the world since the end of the Cold War, albeit most dramatically in the Middle East. The de facto global capitalist empire is restructuring the planet with virtual impunity. It is methodically eliminating any and all impediments to the hegemony of global capitalism, and the privatization and commodification of everything.

Venezuela is one of these impediments. Overthrowing its government has nothing to do with America, or the lives of actual Americans. “America” is not to going conquer Venezuela and plant an American flag on its soil. “America” is not going to steal its oil, ship it “home,” and parcel it out to “Americans” in their pickups in the parking lot of Walmart.

What what about those American oil corporations? They want that Venezuelan oil, don’t they? Well, sure they do, but here’s the thing … there are no “American” oil corporations. Corporations, especially multi-billion dollar transnational corporations (e.g., Chevron, ExxonMobil, et al.) have no nationalities, nor any real allegiances, other than to their major shareholders. Chevron, for example, whose major shareholders are asset management and mutual fund companies like Black Rock, The Vanguard Group, SSgA Funds Management, Geode Capital Management, Wellington Management, and other transnational, multi-trillion dollar outfits. Do you really believe that being nominally headquartered in Boston or New York makes these companies “American,” or that Deutsche Bank is a “German” bank, or that BP is a “British” company?

And Venezuela is just the most recent blatant example of the empire in action. Ask yourself, honestly, what have the “American” regime change ops throughout the Greater Middle East done for any actual Americans, other than get a lot of them killed? Oh, and how about those bailouts for all those transnational “American” investment banks? Or the billions “America” provides to Israel? Someone please explain how enriching the shareholders of transnational corporations like Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin by selling billions in weapons to Saudi Arabian Islamists is benefiting “the American people.” How much of that Saudi money are you seeing? And, wait, I’ve got another one for you. Call up your friendly 401K manager, ask how your Pfizer shares are doing, then compare that to what you’re paying some “American” insurance corporation to not really cover you.

For the last two-hundred years or so, we have been conditioned to think of ourselves as the citizens of a collection of sovereign nation states, as “Americans,” “Germans,” “Greeks,” and so on. There are no more sovereign nation states. Global capitalism has done away with them. Which is why we are experiencing a “neo-nationalist” backlash. Trump, Brexit, the so-called “new populism” … these are the death throes of national sovereignty, like the thrashing of a suffocating fish before you whack it and drop it in the cooler. The battle is over, but the fish doesn’t know that. It didn’t even realize there was a battle until it suddenly got jerked up out of the water.

In any event, here we are, at the advent of the global capitalist empire. We are not going back to the 19th Century, nor even to the early 20th Century. Neither Donald Trump nor anyone else is going to “Make America Great Again.” Global capitalism will continue to remake the world into one gigantic marketplace where we work ourselves to death at bullshit jobs in order to buy things we don’t need, accumulating debts we can never pay back, the interest on which will further enrich the global capitalist ruling classes, who, as you may have noticed, are preparing for the future by purchasing luxury underground bunkers and post-apocalyptic compounds in New Zealand. That, and militarizing the police, who they will need to maintain “public order” … you know, like they are doing in France at the moment, by beating, blinding, and hideously maiming those Gilets Jaunes (i.e., Yellow Vest) protesters that the corporate media are doing their best to demonize and/or render invisible.

Or, who knows, Americans (and other Western consumers) might take a page from those Yellow Vests, set aside their political differences (or at least ignore their hatred of each other long enough to actually try to achieve something), and focus their anger at the politicians and corporations that actually run the empire, as opposed to, you know, illegal immigrants and imaginary legions of Nazis and Russians. In the immortal words of General Buck Turgidson, “I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed,” but, heck, it might be worth a try, especially since, the way things are going, we are probably going end up out there anyway.

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CJ Hopkins
February 11, 2019
Photo: Tom Pennington

CJ Hopkins Summer 2018 thumbnailDISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Patreon page (where you can contribute as little $1 per month), or send your contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our staff up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian novel, Zone 23, which we understand is pretty gosh darn funny, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive email, please feel free to contact him directly.

11 thoughts on “Making Globalism Great Again”

  1. This is the one area I actually disagree with you although the article is still worth publishing and very good on globalism.

    While corporations are now global (because the market is global and hedge funds, other crooks can operate offshore) and BP hasn’t been British for some time, the world is still controlled by the American Federal Reserve, American ratings agencies, the CIA, NSA, and the American military occupation of most of the planet right up to the borders of Russia and Iran. My friend (Singapore) had to buy IBM mainframe computers or his boss would get a phone call from the American ambassador, a Mr Tony Soprano.

    Margaret Thatcher reduced the British economy to rubble, her every action. dictated by Chicago School monetarist economists lead by Milton Friedman. Tony Blair went to war in Iraq despite 70 odd percent public disapproval. No democratic leader would have done that.He was under direct American control. I assume all European action in the middle east is directed by the Americans (and their Israeli compadres).

    ‘Operation Gladio

    Swiss historian Daniele Ganser in his 2005 book, NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, accused Gladio of trying to influence policies through the means of “false flag” operations and a “strategy of tension”.

    Ganser alleges that on various occasions, stay-behind movements became linked to right-wing terrorism, crime and attempted coups d’état. In NATO’s Secret Armies Ganser states that Gladio units closely cooperated with NATO and the CIA and that Gladio in Italy was responsible for terrorist attacks against its own civilian population.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio

    Operation Gladio – Full 1992 documentary BBC.

    See also

    EU is a CIA project. The Telegraph.

    “It was Washington that drove European integration in the late 1940s, and funded it covertly under the Truman, Eisenhower,
    Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations.Nor are many aware of declassified documents from the State
    Department archives showing that US intelligence funded the European movement secretly for decades, and worked aggressively
    behind the scenes to push Britain into the project.

    ttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/04/27/the-european-union-always-was-a-cia-project-as-brexiteers-discov

    Former head of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso has lobbied the current commission on behalf of Goldman Sachs, one of the commission’s vice-presidents confirmed in a letter.

    https://euobserver.com/institutional/141039

    Goldman Sachs has its blood sucking tentacles throughout the EU.

    Trump was elected because many democrats refused to vote for sociopathic gangster Hillary Kissinger.

    Samuel Johnson on the American founding fathers.

    Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.”

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  2. The problem in the new politics is to find the right image. Image hunting is the new thing, and policies no longer matter because whether your electric light is provided by Republicans or Democrats is rather unimportant compared to the service of light and power and all the other kinds of services that go with our cities. Service environment’s the thing in place of political parties.
    Marshal McLuhan

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  5. Another excellent post C.J. Ah yes, Trump has been looking ever so much more “presidential” lately, as nothing says “presidential” quite as emphatically as invasions, coups, torture, bombing, economic sanctions, and general mayhem authorized by the “commander in chief.”

    I’m glad you pointed out the amazing support the Orange One has received from abroad on his little Venezuelan “project.” It has caused me to have to revise my initial assessment of there being at least some kind of “silver lining” to the Trump presidency. Initially I thought that no European head of state in their right mind would ever able to go before their own people and proclaim that she/he was going to lead them like sheep in support of the Orange One’s latest illegal immoral military adventures. I mean lets face it the Orange One lacks the public grace, gravitas and charisma of a “Slick Willie” or “Obomber,” and has been depicted as a cartoonish buffoon for the last two years in international media.

    Originally I thought to myself, “how on earth could a Macron, a May, or a Merkel go before their own people and proclaim their allegiance to this publicly proclaimed “Russian stooge idiot” for yet another illegal, immoral, in violation of all international law, U.S. led “regime change” outing????” How indeed? Boy was I wrong. Here I thought the “silver lining” was that Trump made an awful, perhaps unusable, face for international capitalism to do its worst, but as always, the “miraculous” market can always be manipulated and it’s “invisible hand” is always ready to push the “pillage” button to unleash the next wave of mayhem.

    It is now apparent we Americans could elect Donald Duck for president, and the global capitalist mayhem machine would march on as if it didn’t even notice. Amazing.

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  6. There is still an USA, but as with France and the UK, you have to go to small towns with long memories (and less reliably, to unfashionable bars in the cities) to find it.

    Up until the 21st Century, you didn’t even need to look too hard – just go somewhere that resisted, or more likely didn’t rate, a chain store. Despite decades of economic strangulation, youthful exodus, and media homogenization, there are still people with local roots who understand the value of not shitting where you eat… and maybe a smaller number of newer arrivals who are at least ideologically committed to local economy and sustainability.

    The Gilets Jaunes are largely from that world. Ironically, despite being less responsible for the enforced progress of global capitalism, Europe seems to be somewhat better equipped to accept progress with grace, for better or worse. Perhaps it’s a more measured sense of individuality and a personal connection to history. People who have been (officially) invaded and conquered should more easily recognize the failings of global hubris, and the potential to resist it. The US doesn’t have any ruins of the Roman Empire or the Third Reich. Even the rotting carcasses of the Rust Belt Empire are being bulldozed and renovated to make them more attractive to outside investment, and to new ideological versions of history.

    Don’t fall into the popular trap of thinking that just because Trump says something, it mustn’t be true. Or the revisionist mythbusting trap of asserting that a minority of suffering utterly delegitimizes a time in which people made their part of the world a better place to live. Preaching shame and calling it enlightenment seems more like a religious dysfunction than a path to victory for peace and reason.

    It was in fact the success of the US in the 20th Century (admittedly flawed, like any other good thing that has ever been) that sold itself to people all over the world, a Trojan Horse that smuggled the most crass and callous elements of globalism along with the export of cars, pop music, Hollywood, Silicon Valley… and above all a naive robust enthusiasm still largely untouched by the existential fretting of people who firsthand had seen the death of religion and the backside of Empires. It was (largely) good, and the world (largely) wanted it, and now there are (largely unpleasant) consequences.

    We can’t go back there, and we should maintain a healthy suspicion of anyone who tries to weaponize that desire. Still, that doesn’t mean that we need to rewrite history – for one thing, promoting the endless Now of modern experience serves globalism too well.

    For another thing, the depressed and dispirited people who want to find something of pride and happiness in their country’s past will not become better people from repeated scolding. That’s how you make them mean and vengeful. That’s how you turn an outcast into a shooter… or a loudmouth demagogue into a world leader.

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  7. Again, one can claim that Britain did this or France did that but ongoing Gladio operations ensure that they’re American puppets. The British-American Project for the Successor Generation (BAP) is a classic CIA operation which created Tony Blair and New Labour. Please note the presence of American Rupert Murdoch, widely believed to run British politics, not just with his newspapers but his connections.

    John Pilger

    The “values we share” are celebrated by a shadowy organisation that has just held its annual conference. This is the British-American Project for the Successor Generation (BAP), set up in 1985 with money from a Philadelphia trust with a long history of supporting right-wing causes. Although the BAP does not publicly acknowledge this origin, the source of its inspiration was a call by President Reagan in 1983 for “successor generations” on both sides of the Atlantic to “work together in the future on defence and security matters”. He made numerous references to “shared values”. Attending this ceremony in the White House Situation Room were the ideologues Rupert Murdoch and the late James Goldsmith.

    http://www.johnpilger.com/articles/how-the-anglo-american-elite-shares-its-values-

    Friends in high places (Guardian)

    You won’t have heard of the British-American Project, but its members include some of the most powerful men and women in the UK. Officially it exists to promote the ‘special relationship’, but it has been described as a Trojan horse for US foreign policy. Even its supporters joke that it’s funded by the CIA. Should we be worried? Andy Beckett reports

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/06/usa.politics1 …

    The CIA and New Labour

    The first recorded mention of the need for a “successor generation” came in 1983 when President Reagan spoke to a select group, including Rupert Murdoch, Sir James Goldsmith and senior CIA officers, in the White House. Reagan told them: “Last June, I spoke to the British Parliament, proposing that we – the democracies of the world – work together to build the infrastructure of democracy.

    http://www.mail-archive.com/antinato@topica.com/msg04573.html

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