Democracy vs. The Putin-Nazis

Back in January 2018, I wrote this piece about The War on Dissent, which, in case you haven’t noticed, is going gangbusters. As predicted, the global capitalist ruling classes have been using every weapon in their arsenal to marginalize, stigmatize, delegitimize, and otherwise eliminate any and all forms of dissent from neoliberal ideology, and in particular from their new official narrative … “Democracy versus The Putin-Nazis.”

For over two years, the corporate media have been pounding out an endless series of variations on this major theme, namely, that “democracy is under attack” by a conspiracy of Russians and neo-Nazis that magically materialized out of the ether during the Summer of 2016. The intelligence agencies, political elites, academia, celebrities, social media personalities, and other organs of the culture industry have been systematically reifying this official narrative through constant repetition. The Western masses have been inundated with innumerable articles, editorials, television news and talk show segments, books, social media posts, and various other forms of messaging whipping up hysteria over “Russians” and “fascists.” At this point, it is no longer just propaganda. It has become the new “truth.” It has become “reality.”

Becoming “reality” is, of course, the ultimate goal of every ideology. An ideology is just a system of ideas, and is thus fair game for critique and dissent. “Reality” is not fair game for dissent. It is not up for debate or challenge, not by “serious,” “legitimate” people. “Reality” is simply “the way it is.” It is axiomatic. It is apothegmatic. It’s not a belief or an interpretation. It is not subject to change or revision. It is the immortal, immutable Word of God … or whatever deity or deity-like concept the ruling classes and the masses they rule accept as the Final Arbiter of Truth. In our case, this would be Science, or Reason, rather than some supernatural being, but in terms of ideology there isn’t much difference. Every system of belief, regardless of its nature, ultimately depends on political power and power relations to enforce its beliefs, which is to say, to make them “real.”

OK, whenever I write about “reality” and “truth,” I get a few rather angry responses from folks who appear to think I’m denying the existence of objective reality. I’m not … for example, this chair I’m sitting on is absolutely part of objective reality, a physical object that actually exists. The screen you’re probably reading these words on is also part of objective reality. I am not saying there is no reality. What I’m saying is, “reality” is a concept, a concept invented and developed by people … a concept that serves a variety of purposes, some philosophical, some political. It’s the political purposes I’m interested in.

Think of “reality” as an ideological tool … a tool in the hands of those with the power to designate what is “real” and what isn’t. Doctors, teachers, politicians, police, scientists, priests, pundits, experts, parents — these are the enforcers of “reality.” The powerless do not get to decide what is “real.” Ask someone suffering from schizophrenia. Or … I’m sorry, is it bipolar disorder? Or oppositional defiant disorder? I can’t keep all these new disorders psychiatrists keep “discovering” straight.

Or ask a Palestinian living in Gaza. Or the mother of a Black kid the cops shot for no reason. Ask Julian Assange. Ask the families of all those “enemy combatants” Obama droned. Ask the “conspiracy theorists” on Twitter digitally screaming at anyone who will listen about what is and isn’t “the truth.” Each of them will give you their version of “reality,” and you and I may agree with some of them, and some of their beliefs may be supported with facts, but that will not make what they believe “reality.”

Power is what makes “reality” “reality.” Not facts. Not evidence. Not knowledge. Power.

Those in power, or aligned with those in power, or parroting the narratives of those in power, understand this (whether consciously or not). Those without power mostly do not, and thus we continue to “speak truth to power,” as if those in power gave a shit. They don’t. The powerful are not arguing with us. They are not attempting to win a debate about what is and isn’t “true,” or what did or didn’t “really” happen. They are declaring what did or didn’t happen. They are telling us what is and is not “reality,” and demonstrating what happens to those who disagree.

The “Democracy versus The Putin-Nazis” narrative is our new “reality,” whether we like it or not. It does not matter one iota that there is zero evidence to support this narrative, other than the claims of intelligence agencies, politicians, the corporate media, and other servants of the ruling classes. The Russians are “attacking democracy” because the ruling classes tell us they are. “Fascism is on the march again” because the ruling classes say it is. Anyone who disagrees is a “Putin-sympathizer,” a “Putin-apologist,” or “linked to Russia,” or “favored by Russia,” or an “anti-Semite,” or a “fascist apologist.”

Question the official narrative about the Gratuitously Baby Gassing Monster of Syria and you’re an Assad apologist, a Russian bot network, or a plagiarizing Red-Brown infiltrator. Criticize the corporate media for disseminating cheap McCarthyite smears, and you’re a Tulsi-stanning Hindu Nazi-apologist. God help you if you should appear on FOX, in which case you are a Nazi-legitimizer! A cursory check of the Internet today revealed that “far-right Facebook groups are spreading hate to millions in Europe” by means of some sort of hypnogenic content that just looking at it turns you into a Nazi. Our democracy-loving friends at The Atlantic Council are disappointed by Trump’s refusal to sign the “Christchurch Call,” a multilateral statement encouraging corporations to censor the Internet … and fascism is fashionable in Italy again!”

This post-Orwellian, neo-McCarthyite mass hysteria is not going to stop … not until the global capitalist ruling classes have suppressed the current “populist” insurgency and restored “normality” throughout the Western world. Until then, it’s going to be pretty much non-stop “Democracy versus the Putin-Nazis.”

So, unless you’re enjoying our new “reality,” or are willing to conform to it for some other reason, prepare to be smeared as “a Russia-loving, Putin-apologizing conspiracy theorist,” or a “fascism-enabling, Trump-loving Nazi,” or some other type of insidiously Slavic, white supremacist, mass-murder enthusiast. Things are only going to get uglier as the American election season ramps up. I mean, come on … you don’t really believe that the global capitalist ruling classes are going to let Trump serve a second term, do you?

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CJ Hopkins
May 23, 2019
Photo: UpNorth

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.

95 thoughts on “Democracy vs. The Putin-Nazis”

  1. There is a lot of statistical information supporting the idea that fascist sympathies, attitudes, and groups are very much on the rise globally. Even state institutions have boosted extreme right wing groups with fascistic policies and hyper nationalist and xenophobic rhetoric such as the AfD in Germany but in plenty of other nations as well.

    The magic that power really has isn’t just inventing reality but in being able to take some few objective facts and turn them into whatever reality power wants. For example, when power says that there is extreme poverty and starvation in nation X, it’s usually supportable by objective data. But then power uses that objective data to make unqualified lies about the source of the problem and it’s their solution to that faux source that they’ve been pushing for all along.

    The Nazi/fascist thing is the perfect example. There is a lot of objective evidence on the fast and furious rise of fascistic forces both in official governments, militaries, and the populace of many (powerful) nations. But if you examine holistically, the power structures aren’t doing anything to stymie these and in many cases provide official support for them. Then they spin these objective truths into the need for sweeping laws to surveille, censor and suppress especially including the internet.

    There is a danger all it’s own in immediately rejecting outright the bases for these brutalbourgeois policies. Some have objective data behind them but almost always spun and skewered into supporting power structures’ objectives.

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  2. An empty drum makes the loudest noise. The more shrill the establishment media become the more nervous they are at seeing their twaddle fall short. The Good Old Boys lose momentum. We are witness to weakness. Their enemies are building up steam.

    Naturally, the forces of law and order will attempt to stick their million Dutch fingers in the crumbling dyke of state. They will cheat, lie, commit any crime. This is to be expected. However, with ranks comprised of greedy opportunists the beneficiaries of the regime will split, divide against themselves, defect, bail out, stab each other in the back. Or just shut up and try to lie low. As this division gains momentum, the ruling class becomes exposed to a loss of cohesion, then fragmentation. The center fails.

    All classes of opponents to the regime will remain utterly divided at the same time. There is no viable current or tendency that dominates. The ever-whining Neo-Liberal Party (UD) [Utterly Despicable] will try to shore up the rule of their oppressers but will get hammered from the left and right.

    Usually, the Regime gets away with its serial bloviate because it ensures that just enough of the population gets just enough of its stolen goodies to go numb and compliant. But, when enough folks in enough places feel short-changed and manage to mobilize to a Tipping Point then you get Brexit, Yellow Vests, paralysis. Watching the UK eviscerate itself is instructive.

    What is needed is a fast series of Hard Knocks. Incidents the system cannot respond to. A big debt bubble collapse would be excellent. Yellowstone explodes. Millions on the streets of Spain. Civil war in Brazil.

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    1. Pretty much! I am still sweetly optimistic for some reason. I never imagined this course we find ourselves upon, and i’ve imagined many trajectories.

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  3. It is my view that the extreme right are promoted by the security services to scare voters into voting for politicians.

    The ‘crying Nazi’ from Charlottesville now says he’s an FBI informant

    https://thinkprogress.org/crying-nazi-says-hes-an-fbi-informant-540c438c31f0/

    “An Ohio man was charged Monday with plotting a Fourth of July terrorist bombing in Cleveland after a sting operation by the FBI, which gave him a bus pass so he could travel to scope out targets……

    There’s no indication that Pitts could have carried off any attack on his own. The criminal complaint suggests he viewed his role as planning and surveillance and did not want to be involved in obtaining or building any explosives.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/demetrius-pitts-charged-cleveland-bomb-plot-after-fbi-sting-n888336

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  4. I’ll be lighting my Mueller candle again tonight in order to help stave off the impending and long awaited attack of the Putin-Nazis, but somehow after reading your essay I have an uneasy feeling about all this. I mean what if you’re right about this whole “reality” thing being simply a fabrication by the dominant power structures C.J.? So now you’re telling me I have to question whether the Pope is actually, like – “infallible?” I don’t know if I can handle this much “reality.” I mean I’m an American for god’s sake! We believe in “magic bullets,” and very tall steel and concrete buildings that “dissolve into thin air” if the government tells us we should. So if I’m told by virtually all corporate media that the Putin-Nazi’s are coming who am I to actually think for myself and question whether it’s true? Can’t we just go back to pretending that whatever the New York Times says is like “close enough” to reality and just leave it at that? I’m just saying. :) Thanks for another great post C.J.

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  5. The circulation of elite is a theory of regime change described by Italian social scientist Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923).

    Changes of regime, revolutions, and so on occur not when rulers are overthrown from below, but when one elite replaces another…
    The role of ordinary people in such transformation is not that of initiators or principal actors, but as followers and supporters of one elite or another…

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  11. […] Unlike in the USA, where there is no functional political Left, and where the non-parliamentary “two-party system” is almost totally controlled by the corporatocracy, in the UK, there are still a few old-fashioned socialists, and they have taken back the Labour Party from the neoliberal Blairite stooges that had been managing the transformation of Britain into the aforementioned neo-feudal nightmare. Jeremy Corbyn is the leader of these socialists. So the corporatocracy needs to destroy him, take back control of the Labour Party, and turn it back into a fake left party, like the Democratic Party in the USA, so they can concentrate on crushing the right-wing populists. Thus, they need to Hitlerize Corbyn, so they can fold him into their official narrative, Democracy vs. The Putin-Nazis. […]

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  12. […] Unlike in the USA, where there is no functional political Left, and where the non-parliamentary “two-party system” is almost totally controlled by the corporatocracy, in the UK, there are still a few old-fashioned socialists, and they have taken back the Labour Party from the neoliberal Blairite stooges that had been managing the transformation of Britain into the aforementioned neo-feudal nightmare. Jeremy Corbyn is the leader of these socialists. So the corporatocracy needs to destroy him, take back control of the Labour Party, and turn it back into a fake left party, like the Democratic Party in the USA, so they can concentrate on crushing the right-wing populists. Thus, they need to Hitlerize Corbyn, so they can fold him into their official narrative, Democracy vs. The Putin-Nazis. […]

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  13. […] Unlike in the USA, where there is no functional political Left, and where the non-parliamentary “two-party system” is almost totally controlled by the corporatocracy, in the UK, there are still a few old-fashioned socialists, and they have taken back the Labour Party from the neoliberal Blairite stooges that had been managing the transformation of Britain into the aforementioned neo-feudal nightmare. Jeremy Corbyn is the leader of these socialists. So the corporatocracy needs to destroy him, take back control of the Labour Party, and turn it back into a fake left party, like the Democratic Party in the USA, so they can concentrate on crushing the right-wing populists. Thus, they need to Hitlerize Corbyn, so they can fold him into their official narrative, Democracy vs. The Putin-Nazis. […]

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  14. […] A diferencia de los EE.UU., donde no hay una izquierda política funcional, y donde el “sistema bipartidista” no parlamentario está casi totalmente controlado por la corporatocracia, en el Reino Unido todavía hay algunos socialistas anticuados y han sacado al Partido Laborista de los secuaces neoliberales “blairistas” que habían estado gestionando la transformación de Gran Bretaña en la ya mencionada pesadilla neofeudal. Jeremy Corbyn es el líder de estos socialistas. Entonces la corporatocracia necesita destruirlo, recuperar el control del Partido Laborista y convertirlo en un falso partido de izquierda, como el Partido Demócrata en los Estados Unidos, para que puedan concentrarse en aplastar a los populistas de derecha. Por lo tanto necesitan “hitlerizar” a Corbyn, para poder integrarlo en su narrativa oficial, democracia contra los nazis-Putin . […]

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  28. […] Unlike in the USA, where there is no functional political Left, and where the non-parliamentary “two-party system” is almost totally controlled by the corporatocracy, in the UK, there are still a few old-fashioned socialists, and they have taken back the Labour Party from the neoliberal Blairite stooges that had been managing the transformation of Britain into the aforementioned neo-feudal nightmare. Jeremy Corbyn is the leader of these socialists. So the corporatocracy needs to destroy him, take back control of the Labour Party, and turn it back into a fake left party, like the Democratic Party in the USA, so they can concentrate on crushing the right-wing populists. Thus, they need to Hitlerize Corbyn, so they can fold him into their official narrative, Democracy vs. The Putin-Nazis. […]

    Like