Manufacturing (New Normal) “Reality”

The ultimate goal of every totalitarian system is to establish complete control over society and every individual within it in order to achieve ideological uniformity and eliminate any and all deviation from it. This goal can never be achieved, of course, but it is the raison d’être of all totalitarian systems, regardless of what forms they take and ideologies they espouse. You can dress totalitarianism up in Hugo Boss-designed Nazi uniforms, Mao suits, or medical-looking face masks, its core desire remains the same: to remake the world in its paranoid image … to replace reality with its own “reality.”

We are right in the middle of this process currently, which is why everything feels so batshit crazy. The global capitalist ruling classes are implementing a new official ideology, in other words, a new “reality.” That’s what an official ideology is. It’s more than just a set of beliefs. Anyone can have any beliefs they want. Your personal beliefs do not constitute “reality.” In order to make your beliefs “reality,” you need to have the power to impose them on society. You need the power of the police, the military, the media, scientific “experts,” academia, the culture industry, the entire ideology-manufacturing machine.

There is nothing subtle about this process. Decommissioning one “reality” and replacing it with another is a brutal business. Societies grow accustomed to their “realities.” We do not surrender them willingly or easily. Normally, what’s required to get us to do so is a crisis, a war, a state of emergency, or … you know, a deadly global pandemic.

During the changeover from the old “reality” to the new “reality,” the society is torn apart. The old “reality” is being disassembled and the new one has not yet taken its place. It feels like madness, and, in a way, it is. For a time, the society is split in two, as the two “realities” battle it out for dominance. “Reality” being what it is (i.e., monolithic), this is a fight to the death. In the end, only one “reality” can prevail.

This is the crucial period for the totalitarian movement. It needs to negate the old “reality” in order to implement the new one, and it cannot do that with reason and facts, so it has to do it with fear and brute force. It needs to terrorize the majority of society into a state of mindless mass hysteria that can be turned against those resisting the new “reality.” It is not a matter of persuading or convincing people to accept the new “reality.” It’s more like how you drive a herd of cattle. You scare them enough to get them moving, then you steer them wherever you want them to go. The cattle do not know or understand where they are going. They are simply reacting to a physical stimulus. Facts and reason have nothing to do with it.

And this is what has been so incredibly frustrating for those of us opposing the roll-out of the “New Normal,” whether debunking the official Covid-19 narrative, or “Russiagate,” or the “Storming of the US Capitol,” or any other element of the new official ideology. (And, yes, it is all one ideology, not “communism,” or “fascism,” or any other nostalgia, but the ideology of the system that actually rules us, supranational global capitalism. We’re living in the first truly global-hegemonic ideological system in human history. We have been for the last 30 years. If you are touchy about the term “global capitalism,” go ahead and call it “globalism,” or “crony capitalism,” or “corporatism,” or whatever other name you need to. Whatever you call it, it became the unrivaled globally-hegemonic ideological system when the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s. Yes, there are pockets of internal resistance, but it has no external adversaries, so its progression toward a more openly totalitarian structure is logical and entirely predictable.)

Anyway, what has been so incredibly frustrating is that many of us have been operating under the illusion that we are engaged in a rational argument over facts (e.g., the facts of Russiagate, Literal-Hitlergate, 9/11, Saddam’s WMDs, Douma, the January 6 “insurrection,” the official Covid narrative, etc.) This is not at all what is happening. Facts mean absolutely nothing to the adherents of totalitarian systems.

You can show the New Normals the facts all you like. You can show them the fake photos of people dead in the streets in China in March of 2020. You can show them the fake projected death rates. You can explain how the fake PCR tests work, how healthy people were deemed medical “cases.” You can show them all the studies on the ineffectiveness of masks. You can explain the fake “hospitalization” and “death” figures, send them articles about the unused “emergency hospitals,” the unremarkable age-and-population-adjusted death rates, cite the survival rates for people under 70, the dangers and pointlessness of “vaccinating” children. None of this will make the slightest difference.

Or, if you’ve bought the Covid-19 narrative, but haven’t completely abandoned your critical faculties, you can do what Glenn Greenwald has been doing recently. You can demonstrate how the corporate media have intentionally lied, again and again, to whip up mass hysteria over “domestic terrorism.” You can show people videos of the “violent domestic terrorists” calmly walking into the Capitol Building in single file, like a high-school tour group, having been let in by members of Capitol Security. You can debunk the infamous “fire-extinguisher murder” of Brian Sicknik that never really happened. You can point out that the belief that a few hundred unarmed people running around in the Capitol qualifies as an “insurrection,” or an “attempted coup,” or “domestic terrorism,” is delusional to the point of being literally insane. This will also not make the slightest difference.

I could go on, and I’m sure I will as the “New Normal” ideology becomes our new “reality” over the course of the next several years. My point, at the moment, is … this isn’t an argument. The global-capitalist ruling classes, government leaders, the corporate media, and the New Normal masses they have instrumentalized are not debating with us. They know the facts. They know the facts contradict their narratives. They do not care. They do not have to. Because this isn’t about facts. It’s about power.

I’m not saying that facts don’t matter. Of course they matter. They matter to us. I’m saying, let’s recognize what this is. It isn’t a debate or a search for the truth. The New Normals are disassembling one “reality” and replacing it with a new “reality.” (Yes, I know that reality exists in some fundamental ontological sense, but that isn’t the “reality” I’m talking about here, so please do not send me angry emails railing against Foucault and postmodernism.)

The pressure to conform to the new “reality” is already intense and it’s going to get worse as vaccination passes, public mask-wearing, periodic lockdowns, etc., become normalized. Those who don’t conform will be systematically demonized, socially and/or professionally ostracized, segregated, and otherwise punished. Our opinions will be censored. We will be “canceled,” deplatformed, demonitized, and otherwise silenced. Our views will be labeled “potentially harmful.” We will be accused of spreading “misinformation,” of being “far-right extremists,” “racists,” “anti-Semites,” “conspiracy theorists,” “anti-vaxxers,” “anti-global-capitalist violent domestic terrorists,” or just garden variety “sexual harassers,” or whatever they believe will damage us the most.

This will happen in both the public and personal spheres. Not just governments, the media, and corporations, but your colleagues, friends, and family will do this. Strangers in shops and restaurants will do this. Most of them will not do it consciously. They will do it because your non-conformity represents an existential threat to them … a negation of their new “reality” and a reminder of the reality they surrendered in order to remain a “normal” person and avoid the punishments described above.

This is nothing new, of course. It is how “reality” is manufactured, not only in totalitarian systems, but in every organized social system. Those in power instrumentalize the masses to enforce conformity with their official ideology. Totalitarianism is just its most extreme and most dangerously paranoid and fanatical form.

So, sure, keep posting and sharing the facts, assuming you can get them past the censors, but let’s not kid ourselves about what we’re up against. We’re not going to wake the New Normals up with facts. If we could, we would have done so already. This is not a civilized debate about facts. This is a fight. Act accordingly.

#

CJ Hopkins
June 20, 2021
Photo: “Coronavirus Covid-19 Face Masks,” License: CC0 Public Domain

DISCLAIMER: DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily 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 Substack page, or his Patreon page, 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 sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volume I and II of his Consent Factory Essays, 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, feel free to contact him directly.

149 thoughts on “Manufacturing (New Normal) “Reality””

  2. In this new 21st Century push to shore up the global-hegemonic system Fauci and other such “Orwellian O’brien’s” will matter-of-factly say without a bat of an eye to well-educated liberals that 2 + 2 = 5 and without hesitation they’ll not only be believed but revered.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Then, to make it still richer, in a week or two they will tell the same people that 2 + 2 = 7 (or even 2 + 2 = 4) and they will believe that too.

      I am always amused (or bemused) by the way Facebook and the other reality filters say that they censor any statement that disagrees with what WHO says. I want to ask, “What WHO says this week? Or last month? Or a year ago?” Because they are all different, and sometimes the exact opposite.

      As Mr Hopkins stresses, the only fact that matters is that when O’Brien wants you to see three fingers, you must see three fingers. Or four. Or five.

      Like

  3. Penetrating insight as usual. Yes, putting facts in front of the new normals does not matter to them. Many only pay attention to power and wish to be part of the herd. Somehow the true reality grounded people need to wrest control from the false reality makers.

    Liked by 2 people

  7. The only hope is that globocap is pushing too fast and the shots will kill off their biggest supporters.
    They will destroy their power base, thinking that technology can maintain itself without labor.
    But with the less gullible left alive, they will face people who can make or break their technopoly.

    Like

  16. We’re not going to wake the New Normals up with facts. If we could, we would have done so already. This is not a civilized debate about facts. This is a fight. Act accordingly.

    I realized that FACT around April 2020! After a few months of reading tonnes of moronic stuff about OPERATION COVIDIUS I starting saying the following to my fellow modern mo ron slaves:

    At this point reality is very SIMPLE: It’s either KILL or be culled.
    Until several Jedburgh’s actions aren’t executed nothing will change except the things the SRF & Billionaires via jesters want to CHANGE!

    Those that don’t know what a Jedburg action is… Keep wearing the muzzle!

    Finally we have to give due CREDIT to the Secular Ruling Families & Billionaires for being so successful at this latest attempt to RESHAPE Their Civilization using a fake pandemic…

    Congratulations…

    Like

  29. Re-blogged.
    My partner commented on another site where this essay was re-posted that your voice, CJ, is a voice of sanity in an insane world.
    I could not more fully concur.

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  32. Excellent article trying to get to the bottom line. The Greenwald section is a very good example of who is going along with it and who isn’t. Fear is the cattle prod for the masses, being on the inside track for higher ups.

    It’s a big club, let’s see who’s in it.

    Everyone who matters. Trump, Putin, Johnson. Politicians worldwide apart from a few (former) African leaders. All the corporate journalists, doctors and scientists on earth excepting a few brave (many retired) souls.

    Now that The Intercept is the establishment / intelligence controlled organ it was always meant to be, Greenwald has reinvented himself as a ‘credible’ journalist like Assange did when he leaked the Clinton emails. (This will not make the slightest difference). There are no exceptions for the Great Reset and Glenn has to take the knee if he wants to stay in the club.

    That’s the bottom line.

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  35. A powerful and honest comment, we are at the crossroads, we either die on our knees, or, as the Bard says ‘take up arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing , end them.’ but, as you say we cannot fight this with facts, and of course the cattle are already stampeding. As individuals none compliance is seemingly our only recourse, so be it, wherever that may take us, better to die for the truth than live and die with lies.

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  37. So true, CJ: “This is nothing new, of course. It is how “reality” is manufactured, not only in totalitarian systems, but in every organized social system. ” We humans always live in some kind of manufactured reality, always have. We can’t live without the abstractions-representations of reality in our brains, not as individuals and not as social organisms. We can fight against this current system, attack its science, its ideology, literally physically attack its basic infrastructure and its most essential/leading internal operatives (take a Unabomber or a Soviet/Chinese Communist revolutionary approach) and yet all will fail, or succeed only in bringing the birth of a next-mega-social-org with all its associated evils, dej vu all over again. Ah well, fight we must, but there will be no permanent victory until the system’s basic energy and material supply technologies fail and fail irreparably.

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  38. I live with one of the zombies (but only one more week to go, thank god). He is a true believer. An absolute devotee of muzzles and lockdowns. He thinks there is a killer virus on the loose. Doesn’t stop him from wanting to get a girl into his bed or crashing a party where he could pester the girls. The hypocrite doesn’t realise that he is endangering them with his irresponsible behaviour when he really should be at home doused from head to toe in disinfectant and waiting for the all-clear.

    Whatever he sees on his laptop screen is the Truth. And it usually comes from the Guardian. He reminds me of the fireman’s wife in Fahrenheit 451. He’ll end up in a room surrounded by screens and that will be his reality. Or he will get himself one of those scary immersive screens that you wrap around your head for a digital 3D experience. He has no idea where he and others like him are headed.

    I direct everyone’s attention to a superb book called The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord. It was written ages ago, and like all such books it’s timeless.

    Liked by 1 person

  39. Thanks CJ! You’ve been one of the most sure guides to the new reality and this essay continues that guidance. Perhaps however I could introduce a consideration that might lighten the burden that you and your readers are feeling: the signs of hegemonic decline are actually ubiquitous. While conditions here in the Empire are likely to worsen considerably, things in Zone B are definitely looking up. My beat covers the global dollar economy and the challenges to the supremacy of the USD are looking ever more credible. Given that military supremacy has been ceded to Russia, economic supremacy to China, and moral supremacy to the Axis of Resistance, financial supremacy is pretty much the last arrow in the quiver. Look beyond the oligarchic media and there’s a basis to avoid despair. Thanks again for all your great work and insight! And, hey other readers, I LOVED Zone 23! Check it out!

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  40. Thank you, CJ! Yes, this is a fight! But I have not yet come across an idea of how to fight best. It’s also because (at least for now) the battleground is our psyche, our social interaction with each other. That’s insidious, and the vast majority of people seems to be unable to recognise this.

    Until more of us understand what’s really going on here, the »other side« has a huge advantage: We are in fact fighting their war, are enabling their psyops! So the very first step would be to realise that we are had.

    Like

  41. In Romania, I started wearing a T-shirt with the message (in Romanian language): „Are you vaccinated? Keep distance! I am allergic at fools”.
    In my opinion, in each country should be produced T-shirts with this kind of messages. A brainstorming about the best messages for such T-shirts can be organized.

    Like

  44. […] For ‘new normal’, read – new reality, new ideology, new world order, new trans-globalism, new reset, or whatever ‘new…’ name you care to choose. It is all the same. And if you are one of those struggling to prevent it from happening, as I guess I am also, for perfectly sound, logical and fact-based reasons, and who eschew this ‘new normal’ and fear for those ‘New Normals’ (the folk who have fallen for the – what we believe to be – deadly plot), then you surely have come to the same conclusion (that we have lost the battle already) – based on what your eyes can see. I only wish I had the courage to come out and say that before today. Thankfully someone has now done that. That someone is none other than the already highly esteemed, by me, and self-described ‘in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins‘ of the Consent Factory, Inc. – article: Manufacturing (New Normal) “Reality” […]

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  45. I was reassured by your article and readers comments as it provides comfort that I am not alone in seeing through the Covid smokescreen. Living in a region of the UK where over 95% of the population have already bought into the Government narrative I think daily about how best I can connect and have a meaningful dialogue with the remaining 5%. If your closing paragraph is a call to arms enlightened individuals can no longer stand-alone in the face of growing tyranny and must some how look to build trustworthy and supportive networks otherwise our individual futures look increasingly bleak and dangerous

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