The
world we live in today is much more socially chaotic
and politically contentious than it was only yesterday.
Seemingly overnight our planet's socio-political landscape has
been rearranged into a nightmarish, dystopian mix of
soul-crushing
late-stage capitalism, social media intrusion, surveillance,
and tribally networked
identity politics.
Welcome to the Culture Wars. The term "culture war" has
been used to refer to the political discourse and actions
surrounding issues that are rooted in dogmatically held,
emotionally charged ideologies and factional reality tunnels.
Never... at least in the
modern era... have the dividing lines been so entrenched. With
the rekindled fire of the
Black
Lives Matter alliance on the Left, and the smoldering
hostility of the
White Nationalist Militias on the Right, battle lines have
been drawn. With the sacking of the U S Capitol building, the
front lines of the Culture Wars have erupted into open
hostilities. But what embers of resentment from our past could
spark such hostilities?
Originally, the term "Culture
War" referred
to the conflict between traditionalist, conservative values and
social-democratic, progressive values... as predominantly
demonstrated in the Western world. The late 20th and early 21st
centuries witnessed the rise of a new, ultra-conservative
movement, labeled
neoconservatism. Neo-
conservatives, or Neocons differ
from their conservative predecessors... as well as their
opponents... in that they interpret
problems
facing the nation as moral issues rather than economic or
political issues. With the rise of the neocons, the
culture wars have since escalated from a ideological cold war, to one that
is white-hot.
"There
is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of
America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation
we will one day be as was the Cold War itself."
- Pat Buchanan, during the 1992
presidential election
Most battles in the culture
wars are fought over issues such as LGBTQ rights, abortion,
gun control, feminism, pornography, the sexual revolution,
drugs, multiculturalism, the role of religion in American
society, school prayer, the teaching of evolution... and the
latest battlegrounds... immigration and
climate change. Other battles come and go depending on what
new moral panic is currently trending on social media.
Although the issues of the
culture war target tribal affiliation and emotion, they are
often employed by those who are not actually vested in the
culture war...
those who hold the pursuit of wealth and power as
their primary value. They use the culture war as a means to get
people to act against their own economic self-interest and to
distract voter's attention. In the last decade, certain wealthy
and powerful "players" have turned up the heat.
Cultural
Insurgencies
In the good ole' U S of A, a
Trumpian, networked, open sourced, political
insurgency dismantled the
traditional two-party political system. As such, social networking has
changed politics forever. An open source insurgency is a loose network that is
composed of many individuals and small groups working
independently, but united by a single purpose. Back in the 2016
presidential election, this single purpose was to elect Trump. He directed
this insurgency by interacting with it. He accelerated the
innovation of the insurgency by paying attention to it. His
now-infamous Tweets and media mentions incentivized innovation and
spread new ideas across the insurgency in minutes (not
days/weeks). His brazen behavior fanaticized his core followers,
known in
newspeak as his "base."
A reactive, outraged form of
political social networking rose up from the ashes of the
collapsed two-party political system.
Known in 2016 as
the Resistance, this
reaction can be described as a bureaucratic, networked political
orthodoxy... an open source insurgency in reverse. It uses
social networking to exert pressure on people to accept the
orthodox position (in this case, resistance to the Trumpian
insurgency). Online orthodoxies grow through networked peer pressure and
political correctness.
These two political networks,
the Trumpian insurgency and the politically correct
Resistance... are examples of the extreme polarization of
factions within the culture wars. This
political dichotomy replaces, yet mirrors the old, two-party
system.
For the most part, they generally fall along traditional
left/right ideology. However... they are more insidious than the
traditional broad-based party politics, in that they fuel
racial, religious, ethnic, social, and/or cultural bias to form
the exclusive, niche alliances of identity politics.
Abortion, gun rights, LGBTQ
rights, separation of church and state, privacy, censorship...
all pivot on definable polarities. Contemporary society has
been coerced and consequently divided along essentially the same lines on these issues,
squaring off as two (or multiple) warring groups... defined, not by religion,
ethnicity, social class, or even political affiliation... but
rather by ideological world-views. These ideologies drive the
insurgency vs orthodoxy paradox.
Psy-Wars
Hoax –
noun
1) To
trick into believing or accepting as genuine something false and
often preposterous.
2) Single most-used word by the
45th president of the United States.
3) Favorite subterfuge term used
in the American Psy-Wars.
Having lived through the nefarious exploits of that darling of
the Alt-right:
Q Anon, and the mainstreaming of White Nationalist militias,
the citizenry of the U S was finally subjected to an
insurrectionist assault and sacking of the United States Capitol
building, on January 6, 2021.
Such tactics are standard operating procedures in any banana
republic... which now apparently includes the currently hollowed United States of
Amerika. What has been obvious to some, is finally obvious to all...
What has, until recently been a covert,
domestically targeted cold-war… is fast becoming hot.
The ingrained, covert driver of the above, has
accelerated over the last two decades by a relentless PSY-WAR,
targeting general (and specific) populations.
Psychological
warfare, or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations
(PSY-OPS), have been known by many other names,
including…
Military Information Support Operations, Black Ops,
political warfare, "Hearts and Minds," and of course…
propaganda. The term is used... "to denote any action which is
practiced mainly by psychological methods with the aim of
evoking a planned psychological reaction in other people"
(Wikipedia).
Historically, covert Psy-Ops typically precede overt military
operations.
“Psy-Ops” or Psychological Operations is an ancient art, but in
its modern form, goes back to WWI. In 1918, A Propaganda
Sub-Section was established under the AEF’s (American
Expeditionary Force) Military Intelligence Branch, within the
Executive Division of the General Staff. We consequently think
of Psy-Ops as a covert military operation. However, especially
in western democracies, modern Psy-Ops are becoming
predominantly a commercial product... serving the corporatocracy.
This commercial product and its industry is commonly referred
to as:
Public Relations. Within the industry, they refer to
their primary product, their “killer app” if you
will, as: Perception
management. Increasingly, Psy-Wars are moving out of
governmental and military realms, and into the private sector.
This follows the marginalization of once-legitimate governmental
entities, and the increasing domination of corporate entities.
Companies such as Cambridge Analytica, and its parent company:
SCL Group, are particularly glaring examples of commercial PSY-OP
providers. Cambridge Analytica (now defunct) referred to
themselves as a… “global election management agency.” These
companies got their start by contracting w/ the US and British
military, in their War on Terror campaign, launched shortly
after the 9/11 attacks.
Cambridge Analytica collected intel on their target population
via data mining. In this case, the data set was personal data,
gleaned from social media sources. They built profiles based
upon a person’s facebook “likes” history. This intel was for
sale to the highest bidder, and Cambridge Analytica ended up
working for the Trump Campaign of 2016.
As the corporatocracy assumes ever-more control, as the covert
(cold) Psy-War turns hot, corporate need for military capability
grows. In 1997, Erik Prince founded the private military
company: Blackwater. After the deadly debacle in 2007, where a
group of blackwater mercenaries killed 14 Iraqi civilians,
Prince “re-branded” Blackwater as: Xe Services, commonly known
as:
Academi.
In 2014, Academi was bought out and became part of Constellis
Holdings, Inc. …an American private security company that
provides integrated security, mission support and risk
management services to corporate, government, and NGO clients.
A major funder of Cambridge Analytica was
Robert Mercer…
Billionaire, Republican funder, Trump supporter and, quite
coincidentally, an early AI researcher. Much of my sourcing for
these parapolitical hijinks, comes from non-other than the
ever-reliable Recluse, from the
VISUP website. A detailed exposé
from 2019 can be
found here, dealing with the financial backing
of the Alt-Right-leaning PSY-WARS. Although somewhat dated, here
is a taste from Recluse’s research…
“When it comes to financing the far right, it falls upon
individuals such as Peter Thiel, and families like the Mercers
and the DeVos-Prince Klan. The Mercer and DeVos-Prince families
are closely aligned, being among the wealthiest backers of the
highly secretive Council for National Policy (CNP). And like
Thiel, the Mercer family are also major patrons of the
alt-right. Indeed, the Mercer family became the largest
financiers of Breitbart in 2012, upon the death of the founder.
It was through Breitbart that the Mercers came into contact with
Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, and Milo Yiannopoulos, all of
whom they became patrons of.”
Note the mention of the Devos-Prince clan, which brings us back
to the new corporate entities that provide the on-the-ground
muscle for not only private (para) military operations… but more
importantly the covert PSY-OPS that now permeates our
increasingly on-line culture. These private security
corporations are essentially drawing the battle lines of the
current PSY-WAR, being waged across the globe.
World
Entertainment Wars
On-line, such battle lines are being
exasperated by emerging, social media conglomerates that seek to
dominate the world's infotainment sphere. The usual suspects... facebook, google, amazon... battle for dominancy of modern
humanity's hand-held interface with a globally intact mass-media
landscape. Through intrusive, privacy-busting, personal data
mining techniques, they insidiously target users, utilizing their
own browsing history to not only sell them "personalized"
products, but to sell their personal data to ambiguous, often
shady third-parties, with ambiguous, often shady intent. Theft
by data.
These insidious media entities
partner with the entertainment and advertizing industries to
market their "Brand"
of pop-cultural propaganda to the public. Use of pop icons and
social media "influencers"
magnify the detrimental effect of unfiltered consumption of
social media. Within a broader context, social media memes are
the latest and greatest "shiny objects" of mass media. The great American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist,
historian, social critic, and political activist:
Noam Chomsky
has named five filters through which mass media operate:
Ownership:
Mass media firms are big corporations.
Often, they are part of even bigger conglomerates. Their end
game? Profit. And so it’s in their interests to push for
whatever maximizes that profit. Naturally, critical journalism
must take second place to the needs and interests of the
corporation.
Advertising: The second filter
exposes the real role of advertising. Media costs a lot more
than consumers will ever pay. So who fills the gap? Advertisers.
And what are the advertisers paying for? Audiences. And so media
not only sells you a product... they are also selling
advertisers you as a product.
The
Media Elite: The establishment
manages the media through this third filter. Journalism cannot
be a check on power because the very system encourages
complicity. Governments, corporations, big institutions know how
to play the media game. They know how to influence the news
narrative. They feed media scoops, official accounts, interviews
with the ‘experts’. They make themselves crucial to the process
of journalism. So, those in power and those who report on them
are in bed with each other.
Flak:
If you want to challenge power, you’ll be
pushed to the margins. When journalists, whistleblowers, and
other sources stray away from the consensus, they get ‘flak’.
This is the fourth filter. When the story is inconvenient for
the powers that be, you’ll see the flak machine in action
discrediting sources, trashing stories and diverting the
conversation to distract readers.
The
Common Enemy: To manufacture
consent, you need an enemy... a target. That identified common
enemy is the fifth filter. Communism. Terrorists. Immigrants. A
common enemy, a bogeyman to fear, helps corral public opinion.
In
their quest to dominate the world's infotainment sphere, on-line
advertising takes up hideous amounts of mobile bandwidth,
worldwide.
One study found that ad content accounted for up to 79% of
all mobile data transferred. We refer to this exploitation of
the infosphere as: Babylon
Bandwidth. The masters of the airwaves clearly see the
world's citizenry as consumers, or worse... commodities. They
will stop at nothing to broadcast their disinformation... to
impose their version of reality to suit their nefarious,
capitalistic agenda.
Moving forward into our Brave
Noö World, the culture wars... be they political, religious,
social, and especially on-line... must not continue to
befuddle world populations with divisive chicanery. Such divide
and conquer tactics must be met with creative, enlightened
resistance. We use the term resistance, not in the contemporary
political sense, but in the historic sense. Historically,
particularly in 1930's Europe, the resistance was an underground
movement of liberation. Occupied populations, using stealth and
ingenuity, defied their oppressive occupier's militaristic
incursion.
Make no mistake, the blatant
rise of racism, white nationalism, and gender & ethnic
intolerance is every bit as brutally fascist as pre-WWII Nazis.
Should the intrepid activist choose to engage these dark,
cultural assaults... his/her
tactics and countermeasures need
to... not only push back, but do so with style. At it's best,
such resistance should be creative, amusing and perplexingly
instructional to the point of a Zen-like illumination.
One such smart, effective and entertaining example of
intelligent countermeasures is known as
Doppelgänger
brand image (DBI). Modifying a corporate logo to illuminate,
through "absurdist art appropriation" ...the corp's real agenda.
This is a most effective and humorous way at striking back
against the Empire. As always, we advocate a non-violent
campaign in our resistance efforts. Never stoop so low as to use
the Empire's own dark and sinister methods of tyranny and
violence. Be smarter than that. Meet the dominator/predator
paradigm with imaginative tactics... and beat them at their own
game!
World
Entertainment War is...
“a benevolent media virus programmed to prevent
the
entertainment criminals from stealing your imagination."
-
World Entertainment War
So where does this leave us in
these world
entertainment wars? Where can we obtain accurate, unbiased
intelligence on global events? What sources can we rely on to
provide us with the truthful, compassionate information we so
desperately need in this socially chaotic and politically
contentious world we find ourselves
living in? Should you, dear intrepid reader, wish to enter the
fray... a word of caution... to enter the struggle is to validate
it. In the words of the renown Sci Fi visionary and neo-Gnostic, Philip K Dick:
"To fight the Empire is to be infected by its derangement. This
is a paradox: whoever defeats a segment of the Empire becomes
the Empire... it proliferates like a virus, imposing its form on
its enemies. Thereby it becomes its enemies."
"How
does one fashion a book of resistance, a book of truth in an
Empire
of falsehood, or a book of rectitude in an Empire of vicious
lies?
How does one do this right in front of the enemy?"
- Philip K Dick
The answers
to these compelling questions will not be found without the
application of critical thinking, research, patience and above all,
a willingness to consider the situation from all perspectives. This
objectivity is essential in digging up the truth. Like an
archaeologist, uncovering with wonder an ancient scroll, so too must
the truly inquisitive respect the past in order to understand the
present and glean insight into possible trajectories of our shared
future. Above all, in this or any endeavor... Be Smart, Be Kind, Question
Authority and
Think for Yourself...
Tactical Resources
EcoTek
Environmentalism for
a small planet...
Exegesis
Tractates: Cryptica Scriptura
of Philip K. Dick as published in his classic novel,
VALIS...
Memetic Engineering
Life is hard, let us tell you what to think...
Pop Future
The future is here...
we are it... we are on our own... |
Conspiracy Central
What the hell is really going on?...
Cosmic Joke
Is the entire Universe one big,
cosmic gag? If you don't have a sense of
humor... it's just not funny any more...
High Strangeness
A weird & wondrous journey to the heart of
our Brave Noö World...
Tactics & Countermeasures
Cosmic resistance at
our Premium Membership portal... |
