Contradictions and oppositions within history and understanding today are regarded as dangerous and signs of a threat to democratic order.
The underlying reality, however, is that individual life stories of members of a community become enmeshed and intertwined. And the entanglement of our stories surges out to form the everyday weft and weave of communal life.
The latter can and should never become funnelled into a single ‘way of thinking’ -- generated abstractly and imposed by Central Command.
Defending historical holism, however, implies ultimately, the defence of unique existence, in spite of any superficial contradictions within.
To defend the existence of your people, their unique culture and way of life as an organic, integral, and holistic culmination of the people's historical existence, in itself is History viewed as a living organic thing.
The tool of ‘free money’ facilitated enforcement of many things, but particularly has achieved a hold over the media.
The rush ‘free money’ at zero interest, called Quantitative Monetary Easing or QE - was launched in Japan in 2001. The total credit created by central banks through quantitative easing, or QE, is now more than $30 trillion.
QE quietly became the defining idea of our time. And as QE drove inequality, it polarised politics.
For the past 15 years, every major development in the Western economy and the cultural superstructure has rested upon it: the explosive growth of social media and Big Tech, the property boom, the gig economy, Elon Musk, cryptocurrencies, fake news and woke capitalism.
Trillions flooded into the financial system. It was magic to the financialised world, but it had another effect too --
The rush of ‘free money’ gave Big Tech the power to buy up platforms that previously had relied on selling the news. They were replaced by entities beholden to advertisers that only cared about grabbing people’s attention and selling it to the highest bidder.
A new economy of attention arose -- a machine for turning distraction and polarisation into investor returns.
The Power Structures ‘got it’: Words no longer need to have objective meanings in this market. Everything is about ‘attention’, however achieved. True or false. That’s what the advertisers wanted. Words could mean what those in power say they mean. The ‘truth’ behind the narrative became irrelevant.
What mattered was the force of a narrative, now divorced from meaning, to compel a singularity of messaging, and to demand that belief in the new order be reflected, not just in compliance, but in assimilation of the messaging into personal conduct in life. Critical thinking was disallowed as denoting an enemy; a threat to be crushed.
This revolution and civil war are likely to be extended over time. Enforcement will predominate initially, but ultimately the Ruling Strata will overreach itself. Emmanuel Todd has defined the West as a “post-imperial” entity; just a shell of military machinery deprived of an intelligence-driven culture, leading to “accentuated military expansion in a phase of massive contraction of its industrial base”. As Todd stresses, “modern war without industry is an oxymoron”.
Each time that society just says ‘No’, enforcement by the Ruling Strata will become more problematic, more stupidly heavy-handed. And the Élites will duly undercut themselves.
Julian Assange is a soldier seized by enemy forces -- an undeserving victim in this ‘war’. I mourn also Daryia Dugina who was burnt to death in a fireball, as her father watched on, helplessly -- another battlefront to this war. I salute them both. Let us continue saying, ‘No’; ‘Just go’.
This article is based on a talk given by Alastair Crooke on 9 March 2024 as part of the conference Night Falls in the Evening Lands: The Assange Epic, organised by the Julian Assange Campaign.
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