left-wing

8. Cultivate Detachment and Non-Identification (1)

“We live in a society where detachment is almost essential.”

— Philip K. Dick

Reading time: 15 – 18 mins

The quote above highlights a growing shift in the consciousness of Western populations – if not the globe – namely, the detachment and separation from our political system to offer any kind of resolution to domestic and international problems. The defeat of the remain camp in the Brexit exit poll to the election of Donald Trump are both symptoms of disillusionment with establishment politics. They represent a negative detachment of progressive politics not from rejecting the conservative “other,” but from an attachment to a dream of what ought to be, thus in direct oppostion to objective reality.

As Gilad Atzmon notes in his recent book Being in Time: A Post Political Manifesto (2016):

The Post-Political condition is an era defined by a complete failure of politics (Left, Right and Centre) and ‘Grand Ideological Narratives.’ Liberal Democracy, Marxism, communism, capitalism, and free markets are all empty, hollow signifiers as far as contemporary reality is concerned.

Total detachment describes the current relationship between ‘the political’ and ‘the human.’ We Westerners are becoming keenly aware that we have been reduced to consumers. The present role of ‘the political’ is to facilitate consumption. Our elected politicians are subservient to oligarchs, major market forces, big monopolies, corporations, conglomerates, banks and some sinister lobbies.

Liberal Democracy, that unique moment of mutual exchange between humans and the political, has failed to sustain itself. ^[1]

In the context of politics and culture, non-identification is essential if we are to separate from belief and move toward constructive solutions. Not to play the game of identity politics is to reject the idea that just because there is disagreement with a certain ideology does not mean prejudice against a race, sexuality, gender or religion. Identitarians would have us all categorised into rigid groups of tribal affiliations according to opinions, feelings and surface image rather than the logic and plausibility of the idea itself. Since identity is enmeshed in ideology and persona, to oppose an ideologue is to launch a personal attack. A specific defence mechanism is thus created to maintain this triad.

Examples of this would be:

Being white and male you are privileged and inherently racist
If you vote for Trump you are sexist, misogynist and a white supremacist Nazi.
Everyone knows there is a rape culture and if you deny it you support it.
If you disagree with pre-school education on transgender sexuality means you are transphobic
Criticising Islamic extremism means you are “Islamophobic”.
Criticising Israel’s human rights record against Palestinians means you are anti-Semitic
If you stand against police brutality you support radical anarchists like antifa
Institutionalised racism exists and police target black people as a result.
All those who criticise the science of human-global warming are “climate deniers”.
Being pro-Brexit and skeptical of the EU means you are xenophobic and right wing

Such identitarianism is spellbound by image and feeling rather than reason an logic. There is no room for nuance or complexity. With identify politics, radical feminism and social justice groupings, group identity and its beliefs take precedence over individual belief and autonomy. Any attack against the group is an attack against personal identity, the latter of which the individual give ups to further group cohesion. The ability to discriminate and critique based on reality rather than personal sensibility is lost. As such, it is a collective defence mechanism called “splitting” which we will look at later on.

To identify with someone’s pain or difficulties is to engage empathy. But when we identify with the ideology and belief – regardless of good intentions – we limit our ability to see outside that ideology. It is then that empathy becomes politicised and distorted toward power and projection fuelled by the momentum of the group itself.

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The Hissy Fit Generation and The Loss Of Free Speech II: Microaggressions and Trigger Warnings (2)

“Trigger warnings might also communicate to people that they’re fragile, and coax them [to] interpret ordinary emotional responses as extraordinary signals of danger.”

— ‘Trigger warnings do little to reduce people’s distress, research shows’

The New Lexicon of “Offence” and Para-Morality

In the West, we are already suffering from information overload and a loss of quality communication. It seems people are more afraid of exchanging pleasantries with a stranger than ever before thanks to an overemphasis on negative news in the media as well as the addiction to our smart phones. If you simply want to say “hi” to an attractive man or woman; to chat with someone you don’t know over the deli counter, the gas station or in the street while waiting for a bus… there will increasingly be this niggling thought of saying the wrong thing and offending someone through a cultural programming that is changing our language as well as restricting it. We have a very real collective fear of saying the wrong thing that is causing a conformity to a flawed consensus that doesn’t exist, except in the minds of those who get paid to push this agenda. The Orwellian Offence Police are active in entertainment, universities, the work place and in government, with numerous examples of the most insane persecution imaginable.

The following phrases are in most left-liberal academic and social justice warrior’s lexicon wrapped up in the desire to virtue signal – that now overused phrase from the right – used to dismiss the logic of free speech advocates and ordinary people in their daily lives.

Trigger Warnings – According to the Oxford English Dictionary a trigger warning is: “A statement at the start of a piece of writing, video, etc. alerting the reader or viewer to the fact that it contains potentially distressing material (often used to introduce a description of such content)”. This is a very convenient way for the Establishment to make sure that its population self-censors. Trigger warnings were originally developed by psychologists for war veterans, victims of sexual abuse or common trauma as a means to flag content which might stimulate a re-run of painful memories. Unfortunately, this has now been extended to the university campuses and the arts & entertainment industry (which is perhaps less of an issue given the state of graphic sex and violence on TV) and is now used to provide protection from words and opinions this precious generation doesn’t like; any discomfort at all in fact, a far cry from the preventative measures designed for genuine victims of war, violence and/or sexual abuse.

This postmodern paranoia has infiltrated minorities and student life with a vengeance. Sex, race and politics are all foci for trigger warnings causing protests, demonstrations, self-important letters with lists of demands for faculty members and even their removal due to perceived bias, sexism, racism or the violation of their hallowed safe spaces. ^[1]

Trigger warnings have been imposed in many university curricula due to students’ demands. The control of university policy – whether it is ethnic minority students feeling victimised or screaming young feminists demanding attention – any kind of encroachment of reality and therefore distress has led to warnings on such books as Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald, and The Merchant of Venice. Yes, now Shakespeare is deemed threatening, a trend that is also taking place in Britain, with Cambridge University picking up the PC gaunlet. ^[2]

To pander to this inner health and safety zone one student offered his university faculty tips on how to proceed: “For instance, one trigger warning for “The Great Gatsby” might be: (TW: “suicide,” “domestic abuse” and “graphic violence.”) […] Thanks to the vague tags within the warning, readers and unaffected students alike can approach a narrative without the plot being spoiled. Yet, at the same time, students who are unfamiliar with these works can immediately learn whether courses will discuss traumatic content. […] Professors can also dissect a narrative’s passage, warning their students which sections or volumes of a book possess triggering material and which are safer to read. This allows students to tackle passages that are not triggering but return to triggering passages when they are fully comfortable.” ^[3]

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The Hissy Fit Generation and the Loss of Free Speech II: Microaggressions and Trigger Warnings (1)

By M.K. Styllinski

“Never has never there been a modern age more saturated in irony and hypocrisy, where blind emotion shreds any semblance of measured reason.”

In the last post we explored the bedrock of postmodernist thinking which informs so much of the present left-liberal system of beliefs. The ridicule and disdain of so called conspiracy theorists – most of whom are merely highlighting the camouflaged nature of social and geopolitical realities – is a frequent hobby of the postmodernists who delude themselves and others into thinking that social constructivism and the very notion of free speech is …a delusion! Certainly, there is a case to made that much of our world is socially constructed and deterministic – especially when we factor in social engineering. However, broadly speaking, for postmodernists subjectivity is an end in itself, nullifying any attempts to arrive at an objective appraisal of reality, and thus the search for truth that potentially binds us together. It is a vacuum of endless open-ended relativity that shuns solutions in favour of an intellectual and epistemological void where anything goes because nothing really exists – its all in the mind as a materialist soup of interaction without practical meaning. Such people draw their emotional succor (masquerading as intellectualism) by focusing on a perceived institutionalised racism, sexism, and a social science that has over emphasised the ‘nurture’ interpretation of social dynamics. This has produced an unhealthy, wholly out-of-balance platform for change, elevating the rights of minority groups over the majority.

Being against Monsanto, the evils of capitalism and the general tenets of anti-globalisation is laudable on paper. However, what use is protest if one is high on the drama of division rather than solutions? Engaging directly with the beast merely feeds it. Peaceful protest is necessary but only as an adjunct to creating alternatives. It’s even worse if you are unknowingly in the pay of Establishment minions like fake philanthropist George Soros who funds various left leaning organisations and activist groups for an entirely different agenda. Hugely important issues raised from the spectre of of 9/11; state-sponsored terror; the weapons industry; child sex rings; human trafficking; the modern-day infiltration by CoIntelpro or even the obvious and continuing conspiratorial nature of the National Security State as a whole, are deemed strangely unworthy for much of the left and radical left, thus easily dismissed as conspiratorial nonsense. (Noam Chomsky and the late Howard Zinn are prime examples of this conscious or unconscious gate-keeping).

We have witnessed how easily activists on the radical left have fallen for obvious psyops and limited hangouts which mobilised progressive and anarchist movements on behalf of the Deep State. Left academics lament Trump while ignoring overarching realities which encompass patterns of criminal corruption that traverse the right-left divide. Meanwhile, their erstwhile activist colleagues on the street demonstrate Trump and on occasions, turn out to be more violent than the local Neo-Nazis whom they frequently bait.

The wish for a just society and equality for all is the reason for this type of social activism, we are told. Yet, it can be as superficial as it is disingenuous, often based on nothing more than personal dissatisfaction with one’s lot and the sense of power and meaning that comes from being a member of a cause. It emboldens the ego and the individual’s idea that s/he is socially significant; that s/he has earned a self-righteous badge of honour in fighting for freedom and the emancipation of the oppressed. If you cannot or do not wish to see the core reasons for how easily crowd psychology can be used against you, that one is merely a pawn and fighting for nothing but one’s own fragile identity, such energy can be swiftly exploited for all its transient worth by those in power. Without the wisdom to accompany this adherence to “social justice” more false narratives and ineffective “solutions” will nibble at the edges of resolution.

“Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.”

— Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Identity politics reflects the same unhealthy postmodernist programming and activism of choice. Whatever dark projections of unresolved trauma one wishes to externalise in order to exercise meaning and/or exorcise pain – group identity becomes the arbiter of reality rather than substance and facts. Of course, like any addiction that just makes it worse for the individual and much worse for all of us who have to deal with the psychic pollution and material chaos it creates. We don’t have social activism on the real issues. Instead, we have the collective hissy fit best represented by the Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) who are neither warrior-like or just. We have the violent emergence of Antifa who label themselves as anarchist and anti-fascist yet in truth, they are about as far from true anarchism as it is possible to be, whilst employing distinctly fascist methods to impose their views.

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The Hissy Fit Generation and the Loss of Free Speech I: Postmodernism (1)

By M.K. Styllinski

Freedom of Speech

Right, as stated in the 1st and 14th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, to express information, ideas, and opinions free of government restrictions based on content. A modern legal test of the legitimacy of proposed restrictions on freedom of speech was stated in the opinion by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in Schenk v. U.S. (1919): a restriction is legitimate only if the speech in question poses a “clear and present danger”—i.e., a risk or threat to safety or to other public interests that is serious and imminent. Many cases involving freedom of speech and of the press also have concerned defamation, obscenity, and prior restraint. – Encyclopedia Britannica

***

Hissy Fit

uk /ˈhɪs.i ˌfɪt/ us /ˈhɪs.i ˌfɪt/ informal: a sudden period of uncontrolled and silly anger like a child. – Cambridge English Dictionary

What Happened?

No, the above sub-heading is not a reference to Hillary Clinton’s embarrassingly awful publishing deal in which she attempts to cast herself as saintly victim of (non-existent) Russian malfeasance. This is about what happened to the principles of the left and its liberal brother; why we are seeing such psychological chaos rising up through left-liberal activism and the younger, socially-minded generations.

Take a look a some of these headlines from the past few years:

Institutional child abuse: First grader sent to principal’s office after ‘misgendering’ classmate

Denmark Offers Homes, Education To Jihadists In “Hug A Terrorist” Rehab Program

Stanford University course to study ‘abolishing whiteness’

Teacher suspended after ‘calling a trans boy a girl’

SJWs finally lose it: California college students claim no such thing as truth, ‘Truth’ is a tool of white supremacy

Berkeley snowflakes protest mid-term tests, demand ‘take-home’ exams instead

Compelled speech comes to Canada: Citizens using the ‘wrong’ gender pronoun could be accused of hate crimes

Collapse of masculinity: Millennial men turning to plastic surgery to increase self esteem

Hyper-activists target Confederate monuments across U.S. as Baltimore calls for them to be torn down

France may set age of consent at 13 after man acquitted of raping 11yo

Fired Google engineer Damore says the company is hiring and promoting workers based on race or gender

Swedish Left Party Chapter Wants To Make Urinating While Standing Illegal For Men

Black Lives Matter: Being born a white person automatically makes you a racist

———————

Alarming no?

30 years ago when I was a young, very bewildered 18 year-old, I was firmly of the belief that environmentalism and a liberal sprinkling of old school Marxism was just the ticket for a more humane and just society. Times have radically changed. Or maybe I just grew up. If my 18 year-old self could have had a brief window into his 48 year old future self that now sides with conservative values over left-liberal activism, he would have shook his head at the horror of it all.

Admittedly, I often think I’ve of stumbled into an alternate reality.

The truth is, I don’t naturally resonate to conservatism, moderate or otherwise. If you had to rubber stamp my forehead with an “-ism” then it would have to be agorism with a dash of old, peace-loving anarchism in the truest sense of the word. Nevertheless, I count myself as a liberal on certain issues, more libertarian or conservative on others. Call it a pick ‘n’ mix position of the best that our philosophical and political traditions can offer.

Shouldn’t that be the whole point in a sane and rational world?

Most political ideologies – much like most religions – have at their inception nuggets of golden knowledge which can potentially enrich societies. Obviously, that approach is not what we have in the world; only “My way or the highway” rules the day. Equally, this is not about whether we are left or right-leaning in our worldview and further entrenching the problem along partisan lines. This is concerned with upholding free speech for everyone so that reasoned discourse can be given the chance to prevail. Such a principle is unalterable for very precise reasons, as we will discover over the course of this series.

When I use the terms “moderate conservatism” and “left” or “left-liberal” I refer to the mindset rather than whatever political party is in power. The latter is irrelevant since the Conservative and Labour parties in the UK and the Democrat and Republican parties in the United States are still very much under the yoke of the (Deep) State’s social and economic dictates. It is this essential point that much of the left-liberal worldview is missing and gives nourishment to far right fringe groups by adopting an increasing and equally authoritarian line. This may sound very odd indeed if you consider yourself a traditional fighter of the liberal-left. But we will be explore how much of the left has been comprehensively ponerised i.e. infected by radical beliefs, in turn, turbo-charged by pathology and the implications for free speech.

I also want to make it absolutely clear that I am not throwing the baby out with the bath-water and suggesting that there is no racism, sexism or bigotry in general or that it should somehow be ignored. It does occur and it should be called out – if it is genuine. There has been great strides in addressing these issues, far greater progress has been made than one would think if listening to 3rd wave feminists, anti-racists and the like.

Which is why the focus is about those who have a vested interest in perpetuating and inflaming these “issues” due to their own psychological predispositions rather than any genuine wish to see a more equitable and fair society.

As the world becomes increasingly unstable (particularly in America) this mindset is growing like a virulent fungus and represents a dangerous threat to free speech and expression. It will mean whether we live in a democracy (however fragile that may be at present) or a form of soft totalitarianism that sometimes crudely or very subtly determines what you say or think. In other words: fascism. This is a shift which has developed through a form of neuro-hacking over decades, creating division and apparent tribalism, yet paradoxically encouraging conformity through a form of vertical collectivism. As I stated in World State Policies I:

So, what form has this “socialism” in the West actually taken? Simply put, collectivism is the opposite of individualism, where group thought, philosophy, action and principle overrides the needs of the individual. The term can be divided into horizontal collectivism and vertical collectivism. The former is collective decision-making among largely equal individuals, and is therefore based on decentralisation, while the latter is drawn from hierarchical power structures and socio-cultural conformity, and is based on centralisation. While such a drive to group endeavour can bring out the positive aspects of our interdependence and our shared experiences across the planet, the kind of collectivism we will explore is an overreaching form that employs both vertical and distorted horizontal forms into one vast entity – its expression having been ponerised by emerging strains of psychopathy. The onset of ponerogenesis will manifest by whatever channels deemed suitable in order to achieve Pathocracy. Remember that none of these ideologies are evil in themselves, but used in a pathocratic context, they become tools of destruction.

It is manifesting in complex, perhaps irreversible ways, through the very traditions that ostensibly speak up for the oppressed and disenfranchised. Such a collective social conscience is in danger of being replaced by a something quite different. It is being seeded in the younger generations who are least able to process its effects, therefore becoming it’s primary foot-soldiers. Since they are our future, this should be a concern to us all.; if that is, we can step outside our political allegiances and look squarely at the nature of the beast.

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Trump Hysteria, Left Hypocrisy and the Four Drivers of the Deep-State Part III

By M.K. Styllinski

Setting aside the possibility that Trump was “allowed in” at the eleventh hour once Killary was found to be a liability and hot on the heels of DNC vote rigging, ^[1]there can be no doubt that he had a substantial platform of ordinary support. ^{[2 ]}Regardless of the complexities of the path Trump must now follow, in order to understand why so many voted for the man we have to a) understand the international and domestic background to his popularity b) whether or not he is going to be a significant impediment to the shadow government.

The intense dissatisfaction with government in both the United States and Europe was sourced from a decades long bubbling resentment against the Powers that Be and their corrupt, criminal enterprise we call the White House, Congress, its federal agencies and the European Union’s endless unelected bodies of Eurocratic corruption. Both perpetuate a neo-liberal economic monster the likes of which culminated in the sub prime housing crisis in the states encouraging a form of financial warfare between banks and corporations all due to a huge popping of a financial bubble the shock waves of which had serious repercussions in Europe. Hello austerity measures. Thanks very much said the banking cartels. It was to result in the further consolidation and centralisation of this economic model and a return to business as usual on a higher and more risky turn of socio-economic resource extraction (people being the ultimate resource).

This led to a massive financial bonanza for the rich whilst the poor and middle classes shouldered the cost producing a sharp rise in mental illness, poverty and hardship. Americans, who were already reeling from the Bush-Cheney era, unnecessary foreign wars and the commensurate rise of the police state bore the brunt of this cynical exercise in propping up a dying banking system. Most importantly, such obvious criminality gave rise to complete disillusionment, anger and fury against the Establishment and politics. A large proportion of the American public saw through the veil and responded to Trump as a relative outsider who appeared to speak their language, appealed to traditional right wing America as well as Libertarians and those in between.

In one sense, the reasons why Trump found himself as president is not the point. Trumphobia is a side show and a distraction. What the new president elect is up against – indeed everyone who truly has a conscience set afire by our brother and sister’s suffering – are the engines or drivers of psychopathic infection which create our present Official Culture, its pathological enculturation and adjustment to a false normality. Moreover, these drivers encourage us to fuel our institutions, governments, military, and socio-economic infrastructures largely by default and with an alien perception of the psychopath and narcissist, spreading like a psycho-virus from the trusted but entirely broken model of statism – a belief in the state as both provider/enforcer and from which all our ills are created.

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Trump Hysteria, Left Hypocrisy and the Four Drivers of the Deep-State Part II

By M.K. Styllinski

“That’s why we’ve witnessed such fury from her supporters – they had wrapped themselves so tightly in the Hillary flag that a rejection of her felt like a rejection of them. And when you consider that many American colleges gave their students Wednesday off class because they were too ‘upset’ to study, you can see that this wasn’t a battle for the White House – this became a genuine battle for America’s future direction. And, indeed, for the West.”

– ‘Two Fingers to a Politically Correct Elite’ by Ian O’Doherty

Image is everything in America right?

Bill Clinton’s jazz-cool sax playing and predatory behaviour towards women; Barack Obama’s winning smile and languid nonchalance care of a marketing ploy of the first Black American fused with mythic qualities of JFK and Martin Luther King…. Who wouldn’t want such a man proclaiming “Hope and Change” after the Organ Grinder and Monkey of the Bush-Cheney years?

Well, that fell as flat as a week old soda. But not before havoc and mayhem was caused on behalf of Deep State movers.

In the heady days of Obamamania – so cool so fake. See: OBAMA: A LEGACY OF ASHES (2017)

Obama was a gargantuan disappointment failing to deliver on his stunningly hyped message of progressive change as an antidote to the Bush Junta. In particular, African-American supporters were thrown into tail-spins of disillusionment or a psychosis of denial because he gave the U.S. population the exact opposite of emancipation and liberal dreams of equality: he became the figurehead of the same regime change foreign policy strategy killing hundreds of thousands in the process. Our ex-human rights lawyer tipped this country into a full-blown police state and allowed the NSA to transform America into a surveillance society. Despite Edward Snowden, Bradley/Chelsea Manning and other whistle-blowers the dark maneuvers of the NSA became public knowledge but didn’t change. If anything, it got worse.

Barack Obama’s presidency, (as was his diabolical Nobel Peace Prize) was a carefully managed stage show, the same shadow marketing which has shaped successive presidents to ensure a role designed to whittle away corporate accountability and dismantle the constitution; to preempt and degauss a restless population and enforce compliance by stealth on behalf of their banking masters.

The same worship of authoritarianism is as relevant now as it was just after the Industrial Revolution and the outgrowth of elite institutional directives post World War II. Accordingly, the same divide and rule formula in combination with the conditioned “normality” of statism had been used against a dumbed down populace for more than one hundred and fifty years. Yet, we live in the Information Age, an equivalent to an internal expansion of the mind in the same vain that the Industrial Revolution was an expansion of external control. And yet, still – STILL – you have terminally deluded individuals who feel duty-bound to support and defend this war criminal against all the bloody evidence. Such objective proof batters on the door of people with conscience up and down the country pleading to be recognised. Unfortunately, it seems denial and lies have been inculcated to such an extent that a collective Stockholm Syndrome is still holding sway.

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Trump Hysteria, Left Hypocrisy and the Four Drivers of the Deep State Part I

By M.K. Styllinski

“I’m a bit of a P. T. Barnum.” Trump, 1991

Indeed he is – and so the show goes on.

Whether you like or loathe Donald Trump he appears to have been the first in a long time to have been democratically elected offering a platform of nationalist capitalism. It remains to be seen if this trajectory will oppose the hybrid blend of cultural Marxism and cartel capitalism which has been destroying the socio-cultural fabric of America for decades. Although Trump, with help from the media is perceived as a sexist, racist and bigoted demagogue (all, or some of which may be true) he is getting down to business and attempting change, despite the media-led hysteria and propaganda. What I want to do in these series of articles is not just explore whether Donald Trump is the caricature of the ivory tower rich but to question the hysteria and focus of the the left in light of their rude awakening to such a presidency. Moreover, how this cognitive dissonance is actually feeding into the Establishment’s wishes.

It’s proving a very tough call indeed for many who consider themselves “progressive” and “left-liberal” to see the wood for the trees. Indeed, it seems the very notion of “wood” or “trees” simply doesn’t register. Gee, we gotta have the first female president already…That’s all that matters right? The fact that Hillary Clinton is one of the most repellent criminals ever to stain politics seems to be of secondary importance. And it was the same PR/marketing brand of an Establishment candidate that propelled Barack Obama and his “Hope and Change” into office. “Wouldn’t it be neat to have the first black president and then the first female president? Keewwwwl.” And when that didn’t work out the encroachment of reality meant collective fingers were thrust into ears and screaming tantrums exploded into protests; calls for a democratic re-vote were screamed from behind balaclavas contradicting the whole basis of democracy in the first place: Whaaaaaaaaaaa! – cue toys thrown out of pram.

If that wasn’t enough, then the predominantly twenty-something middle class voters accuse “fascist pig Trump” of exactly the same style of group-think fascism in calling for his assassination and abusing anyone who has the temerity to think differently. So much for free speech. It appears as if inclusiveness and cooperation, tolerance and humanitarianism is only for those in your own tribe. Otherwise, you can apparently “Go fuck yourself.”

The videos here here, and here pretty much sum up the petulance and hypocrisy on display to the point where self-entitled snowflakes hurl abuse at all and everyone and self-proclaimed “anarchists” decide to trash property and commit violence on Trump supporters. Now, despite having a few issues with Conservative and Libertarian views, when Barack Obama was elected there was no such reaction from this sector of belief nor did they have very public and attention-seeking meltdowns of the kind we are getting from the left in tandem with usual MSM editorials. I resonate to anarchism in its original meaning, the origins of which these spoiled young narcissists appear to have no clue at all, preferring to vomit their unresolved issues everybody else. Be the change you’d like to see in the world? If that’s the case then America’s fallen into the path of Non-being…

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Trumping the Future

By M.K. Styllinski

trumpclintnon1

It’s not often our repellent Establishment Elite receives a public punch squarely on the jaw and flies across the saloon bar of their sordid reality, gambling cards scattering everywhere. That’s what they’re usually quite good at: behaving like Kings and Queens while gambling with billions of lives and maintaining the poker face of Official Culture; applying just enough pressure to make an outcome seem “democratic” or a regime change appear to be a “humanitarian intervention” whilst bestowing an Anglo-American”freedom” upon whichever nation has the most resources to plunder.

Yet, away from the nonsense of the polls and the disgusting excuse for journalism, most Americans didn’t buy it. Perhaps for some, the sobering lesson of golfing impresario Obama and his lamentable “hope and change” tagline was finally enough to catch a glimpse of this revolving door of hapless puppets where the ideology of right and left mean nothing anymore. The full tank of gullibility had finally run dry – at least for a large portion of the U.S. public. This, in itself is cause to be hopeful.

So, the aces in the pack dropped out of the Elite’s dark sleeves and in a similar result to Brexit the whole show went spectacularly awry. Even with a bit of DNC vote rigging and no doubt some electronic manipulation on the side, the Liberal/Conservative Establishment’s Zio-Con war hawk Killary fell flat on her face. (Quite literally at one point). Poor Hillary. She so wanted to be President just like her lecherous husband Bill. But even the Grand PR Machine of the Pathocrats couldn’t quite pull it off, since there wasn’t even any charisma or charm in evidence, only the likely onset of dementia, the trademark cackling laugh and a hypocritical mendacity which left a very nasty taste in most people’s mouths. If she wasn’t a lying sociopath with a trail of corpses lining her gaudy political carriage thus far I might have felt a twinge of sympathy.

Since that isn’t the case then we can allow a brief period to gloat.

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Dark Green IX: UN Agenda 21 and US Land Grab

By M.K. Styllinski

“One of the big lies about UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development is that it ‘builds strong communities’. It does. But not in the way you would expect. It is managed democracy and manufactured consensus.”

– Rosa Koire, Executive Director, Post-Sustainability Institute

If we are to live our lives supporting and deriving benefit from Nature’s bounty, sustainable development must be an essential part of human destiny. However, in the hands of our leaders the concept of sustainability in its present incarnation may be very far from what many environmental activists believe it to be.

One of the many initiatives to come out of the Rio conference in 1992 was a 300 page document called Agenda 21 which the UN defines as: “… a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and major groups in every area in which human impacts on the environment.” Out of the summit came a National Strategy for a Sustainable America which led to the announcement in July 1993 by US President Bill Clinton of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD) to implement a “national Strategy” for sustainable development. By 2010, this had advanced to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s mission of advancing the principles and goals of sustainable development through partnerships, collaboration, and outreach. ^[1]

The 1992 Earth summit’s Rio Declaration on Environment and Development set out 27 principles intended to guide future sustainable development around the world. The PCSD also had a set of “We Believe Statements” outlining 16 principles which paraphrase the Rio Declaration. Both these sets of principles are incorporated into Agenda 21 (“21” refers to the 21^st Century).

The Agenda 21 document comprises of 40 chapters grouped into 4 sections:

Section I: Social and Economic Dimensions
Combating poverty in developing countries, changing consumption patterns, promoting health, achieving a more sustainable population, and sustainable settlement in decision making.
Section II: Conservation and Management of Resources for Development
Includes atmospheric protection, combating deforestation, protecting fragile environments, conservation of biological diversity (biodiversity), control of pollution and the management of biotechnology, and radioactive wastes.
Section III: Strengthening the Role of Major Groups
The roles of children and youth, women, NGOs, local authorities, business and workers and strengthening the role of indigenous peoples, their communities, and farmers.
Section IV: Means of Implementation Science, technology transfer, education, international institutions and financial mechanisms. ^{^[2]}

In the above, we find the complement to the Earth Charter, where the opposite poles of political beliefs come together to create maximum noise ratios and thus obscure any rational discourse on the issue. A “divide and rule” friction is set up between so called “lefties” and “right-wing whackos” for which Agenda 21 is the devil incarnate or a practical framework for a sustainable future. Is Agenda 21 an innocent “soft law” platform for change? Or are the “radical right, conspiracy theorists” correct and this is an an attempt to impose a vast template for technocratic global governance?

© infrakshun

The UN Commission on Global Governance established in 1992 with full support from then Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali published a report in 1995 called “Our Global Neighbourhood.” Sustainable development (SD) and environmental protection are seen as integral step to the long-term security of that vision. As the report confirms: “The concept of national sovereignty has been immutable, indeed a sacred principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation.” And further: “Regionalism must precede globalism. We foresee a seamless system of governance from local communities, individual states, regional unions and up through to the United Nations itself.” ^{^[3]}

The problem that many have with this process as it is being developed in both EU and the United States, is that it removes the public from the decision-making process, by default. If elected officials are by-passed by non-elected officials who have been tasked with an agenda, however well-intentioned, it means that democracy and civil liberty is side-lined in favour of a consensus that may have no relation at all to the values, culture and self-determination of the country involved. Regionalism and the communitarianism are fine ideas – even welcome theories for socio-economic development. However, the devil is in the details. The overriding importance for members of the UN and Establishment circles is the dismantling of national sovereignty and the absolute control of the domestic population with the means to see that come about. When you get these people whole-heartedly supporting such potentially massive changes you can be absolutely sure it has nothing whatsoever to do with the greater good but the interests of the “lesser evil.”

Areas which are prompting most concern involve policy making procedures defined by collaborative consensus building a conflict resolution label appropriated by SD and SMART redevelopment and is inaugurating drastic changes in the way public policy is created in the United States. This consensus process as defined in Agenda 21 and the “We Believe” Statements of the PCSD serves to circumnavigate elected officials and place power in the hands of unelected officials who then determine Agenda 21 policy. This gives a free reign to a multitude of SMART redevelopment programs, where government and the corporate sector merge in ethically compromised, ideologically questionable ways.

With the United States having already had much of its constitution eviscerated by both the Bush-Cheney and Obama-Biden Administrations, the legitimate concern here for this one-time Republic and for the nations of Europe is that governments are exercising entirely undemocratic powers through seemingly benign programs. They do this because such passion can be usefully diverted to agendas which piggy-back the initial intent from public and officials, which is sincere. The Agenda 21 platform certainly has collectivist principles to its policy changes which immediately causes the political right to raise its hackles at the merest hint of such a thing. Since the US has an appalling record on global resource use and environmental safeguards in general, the kinds of changes which are being demanded under Agenda 21 will mean that there will be a forced redistribution of wealth and the confiscation of private property under the guise of “protecting the environment.” Therefore, the “social equity” in such a context, is a collectivist dream.

The concept of sustainable development does require a system of governance that is even more centralised under an integrated package of social equity, environmental protection and economic activity. (And we haven’t even looked at carbon tax yet). The PCSD brought the concept of Sustainable Development (SD) into the policy process of every agency in the US federal government. In partnership with the same environmental organisations who drafted Agenda 21, federal government agency grants are allowing SD programs to be seeded into the infrastructure of American life. So, while the UN cannot impel communities to adopt Agenda 21 policies its influence and beliefs are outsourced to hundreds of environmental groups and NGOs – the latter often paid quangos for government meddling – who carry out its operations so that Agenda 21 dove-tails seamlessly into future SMART growth infrastructure.

As a prelude to the Agenda 21 framework and The Convention on Bio-Diversity which has yet to be ratified, the Ecosystem Management Policy spear-headed by the UNEP is up and running in many US states. This means that where federal management of ecosystems exists it would inevitably expand federal control of the use of privately owned land and increased restrictions on the use of public lands for economic purposes. Since ecosystems do not have a defining boundary, private lands would be included in an expanded regulatory framework with the imposition of restrictions and guidelines mandated by law. The scope for the abuse of power would be limitless.

In Agenda 21’s vision for America, the protection of the ecosystem and sustainable development would take precedence over economic activity and private property rights. If the authority for implementing ecosystem management eventually meshed with Agenda 21 and continues to lie with the federal government, the vested interests of stakeholder input and authoritarian environmental activists, a massive transfer of power from the individual to the state is the only possible outcome.

The political and social equality pushed in Agenda 21 does not necessarily equate with a free society.

The repeated statement that a “transformation of society” is required includes an irreversible change in the process through which decisions affecting citizens are made. Extensive land use planning delivering SD to local communities dispenses with these democratic processes, or as commentator Henry Lamb correctly observes: “The fundamental principle that government is empowered by the consent of the governed is completely by-passed in the process … the natural next step is for government to dictate the behavior of the people who own the land that the government controls.” ^{^[4]}

The lure of partnership-privatisation, be it water or forestry management and the wider issues involved, are often eclipsed by the approach of financial dividends. Everyone is always keen to make a buck and nothing is more seductive when one’s conscience is perceived to be clean while doing it. Bailing out bankers is a euphemism for maintaining an exploitative system. Such bailouts can operate under corporate lawyers and foundation executives offering financial assistance while making sure that they can gain much more for their money in return. Local officials and rural communities are seldom aware of what they are being “sold” and wouldn’t know a biodiversity clause or an Agenda 21 stipulation if it was deftly flashed in front of them on an i-pad screen. But it would sure look benevolently green.

One of the most surprising and little known facts related to SD and the present land grabs which are now taking place in the USA are the Executive Orders No.11490 and No.11647 enacted by President Richard Nixon on February, 10, 1972. The United States was divided into 10 Regional Councils, each federally controlled by bureaucrats for the improvement of coordination of activities between different levels of government. These 10 federal regions were to be given powers over everything pertaining to regionalism. Within those regional divisions, this included conservation, land use, water and all other natural resources within the United States. Fairly momentous and dramatic contributions to the US yet very few people know about it thanks to a compliant media and a corrupt Congress.

Standard Federal Regions

A bureaucratic binding has now arrived in the form of four federally chartered regional commissions: the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), signed into effect by President Kennedy in 1963 and amended numerous times up until the present; The Delta Regional Authority (DRA) signed into effect by President Ronald Reagan (1988) and the Northern Great Plains Regional Authority (NGPRA) signed into effect in 1994 and the Denali Commission (DC) signed into effect in 1998 – both by President Clinton, the latter being the only commission targeting a single state (Alaska).

Each commission is responsible for a variety of legislative operations and procedures implementing a long term economic plan:

ARC: On top of a mandate to improve “regional infrastructure, reducing regional isolation; water and wastewater management resources; natural resources development; and human resources development, including housing, education, job skills, and health care” the Truman Administration expanded this to “… promot[e] economic development in the region; and establishing a framework for joint federal and state efforts in developing basic facilities essential to promoting coordinated regional responses to the region’s problems.”
DRA: “The Rural Development, Agriculture, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act for FY1989.9 Title II of that act, known as the Lower Mississippi Delta Development Act, authorized the creation of the Lower Mississippi Delta Development Commission (LMDDC […] the Commission’s legislative mandate was to identify the economic needs and priorities of the Lower Mississippi Delta region, and to develop a 10-year economic development plan for the region.
NGPRA: “… directed it to study and make recommendations for improving the economic development prospects of residents of rural Northern Great Plains communities. The Commission was charged with developing a 10-year rural economic development plan for Northern Great Plains (NGP) with the assistance of interested citizens, public officials, groups, agencies, businesses, and other entities. […] “The act charged the NGPRDC with developing a 10-year plan that would address economic development, technology, transportation, telecommunications, employment, education, health care, housing, and other needs and priorities of the five-state region. The act encouraged the NGPRDC to develop the plan in collaboration with Native American tribes, federal agencies, non-profit and specific issue areas: value-added agriculture, international trade, business development, telecommunications, transportation infrastructure, health care, and civic and social capacity.”
DC: “… the Commission’s mission included providing job training and other economic development assistance to distressed rural areas in the state. The act also charged the Commission with providing for rural power generation and transmission facilities, modern communication systems, water and sewer systems, and other infrastructure needs of remote areas in the state.” ^{^[5]}

All these Commissions are in turn, focused on a highly complicated jumble of state and local county development programs many of which are integrated or in the process of being integrated into the Agenda 21 blueprint. What Nixon and the Clinton-Gore administration did was to create a new government eco-bureaucracy or “regional” government placing the states into the aforementioned Ten Regions and their requisite federal funding. However, as regional government was the assigned vehicle for federal fund distribution it meant that local government officials were unaware that they were effectively reducing their power by being answerable to administrators of regions. Local authorities would be bypassed in favour of regionalism which isn’t just a system of grant distribution but an extension of State power.

The justification for all these eco-imperatives comes from the United Nations which – in much the same way as the Eurocrats in Brussels – overrides democratically elected decision-makers in favour of SD and SMART associated stake-holder legislations. Fusing management and administration systems based on new technology, redevelopment and eco-imperatives are making regionalism very far from democracy and constitutional accountability. We are faced with a situation where decisions are rubber-stamped by international regional government administrators and their connected councils serving a desperately hierarchical world management system which has nothing whatsoever to do with serving Mother Earth or its people.

The concept of Sustainable Development as it was sold to the public was never a grassroots ignition. It is a top-down product of a world management system dressed up in green language which will allow yet another vast channel of technocratic control to merge with fake land ethics, laws, and regulations. Environmental protection of fauna and flora will certainly take place but society will be in no position or have the legal right to enjoy it! Nature’s new found liberalisation, sagely bestowed by global stewards will always know best it seems.

The UN works through the emerging civil society which is actually made up of thousands of NGOs with largely the same beliefs as UN personnel. They are not necessarily representative of society as a whole. Via summits, national and international conferences, seminars and local outreach groups policy documents are formulated drawn from the gospel of Agenda 21, they are all overseen by Maurice Strong’s UNEP. Under the ever-present influence of NGOs and environmental pressure groups, local governments become un-elected members of “stakeholder councils” managing “empowerment zones”, or “enterprise committees” and “visioning councils” determined to adhere to the concepts of SMART growth. *

Despite many recommendations still to be implemented, the UN has spent – and continues to spend – millions of dollars whilst holding various international meetings which are attended by hundreds of political leaders, corporate CEOs and thousands of other non-governmental organizations who expend equal amounts of time drafting massive policy documents. Clearly, this is much more than a whimsical green distraction. They mean business. Although Agenda 21 is entirely “voluntary” and “non-binding” that is not how it’s playing out on the ground. Using an array of Delphi-based psychological techniques a veritable army of “facilitators” are descending on American cities and part of the neighbourhood councils and planning associations. Often, eco-SMART NGOs are nothing more than pincer movements into communities in order to extract support for redveelopment proposals under Agenda 21/SMART auspices. Most importantly, they represent a fusion of corporate and government sponsorship which stands to make a lot of money for both parties at great expense to specific communities, most notably in suburbia. As these new vested interests are drawn from Rockefeller-type Foundations and corporate CEOs it does not bode well for the future that will be defined by the disempowerment of civil society and the dilution, if not disappearance of truly representative local government and community.

The ubiquity of SD activists and advocates becomes especially problematic when so many of these people are tuning in to what is after all, a genuine wish to protect the environment and improve the quality of societies for future generations. Yet there is a refusal and a lack of knowledge as to how an ideology and system can be co-opted and used for something quite different. The young’s natural passion to protect the Earth is strong, so too are the dangers of the dogma and fascism that are intimately connected to the history of the environmental movement. With the present global economic system in terminal decline and media propaganda as potent as it has ever been, we are reminded of Peter Staudenmaier’s observation in the context of rising fascism: “The attraction such perspectives exercised on idealistic youth is clear: the enormity of the crisis seemed to enjoin a total rejection of its apparent causes. It is in the specific form of this rejection that the danger lies.” ^[6]

So Agenda 21 network continues to infiltrate by stealth every aspect of society and local development plans from biosphere reserves, wetlands, greenways, railways, carbon footprints, partnerships, conservation /environmental protection, land use, heritage areas and planning, to name but a few. While securing more legislation and government control it reduces the rights of the individual and usurps power from local, democratically elected councils. Perhaps most importantly, after our exploration of eco-fascism and depopulation we should be extremely concerned when a vast blueprint for ecological management and sustainable development is sourced from those who cheerily support perpetual war, state-sponsored terror, cartel capitalism, eugenics, forced sterilisation; a global tax, (usually on those who will be least able to pay) and massive reduction of the human population by any and all means to reach that objective.

So, the perceived belligerent fears from the right-wing resistance to Agenda 21 stems from a much more complex dynamics playing out in plain sight. Therefore, there needs to be much more bipartisan support for rooting out what really gives on this issues both politically and within the public. The refusal to address legitimate fears from liberal and left-wing groups displays the same tunnel vision.

© infrakshun

Building on the advances made from the 1992 Rio summit, the Rio+20 Summit on Environmental Sustainability took place in late June of 2012. Though no real breakthroughs or commitments were forthcoming, the “larger achievement [may have been] making global sustainable development goals a priority on the international agenda” according to a recent Council on Foreign Relations report. The summit produced Rio+20’s outcome document, The Future We Want the greatest contribution of which “… catalyses a global call to make sustainable development priorities central to global thinking and action.” ^[7]

Whether this is a turn for the better for humanity is entirely dependent on whom we choose to preside over this transformation. Some of the perceived enemies of environmental activism such as large polluting corporations and bureaucratic government departments also play a part as effective double agents on the panoramic stage of social engineering. Presenting and even encouraging the rifts between the two serves to prop up the illusion that the overall conflict is real when it is all part of the programming. That is not to say that is ALL a conscious ruse. Clearly not. But we can hopefully begin to see how these ambitious macro-social projects connect like a vast net across the globe. And a big part of this eco-Intelpro involves the confiscation of land.

The rush to grab land and resources across the world has defined a new form of colonialism in the 21^st century. China, America, Britain and other European countries are leading the way in carving up African land under the pretext of offering environmental or humanitarian assistance. ^[8]But how many of us know about the vast tracts of land which are being bought up by federal government programs in partnership with Establishment families, and hundreds of conservation trusts and environmental groups a bit closer to home? In the US these “buffer zones” and “rural corridors”; heritage sites and designated conservation areas of “re-wilding” which are falling under the protection of SD and biological diversity legislation sometimes run into anything from 100,000 to 25 million acres where human presence is seen as “interference.” ^[9]

The re-introduction of species which have died out in specific regions, the management of forests and lakes, reservoirs and various types of land reclamation rides on the powerful and deep-seated wish for people to care for their environment. Difficult as it may be to accept – especially for ecologists and environmentalists who are traditionally some of the most passionate in their beliefs – the US is experiencing a gradual but inexorable large-scale theft of US land by those with money and power in order to turn almost 50 percent of America into protected habitats and reserves for the good of biological diversity. It is a theft because the vast majority of the public has neither access to, nor the necessary information to make an informed decision as to where they stand on the issue. Thanks to the usual lack of proper investigative reporting by the US media and the constant noise and distraction of Republican and Democrat knockabouts, the required public awareness on this agenda is non-existent and thus proceeds with ease, with locals and their councils oblivious to the larger implications, all too often embroiled in the impenetrable bureaucracy that SD has spawned.

The Wildlands Network (formerly the Wildlands Project) is more radical than the vision of SD though it is sitting alongside its ideological platform quite comfortably. The United Nations gave its seal of approval in its “Global Biodiversity Assessment” when it mentioned The Wildlands Project as a possible approach to preserving biological diversity. ^[10]It is vast in scope, extending from one end of the continent to the other. Equally impressive is the enormous list of Wildlands Network affiliated organisations and groups, councils and foundations which in turn have sub-categories of affiliates which are thousands in number. And what do you know? The Rockefeller Foundation is there among the donators as is The Turner Foundation, from media mogul and depopulation advocate Ted Turner, the largest sponsor of environmental causes in the country. The Environmental Grantmakers Association makes sure a steady stream of cash keeps this long-term project afloat and on course.

The network was created from the concept of “re-wilding” a term first coined by conservationist and activist Dave Forman, one of the founders of the group Earth First! The term described the creation of “reserve networks” across the United States which would provide vast areas of wildlife habitat, the goal being to maximize biological diversity across the land. Humans, however, do not feature in this grand plan. Having laid the blueprint for the Wildlands Network in the 1980’s with colleagues Howie Wolke, and Bart Koehler, conservation biologists Michael Soulé and Reed Noss continued to build on the ideas, most notably in an influential paper published in 1998. ^[11]While Forman’s involvement has faded somewhat, Reed Noss, has become the leading spokesman for the Plan, expanding the possibilities with federal government support.

The philosophy which suffuses the Wildlands Network is Deep Ecology. In the words of Forman, from his popular 1991 book Confessions of an Eco-Warrior: “The only hope of the Earth is to withdraw huge areas as inviolate natural sanctuaries from the depredations of modern industry and technology. Move out the people and cars. Reclaim the roads and the plowed lands.” Deep Ecology is essentially a mix of the rich tradition of Pantheistic nature worship with streams of Taoism, Buddhism and American and German eco-revivalism thrown in. It is in fact, a beautiful philosophy. However, in radical hands it becomes something quite different.

Norway’s premier Philosopher Arne Naess and recognised pioneer of the Deep Ecology movement drew up eight basic principles that describe the philosophy:

The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth have value in themselves. These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes.
Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realisation of these values and are also values in themselves.
Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs.
The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life demands such a decrease.
Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.
Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present.
The ideological change is mainly in appreciating life quality rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great.
Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to try to implement the necessary change. [Emphasis mine]

Eminently sensible. Except that this same philosophy is also embraced by eco-fascists who define our “obligations”, in slightly more authoritarian ways thereby hoping to change political policies to a situation “deeply different from the present.” We might hazard a guess what they might be prepared to do to get that ideal differential.

Deep Ecology has many positive connections to past traditions which involve co-creating with Nature rather than exploiting it, thus exhibiting a much needed humility. Nonetheless, since it appeals to those harbouring eco-fascistic views and authoritarian designs it is easily absorbed into the Agenda 21 framework. Despite the central premise of Deep Ecology as philosophical (which often means impractical) and a guide to a deeper awareness of nature and our relationship to it, in the context of Pathocracy it becomes another nail in the coffin of true awareness; the case of the horse bolting before the cart. When Deep Ecology becomes grafted on to the State – much like anything other truth – it cannot become anything else but subverted. The radicalism of the Wildlands Network in combination with Agenda 21 and Deep ecology advocates has the potential to become something quite different to the romance of us all returning to a more harmonious connection to the Earth. Such radicalism invites it as John Davis, editor of Wild Earth magazine exemplifies: “Does all the foregoing mean that Wild Earth and The Wildlands Project advocate the end of industrialized civilization? Most assuredly. Everything civilized must go …”

So, to what does the Wildlands Network comprise? Reed Noss defines it in the following terms: “A wilderness recovery network is an inter-connected system of strictly protected areas (core reserves), surrounded by lands used for human activities compatible with conservation that put biodiversity first (buffer zones), and linked together in some way that provides for functional connectivity of populations across the landscape.” ^[12]

The 4C’s meets the 3E’s

The characteristics of these core areas include the expansion of parks and “wilderness areas to include adjacent old growth, roadless areas, and ecological areas,” where size means “bigger is better.” (So much for E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful) Existing roads would be closed and “Human access greatly reduced or eliminated altogether.” Noss interjects that: “Many ecologists (myself included) would just as soon see huge areas of land kept off limits to human activities of any kind.” ^{^[13]} “Buffer zones” allow for some human activity, while “corridors” permit wildlife to travel freely from one core area to another, extend reserve habitats; allow seasonal migration genetic interchange between core reserves; “provide for long distance migration in response to climate change” with the average width of corridor one mile wide where little or no human use is encouraged. All of which seems to confirm the idea of that humans are to be controlled and managed in order to preserve Nature. The Integration and marriage of the natural world of which we are a part seems an unworkable hypothesis, but such segregation would certainly appeal to a super-rich Elite who have made it their long-term purpose to live in these reserve habitats while the rest of us get used to living in Mega-cities.

SD principles and the parallel visions of conservation biology share a special place in collectivist minds. The three pillars of SD which can be found in almost every article or paper related to Agenda 21, ecology and environmental ethics are: “Equity”, “Economy” and “Environment” or “The three E’s of Sustainability.” (See above). Each sector requires a total transformation towards global government. The “transformation of society” under the auspices of the UN and its agencies, the Club of Rome and many other think tanks and non-elected institutions and NGOs is not about a paradigm shift to more freedom and ecological emancipation but to accept a carefully engineered set of beliefs in order to welcome its exact opposite. Equity, Economy and Environment are embedded in the collectivist-corporatist ethos of the 4Cs of: commercialisation, consolidation, centralisation and control. Equity is about social justice that will put nature before humans and thus create the conditions by which private ownership is diluted and eventually seen as “eco-unfriendly” and against the “greater good”. Integrated into a SMART infrastructure a police state will be relatively “soft” due to the pervasive sanitising of consciousness drawn from socio-eco-engineering principles. In this way, Fabian economics has always been behind much of the new ecological visions currently capturing the minds of the Western young bureaucrats and technocrats. It is the core force behind the 4Cs, the 3Es and the 3EM.

Ecologists, environmental activists, politicians and bureaucrats are so bound up in green visions or the cash incentives for green technology that they cannot seem to entertain the possibility that such huge projects may serve a totalitarian game-plan. As discussed the shadow of right-wing paranoia and conspiracy theory lunacy, rather than a cold-bloodied appraisal of some obvious sign-posts holds sway. One wonders if the Rockefeller, Oppenheimer, Windsor, and Rothschild dynasties and the protégés of One World, eco-fascists are going to be inhabiting the carefully regulated, SD-designed SMART cities of the future where everything conforms to a bland monotony of ecological and technocratic “efficiency”. I doubt it. The poor of course will remain where they always have – in centralised systems, on the margins of society scratching a living without access to nature (or nurture) while the middle class will be suffocated under more and more eco-SMART technocracy with very little ability to free themselves from biometric “convenience.” The Elite will be residing in “secure zones” with grand ranches, mansions and resorts set deep in the wilderness away from the human species that does not respect her; like demi-Gods on earth whose stewardship and spiritual status demand their presence as custodians of the New World Religion. The World State writ large. Meantime, the rest of humanity will be corralled into cities known as “safe zones” and far away from “sacred” wild lands. These mega-cities will house what’s left of the human populations, after wars, disease and manufactured crises have done their work…

Dystopian fantasy? Hysterical hyperbole? Or perhaps we really believe that all of this is really for us, and everyone will be happily paragliding, hiking and rafting the rapids at their leisure from core wilderness centres to the grand corridors of their choosing?

In the next post we will look deeper into the Sustainable Development, UN Agenda 21 and how it is currently affecting cities in America.

* In the unlikely event that you still unclear as to what SMART growth actually means, wikipedia provides as good a summary as I can come up with describing it as:

“… an urban planning and transportation theory that concentrates growth in compact walkable urban centers to avoid sprawl. It also advocates compact, transit-oriented, walkable, bicycle-friendly land use, including neighborhood schools, complete streets, and mixed-use development with a range of housing choices. The term ‘smart growth’ is particularly used in North America. In Europe and particularly the UK, the terms ‘Compact City’ or ‘urban intensification’ have often been used to describe similar concepts, which have influenced government planning policies in the UK, the Netherlands and several other European countries.”

As we get to the section on Technocracy you’ll see how snugly all this “exciting” and “liberating” SMART technology fits into Sustainable Development and Agenda 21.

See also: What Is Sutainable Development? By James Corbett

Notes

[1] ‘Sustainable development,’ U.S. Department of Agriculture.
[2] http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/
[3] The Commission on Global Governance, Our Global Neighbourhood, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
[4] ‘Is your private property in jeopardy?’ By Henry Lamb, October 31, 2005 | http://www.sovereigntinternational.com
[5] CRS Report for Congress Received through the CRS Web, Federal Regional Authorities and Commissions: Their Function and Design Updated September 21, 2006, By Eugene Boyd, Analyst, Government and Finance Division. http://www.hsdl.org
[6] op. cit. Staudenmaier.
[7] ‘Examining Rio+20’s Outcome’ Authors: Suan Ee Ong, Senior Research Analyst, Multilateralism Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University Rômulo S. R. Sampaio, Professor of Environmental Law, Getulio Vargas Foundation Andrei Marcu, Senior Advisor and Head of Carbon Market Forum, Centre for European Policy Studies Agathe Maupin and Elizabeth Sidiropoulos, Research Fellow and National Director, South African Institute of International Affairs. http://www.cfr.org/ July 5, 2012.
[8] The Land Grabbers: The New Fight Over Who Owns The Earth by Fred Pearce. Published by Eden Project Books. 2012.
[9] The Wildlands Project: Summary: http://www.wildlandsprojectrevealed.org
[10] Section 13.4.2.2.3, page 993, ‘Global Biodiversity Assessment’ Cambridge University Press, 1995.
[11] Michael Soulé and Reed Noss, “Rewilding and Biodiversity: Complementary Goals for Continental Conservation,” Wild Earth 8 (Fall 1998) 19-28.
[12] “The Wildlands Project: Land Conservation Strategy, ”by Ross F. Need, Wild Earth Journal, .January 1992.
[13] Maintaining Ecological Integrity in Representative Reserve Networks by R. Noss, World Wildlife Fund Canada Discussion Paper, 1995. p.12.

Religious Authoritarians I

By M.K. Styllinski

“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.”

– Sinclair Lewis

Guns, movies, fast-food, cheerleaders, the Super-Bowl, Disney and democracy might be some of things that first come to mind when you think of America. Religion and conservatism may be other keywords. What about fascism and authoritarianism? How many of us would think that the last four descriptors are gateways into perhaps the most important socio-cultural and geo-political shifts taking place in the US in its relatively short history? Well, you’d have to have been living under a rock not to notice the huge shifts in American society away from principles of a Republic let alone a perceived democracy. The evolution (or devolution) of the United States has drastic implications for every one of us, regardless of our geographical locations.

Some would think fascism – or Eternal Fascism as Umberto Eco preferred to call it – has long since been left for the historians to ponder and for us to thank our lucky stars that we are no longer part of the original rip-tide. Some would say that this perception has largely been buried in the emotional refuse tips of our tragic past. The problem is, past events are never really buried or forgotten. “Past is prologue.” We either learn to recognise the shoots of extremism or we choose to ignore them once again. By doing the latter we ensure that the old dark ways that led to the manifestations of our collective imbalance are unearthed, brushed off and given a fresh new lick of paint from the propaganda can. We ensure that they return stronger than ever with the power of technological advances gained from the innovations of war and the ever booming arms trade.

The result of the Second World War was over 65 million dead and millions more wounded; children orphaned; families broken up and generations left to cope with undiagnosed and endemic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The irony is, after such intense suffering, and with the healing balm of time attending to these wounds, the immediacy of the slaughter no longer shocks us. The Brave New World of an emerging Technocracy has dulled our critical faculties and heightened the need to escape; to forget the reasons why such evil manifested and why the Hysteriodal Cycle is coursing up through the our collective roots once again.

Much has been written on the possibility that The United States of America has succumbed to an irreversible form of fascism. It is an emotive word. We think of jackboots, Hitler’s speeches at Nuremberg, the concentration camps and the infamous swastika flag. Theories as to why such extremism has nestled its way into seemingly democratic structures have been thrashed out, discussed and debated; seemingly watertight beliefs and academic comfort zones have been erected to ensure such a mind-set could never return. Yet, it is surely evident that the desire to control and subdue sentient life by a trenchant minority could never have died. Indeed, there was no “return” to Nazism as it never went away, it merely adapted and clothed itself in new labels and ideological forms taking advantage of already established pathological channels laid down decades before.

Many of the architects of the Bush administration bulldozed their way to power on the platform of Project for the New American Century a Neo-Conservative blueprint for distinctly American-Zionist control. ^{^[1]} The 9/11 attacks fit snugly into their overall game-plan for perpetual war, with the “war on terror” acting as a pretext for the needed climate of fear. But Neo-Conservatism was merely one strain in the ponerogenesis of the US socio-economic model that has proved convenient. While Neo-Con hawks were used to push through the Invasion of Iraq, religious authoritarianism has simply jumped onto to the next available grouping in government. So grave is the pathological dominance in the US administration it matters little who holds the reins of power. Be it Republican or Democrat, the American political system is broken and it is beyond repair. Perhaps it was always designed to fail.

Marketing puppets has never been easier

Of course, the Neo-Conservatives are only one facet of an socio-political canker which gives rise to progressively extreme forms of social domination. Think tanks, occult groupings and various forms of social engineering sourced from a Conservative, Liberal and Zionist Establishment are all seeking to wage war on the normal man and woman, albeit employing differing geo-political strategies. What they all have in common is psychopaths in power attempting to extract piecemeal, the soul of normal humanity – the recurrent psychophagic stratagem.

The roots of American fascism and their manifestations are complex but they follow recognisable patterns of emergence. The time-honoured practice of pathogenic infection demands a suitable platform of social unrest on which to ferment its ideas and mimic the original good intentions of its targeted host. Elaborate theories and seminal justifications are clothed with corporate suits and dignified by official titles and boardroom meetings. It takes time, effort and persistence; it requires the creation of conditions through which the spark of justification can be lit amid a tinderbox of future possibilities. The United States of America has now carved out such a role for itself.

It would be foolish to think that George W. Bush had the mental wherewithal to actually embody the presidential traits that we wistfully longed for. It is even more foolish to think that after such a caricature, the “Hope and Change” marketing of Obamamania and its Nuremberg rallies of wilful blindness could ever deliver the goods. For many at the time there was a sense that maybe … just maybe he could light the blue touch paper that could lead to an illumination rather than a decimation of inner values. But it was not to be. True to wishful thinking and hi-tec propaganda a sizable proportion of the American electorate even now, still believe that Obama will eventually turn the country around. A tall order for any politician but an impossible for one who hasn’t keep any of his many promises and even worse, has extended the Bush Reich legacy in ways undreamt of. Obama, like Bush, serves corporate interests and corporatism is inextricably bound to the erosion of civil liberties and the dominance of cartel capitalism.

Psychologists from National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, came to some unexpected conclusions – at least for the Neo-Conservative congressman and officials – with their extensive research paper titled: “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition.” The report, which cost $1.2m in public funds, found that “conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in ‘fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity’.” The authors stated that many proponents of conservatism from the past and present all: “preached a return to an idealised past and condoned inequality” The document linked Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and the right-wing talk show host, Rush Limbaugh, as all suffering from the same “affliction.” Bush Jr. himself was cited as a textbook case in which his moral certainty, dislike of nuance: “… can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic clichés and stereotypes.” ^{^[2]}

Similarly, there is the threat of what has been called inverted totalitarianism where the likes of Obama supporters and so-called “progressive” liberals of the left can unwittingly contribute to the formation of a “soft” dictatorship due to a highly subjective and juvenile rendering of reality. This is a wide open door to psychopathy and their toxic influences. It doesn’t matter if you are pushing a socialist dream or a conservative ideal or even a mixture of the two, both visions have been and will be used to supply the psychophagic supply for social dominance. Indeed, the discourse of disbelief serves to speed their manifestation. It is no coincidence that religious fanaticism underlies most of the current lines of high-level psychopathy in the country. It has encompassed a history of fear and social control over which the State and Church have presided. Keep in mind the nature of political ponerology as we look at authoritarianism, and those predisposed to follow it. In the next few posts we will look at some of the effects of this authoritarianism in the context of religion and conservative politics.

In 2006, Professor Bob Altemeyer, Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, published an online e-book entitled: The Authoritarians containing some of his thirty-year research into authoritarianism, its leaders and those personalities likely to end up as followers. His findings provided valuable information as to why it was that historically our collective beliefs – and usually our religious ones – led to such catastrophic consequences.

Altemeyer used an array of carefully designed surveys and role-playing methodologies to obtain some rich data on the nature of the authoritarian and social dominator qualities from thousands of university students and their various personality profiles. His research provides another window into normal folks alongside the minds of the psychopath, characteropath, narcissist and most importantly those that are predisposed to comply with authoritarian influence (which means a large percentage of us!) A brief detour into his findings will provide a platform for furthering understanding of social psychopathy and the descriptions of organised social abuse within the establishment that follows.

Bob Altemeyer

What is authoritarianism? According to the Encyclopaedia-Britannica/Merriam-Webster Dictionary: “of, relating to, or favouring blind submission to authority.” It is also historically associated with “relating to, or favouring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people [i.e.] an authoritarian regime.”

So, how is it that authoritarianism manages to gain any kind of foothold in the mass populace? That’s where the authoritarian followers come in, sweeping the leaders to power on a tide of rhetoric, wishful thinking, religious dogmatism and blind faith. They willingly submit to anything that acts like an overarching, parental figurehead that tells them what to do, whether it is through governments or from the pages of the Bible, though neither are mutually exclusive as we’ve discovered.

Altemeyer places the right-wing authoritarian personality at two levels: high and low. Both have the following traits with the Highs manifesting as the more extreme version: 1) a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in their society; 2) high levels of aggression in the name of their authorities; and 3) a high level of conventionalism. He stresses that these are personality traits and not necessarily indicative of political preference which means he uses “right-wing” to encompass both left and right expressions of that personality, but there is a much higher incidence of authoritarianism in religiously-inclined Republicans.

What makes these personalities so amenable to psychopaths and other social dominators who insinuate themselves into power is the naive ease to which they submit to their “parent / teacher” figures. They joyfully believe in their own exceptionalism and project onto their leaders similar rarefied qualities which they consider to be above the law. From this alone, you can already see the seeds of tyranny forming while right-wing authoritarians (RWAs) happily skip through the daisies, convinced they are on the side of God. In the short-term, authoritarian leaders need these followers to attain power as they are a vital stage in the potential for a Pathocracy to take over normal development of civilisations. These individuals are the crucial enablers without which many psychopathic leaders would not be able to reach the dizzy heights of power they so desperately covet.

Ideas of democracy are extremely plastic in the authoritarian follower’s mind, so that that they can be stretched out of all recognition if need be. As long as their beliefs and ideas are confirmed through Mummy and Daddy RWAs then all is well. Consequently, when folks with basic modes of critical thinking become alarmed by American citizens being assassinated without trial; unlawful wire-tapping; mass surveillance and embracing torture, authoritarian followers will continue munching their grass without batting an eye-lid. When the fourth and fifth amendments; the Bill of Rights; as well as habeas corpus, one of the oldest rights in Western law are routinely ignored; when an array of black operations, dirty tricks and Congressional corruption that would make any Catholic banker blush are routinely taking place, RWA followers would continue grazing, a few would twitch their tails, but overall, they’d remain unmoved.

From this data and more, Altemeyer confirms his own thoughts that the US is currently being ravaged by “… a militant authoritarianism that has become a cancer upon the nation.” The present day Empire of US-UK-Israeli interests can be understood as another way to describe ponerological dynamics in more simplistic but useful terms.

If RWAs are the proto-typical sheep, what happened to their thinking processes? Illogical thinking dominates and this is never good for getting on in life. It is dangerous because “… it shows that if authoritarian followers like the conclusion, the logic involved is pretty irrelevant.”

Altemeyer discovered further:

“The reasoning should justify the conclusion, but for a lot of high RWAs, the conclusion validates the reasoning. Such is the basis of many a prejudice, and many a Big Lie that comes to be accepted. Now one can easily overstate this finding. A lot of people have trouble with syllogistic reasoning, and high RWAs are only slightly more likely to make such mistakes than low RWAs are. But in general high RWAs seem to have more trouble than most people do realizing that a conclusion is false.” ^{^[3]}

According Altemeyer’s extensive data, RWAs also scored highly on the practicing of double standards, hypocrisy, lying to themselves and running away from unpleasant truths about their carefully crafted self-image. Their self-awareness is residual which logically reflects their awareness of others and adds to the understanding about geo-political policy today, not least certain education curricula.

The other important trait that came up again and again was a “profound ethnocentrism” best personified with George W. Bush’s chilling statement: “If you’re not with us you’re with the terrorists.” It’s about the in-crowd and belonging; adhering to illusions of specialness and ideas of being the “chosen Ones,” which is why Zio-Conservatism makes such classic authoritarian belief partners. This is like a security system which prevents critical thinking and self-knowledge bringing together those that think alike, thus maintaining the illusion that not only does the world operate exclusively within such a reality it is the mission to extend that shared belief so that more and more people are contained within it.

Loyalty is a cardinal principle and the beliefs are fundamentally based on fear, lies and subjective interpretation so that the integrity of the belief structure is inherently weak long-term. Hence, more and more authoritarian methods are needed to prop it up in the face of encroaching objective evidence. But the unrivalled dogmatism will ensure that they and the group to which they are attached are always right. To question themselves is never an interesting or even necessary proposition. This loyalty and wilful blindess leads to gullibility and monumental gaps in the awareness of RWAs which means that once authoritarian followers are sufficiently mobilised they would find it easy to embrace a dictator.

RWAs are aggressive and bully their beliefs to the top. Very useful for psychopaths who want to outsource their nature and seed it in others for particular designs. The aggression is not the kind that looks for a fair fight but the kind that personifies “Might is Right” behind a big gun or a water cannon and a raft of riot police you can command and employ. As long as the RWA follower can get away with it and avoid responsibility for his actions then all is well. It is cowardly aggression behind closed doors and from the flick of fountain pen or keyboard stroke where tracks can be covered if necessary by shifting the blame to an unsuspecting minion. This bolsters his sense of superiority while pleasing daddy psychopath who will drop all kinds of tailored favours from above.

Conventionalism (often read as dull) is another defining characteristic of RWAs which means they lack the facility for imagination and abstract thought. To put it kindly, their feet are very much on the ground pointing in the direction of the known and familiar, shoe-shined and ready for inspection. But it doesn’t stop there. As a high percentage of RWAs are religious and fundamentalist this means that their beliefs do not just determine their life direction and perception of morals but the desire that those beliefs should be foisted on others, as a matter of course. When you have around 46 per cent of American adults believing that the earth is 10,000 years old thanks to Creationist views then this is enough to cause alarm concerning the sheer stupidity alone. Mixed in with authoritarianism – it’s a recipe for a horror flick. .” ^{^[4]}

For RWAs, the fabric of their reality would be rent asunder of you not only had the temerity to question their beliefs but backed it up with deductive logic and concrete facts. In the authoritarian mind, that cannot be allowed to happen as behind the edifice and hot air there is a very fragile ego and if threatened by objective reality then all hell is let loose. Therefore, the “I am right you are wrong” mentality dominates even if the facts are as obvious as “the Earth is not flat,” the RWAs will insist that it is. And while such buffering can be understood in the kindergarten or playground in high level politics it becomes more than terrifying when applied to Middle Eastern politics. As Altemeyer mentions: “If their authorities endorse hostility, you can bet most authoritarian followers will be combative. A lot of high RWAs apparently do not think that the peacemakers will be blessed.”

And the results we can see before us.

Extend this principle into law and justice and Altemeyer found that while strongly endorsing capital punishment they would send anyone to jail regardless of race, sexuality or gender. Differences in degree such as rape as oppose to jay-walking – all received much longer sentences from high RWAs while going easy on the authorities if accused of any corruption, undue force, infringement of human rights etc. The benefits of capital punishment in the RWAs mind equate with the almost British Victorian ideas of family values where some fathers were expected to teach their sons the value of discipline and order by giving them a good leathering with the cane or belt and a good slap for the women should they step out of their designated role. That’ll knock some sense into them! Never did me any harm when my parents use to kick me down the stairs every morning before breakfast … Along those lines …

Promotional poster detail from Gerald Scarfe’s artwork for Pink Floyd: The Wall (1980)

As RWAs are commonly religious, as they see it: placing the fear of God into criminals whom they consider to be way down the ladder of purity is the obvious choice. Since they believe they are currently poised, angel-like, on the highest rungs of the evolutionary ladder it is their duty to self-righteously view the hoi-polloi of ordinary people and manage their destiny for them. And if you don’t do as you’re told…Authoritarian followers have a nasty retributive streak that delights in the misery of those who have received their – as they see it – divinely administered comeuppance. Those that stray off the track of righteous get all they deserve. Compassion is a footnote in the high RWAs psyche (if it exists at all) and is habitually overridden by deep-seated anger and resentment which also means that if an outlet for that inner angst presents itself – they’ll take it. If persecution and torture for the Homeland is decreed normal – no problem. Rigging up electrodes on little grey-haired Auntie May who is thought to be harbouring Al-Qaeda agents under her “welcome” mat – I’m your man! Sign on the dotted line – no questions asked? Just how the RWAs like it. And Daddy dictator will love me. The authoritarian personality is Freud’s dream come true.

When the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld Reich decided to do just that and torture largely innocent Iraqis and those incarcerated in Guantánamo Bay under Obama’s “hope and change” rhetoric, many authoritarian personalities both in the UK and the US were clapping delightedly. When anger and chosen ignorance are present then substantial quantities of innate fear will be flowing through the RWA personality perceiving more of a threat in a situation of potential conflict than there may be in reality. This is what happened in 1987 when Bob Altemeyer and his colleague Gerry Sande had five-man teams of male introductory psychology students role-play NATO in an “international simulation” involving (they thought) another team of students playing as the Warsaw Pact.

Here’s what happened:

Some of the NATO teams were composed entirely of low RWA students, and other NATO teams were stocked entirely with highs. (We experimenters secretly played the Warsaw Pact.) The simulation began with a couple of ambiguous moves by the Warsaw Pact, such as holding military exercises earlier than anticipated, and withdrawing divisions to rear areas (possibly for rest, or –as Dr. Strangelove might argue–possibly for redeployment for an attack).

The NATO teams could respond with nonthreatening or threatening moves of varying magnitudes. But if they made threats, the Warsaw pact responded with twice as much threat in return, and the NATO team would reap what it had sown as an escalation of aggressive moves would likely result.

The low RWA teams did not interpret the ambiguous moves at the beginning of the game as serious threats and thus seldom made threatening moves. The high RWAs on the other hand usually reacted to the opening Warsaw Pact moves aggressively, and sowed a whirlwind. Over the course of the simulation, the high RWA teams made ten times as much threat as the low teams did, and usually brought the world to the brink of nuclear war...” ^{^[5]} [Emphasis mine]

Furthermore, in other scenarios the overwhelming comeback from RWAs was the philosophy of “Care about Your Own; We Are NOT All in This Together.” As a result, Global Change Games that simulated geo-political challenges dominated by authoritarians typically ended in world-wide disasters.

So, what are the roots of authoritarianism in the context Altemeyer’s findings?

He prefers “Bandura’s Social Learning Theory of Aggression” which is admittedly a large step up from Freud but fails to explain the whole picture, ponerology being the missing element. However, Albert Bandura of Stanford University and the SLTA theory posits the idea that there must be a burning anger present and a sub-strata of fear. For that anger to be released certain inhibitions and restraints must be overcome so that a volcanic eruption can flow. These stages are termed “The instigator” – the individual and his brand of fear and anger waiting to be tapped and “The Releaser” –the mode that allows it all to happen; a designated “holier than thou” moral cause that would release their hostility on the world while lying to themselves concerning the reasons for the perceived moral justification.

From a ponerological perspective this anger and fear is carefully directed along pre-designed psychic and material channels facilitating maximum efficiency for psychopaths’ goals. In other words, instinct and emotion is used exclusively to further an increase and maximisation of an already present pathology.

Why did it stay wired at the child stage of authority pleasing?

Although Altemeyer leans towards experience and environmental factors he also highlights the fact that studies have confirmed a genetic component. Usually, as with most things in life, it is probably a mix of both.

Further research offering a more general confirmation of the above findings was offered on September 8th 2013, when online culture magazine grist.com ran an article by Chris Mooney entitled: ‘Science confirms: Politics wrecks your ability to do math.’ A study undertaken by Professor Dan Kahan of Yale University found that people’s ability to correctly solve a mathematics question was intimately connected to political persuasion. In summary, erroneous data was given to groups about skin cream efficacy and were also given difficult maths problem to solve. Here, the results were good. When exactly the same data was given alongside a topic of gun control, the answers changed dramatically indicating that the political beliefs were influencing their mathematics solutions to an extreme degree.

In a nutshell: respondents’ political belief distorted the ability to give correct answers if it wasn’t to their liking with the result that objective reality was discarded in favour of their chosen political preference.

This indicates that those of a more intuitive nature aren’t the only ones prone to be led by more subjective notions of reality. Even numerate people have massive blind-spots when it comes to taking on board views which run counter to their own. Whether left-leaning or conservative, persons with a logical/mathematical intelligence will subconsciously subvert the process from which the correct result can be achieved, attempting to fit the round peg of a solution into the square hole of their beliefs. This goes some way in explaining why it is that you can present evidence as plain as day that left-right politics is a charade and the political system is irrevocably broken – belief and comfort zone will trump all, even for seemingly intelligent people. It gives a reason why all manner of rational and IQ-busting academics choose not to make the leap to the obvious when presented with a mountain of facts and empirical data. No amount of reasoning will do it without some form of external shock. Even then it may make no difference for some.

This has enormous implications regarding the evidence of Official Culture and rogue elements in governments and intelligence actively working against their populations. Recognition of such a reality sets up a cognitive dissonance that is both painful as well as befuddling, symptoms commonly exhibited by authoritarian followers.

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N.B. let’s not forget that authoritarianism rises in the left wing camp just as much as the right. From the election of Donald Trump we have a shocking wave of left-liberal authoritarianism in the guise of “Social Justice Warriors” snowflake millennial, radical feminism and the Neo-Marxist invasion of Universities.

See: Where Do SJWs Come From?

See: Trump Hysteria, Left Hypocrisy and the Four Drivers of the Deep-State / Overworld Part I

Notes

[1] Project for the New American Century (PNAC) at http://www.newamericancentury.org was an American think tank based in Washington, D.C. that lasted from 1997 to 2006. It was co-founded as a non-profit educational organization by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. Members included right wing, neo-conservative politicians and intellectuals. The series of documents that comprise the ideological vision of neo-conservatism is wholly concerned with establishing a global American Empire with access to the resources of other countries and the implementation of pre-emptive war partnered with the necessary “evil” of perpetual war. The famous of these is “‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century’ written by Richard B. Cheney. The PNAC is literally an “organization whose goal is to promote American global leadership” or as a continuation of the ancient phrase which George Bush Sr. noted in 1992 speech: A New World Order.” Needless, to say this New World Order is based around occult principles of establishing “Order out of Chaos” which neo-conservatists happily seek to carry out regardless of their awareness on this point. | PNAC’s second incarnation goes by the name of The Foreign Policy Initiative which holds to exactly the same ideology.
[2] ‘Study of Bush’s psyche touches a nerve’ by Julian Borger, The Guardian, August 13, 2003.
[3] The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer Associate Professor Department of Psychology University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Canada.
[4] Online PDF version at: http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/op. cit.
[5] ‘In U.S., 46% Hold Creationist View of Human Origins Highly religious Americans most likely to believe in creationism’ By Frank Newport, http://www.gallup.com