Postdemocracy
NWOU is always delighted when we come across a piece of writing that we can endorse. Unfortunately, that seldom happens, so we usually have to write the posts ourselves. But today we are going to send you to a piece that describes what has happened to democracy in the media age, Postdemocracy by E.R.E. Knutsson. Both parts are required reading.
We are going to use Knutsson’s text as the basis for future posts on media and culture. Today we will assume that you are a naive liberal and are just getting introduced to the New World Order, so we’ll summarize some of the key concepts and key terms for you. Master these terms before reading future posts.
Postdemocracy: the present situation of politics as media spectacle, preserving the forms of democracy in the age when politics is controlled by elites using advertising to sell their policies and programs.
the politics of simulation: media events don’t refer to real world events but to organized demonstrations, photo opportunities, and manufactured crises that serve to feed collective anxieties into pre-formulated elite plans for takeover. The controllers have already created their solution to the manufactured crisis before they create the manufactured crisis in the media.
the “emancipatory-progressive project” (Communist takeover): liberation from existing social norms and displacement of populations into the mass pseudo-society under the guiding sign of liberalism or progressivism is now exhausted and has been replaced by media directives. This “liberal” agenda has always really been the agenda of Communist subversion. Liberal elites are Communist globalists. TV has replaced the subversive Communist spy as the agent of subversion. Under postdemocracy, community organizing is just mop-up work after TV has done its job.
The Communist takeover is disguised as a “moral campaign” requiring “zero tolerance” for alternative worldviews. At the same time, the change-agents and cadres (low-level mass public opinion) are paralyzed under the master slogan of “tolerance” or “refusing to make judgments.” The master slogan of “tolerance” becomes internalized as the desire of the masses that no one ever pass judgment over them if in return they promise never to exercise any sort of judgment or discrimination in their thinking. Sometimes this liberal-induced propaganda delusion results in a reality check, such as an encounter with law enforcement or the actual requirements for employment.
“The media rarely contribute to an area of democratic engagement and public deliberation but to a distorted realm of communication in which propaganda and dominant views and values are disseminated largely unopposed.”
It is important to recognize how few points of view ever even get expressed in media. The political parties contribute to this “freezing out” of alternative views.
Hyperreal media images are mesmerizing. They become emotionally important because there is a universal human tendency not to refer the image to what it represents (in the real world) but instead to refer the image instantly and subconsciously to one’s own collection of inner images. If you break this emotional connection, you can watch TV without being affected by it. But then, it sort of loses its point, which is to addict you to emotional manipulation. If you achieve this level of maturity, TV becomes just a gray, uninteresting pseudo-spectacle and you are no longer caught up in it. Achieving this level of sophisticated perception allows you to abandon the addictive habit of TV and focus on genuine culture and genuine human values. Another way of saying this is, you can only be manipulated by TV subconsciously. Once you wake up to who is doing it and how they do it, they can’t manipulate you any more.
News media don’t report the news. Notice, for example, how little actual reporting there is about the European Union, the North American Union, Communist China, Russia, the United Nations, or any of the control groups such as the Bilderbergers and the Club of Rome. The main purpose of TV news is to create a “moral” campaign. We are controlled under Mao’s model of the “constant campaign.”
“Elite-manufactured panics can help to divert attention from deepening crises.”
Short-term panic has replaced social norms. They want you in a “panic mood,” but only about their version of crisis, not about the real crisis. You see this strategy playing out in Congress every day now.
Political differences are now mediated by psychologists, who are pseudo-authorities. The entire thrust of psychological research in the twentieth century has been in the service of the mind controllers.
Elites have resorted to the standard that radical groups might be offended as their excuse for censorship. This is not a moral standard.
Baudrillard’s contribution: “Any structure that hunts down, expels or exorcizes its negative elements risks a catastrophe.” We have expressed this principle as, system-building is more dangerous than any disorganized or local problem-solving. Localism is the antidote to federalism and global federalism. Another way of putting this is, The New World Order is far more dangerous to humanity than any other possible state of affairs. Example: linking the banks into a global financial system crashed the entire global system.
Baudrillard describes the transpolitical as “the passage from growth to excrescence … from organic equilibria to cancerous metastases.” This means, their pre-programmed solution is always worse than the problem they are trying to scare you about.
“Politics is really shaped in private by interaction between elected governments and elites.”
That’s why there really isn’t any democracy anymore, the elites control everything that is important. We call people who don’t recognize this, “naive liberals.” But there are plenty of naive conservatives as well. Conservative naivete is currently focused around 9/11, Bush’s wars, and overestimating the threat of radical Islam. So-called conservatives are vulnerable to the appeal to a strong police state apparatus to protect them from minor threats. This is George Bush’s great achievement, building the police state right under the noses of Republicans with their assent. Liberals are able to recognize that Bush took away civil liberties and built the police state under the Patriot Act, but they are not able to recognize that Obama is simply carrying on the same project.
Panic shapes “an anxiety-ridden world.” First they induce the panic, then they do what they want. The modern age has often been called “The Age of Anxiety.” What most people don’t grasp is, the anxiety is induced by the elites in purposeful anxiety campaigns in the media. Anxiety is both paralyzing and mobilizing. Both responses are fine with the elite controllers. They want to create zombies and activists.
“[T]he multitude, freed of the worry of governing, is left to its private and egotistical passions.”
Most people now understand that the game is rigged, even if they don’t understand who is rigging it and why. This is the apathy of the masses, who come to prefer vulgar entertainments over the nauseating kitsch of the mediated Marxist political spectacle.
Astroturfing: setting up front groups to simulate widespread grassroots demand for change. Democratic politics is now entirely astroturfing. All you need to do to confirm this is to investigate who funds the web of interconnected front groups.
Jews and black radicals run America. We continue to be amazed that white feminists are pulled into this race coalition. Politics is really race-based, with white feminist race-traitors as the exception. (The feminist leaders are Jewish Communists, and feminism mainly appeals to Jewish women.) But we fail to see a genuine “tribalism” as all of the important Negroes are really Communist blacks now. The attempt in 1989 to introduce “African-American” culture into radical black politics is really just another front. Even Negroes don’t want to become Africanized in their culture, it makes them look silly. If African-Americans were really serious about it, they would go to Africa. Joining white European culture is of such a tremendous benefit to Negroes that they now insist on integration, just to be near white people.
Politics as entertainment is extremely important in keeping the game going. There can always be another “meeting with a celebrity” to cycle fresh images into the media appliances.
“Advertising is not a form of rational dialogue. It does not build up a case based on evidence, but associates its products with a particular imagery. … Its aim is not to engage in discussion but to persuade to buy.“
Once politics came under the influence of advertising, democracy as the expression of individual opinion disappeared. The individual opinions are now mass produced. It’s more efficient for the controllers. They always prefer mechanical means of control. In fact, they make money off of controlling you. You pay them to control you.
“Celebrities become paragons because they are the ones who have learned how to steal the spotlight, no matter what they have done to steal it.”
Knowledge that celebrities are in control and everything serious has been marginalized leads young people to aspire to celebrity as the key to power. This generational shift from serious ideas to mediated celebrity images destroys civilization and reinforces the mass circus.
“Radical surveillance and risk-management strategies are in great demand and good supply.”
The crisis mentality injected into media creates a demand for the police state among the masses. They are made to desire collectivism and security.
How the takeover is normalized: Accelerating surveillance becomes “fluid” and omnipresent — even merging with show-business in the form of Big Brother style reality TV. TV kills opposition to the police state by modeling it as a normal part of everyday life. Not as an intrusion but as a requirement for traffic flow, to keep the system functioning efficiently. The ability to get people to hold efficient functioning as a high value enlists them into supporting the police state takeover.
Kudos to E.R.E. Knutsson, nice work. Another book we don’t have to write.
About The Author
Comments