The Zhou Regime And The Road We're On

Several commenters have recommended Alastair Crooke’s most recent article. Crooke develops a theme put forward by Gerry Baker, editor at large at the WSJ:

We Were "Deceived & Gaslit For Years", All In The Name Of "Democracy"; Then "Poof", It Collapsed Overnight

Crooke begins with several quotes from Baker’s plaintive whine:

The Editor at Large for the Wall Street Journal, Gerry Baker, says: ‘We’ve been “gaslit’ and deceived” – for years – “all in the name of ‘democracy’”. That deceit “collapsed” with the Presidential debate, Thursday’.

“Until the world saw the truth … [against] the ‘misinformation’ … the fiction of Mr. Biden’s competence … suggests they [the Democrats] evidently thought they could get away with promoting it. [Yet] by perpetuating that fiction they were also revealing their contempt for the voters and for democracy itself”.

“Biden succeeded because he made toeing the party line his life’s work. Like all politicians whose egos dwarf their talents, he ascended the greasy pole by slavishly following his party wherever it led … Finally—in the ultimate act of partisan servility, he became Barack Obama’s vice president, the summit of achievement for those incapable, yet loyal: the apex position for the consummate ‘yes man’”.

“But then, just as he was ready to drift into a comfortable and well-deserved obscurity, his party needed a front man … They sought a loyal and reliable figurehead, a flag of convenience, under which they could sail the progressive vessel into the deepest reaches of American life — on a mission to advance statism, climate extremism and self-lacerating wokery. There was no more loyal and convenient vehicle than Joe”.

If so, then who actually has been ‘pulling America’s strings’ these past years?

“You [the Democratic machine] don’t get to deceive, dissemble and gaslight us for years about how this man was both brilliantly competent at the job and a healing force for national unity – and now tell us, when your deception is uncovered, that it’s ‘bedtime for Bonzo’ – thanks for your service, and let’s move on”, Baker warns.

“[Now] it is going horribly wrong. Much of his party has no use for him anymore … in a remarkably cynical act of bait-and-switch, [they are trying to] swap him out for someone more useful to their cause. Part of me thinks they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it. I find myself in the odd position of wanting to root for poor mumbling Joe … It’s tempting to say to the Democratic machine frantically mobilizing against him: You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to deceive, dissemble and gaslight us for years”.

Let’s have a show of hands: Who actually believed Zhou was competent, or even compos mentis? C’mon, we’re not all as gullible as editors of the WSJ. How about this: Who actually thinks Obama was in charge of the federal government? No doubt he agreed with much of what was done on his watch, but who really thinks he was in charge, rather than reading cheap novels and watching NBA games in the OO? Baker blames the Dems? How about the fourth estate, the MSM? Surely the American people didn’t get gaslit for lo! these many years without the MSM playing a major part in the operation.

Crooke fingers the the 1970s and 1980s as “the point at which the long arc of traditional liberalism gave place to an avowedly illiberal, mechanical ‘control system’ (managerial technocracy) that today fraudulently poses as liberal democracy.” I understand why Crooke sees those decades as a turning point in the West. In any long historical process there are bound to be turning points, but we must be clear—as I hope I have been—that we can look back to centuries, not decades, of this process.

As he is wont to do, Crooke appeals to the French anthropological historian Emmanuel Todd for an explanation of what’s going on. Todd finds a longer timeline, but still one that only really gets us back to the second half of the 19th century. I noticed a discussion of the role of the Puritan ethic in American history in the comments this morning, so this feeds into that:

[Todd] … examines the longer dynamics to events unfolding in the present: The prime agent of change leading to the Decline of the West (La Défaite de l’Occident), he argues, was the implosion of ‘Anglo’ Protestantism in the U.S. (and England), with its entailed habits of work, individualism and industry – a creed whose qualities were held then to reflect God’s grace through material success, and, above all, to confirm membership of the divine ‘Elect’.

Whereas traditional liberalism had its mores, the decline of traditional values triggered the slide towards managerial technocracy, and to nihilism. Religion lingers on in the West, though in a ‘zombie’ state, Todd avers. Such societies, he argues, flounder – absent some guiding metaphysical sphere that provides people with non-material sustenance.

However, the incoming doctrine that only a wealthy financial élite, tech experts, leaders of multinational corporations and banks possess the required foresight and technological understanding to manipulate a complex and increasingly controlled system changed politics completely.

What Todd is describing here, of course, is the rise of Progressivism, beginning in the late 19th century—although the idea of “experts” running everything is an idea at least as old as Plato’s Republic, part of the great Platonic heritage, the dominant tradition of the West. I’ll say it again. The Platonism of the West, mediated through Augustine, led directly to the destructive radical skepticism of Nominalism in the late Medieval Ages, and fueled the Protestant Revolt that broke Christendom and turned authority over to the Princes. The radical individualism that results from any skepticism led directly to the nihilistic ‘zombie’ state of the West that we see today. The denial of human nature entailed by radical skepticism leads to all the excesses that we see. An appeal to individualism, the bottom line of the liberal/libertarian official ideology of the West, can only lead to a doubling down on what got us to this point.

Anyway, Crooke returns to his initial question: Who actually has been ‘pulling America’s strings’ these past years? Or, we might well ask, since WW2? Crooke answers his own question, and offers food for thought from a relatively short term perspective:

Of course, Jake Sullivan and Blinken sit at the centre of what is called the ‘inter-agency’ view. This where policy mostly is discussed. It is not coherent – with its locus in the National Security Committee [sic, Council?] – but rather is spread through a matrix of interlocking ‘clusters’ that includes the Military Industrial Complex, Congressional leaders, Big Donors, Wall Street, the Treasury, the CIA, the FBI, a few cosmopolitan oligarchs and the princelings of the security-intelligence world.

…

Nonetheless, at bottom, the 1992 Wolfowitz doctrine which underscored American supremacy at all costs, in a post-Soviet world – together with “stamping out rivals, wherever they may emerge” – still today remains the ‘current doctrine’ framing the ‘inter-agency’ baseline.

Dysfunction at the heart of a seemingly functioning organization may persist for years without any real public awareness or appreciation of the descent into dysfunctionality. But then suddenly – when a crisis hits, or Presidential debate misfires – ‘poof’ and we see clearly the collapse of the manipulation that has confined discourse to within the various Washington villages.

In this light, some of the structural contradictions that Todd noted as contributory factors to western decline become unexpectedly ‘illuminated’ by events: Baker highlighted one: The key Faustian bargain: the pretence of a liberal democracy operating in tandem with a ‘classic’ liberal economy versus the reality of an illiberal oligarchic leadership sitting atop a hyper-financialised corporate economy that has both sucked the life from the classic organic economy, and created toxic inequalities too.

No amount of technical tinkering with this Frankenstein monstrosity, a parody of a functioning culture, can get us back on the path to a sane society. Todd knows that. The governing institutions are ultimately an expression of the dominant culture. Culture change, conversion, is what is needed. That’s a slow process, out of the ‘zombie’ state we’re in. And without the recovery of “some guiding metaphysical sphere that provides people with non-material sustenance” that conversion won’t take place. Excuse my pessimism.

Well, let’s turn to the short term outlook, since that’s where we mostly live our lives. Brandon Smith offers a warning for the very short term—the next six months or so, with an opening to succeeding years:

Trump's Return: Get Ready For Chaos To Be Unleashed And Blamed On You

Among other issues, Smith addresses Crooke’s question of, Who’s pulling the strings?

There’s a vegetable sitting in the Oval Office and the nation is in a panic.

Leftists are panicking because they’re now realizing their candidate is a farce, the emperor has no clothes and they bet all their cash on one very retarded race horse. Conservatives are celebrating, but also panicking because they think Biden in his senility might launch nukes at any moment.

There are even people calling for a 25th Amendment intervention to remove Biden because they actually think he makes decisions. He doesn’t. Biden is a proxy for more powerful interests and always has been. Getting rid of Biden early doesn’t solve the greater problem, nor would it prevent a nuclear Apocalypse (if that was ever the plan to begin with). Other people are making his decisions for him.

In the meantime, there are a host of surprises that could take place before November. As I noted in my article ‘The Juggling Act: Is 2024 A Pivotal Year For The Globalists?’ published in January, the election of 2024 is developing into its own Black Swan event. I stated that:

“…There is the potential for shock events, such as Biden stepping down at the last minute. Trump being arrested but winning anyway. Or, a major geopolitical crisis which is used by the Democrats as an excuse to “postpone” the election…”

Or maybe the Ruling Class saying, So what if people get upset? Screw ‘em, we’ll steal it in plain sight.

Smith goes on to review the Ruling Class war against Trump—useful reminders. His thesis in this article is that Trump will be allowed back into the WH so that the Ruling Class can pull the economic rug out from under his feet, leading to an authoritarian takeover.

The agenda will be to put conservative and liberty movement principles on trial and paint them as ideals of calamity. Meritocracy, individualism, independence, personal liberty, responsibility and discipline, free markets, private property, everything that makes up the foundations of western civilization is going to be put on the pyre. Giving Trump an easy win against a cognitive deficient like Biden (or any other weak candidate) might be a setup; letting conservatives gain a moment of power only to find they’re sitting on the throne of a crumbling castle.

I don’t actually buy this, but it’s worth remembering that creating chaos, staging violent events, to facilitate regime change has a long history in the Anglo-Zionist Empire. And not just abroad. We’re only now beginning to recognize the signs in our own history.

Along similar lines is an article by the Whiteheads:

Project Total Control: Everything Is A Weapon When Totalitarianism Is Normalized

The idea of this article is that the Deep State is waging psychological warfare—not just abroad but right here at home against the American people:

In the midst of the partisan furor over Project 2025, a 920-page roadmap for how to re-fashion the government to favor so-called conservative causes, both the Right and the Left have proven themselves woefully naive about the dangers posed by the power-hungry Deep State.

Yet we must never lose sight of the fact that both the Right and the Left and their various operatives are extensions of the Deep State, which continues to wage psychological warfare on the American people.

Psychological warfare, according to the Rand Corporation, “involves the planned use of propaganda and other psychological operations to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of opposition groups.”

For years now, the government has been bombarding the citizenry with propaganda campaigns and psychological operations aimed at keeping us compliant, easily controlled and supportive of the government’s various efforts abroad and domestically.

Recall Crooke’s question about “who is pulling the strings”? It turns out that the U.S. Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group says right up front that they’re the ones pulling the strings.

The government is so confident in its Orwellian powers of manipulation that it’s taken to bragging about them. For example, in 2022, the U.S. Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group, the branch of the military responsible for psychological warfare, released a recruiting video that touts its efforts to pull the strings, turn everything they touch into a weapon, be everywhere, deceive, persuade, change, influence, and inspire.

“Have you ever wondered who’s pulling the strings?” the psyops video posits. “Anything we touch is a weapon. We can deceive, persuade, change, influence, inspire. We come in many forms. We are everywhere.”

This is the danger that lurks in plain sight.

Of the many weapons in the government’s vast arsenal, psychological warfare may be the most devastating in terms of the long-term consequences.

As the military journal Task and Purpose explains, “Psychological warfare is all about influencing governments, people of power, and everyday citizens.”

Mind you, these psyops (psychological operations) campaigns aren’t only aimed at foreign enemies. The government has made clear in word and deed that “we the people” are domestic enemies to be targeted, tracked, manipulated, micromanaged, surveilled, viewed as suspects, and treated as if our fundamental rights are mere privileges that can be easily discarded.

Part of the stock in trade here is ginning up hatred for foreign enemies to justify wars. The Whiteheads go on to discuss in list fashion “some of the ways in which the government continues to wage psychological warfare on a largely unsuspecting citizenry in order to acclimate us to the Deep State’s totalitarian agenda.”

Lest you think this is scare mongering, Jonathan Turley—not usually a bomb thrower—is also sounding a warning:

"The First Amendment Is Out Of Control": Academic And Media Figures Rally Against Free Speech

Authored by Jonathan Turley via jonathanturley.org,

“The First Amendment Is Out of Control.” That headline in a recent column in the New York Times warned Americans of a menace lurking around them and threatening their livelihoods and very lives. That menace is free speech and the media and academia are ramping up attacks on a right that once defined us as a people.

In my new book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss how we are living in the most dangerous anti-free speech period in our history. An alliance of the government, corporations, academia, and media have assembled to create an unprecedented system of censorship, blacklisting, and speech regulation. This movement is expanding and accelerating in its effort to curtail the right that Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once called “indispensable” to our constitutional system.

It is, of course, no easy task to convince a free people to give up a core part of identity and liberty. You have to make them afraid. Very afraid.

The current anti-free speech movement in the United States has its origins in higher education, where faculty have long argued that free speech is harmful. Starting in secondary schools, we have raised a generation of speech phobics who believe that opposing views are triggering and dangerous.

What’s going on here? Recall what I wrote above, that political institutions are, ultimately an expression of a dominant culture. Recall also Emmanuel Todd’s argument that “The prime agent of change leading to the Decline of the West … was the implosion of ‘Anglo’ Protestantism in the U.S. (and England) …” Todd is describing culture change, the change in the dominant culture which is implacably hostile to the old culture of Christendom that lies behind our current institutions, battered as they may be. Turley is describing the culture war to replace those institutions that the anti-Christian Ruling Class believes do not reflect they’re culture.