Home » Posts tagged 'authoritarianism' (Page 2)

Tag Archives: authoritarianism

❖

In what’s surely the biggest “Imagine the outrage if Trump had done that” moment to date, the Biden administration has admitted that it is giving Facebook a list of accounts to censor for spreading “disinformation” about the Covid-19 response.

“We’ve increased disinformation research and tracking,” Press Secretary Jen Psaki told the press on Thursday. “Within the Surgeon General’s Office, we’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation. We’re working with doctors and medical professionals to connect medical experts with people, who are popular with their audiences with accurate information and boost trusted content. So, we’re helping get trusted content out there.”

Psaki told the White House press corps that the administration has a list of accounts who produce most of the anti-vaccine information on Facebook, which civil libertarians are decrying as an obviously authoritarian government overreach.

“The Biden administration is telling Facebook which posts it regards as ‘problematic’ so that Facebook can remove them,” Glenn Greenwald said on Twitter in response to the news. “This is the union of corporate and state power — one of the classic hallmarks of fascism — that the people who spent five years babbling about fascism support.”

“If you don’t find it deeply disturbing that the White House is ‘flagging’ internet content that they deem ‘problematic’ to their Facebook allies for removal, then you are definitionally an authoritarian,” Greenwald said. “No other information is needed about you to know that. There is no circumstance — none — in which it’s acceptable for the White House or any other agency of the government to be providing lists to Facebook of ‘problematic’ content it wants removed, yet that’s exactly what Psaki says they’re doing…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Few Bananas Short of a Bunch

June 6, 2021

A FEW BANANAS SHORT OF A BUNCH

“You’ve been living in a dream world, Neo.” – Morpheus

“How did you go (morally) bankrupt?” Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” ― With abject apologies to Ernest Hemingway and his “The Sun Also Rises”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own.” – Adam Savage from Mythbusters

I have this short-on-specifics, long-on-emotion memory of being young, around 9 or 10 years old, and in grade school during the mid 60’s. I was an introvert and thirsty for any knowledge that could help me better understand what to me was nothing less than insanity.

Even back then I instinctively knew the secret, though no one in their ‘right’ mind believed me when I voiced my concern. I was living in an insane asylum, populated by humans reasonably well adapted to close quarters and authoritarian rule. At least that’s the way it was in my house and just about every other home within walking distance.

Of course, the grand global collective, as diverse and culturally mixed as it claimed to be, pretty much followed similar directives. It did then, and in fact still does today. While it may be carefully concealed behind grand consensual governing concepts such as parliamentary rule, democracy or a representative republic, they couldn’t fool me. Whether by closed fist or pointed gun, it was pretty obvious to me the authoritarian few always ruled over the collective many.

I gravitated towards history (which at the time I believed was factual) and dove straight into the deep end head first. The good news was I wasn’t fully and properly indoctrinated yet, so there was a chance my young mind would survive somewhat intact now that some self-awareness was beginning to peek through.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

New Age of Authoritarianism

June 3, 2021

New Age of Authoritarianism

QUESTION: With over 1 million millionaires and billionaires fleeing the north to the south, why do these people not see the handwriting on the wall? Willful ignorance? Or are they planning to try to prevent non vaccinated people from even engaging in any commerce?

ANSWER: This reminds me of how Spain fell. Indeed, Spain was once the richest nation in Europe. It had America and the gold kept piling in. Spain was the Financial Capital of the Western World at that time. Even the main currency in the United States prior to the Revolution as Spanish dollars. Here is a private note from the Exchange Office in Mississippi. Note that they picture a US dollar as well as Spanish dollars. The US adopted the Spanish monetary system because it was the Financial Capital of the Western World at that time.

The Spanish Inquisition was even rejected by the Pope. It was being used for political purposes not unlike how they are using COVID today. They would torture and confiscate the property of especially Jews and Muslims. What they too succeeded in doing was driving the jews out of Spain. Where did they go? They migrated to Amsterdam and in the process, they began banking and the first insurance companies. It was the English who copied the “Dutch” which were really the Jews at that time who even created the first stock exchange – the bourse.

It was the Sephardi Jews from the Iberian Peninsula who had been expelled from Spain in 1492 after the fall of Muslim Granada. There were some who first migrated to Portugal. However, they too were forced to leave in 1497. The crown was using religion for-profit and the Jews were given the choice between conversion to Catholicism or suffer the death penalty on the grounds of heresy. By expelling the Jews, they set in motion the fall of Spain…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Expect Government Crackdowns In A “Global Depression”

March 8, 2021

Expect Government Crackdowns In A “Global Depression”

For those professing a preference for one type of government over another, an ugly reality is they all cut from the same cloth. Whether we are talking about Democracy, Communism, Socialism, or Fascism the strong link they share is one of dominance and a desire to control. While seen as vastly different systems with distinct goals, each is rooted in the promise people should sacrifice as needed for “the greater good.” The main flaw in a democracy is that it allows a simple majority to force their desires upon others. This is why our forefathers set checks and balances in the Constitution, however, even these do not guarantee freedom will remain. Today, the burden of risk and the amount of “skin in the game” is not equally shared by all of society. Over time our financial system and institutions have been corrupted by crony capitalism and a political system that panders to the masses by exchanging favors for baubles. It could be argued that those in power don’t have to take away our freedom by force if we are willing to surrender it or trade it for a few paid weeks off work. Nor do they have to be fair in how they go about this if they simply get a majority of the populace to go along with their plan.

The suspicion governments are self-serving creatures is apparent in the old school British imperial definition of “commerce” which used free trade as a cover for the military dominance of weak nations. Those put in a position of being exploited often saw this as simply a ruse promoted by those wishing to abuse them. In short, opening borders and turning off protectionism simply makes it easier to rob countries of their wealth. America, a wayward child of England, has been accused of following this same path.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

You Counter Trumpism By Ending The Conditions Which Created It, Not With Authoritarian Policies

January 22, 2021

You Counter Trumpism By Ending The Conditions Which Created It, Not With Authoritarian Policies

The US political/media class have been pushing hard for more authoritarian policies to stave off the threat of “domestic terrorism” in the wake of the Capitol riot. President Biden, who was already working on rolling out new domestic terror policies well before January sixth, confirmed after the riot that he is making these new measures a priority. Political internet censorship is becoming increasingly normalized, anti-protest bills are being passed, and now we’re seeing liberals encouraged to form “digital armies” to spy on Trump supporters to report them to the authorities.

And an amazingly large percentage of the US population seems to have no problem with any of this, even in sectors of the political spectrum that should really know better by now.

“What else can we do?” they reason. “What other solution could there possibly be to the threat of dangerous fascists and conspiracy theorists continuing to gain power and influence?”

Well there’s a whole lot that can be done, and none of it includes consenting to sweeping new Patriot Act-like authoritarian measures or encouraging monopolistic Silicon Valley plutocrats to censor worldwide political speech. There’s just a whole lot of mass-scale narrative manipulation going on to keep it from being obvious to everyone.

The way to stem the tide of Trumpism (or fascism, or white supremacism, or Trump cultism, or whatever term you use for what you’re worried about here) is to eliminate the conditions which created it.

Trump was only able to launch his successful faux-populist campaign in the first place by exploiting the widespread pre-existing opinion that there was a swamp that needed draining, a corrupt political system whose leadership does not promote the interests of the people.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Two Faces Of The US Empire

January 16, 2021

The Two Faces Of The US Empire

The Biden/Harris inauguration event is going to be a star-studded celebration spanning an unprecedented five days, a giddy orgy of excitement at a murderous oligarchic empire having a new face behind the front desk after promising wealthy donors that nothing will fundamentally change.

This comes at a time when Americans are now reporting that they trust corporations more than they trust their own government or media, when pundits are gleefully proclaiming in The New York Times that “CEOs have become the fourth branch of government” as they pressure the entire political system to smoothly install Biden, when the leading contender for the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division is an Obama holdover who went from the administration to working for both Amazon and Google, and when Americans are being paced into accepting an increasing amount of authoritarian changes for their own good.

And this manic celebration and increasing brazenness of corporate power are of course overlaid atop an unceasing river of human blood as the globe-spanning empire continues to smash any nation which disobeys it into compliance so as to ensure lasting uncontested planetary hegemony.

But hey, at least they voted out fascism.

The US empire is ugly and creepy. The more you look at it, the uglier and creepier it gets. That’s why so much effort goes into keeping the public from looking at it directly.

The US empire has two faces, one rooted in the west coast and the other in the east. The first face, which sprouts up from Hollywood, presents a grinning plastic smile to the world depicting how fun and wonderful and righteous America is and how all its systems are working completely fine. The second face, which sprouts up from DC, Arlington and Langley, is wild-eyed and covered in blood.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Threat of Authoritarianism in the U.S. is Very Real, and Has Nothing To Do With Trump

December 28, 2020

The Threat of Authoritarianism in the U.S. is Very Real, and Has Nothing To Do With Trump

The COVID-driven centralization of economic power and information control in the hands of a few corporate monopolies poses enduring threats to political freedom.

(L-R): Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos (Photo by BERTRAND GUAY,TOBIAS SCHWARZ,ANGELA WEISS,MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images)

Asserting that Donald Trump is a fascist-like dictator threatening the previously sturdy foundations of U.S. democracy has been a virtual requirement over the last four years to obtain entrance to cable news Green Rooms, sinecures as mainstream newspaper columnists, and popularity in faculty lounges. Yet it has proven to be a preposterous farce.

In 2020 alone, Trump had two perfectly crafted opportunities to seize authoritarian power — a global health pandemic and sprawling protests and sustained riots throughout American cities — and yet did virtually nothing to exploit those opportunities. Actual would-be despots such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán quickly seized on the virus to declare martial law, while even prior U.S. presidents, to say nothing of foreign tyrants, have used the pretext of much less civil unrest than what we saw this summer to deploy the military in the streets to pacify their own citizenry.

But early in the pandemic, Trump was criticized, especially by Democrats, for failing to assert the draconian powers he had, such as commandeering the means of industrial production under the Defense Production Act of 1950, invoked by Truman to force industry to produce materials needed for the Korean War…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Denmark Also Passes Emergency COVID Law Coordinated with Germany – They Are Now Moving Rapidly Globally

November 19, 2020

Denmark Also Passes Emergency COVID Law Coordinated with Germany – They Are Now Moving Rapidly Globally

Denmark has taken a major step to a totalitarian state. This new law allows forcing people who test positive for ‘dangerous diseases’ to be ‘medically examined, hospitalized, treated and placed in isolation’. This further grants the Danish Health Authority the power ‘to define groups of people who must be vaccinated in order to contain and eliminate a dangerous disease’. The government can now coerce people who refuse to have the vaccine ‘through physical detainment, with police allowed to assist’.

These clauses present the collapse of all freedom. The government can simply say they “think” you are a member of such a group they define arbitrarily without any court to step in with respect to human rights. All individual liberty is now officially extinguished. This law allows full discretion to government officials with respect to defining what is now even a ‘dangerous disease’ and which groups will be forced to take a vaccine.

The government was forced to repeal the law after a week of constant protesting.

All the lessons of tyranny born with such horror and human suffering, for which so many gave their lives in defense against such unbound discretion handed to government agents, has been pushed aside. This agenda is being imposed because SOCIALISM is collapsing – they can no longer fund the pensions and programs for they can no longer borrow other people’s money. Instead of revising the system to preserve our humanity, world leaders have chosen the path to authoritarianism and the end of all our rights.

We no longer have world leaders who even remember World War II. They think only about their own status and power. They do not represent us. Just open your eyes, they are all using the very same slogan – Build Back Better.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Britain Calling in Military to Enforce its COVID-19 Restrictions Without Parliament Debate

September 23, 2020

Britain Calling in Military to Enforce its COVID-19 Restrictions Without Parliament Debate

COMMENT: Has social media replaced civil disobedience, do people vent their spleens over a keyboard and feel that they’ve made their contribution.

When will we see politicians hanging from lampposts?

Cheers A

REPLY: It is clever to call anyone who disagrees with this agenda a “conspiracy theorist” so then they do not have to answer for their actions. I seriously doubt that people are truly aware that this is a major agenda and it is being put forth from so many directions with each expressing one component. I cannot stress enough that our computer has been accurately projecting what is coming. I have stated previously, I question if there will be free elections in the USA after 2024.

Martial Law in Poland

This AGENDA is the acknowledgment that there is a Sovereign Debt Crisis and a Monetary Crisis converging which would normally bring about the fall of governments and sets the stage for war. They actually believe by using this virus as the excuse to justify eliminating human rights and adopt an authoritarian style government under the pretense of protecting you, they will succeed. It is inevitable that such types of governments ALWAYS crash and burn.

This is the Wroclaw Poland Monument to the Anonymous Passerby. This is a striking public sculpture installed on street representing the period of martial law in Communist Poland. The Wroclaw Monument honoring the anonymous passerby who fell under the ground. People who were living at the time of martial law, know that it is real. Underground was a place where a part of the Polish nation came into being December 13, 1981. Wroclaw took part in the anti-communist activity. This represents our hope, that the dissent which is being forced underground, will one day rise up as history dictates such oppression always fails.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

On Covid-19 And Authoritarian Abuses

August 22, 2020

On Covid-19 And Authoritarian Abuses

Over the last few months there’s been a clique of indie media who’ve been urging their respective followings to bully and cajole other indie media into focusing on Covid-19, lockdowns, mask laws and Covid-related authoritarian agendas in their coverage of world events.

I personally find the idea of fighting with indie media in a world that is dominated by murderous globe-spanning power structures absurd, so I won’t make this about them, but since their attacks are getting more heated now I’m going to try to spell out my own position on the matter here as clearly as possible. I don’t expect this essay to have any effect on this online mobbing behavior’s primary drivers, who appear to operating in bad faith; this is more for my longtime readers who’ve been expressing bafflement that I haven’t made Covid-related abuses a primary focus of my writing.

To sum up the gist of my position in a paragraph: I’ve said from the beginning that “the fears that the ruling class will seize this opportunity to advance preexisting authoritarian agendas are well-founded”, and I’ve repeatedly written entire essays about this. Unless people want me to re-write more or less the same essays over and over again, there hasn’t been much more for me to add to the discussion. The information ecosystem is still too polluted and muddied to see clearly enough to provide a comprehensive, lucid, big-picture understanding of what’s actually going on, so I’ve just been watching and patiently gathering information.

That is what someone who is interested in telling the truth does: they wait until they have enough information about something before they attempt to elucidate their understanding of it. I haven’t been writing about my clear, big-picture understanding of what’s going on with this virus because I simply do not have one, and frankly I don’t believe anyone else does either.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Europeans Are Waking Up to Government Covid Tyranny. Why Are We Still Asleep?

August 4, 2020

Europeans Are Waking Up to Government Covid Tyranny. Why Are We Still Asleep?

Tens of thousands of Germans marched through Berlin on Saturday, proclaiming a “Day of Freedom” and demanding an end to government-mandated face masks and “social distancing.” The UK and Netherlands also saw large protests against their governments’ tyrannical actions in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

According to media accounts, the Berlin protesters held signs reading “We are being forced to wear a muzzle,” “Natural defense instead of vaccination,” and “We are making noise because you are stealing our freedom!”

Good for them!

The New York Times Tweeted that the masses of Berlin demonstrators were all “Nazis” and “conspiracy theorists.” Does the “paper of record” really want us to believe there were perhaps a million Nazis active in the streets of Berlin? Wouldn’t that be alarming?

The fact is, Europeans are realizing that their government-mandated lockdowns did little or nothing to protect them from the virus, while causing economic catastrophe and untold human suffering.

They likely looked around and noticed that Sweden, which never locked down its economy, rejected face masks, and kept its restaurants and other places of business open, did not fare any worse than the countries that have been turned into open air prisons for much of the year. In fact, Sweden had a lower death rate from the virus than strict lockdown states like the UK and France. No wonder people are starting to get angry.

Unfortunately, while the Europeans are waking up, Americans are still asleep as our freedoms continue to be trampled. While Europeans demand an end to government tyranny, here we see states with minuscule new deaths returning to lockdown. It is as if all the wannabe tyrants from mayors to governors are finally realizing their secret dreams of ruling by decree. Their dreams are our nightmares!

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Corona Crisis: Fighting the Authoritarian Response

August 4, 2020

The Corona Crisis: Fighting the Authoritarian Response

At least 20 thousand people (some say many more) marched in Berlin on August 1st 2020 to protest against the restrictions imposed by governments against the Covid-19 epidemic. Unanimously branded as “criminals,” “neo-nazis,” and “idiots” by the Western media, their presence is nevertheless an indication of a growing movement of resistance against the authoritarian crackdown in Europe.

As I am writing, the Covid epidemics has been over for at least two months in Europe. In the US, instead, the epidemic is over only in the large cities while it is still ongoing in the central states, only recently showing signs of abating. The result is a different perception of the situation. In the US, the progressive movement is still trying to use the epidemic as an anti-Trump weapon, accusing the president of not having been authoritarian enough and not having imposed even more draconian measures. In Europe, instead, the public is starting to perceive that nobody is dying of Covid-19 anymore and that their governments are terrorizing them about a threat that has ceased to exist. It is still an embryonic movement, routinely demonized and criminalized by the government propaganda machine, but it is clearly rising. The recent manifestation in Berlin of tens of thousands of people (perhaps many more) is a clear indication of this trend. Earlier on, we had seen something similar in Italy.

You will be probably baffled by this interpretation of the Berlin demonstration, especially if you live in the US, or if you routinely watch TV or read newspapers in a Western country. But there is a logic in everything that happens and the general perception of the coronavirus is rapidly changing. As an example of this growing interpretation of the situation, let me report, below, a few paragraphs from the book “The End of the Megamachine” by Fabian Scheidler, at present in press in the English version.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The New Normal: Extremes of Neofeudalism, Incompetence, Authoritarianism and Relocalization

July 1, 2020

The New Normal: Extremes of Neofeudalism, Incompetence, Authoritarianism and Relocalization

The pendulum swung to an extreme of globalization, financialization, centralization and monopoly, all of which created extreme systemic fragility.

Here’s what to expect in the rapidly evolving New Normal: extremes become even more extreme as the status quo attempts to force compliance with its last-ditch schemes to preserve what was always unsustainable while painting a happy face on the stock market, the one thing they can push higher as the global economy unravels.

Mark, Jesse and I discuss this dynamic in Salon #10: Remember when Maximum Pessimism and Irrational Exuberance were mutually exclusive? (54 minutes): realistic pessimism is lashed to the mast with the irrational exuberance of stock market soothsayers, central bank cheerleaders and the organs of propaganda (Wall Street) and control of the narratives (social media and search monopolies).

Cognitive dissonance? Yes. Schizophrenia? Sure. Crazy-making? Undoubtedly. So the default “solution” is petty Authoritarianism to ensure we only see approved narratives, that we focus on the happy-happy signal of the glorious stock market (best rally ever!), that we pay higher taxes without complaint, and so on.And of course, buy, buy, buy and borrow, borrow, borrow, lest the flimsy house of cards collapse.

As I explain in my book Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform, the only possible output of central bank monetary stimulus is financialization, and the only possible output of financialization is unprecedented wealth and income inequality.

As Max Keiser, Stacy Herbert and I discuss in Fractals of Incompetence (15:30), the problem with pushing extremes is the system is incompetent at every level, from school boards to the Federal Reserve. Rather than solve problems, our institutions have devolved into mechanisms to protect clerisy / insiders from transparency and accountability.In the New Normal, systemic incompetence isn’t going to magically transform into competence, it’s going to reach new extremes of incompetence and self-serving hubris.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Authoritarianism in the Age of Pseudoscience

May 9, 2020

Authoritarianism in the Age of Pseudoscience

Following the court decision in the US to award in favour of Dewayne Johnson (exposure to Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer and its active ingredient, glyphosate, caused Johnson to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma), attorney Robert Kennedy Jr said at the post-trial press conference:

The corruption of science, the falsification of science, and we saw all those things happen here. This is a company (Monsanto) that used all of the plays in the playbook developed over 60 years by the tobacco industry to escape the consequences of killing one of every five of its customers… Monsanto… has used those strategies…”

Johnson’s lawyers argued over the course of the month-long trial in 2018 that Monsanto had “fought science” for years and targeted academics who spoke up about possible health risks of the herbicide product.

Long before the Johnson case, critics of Monsanto were already aware of the practices the company had engaged in for decades to undermine science. At the same time, Monsanto and its lobbyists had called anyone who questioned the company’s ‘science’ as engaging in pseudoscience and labelled them ‘anti-science’.

We need look no further than the current coronavirus issue to understand how vested interests are set to profit by spinning the crisis a certain way and how questionable science is again being used to pursue policies that are essentially ‘unscientific’ – governments, the police and the corporate media have become the arbiters of ‘truth’.

We also see anyone challenging the policies and the ‘science’ being censored on social media or not being given a platform on TV and accused of engaging in ‘misinformation’. It’s the same old playbook.

The case-fatality ratio for COVID-19 is so low as to make the lockdown response wholly disproportionate. Yet we are asked to blindly accept government narratives and the policies based on them.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Internet Censorship, Ego Death, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

May 9, 2020

Internet Censorship, Ego Death, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

There is no legitimate basis upon which to support monopolistic plutocratic megacorporations with extensive government ties silencing dissident voices in order to control the thoughts that people think about Covid-19. This is true regardless of your stance on the virus itself.

It is a known fact that Silicon Valley tech giants have extensive ties to the US government. Like, it’s not a secret. At all. Yet whenever you object to internet censorship you always get people babbling about how it’s a “private company” so it’s okay. If a company is intertwined with government power in myriad ways, how is its deplatforming behavior meaningfully distinct from state censorship? Especially when its willingness to collaborate with the government protects it from antitrust cases, thereby killing any potential competition?

“Free market” types say “If you don’t like it you can go on another platform!” No you can’t. There’s no competition. If you don’t like Twitter you can leave a platform of hundreds of millions for a platform like Gab, which is like ten people and nine of them are Nazis.

They’ll say “No biggie, go be on that tiny platform over there, there’s plenty of free speech there!” I am sure there is. There’s free speech in the desert, too. Free speech doesn’t matter if you’ve isolated yourself on a platform where your voice is only heard by a few fringey people.

They’ve herded everyone onto a few monopolistic government-tied platforms, and now they’re censoring those platforms with an increasingly authoritarian fist. There’s no “free market” solution to this problem, because it’s not happening in a free market.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tag Archives: authoritarianism

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

Post navigation

Latest Posts