Propaganda and Subversion, Part 2: Division

Divide and conquer tactics are an integral part of warfare and subversion alike. If you can get your enemies to destroy each other, it is so much easier to conquer them than if they are united. This is something that every tyrannical government knows, hence the constant fearmongering that keeps the public divided, that keeps everyone at each other’s throats, rather noticing a common enemy. Right now, as I’m writing this in December of 2022, American propagandists are still pushing the narrative that the American people are divided, and that there are multiple factions of the public that all hate each other. Nah, the country is well past that and well into the third stage of propaganda, the first true stage of subversion, but we’ll get into that as I explain how division is fomented and how it has played out in other instances throughout history.

People are naturally tribal, and tend to self-isolate into different communities. As long as there are abundant resources, conflict between tribes is minimal. However, as resources dwindle for whatever reason, tribes come into competition with each other, sometimes violently, over what little is available. When the government is responsible for the shortage, the government finds a “scapegoat community,” usually the Jews, and blames them. On that note, Jews are easy to blame because they tend to be quite shrewd at both making and managing money, hence they don’t usually feel the squeeze of a widespread economic downturn the way that the rest of the population does. Danish photographer Jacob Riis made note of this in his book titled How the Other Half Lives, observing that when the Irishman had a little extra money, he drank it away, whereas when the Jew had a little extra money, he saved it. Though the book is about New York City tenement houses in the late 19th century, most of these observations are still applicable to impoverished people today. Having lived in economically depressed areas most of my life, I’ve seen it firsthand; most propagandists and other ivory tower denizens, on the other hand, have no idea what it’s like to be poor, hence the title of the book, a reference to the saying “one half of the world does not know how the other half lives.”

Of course, people aren’t always quite so eager to blame their neighbour for their own misfortunes; if there is no enemy for the elite to place the blame on (or if the people are already blaming the elite), then the elite will fabricate one, and all of their captured institutions will act as if that phantom scapegoat is real. Remember, the best grift is not to sell a fake cure for a real illness, but to sell an imaginary illness, and there is no greater grift than religion.

Religious apologists have a very long and consistent history of blaming the “non-believers” for society’s ills. Pre-Christian Romans blamed Christians, Christians blamed pagans, Catholics blamed Protestants, Protestants blamed witches, and gentiles continue to blame Jews… yawn. Some of the things that early Christian apologists had to say about non-Christians were particularly spicy, such as the accusation that we eat babies. I’m not making that up, they’re making that up.

People rarely have the exact same set of beliefs, but there are consistent sets based on over-arching principles, and propagandists know this. People who are more “conservative,” i.e. traditionalist, tend to be more religious, whereas those who are more “progressive” tend to be more secular. Thus, anyone who calls themselves “conservative” can be smeared as an “ignorant and bigotted superstitious savage” by those who call themselves “progressive,” regardless of whether or not the conservative individual is religious or not. The same works in reverse: “oh, you think marijuana should be legalised? What are you, a woketard pothead?” Such fringe issues belong at the children’s table of politics, and yet are frequently dragged into debates about bigger issues in order to smear the opposition for ease of dismissal. The real issue isn’t black vs. white, or “left” vs. “right,” the real issue is collectives vs. individuals. The state is a collective, whereas people are individuals, and the state oppresses individuals on the basis of their beliefs, associations, or immutable characteristics in order to achieve their grand designs for society.

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand

That quote is taken from the book titled Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal. Ayn (pronounced “Ein,” as in the German word for “one,” BTW) Rand is one of the most widely misrepresented authors ever, right up there with Karl Marx, and by the same people, oddly enough. The primary difference between Rand and Marx is that, while they both correctly identify what is wrong with society (greed), Rand’s solution would actually improve society, whereas Marx’s “solution” only exacerbates those very problems. Collectivism is the cause of most of society’s ills, so to implement more collectivism is to worsen those very problems. People generally form collectives when they are going to war, because the sacrifice of individual liberties is necessary for a cohesive unit and effective fighting force. When people are not fighting, they tend to treat each other based on the content of their character, rather than based on some inherited trait or circumstance. Marx and Rand both knew this, indicated by the fact that Karl Marx didn’t believe in race, and Ayn Rand once called racism “the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism” in The Virtue of Selfishness.

Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups, rather than as individuals. – Ron Paul

Neo-Marxists, meanwhile have turned this idea completely on it head and have claimed that “the belief in individualism is racist,” and that the very word “individual” is “red flag phrase” considered to be racist. According to the neo-Marxists, it is politically incorrect to say that a person is “a real individual,” and we should instead say that such a person is “a real team player” or “a real part of the group.” I shouldn’t need to point this out, but those are total opposites. Again, I’m not making that up, they’re making that up. Such narratives can be found in the writings of the self-described “trained Marxists” who founded Critical Race Theory. Say their names together now, because Christ knows the media won’t: Patricia Bidol, Judith Katz, David Wellman (not to be confused with David John Wellman), Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Ibram X. Kendi. These are the race grifters who have worked tirelessly to elevate racial consciousness in the west, thus sewing division based on something as silly as skin colour. There is a reason for the saying “leftists are the real racists.”

I am not one bit ashamed that I take a substantial measure of joy pointing out that Yankee academics are complete bellends when it comes to the subject of race. First of all, there is no scientific basis for it: if one defines “race” as “subspecies,” is it was in Charles Darwin’s day, then there is only one race of humans currently in existence, with the other (Neanderthals, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) having long ago disappeared as a distinct group. Second, the immutable characteristics that humans have focused on during darker episodes of history go way beyond skin colour. Everyone laughed, and rightly so, when Whoopie Goldberg (not an academic, but the point still stands) infamously stated that the Holocaust “wasn’t about race,” because everyone and their dog knows better:

The term “genocide” means “the systematic extermination of a particular group of people on the basis of ethnicity.” There have been many throughout history, and the lead-up to them has always been divisive propaganda on the part of the government responsible. One book I cannot recommend enough is Is the Holocaust Unique? by Alan Rosenbaum, though perhaps it needs an update, given recent events in Yemen and China. One such event that doesn’t get discussed nearly enough is the massacre of the Tutsi and Twa people as well as moderate Hutus by a supremacist group called Hutu Power at the end of the 1990-94 Rwandan Civil War. Of particular interest is the role that the media (specifically radio stations) played, and also how media complicity in the genocide led to massive amounts of censorship in its wake. Allan Thompson discusses this in his book titled The media and the Rwanda genocide, and one particular consequence is that “divisionism” is now a criminal offense in Rwanda. “Divisionism” is defined by the Rwandan government as “the use of any speech, written statement, or action that divides people, that is likely to spark conflicts among people, or that causes an uprising which might degenerate into strife among people based on discrimination.” Anyone who is a stanch supporter of free speech knows exactly what this leads to, and today, the press in Rwanda frequently avoids saying things critical of the government in order to avoid running afoul of these laws. China has had similar laws for far longer, and as always, such laws are used to protect the state from criticism, not to protect the people from harm. Division is thus used to justify curtailing personal liberties, including free speech, and increase the government’s power. In other words, governments create division, radical factions (sometimes directly funded by the government) incite violence, widespread violence occurs, governments then exploit the tragedy of widespread violence in order to control the flow of information. Abraham Lincoln did it, Vladimir Lenin did it, Iosif Stalin did it, Adolf Hitler did it, Mao Zedong did it, and your favourite dictator did it too.

On a side note, when looking up sources for this article, I decided to pop on over to Wikipedia (which, as well all know, as the most reliable source of information in the world), and after finding Thompson’s book about the media’s role in the Rwandan genocide, I noticed that on the right side of the page was a column of hyperlinks leading to articles about censorship in other countries. On a whim, I clicked on Ukraine, and at the top of the article is a picture that shows level of press freedom in the entire world. It’s hilarious:

Source

You honestly mean to tell me that New Zealand is one of the least censorious countries in the world?! What are you smoking, and can I have some? I want to have a nice long chat with Buddha and the Jade Emperor. No, I’m serious, free speech is officially dead in most of the Anglosphere, obvious exception being the United States. Unless, of course, Reporters Without Borders is referring only to “professional” journalists, by which I mean people who are brainwashed in “journalism” school into believing that state’s narratives, in which case sure, if you work for the corporate media in any of the blue countries, you don’t need to worry about being arrested for doing your job… most of the time, anyway.

Back on topic, what happens when the people don’t fall for the divisive narrative, and continue to view each other as fellow human beings, rather than simply as members of some group that they’re constantly being told is responsible for all their problems? Simple, as I mentioned before, the state will invent an enemy, as the Puritans did with witches, as the Soviets did with counter-revolutionaries, and as the FBI did with Q-Anon. I don’t actually have any proof of the latter (yet), but the pattern should be as immutably obvious as a blue sky by now. So, let’s start with the first, shall we?

There is no such thing as witchcraft, it is nothing more than superstition. The Roman Catholic Church actually held that position until 1400, when the first recorded European witch trial took place. What changed, you ask? Well, Thomas Aquinas is widely credited with bringing the idea to the Church, but considering that he died in 1274, I sincerely doubt that. No, there was something far more recent, in fact something still in living memory at that time, that many Europeans believed was a divine punishment for the sinful ways of clergy, noble, and peasant alike: the Black Death (1347-1351). The consequences of the Black Death were quite widespread, leading to a complete upheaval of European society called the Renaissance. If you haven’t figured this out yet, what I’m telling you is that I suspect witch trials were an attempt to prevent another Great Plague. Witch trials were comparative rare until 1560, by which time the Protestant Reformation was underway, and anyone familiar with the history of Christianity is aware that Protestants burnt more people at the stake for witchcraft than the Catholic Church. I will go into this in greater detail in an article about the strange history of the Reformation and the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), because this topic deserves several articles devoted to it, and may even become a regular series. For now, just keep in mind that the Puritans were so paranoid that they would brand you a witch and burn you at the stake if your cow had a miscarriage. Scary, right? Next point!

By the time that the Russian Civil War ended, no-one with their head on straight who supported the tsarist regime stuck around. Some fled to China (and met up with an absolute mad lad named Zhang Zhongchang), some fled to Poland, some fled to Finland, and some even crossed the Atlantic Ocean and settled in a town in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere called Moscow… Moscow, Pennsylvania, that is, which had been founded roughly a century earlier. Yet, the Soviets, even under Lenin, were paranoid schizophrenics when it came to their enemies, seeing “counter-revolutionaries” round every corner and under every bed. In reality, the vast majority of dissidents were members of the CPSU who didn’t toe the political line, such as Leon Trotsky, the original neo-Marxist, and I explained some of his transgressions in my article about Marxism. The vast majority of the people who were victimised by Stalin’s Great Purge were loyal party members who were either of no further use (e.g. Genrikh Yagoda, head of the NKVD prior to being convicted of crimes against the state during the Trial of 21), were people who had slight disagreements with Stalin’s policies, or in some cases, had simply caught Stalin at a bad time, as Georgy Zhukov once noted that Stalin was extremely temperamental and a hard man to read, but he had some subtle “tells,” as it were. The funny part is that the Great Purge is the single greatest argument against the claim made by Nazi propaganda that Soviet Communism was “Jewish Bolshevism.” Here’s how that argument typically goes:

“Trotsky was a Jew!” Yes, and Stalin had him killed.

“Genrikh Yagoda, who ordered over 100,000 executions during the Great Purge, was a Jew!” Yes, and Stalin had him killed.

“447 of the 545 members of the Bolshevik Party were Jews!” Yes, and Stalin had them all killed.

The purges, incidentally, began under Lenin, and continued under Khrushchëv. Modern Marxists have almost universally denounced Stalin, but continue to turn a blind eye to the same atrocities that took place under the other Soviet dictators because of their ideological bias. I mentioned, for example, that my maternal grandfather may very well have been assassinated by the MVD, which took place long before I was born, but considering that my mother was born in 1956, I can’t very well blame Stalin for that. There were indeed resistance movements throughout the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union proper, but none of these dissidents, organised or not, didn’t believe in some form of socialism. I mean, FFS, my maternal grandfather immigrated to the Soviet Union, because he wasn’t even Russian… he was French! Anyway, I’d better stop talking about the Soviet Union, otherwise we’ll be here all day. There will be plenty more on them in the next instalment of this series, anyway.

Before I move on to the government psyop that was Q-Anon, I need to explain something about American politics that you’re probably not aware of unless you know as much history as I do. The principles laid out in the Constitution were betrayed within a single decade of the nation’s founding. This is why strict constitutionalists, who are ideologically aligned with most libertarians, are not conservatives. In fact, I would argue that libertarians are the real progressives, since they are continually pushing for a free society the likes of which the world has never really seen before, whereas self-described “progressives” are almost always authoritarian socialists, adherents of a centuries-old ideology that has an extremely consistent track record of disaster, and progs keep demanding more of the same and/or a return to tradition: more regulation, more subsidies, bring back the draft, bring back segregation, repeal Title 9, bring back blasphemy laws, long-distance travel for the rich only, that kind of nonsense. Progressives are about as regressive as it is possible to be, but they hide their true nature, even from themselves, by means of a particular type of wordplay known as linguistic propaganda.

“Progressivism” is such a regressive ideology only politicians can apply the label to themselves and keep a straight face. – Jacob Tothe

Q-Anon was a psyop that anyone with a three-digit IQ could see through, based purely on the “trust the plan” mantra. “Trust the plan, don’t do anything” is the type of message that keeps people passive and out of the way, similar to the demoralisation that lies at the heart of all propaganda, as I will discuss in the next instalment. Of course, any time that there is a political movement, there are going to be a handful of its supporters who are crazy enough to rally in the streets, and the state knows to infiltrate those organisations with unscrupulous people who will make the wider movement look bad. The legacy media, meanwhile, will focus in on the bad actors and amplify them, ignoring the wider organic movement of citizens. While I’m fairly certain that most Americans already know that the 2021 Capitol riot was a dog-and-pony show, there are still a handful, mostly with liberal arts degrees, who still keep pushing the narrative that it was an “insurrection,” never mind that the rally was infiltrated and subsequently agitated by undercover FBI agents cough cough Ray Epps cough cough. Unfortunately, anyone who says this, or who points out the 2020 presidential election irregularities, is smeared as a “tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorist,” and dismissed, never engaged with seriously, and thus further radicalised. The “conspiracy theorists” have presented the evidence for their claims, but the establishment refuses to present counter-evidence, only further lending credence to the idea that the 2020 election was fraudulent, Q-Anon was a government psyop, and the subsequent riot was also a government psyop. I share this quote a lot, since I open almost every instalment of the “stupid or psyop” series with it:

If you must lie in order to advance or defend a narrative, then I must assume the narrative itself is a lie. – Karel Antonovič Janáček

Going back to the process of making assumptions about people for having attached themselves to a narrative deemed “dangerous” by the state, anyone who questions the results of an election that goes exactly the way the state wants it to is further smeared as a “brainwashed believer of every conspiracy theory out there,” and supporters of Donald Trump or any truly anti-establishment public figure is further smeared as a “far-right fundie dunce creationist flat-Earth anti-vaxxer,” or some shit, which anyone with a functioning pair of eyeballs knows isn’t true. In the Soviet Union, the nosy neighbours with no life of their own would overhear people grumbling about how crushing the state’s policies were, and then the Lyudmilas of society (the Russian equivalent of “Karen,” since it is close to the word for “nosy”) would smear such unhappy people as “counter-revolutionary tsarist capitalist kulak black marketeers,” or some other hyperbolic nonsense, and the NKVD would abduct the malcontent and drop them off in a “corrective labour camp” somewhere in Siberia where they would break rocks for the next ten years just to keep them out of the way. People learnt the hard way to keep their mouths shut, even in the privacy of their own homes, which is why Russians tend to be a rather taciturn lot. The “silent majority” is the product of a state that simply will not listen to reason.

These articles keep getting longer, but hopefully I managed to keep you entertained with such a dark topic. Look, it only gets worse from here. My next article will be about the NSDAP, you have been warned.