Mao rose to power by recruiting others to his ideology until he had a sufficiently resourced army with which to win fights and gain territory. Once in control of the country he then sanitised society from the top down, working through the nobility, bourgeoisie, institutions, intellectuals, unions, then individuals whose faces, facial hair, spectacles or comments didn’t fit.
Through death and disappearances, Mao stripped society down to the proletariat who were pinned by fear and the threat of death, and surrounded with a notional or actual surveillance, command and control system. Mao then reprogrammed and rebuilt society in line with his ideology, which resulted in a nation that could not compete beyond its own borders and was left behind by the Soviet Union and the USA, until a single victor emerged and China again reprogrammed itself and adopted new strategies and tactics over decades. Romania and other Soviet satellites underwent similar. It was an unproven perception that 1 in 3 citizens were informants for the Romanian Securitate, meaning that at the dinner table of a one child household, someone at that table was an informant. Odds on, it was the kid.
How then, has the Western world managed to achieve the results now plainly visible out of the window, within one’s nearest screen and in the minds of those around us? How have comfortable, developed nations been captured?
Mao’s methods have ultimately been digitised.
Small numbers of the rich and resourced have simply captured key strategic and tactical positions of influence throughout society over a long period of time. Not everyone needs to be recruited, just enough with enough influence. Whether that’s planning well ahead by training WEF Young Leaders and backing them until the cream rises to the top (then again, shit floats), or by (ideologically) recruiting, buying, bribing, extorting or blackmailing enough agents at every level of society, the ultimate effect is the same.
Ghislane Maxwell has been banged up for sex trafficking, which is an activity that involves a trafficker, a victim and at least one customer. Without a customer, Maxwell would’ve been an abuser, not a trafficker. So where’s her client list? It’s being looked after by her clients. Epstein and Maxwell weren’t doing it for just their own kicks.
Once a key institution is captured, the messages it puts out and the policy lines it backs are themselves captive. This effect cascades down and out through society. Useful idiots abound, lulled to continue tribally connecting and identifying with the captured institutions and various points of influence. They then parrot the required messages and ideologies thereby magnifying them through their own tribes.
People are tribal and derive identity from groups. Huge amounts of people directly absorb and regurgitate the opinions that they are told to have, but few acknowledge the sources of their opinions. Who wants to admit that they think what they think because they read The Guardian or The Telegraph? They read those rags because those rags fit their opinions, not the other way round, so they would have others believe. Often, this claim is untrue and is easily testable by listening to people discussing issues. The boundaries of their opinions and ability to debate or argue around a topic, let alone tolerate challenges or complex and ambiguous concepts without coming to definite answers often betray that a person’s “opinion” is received and not self-developed.
Add in the power of the corporate media and large swathes of society are little more than version 2.0 of Mao’s proletariat. Big Tech, SocMed and majority control and monitoring of information flows means it’s largely possible to know how humans are thinking and reacting, enough to mass manipulate them in ways they can barely detect. These concepts are well covered but probably the majority don’t want to know what’s being done to them.
Now add in the latest fear narrative - 45 minutes strike capability, WMD, a deadly cough - and you can get people to do whatever you want. Shock Doctrine works because people are, en masse, ignorant and pliable.
I’m not saying that’s all their own fault - the system and society has been deliberately rebuilt like this over decades. The bullets and bombs have been fired at foreigners in far away lands while the surveillance networks have been built around the globe in front of our faces. Our Cassandras and would-be saviours have been exiled, marginalised, killed or tortured and the public have done nothing to come to their aid. All whistle-blowers get screwed, banged up or dead for doing the right thing. The public en masse rarely recognise, protect and reward whistle-blowers the way they should because the corporate media tells the public to think badly of them in order to protect the system, and the public largely thinks what it’s told to. It’s a wonder that Project Veritas can still find any whistle-blowers. “Society” - whatever that actually is - doesn’t deserve them.
Digital Maoism is so effective that the critical thinkers, the independent minds and the counterbalances to unchecked power exist in such fragmented minorities that they can’t effectively act through any mechanism to be an effective break or interruption to the system. The proof of this is 2.5 years of literal madness and the realisation of nearly every conspiracy theory over the last two decades (including the possible reveal of aliens on earth) coming true. Except flat earth, which is probably a sub-form of distraction via niche identity politics and divide-and-conquer. Like mask wearing, at least flat earth theory allows you to identify clearly certain traits in people that otherwise wouldn’t be easily detectable so that you can choose to avoid.
Digital Maoism is probably impossible to fully counter because it is so pervasive. Never mind, at least we’re getting a new face in Whitehall. Things will definitely have to change then, won’t they? Just like they changed when Hancock hopped it.
That people haven’t risen up against a government whose MO and egregious lies and law breaking are literally televised on captive stations, plain as day tells you everything.
Remind me of what the UK has said about Vaccine Passports, and then what it’s actually done? Now what’s it saying? People are literally tolerating being treated like cattle. Is it any wonder that the things being done to them are so lamentable? They even vote in the people doing it to them and then repeat the slogans that they were told to say as excuses for why they voted in scum.
Did BozJob turn out to be a lying, incompetent, lying, scumbag who doesn’t represent the voting masses? That was directly explained by his former boss before he took positions of substantial power, yet I have come across numerous people who were prepared to openly admit they voted for him because “he’d get something done”, which was not their own opinion but simply the repetition of a slogan that they were told to repeat. QED.
“Welcome to China. Join the queue to be anally swabbed and make your papers available. You won’t like it, you don’t have to like it, but you do have to do it.”
And we will. No bullets or bombs necessary.
Even if you try to reboot this version of Digital Maoism, it’s the only operating system available. It doesn’t matter if you change the background colour from red to blue, or pink or rainbow. It’s the same thing no matter what it looks or sounds like. And you are contractually obliged to pay the increasing subscriptions for the rest of your life. And you will.
“We’re rationing this increasingly expensive gas that we have deliberately made artificially expensive and artificially scarce, so you have to have this digital ration card.”
If acceptance and tolerance of such patently circular “policy” isn’t enough to drive misanthropy, what is?
You are absolutely right. We do deserve to be endlessly anally swabbed for our docile servility. In public would be fitting in order to receive your check from the government. How did we even get this far? It is miracle we are not extinct yet.
This is a brilliant commentary; and 100% spot-on. How can we get the muggles to read it though?
Tweeting it out anyway, although I'm pretty certain that my account is being shadow-banned so much as to make it a worthless gesture.