In growing chaos like this, crises such as the supply-chain disruptions and the climate-related natural disasters get amplified in their humanitarian costs. As do the destabilizing effects of the cognitive warfare that the U.S. empire is increasingly waging against its own people.
Pouring gasoline onto a social tinderbox
I'm not making an "economic anxiety" argument to explain why bigotry against Asians and other minorities has been on the rise in recent years. People don't become racist simply because they get poorer. But adverse events throughout imperial decline, economic deprivation being one among many, can make people more susceptible to paranoid rhetoric. Rhetoric that the intelligence centers and their media lackeys are eager to promote.
Eric Levitz of New York Magazine has described the ways uncertain times increase the potential for delusional beliefs:
The tendency toward conspiracism is deeply rooted in the human psyche. It manifests across time and geography and is likely a product of evolutionary pressures. On an emotional level, human beings tend to find the idea of being threatened by forces beyond their comprehension or control much more upsetting than being threatened by an intelligible enemy. Social psychologists have found that when fearful people contemplate potential misfortunes, they tend to feel helpless and pessimistic, but when angry people contemplate the same, they feel a sense of optimism and control. And one simple way to transmute fear into anger is to perceive an evil agent behind whatever development is causing you uncertainty and disquiet. (Confronted with apocalyptic wildfires of uncertain origin last week, many conservatives in the Pacific Northwest attributed the conflagration to "antifa" rather than to complex and amoral climactic forces.)
Is it any wonder why Canada is one of the countries where QAnon has been picking up the most traction, given the extent to which Canada has been following Washington's example of accelerating the neoliberal assault on the masses? Illness begets illness. Miserable conditions beget hate and ignorance, especially when a concerted campaign is being waged to make public sentiments head in such a dark direction.
Indeed, there's ample evidence that U.S. intelligence has been taking advantage of this growing psychological vulnerability of the masses to sow conspiracy thinking. This year, a Reuters investigation supposedly found that the very first Twitter account to use the term "QAnon" had "retweeted obscure Russian officials." This is a red flag that QAnon is a modern version of the FBI's COINTELPRO; in accordance with the numerous anti-Russian hoaxes that have been produced by U.S. intelligence throughout the new cold war, these supposedly Russian sources could have been FBI disinformation agents who were seeking to carry out a psychological operation, and then pin it on a U.S. rival. The FBI may have lit the flame behind the QAnon movement, and the numerous outbreaks of violence this movement has produced.
If this sounds far-fetched, look at the extent to which intelligence operatives have manipulated public opinion surrounding the pandemic, to the effect of inflaming tremendous violence.
Going against numerous warnings from scientists to not believe the "Wuhan lab leak" theory without far more substantial evidence, the liberal side of the U.S. media has been joining the rightists in promoting this conspiracy. As Alan Macleod of MintPressnews has assessed, the intelligence sources behind this narrative show all the red flags for being new versions of the Iraq WMD-hoax propagators. So much that "The lab leak theory bears a striking resemblance to the WMD hoax of 2002, not only in the fact that one of its key players is literally the same journalist using potentially the same anonymous sources, but also in the bipartisan political and media support it enjoys." Elaborates Macleod:
If anything, The Wall Street Journal article [that argues for the conspiracy] is more suspect, given that it is based on nothing but anonymous state officials who refuse to share the evidence or go on the record. National security state operatives are among the least trustworthy sources it is possible to encounter, journalistically speaking, as it is part of their job to plant false information in order to alter public discourse. The only group less deserving of blind faith than natsec officials would be anonymous natsec officials. Yet many of the biggest and most embarrassing media blunders in recent years have been based on dodgy data from shadowy spooks feeding dubious intelligence to credulous dupes in the press... Even worse, The Wall Street Journal article's lead author is Michael R. Gordon, the reporter infamous for co-authorship of a notorious 2002 New York Times article claiming Saddam Hussein was seeking to build weapons of mass destruction, a piece widely credited as a keystone of the push to invade Iraq the following year. For that article, Gordon also relied upon anonymous state officials.
The imperialists are trying to make the best of their situation of unprecedentedly contracting capital. They've engineered a deterioration of conditions in this country on par with what they've done to places like Yugoslavia, then taken advantage of the consequential social ills by subjecting the people to strategic lies. The lab leak lie is perhaps the most destructive one they've put out so far; by creating a hoax about China being to blame for the virus, the U.S. ruling class has exploited the massive pandemic deaths that have come about from neoliberalism. This has led to an ongoing increase in hate crimes against Asians, with these crimes sometimes taking the form of mass shootings.
At the same time, QAnon has been motivating its followers to engage in more militia activity and weapons gathering. What will happen when these factors that our government's propaganda is exacerbating--violent bigotry, paramilitarism, and reactionary vigilantism--combine during the coming years? At what point will capital's contraction become severe enough for these militias to act as a counterrevolutionary terror force, sanctioned by the state and empowered by the state's disinformation? What other sorts of extreme measures will the U.S. ruling class be taking by that point?
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
