The
United States of Manufactured Hysteria
By CJ Hopkins
August
31, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
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Thank God for the
Charlottesville Nazis! For a moment there, it
was looking like we were actually going to have
a few days to stop and reflect on the state of
America without being subjected to some new form
of manufactured mass hysteria. Seriously, just a
few short weeks ago, as the
corporatist ruling classes’ ridiculous attempt
to convince the world that Donald Trump is some
sort of Russian sleeper agent appeared
to be finally fizzling out, a significant number
of leftist types were beginning to wonder if
maybe, just maybe, the fact that the United
States government is controlled by a global
corporate plutocracy that has no allegiance to
any nation, or people, or to anything other than
itself, and that is in the process of demonizing
and potentially deposing an elected president …
that maybe that might be something to focus on,
not exclusively, by any means, but alongside
other vital issues, like defending the rights of
transgender drone pilots and purging syllabi of
oppressive pronouns.
Fortunately, thanks to the Nazis of
Charlottesville, this dangerous moment of doubt
has now passed. If you were listening closely on
August 11, you could hear the collective sigh of
relief whooshing out of Resistance quarters like
a hypnagogic idiot wind as roughly one hundred
white supremacists marched into town with their
tiki torches barking N.S.D.A.P. slogans and
otherwise making asses of themselves. Corporate
media apparatchiks, mandarins of the Internet
Left, professional and amateur Naziologists, and
assorted other Nazi experts immediately went to
DEFCON 1, signaling imminent Nazi invasion.
Photos of bug-eyed, torch-bearing Nazis, their
mouths wide open in mid-Nazi shriek, veins
bulging out of their Nazi necks, were released
to the public and circulated widely. Millions of
conflicted leftists (many of whom had been
feeling uneasy about collaborating with the
corporate plutocracy in their efforts to
delegitimize Trump, and every last American who
voted for him), upon seeing glossy, color
close-ups of these Nazis waved in front of their
faces, responded as every Good
American has
been conditioned to respond since early
childhood. They instantly switched off their
critical faculties and began reenacting the
Second World War … or rather, the mythical
version of it wherein the USA defeated the
Nazis, which is one of Americans’ favorite
pastimes.
Look, I don’t mean to make light of
Charlottesville. We’re talking actual neo-Nazis,
with actual Nazi flags and haircuts, shouting
actual Nazi slogans, and the Ku Klux Klan, and
heavily-armed militia, and just garden variety
racist rednecks … all of which have been standard
features of American life for decades,
and longer,
but this is no time to reflect on history, or
try to put things into perspective. Also, one of
these Nazi morons ran over people with his car
the next day, killing one woman, and injuring
many others, which renders any critical thinking
about the actual size of the Nazi menace (which
remains ridiculously small, as ever) or the
motives of the corporate media in blowing it up
all out of proportion tantamount to Nazi
sympathizing, and I’m already in enough trouble
as it is.
Plus, Charlottesville was just the beginning …
kind of like a Nazi Tet Offensive. Just one week
later, on August 19, literally forty to fifty
Nazis (cleverly disguised as Trump supporters,
libertarians, and right-wing oddballs) occupied
a public gazebo in Boston,
and were right on the verge of expressing
virulent Nazi views to the cops surrounding
them. Luckily, just in the nick of time, a
contingent of approximately forty thousand
anti-fascist Resistance members arrived on the
scene to deny them a platform, and chase down
anyone wearing one of those MAGA hats and
verbally abuse them.
You’d think the Nazis would have gotten the
message … but no, last Sunday, August 27,
another ten or eleven Nazis (many of them posing
as “Trump supporters,” as if that didn’t make
them Nazis, and some of them even going so far
as to attempt to pass themselves off as
“Latinos”) audaciously tried to assemble in
Berkeley. The Resistance showed them no mercy
this time. Thousands of peaceful
counter-protesters quickly frightened the Nazis
away, then squads of masked-up anti-fascists
hunted down any Nazi-looking stragglers, “apparent
alt-righters,” and
nosy photographers, and stomped the living
Hitler out of them. This alarmed the more
liberal Resistance, which set about branding the
anti-fascists who beat the crap out of the folks
the liberals had branded Nazis “domestic
terrorists.”
Elsewhere in America, Resistance members were
frantically tearing
down Confederate monuments,
which had suddenly become intolerably offensive,
and searching through online business
directories for anyone
named after Robert E. Lee,
or horses
named after General Lee’s horse,
or the horses of other racist Nazis. That, and
hastily organizing the upcoming March
to Confront White Supremacy (presumably
in order to make a mockery of the 1963 March on
Washington), and penning lengthy explications of
the evils of racism, white supremacy, and all
other forms of Naziism associated with Donald
Trump … and otherwise whipping people up into a
sputtering frenzy of Nazi hysteria.
Now,
you have to hand it to the fake Resistance …
this Nazi hysteria is good for everyone. Not
only is it an easier sell than that ridiculous
Russian hacking nonsense (because Trump really
is a racist, of course), but it’s something the
broader Left can embrace, as it plugs straight
into identity politics, which is pretty much all
we’ve got these days.
See, up
to now, the dilemma we’ve been facing (or some
of us have been facing, anyway) is how to
respond to the ruling establishment’s concerted
campaign to “regime-change” Trump. On the one
hand, Trump is a living embodiment of everything
the Left opposes. On the other hand, going after
Trump has meant carrying water for the fake
Resistance, i.e., that global corporatocracy
(which, by the way, does not mean “the Jews.” I
always like to slip that in to piss off my
anti-Semitic readers.) This has been a bit
awkward for some of us, restraining our impulse
to stick it to Trump (at least on whatever
talking points the Resistance is currently
putting out) because in doing so we would align
ourselves with the ruling establishment’s
attempt to demonize, and eventually depose an
American president who isn’t playing ball with
them properly. If we oppose regime change in
other countries, shouldn’t we also oppose it at
home? Or do the ruling classes get a pass this
time because Trump is such an exceptional
monster? But wait … wasn’t Saddam a monster? And
Gaddafi? And all the other “Hitlers” that
wouldn’t play ball with the corporatocracy? And
Assad? Isn’t he a monster?
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You can
see how confusing all this gets … when you’re
trying to figure out how to oppose both the
supranational corporatocracy that is superseding
sovereign nations as the hegemonic power in the
world and the neo-nationalist reaction against
it, which is essentially fascist in
nature, and which the corporatocracy also
opposes … and desperately wants you to help them
oppose by buying their manufactured hysteria
about Russians, or Nazis, or whatever scary
monster they wave in front of your face. After a
while, your brain starts to hurt, and you just
want someone to make things simple.
Charlottesville Nazis to the rescue! How much
simpler could it possibly get? Corporatocracy?
What corporatocracy? We got goddamned Nazis
coming out of the woodwork! Racist Nazis!
Confederate Nazis! Nazi apologists! Nazi
sympathizers! This is no time to worry about
who’s actually wielding political power, or how
they’re manufacturing hysteria and otherwise
manipulating people (not you, of course … other
people). No, what we need to do now is censor
the Internet,
and other venues for Nazi hate speech, and round
up all these racist Nazis and subject them to
anti-Nazi therapy, or anti-racist empathy
programs, or
just gang up on them and beat them senseless.
OK,
sure, that might sound extreme, or
authoritarian, or just plain old creepy, but
keep in mind that This Is Not Normal! And racism
and Naziism is very, very bad. And Love Trumps
Hate! And Scope Kills Germs! And we never
literally meant that Trump was an actual Russian
agent or anything. Forget about all that Russia
stuff now. Trump is Hitler. Trump has always
been Hitler. America has always been at war with
Hitler. America will always be at war with
Hitler.
Oh,
yeah, and I almost forgot, today’s edition of
the Two Minutes Hate will begin in approximately
fifteen minutes. Please assemble in the usual
location. Thank you for your cooperation.
C. J. Hopkins
is
an award-winning American playwright, novelist
and satirist based in Berlin. His plays are
published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and
Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel,
ZONE 23, is
published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant.
He can reached at
cjhopkins.com
or
consentfactory.org.
This article was first published by
Counterpunch
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