Diabolical bullshit merchant Edward Bernays was the nephew of well known repressed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.
After a well played career as a government administrator, Bernays realised from his uncle’s work that, with an understanding of manipulation and people’s innermost desires, companies could design their advertisements and marketing campaigns to tell people exactly what it was that they wanted, and then make them feel like tragic losers who would miss out if they didn’t go out and buy it immediately.
He was the first to coin the term “public relations,” when referring to propaganda, and also introduced corporations to the concept of focus groups.
Edward said that he believed those in power had an obligation to control the general public in order to prevent them from reverting to what he regarded as a dangerous “herd instinct” that would see society descend into primal chaos. But… (cough), Edward said a lot of things…
However, Bernays depended on this “herd mentality” to dupe the population into believing capitalist consumerism was a grand idea and that communism was a clear and present danger to America which required the installation of U.S. friendly government regimes in countries that had desirable populations and resources to exploit and pillage. Let me introduce you to the United Fruit Company.
When you spend a lifetime betraying your fellow man and generally behaving like a smug asshole you might end up looking like Edward (the father of lies) Bernays. It’s not a pretty picture.
The Century of the Self is a documentary worth watching if you want to fully appreciate the depth of this wreched man’s unbridled depravity.
There seems to be two main strands of the pro-Brexit argument. The first is that Brexit will better allow Britain to control its borders. Although EU citizens have the right to live and work in the UK, Britain is not part of the Schengen Area (the part of Europe where border controls have basically been abolished) and therefore retains a high degree of border control.
But more interesting is the claim that Brexit restores Britain’s national sovereignty, and returns political decisions that were once made in Brussels back to British shores. The motivating belief behind this reason to support Brexit is that local decision making by British politicians and officials is better than decision making by people from other European countries, whose values and interests do not coincide with those of the British populace. According to this line of reasoning, political decisions made on your behalf (and to which you are subject) are better made by people who (at least broadly) share your values and interests; the closer they are aligned, the better. This is also in large part the motivation behind nationalist and anti-imperialist movements.
(It should be noted that this same line of argument is being used by people who support Scotland’s independence, or even London’s (!) independence, in the wake of the Brexit referendum. The people who voted for Brexit, according to them, do not share the political values of people in Scotland and London who voted heavily to remain.)
But if this is a good argument, surely it applies to decisions made in Westminster as much as in Belgium: the United Kingdom contains some 63 million diverse souls whose values, beliefs and interests diverge wildly. The same can be said on a local level: my interests and values may be radically different from that of my neighbour. If so, then according to this argument, the fact that they do not share my interests and values means that they should *not* be in charge of making political decisions on my behalf. The geographic fact that they live in essentially the same area as me makes no difference, any more than the fact that Britain is part of the geographic area known as Europe.
The natural conclusion of this argument, if followed to its logical conclusion, is a thoroughgoing philosophical anarchism. Only my interests and values match my own, and therefore only I am fully competent to make political decisions on my behalf, including deciding which laws to live under. (At any rate, more competent than anyone else.)
What this means is that, unless you genuinely support a single world government – if you agree with the reasoning above as an argument against the existence of a single, worldwide government, you really ought to support anarchism. No other position is coherent.
First up, let’s have a gander at why anyone would make such an alarming suggestion in the first place. When you’re discussing tyranny with someone on the internet (as you do), and you bring up the fact that it’s not about who’s in power as much as it’s about there being someone in power at all (as you do), a common response you’ll be likely to hear is “well if you don’t like it, move to Somalia”.
This is (of course) a highly amusing (albeit lazy) way of telling you they don’t wish to discuss tyranny after all. It shuts down the discourse and proves that they can’t think of a proper argument.
So why Somalia? In 1991 the Siad Barre regime crumbled to pieces. See the hollywood blockbuster Black Hawk Down for details. Or… click the link below for a quick summary of “actual” information.
The intended inference is that Somalia has no government, so anybody who aspires to living their life without being governed should appreciate living in the warlords wet dream that we know as Somalia.
But Somalia got it’s so called anarchy by default. It didn’t arrive through any process of anarchic revolution or come about by way of agorism, or anything like that. It was born from the gut shot bowles of a big old punch up between the various armies of megalomaniacs trying to seize power by military force. Exactly the kind of behaviour Anarchists are morally and fundamentally against.
Telling people to move to somalia if they don’t like it is as foolish as suggesting that if the political party you vote for doesn’t get in, you should move to Somalia. Or if you don’t like how the guy down the road has all night parties after the rugby club closes, you should move to Somalia.
And that is why telling people to move to Somalia if they don’t like it is nothing but a jolly laughworthy nosediving fail.
In order to control a population, that population has to be divided against itself by fear. Absent fear, a population cannot be ruled for the simple reason that they will not submit to the rule of any other person and will naturally destroy anyone who tries to force them to. Anyone fancying themselves as a ruler, then, needs to divide the population anyway they can – and the concept of “left and right” is one of those divisions.
What does left and right even mean? Originally the terms referred to the position of politicians in the French National Assembly during the French Revolution. Supporters of the king sat to the right of the President, and supporters of the revolution sat to the left. This convention continued into later assemblies, with supporters of the status quo sitting to the right and supporters of change sitting to the left.
This relation to the status quo is said by some to be the very definition of left and right. More precisely, the right wing is in favour of the status quo, which in practical terms means being in favour of the landowners and the rich, as once a person becomes a member of this class they feel little desire to change. The left wing in favour of change, which in practical terms means being in favour of the renters and the poor, as members of this class generally experience having a low social status and naturally seek to “fix” this.
Some others, particularly Americans, relate the terms left and right to the size of the state, roughly measured by the proportion of the national GDP that is taken in by the government in the form of taxation. In this sense, leftists want to increase taxes and social services while rightists want to increase freedom and liberty from government interference.
Others might say that left and right correlated with feminine and masculine. The feminine left (which sometimes gets called the “Nanny State”) is associated with nurturing and co-operation, and tends towards sharing and egalitarianism. The masculine right is associated with competition and inequality, and tends towards hierarchies and harsh punishments.
Yet another distinction – which is a particularly modern one – has it that the left is in favour of the underdog, while the right is in favour of the dominant party. This line of thinking defines the left as a broad tent of various interests that include those of ethnic minorities, women, gays and lesbians, drug users, autists and anyone else with a grievance. The right is then the natural party of heterosexual white men, especially old and Christian ones.
These are just four of the many different axes upon which the terms left and right have been drawn. It’s apparent, then, that left and right have become so conflated over the decades that the terms are almost meaningless; no matter what someone claims to be a defining characteristic of either left or right, there will always be someone who can mount a well-reasoned (at least on superficial appearance) argument against that. After all, it’s impossible to be both against big government and for building a large military, and it’s also impossible to be for freedom and for the government taxing the citizenry to pay for it.
Moreover, anyone associating with so broad a label as either left or right will find themselves inevitably set against things they actually support, and vice-versa. Legion are the leftists against mass immigration to the West on account of the effect of this on local wages. Legion are the rightists who wouldn’t mind paying a bit more tax as long as it went to schools or hospitals.
Whatever the origins of the terms left and right, it is clear that nowadays both terms are Hate Machine propaganda. We know this is true because neither term is associated in the minds of anyone with anything positive. Supporters of both left and right are relatively neutral about their own side. But their opinion of the other side is regularly driven by fear. American leftists fear that Donald Trump will alienate Muslims and attract terrorist attacks. American rightists fear that Barack Obama will take their guns away. New Zealand leftists fear that John Key will sell the country to the Chinese. New Zealand rightists fear that they will soon need permission from the local Maori to visit the beach.
Both leftists and rightists fear these things because the mainstream political narrative is a torrent of fear (politicians are black magicians, therefore they work using fear, and the media uses black magic to attract attention). Behind the torrent of fear is a system of control. The Hate Machine doesn’t care if you are left or right, so long as you pick a side and enter the melee, because the more people fighting the more fear and the more fear the more hate and the more hate the more control.
A better way to judge the merits of any political proposal would be to ignore which party proposed it, and to consider the effects of the proposal in terms of whether it brings fear into the world or takes fear out of the world.
My pet issue has always been cannabis law reform. I’ve always voted for cannabis law reform.
In 1996 I voted in the first New Zealand general election held under the MMP voting system. Naturally, I gave my party vote to the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party, who gained 1.66% of the party vote. Their result was simultaneously disappointing and encouraging. Disappointing, because it fell well short of the 5% threshold required to gain seats in Parliament under MMP. Encouraging because it was a solid base of support on which to build.
So in 1999 I voted for the ALCP again. But this time their share of the party vote fell by about half a percentage point to 1.10%. Instead of voting harder, people were realising that a vote for the ALCP is a wasted vote under MMP. But in a sudden plot twist, former ALCP candidate Nándor Tánczos entered Parliament as a Green Party MP and started making noises about cannabis law reform.
Clearly, I hadn’t been paying attention. Here was a party with a serious cannabis law reform policy that was actually in Parliament. So in 2002 I voted Green. Nándor was returned to Parliament and the Greens gained two more seats. Meanwhile, the ALCP’s share of the party vote fell again to 0.64%.
Then I discovered what seemed to be my natural political home, the Libertarianz Party. I became their Spokesman on Health and stood for Parliament for the first time on the Libertarianz Party list in 2005. We gained a solid 0.04% of the party vote. Meanwhile, the ALCP’s share of the party vote fell to a record low of 0.25% and Nándor lost his seat. The Greens had lost interest in cannabis law reform and the dreadlocked skateboarder was now being seen by some as increasingly out of favour. He’d been moved down to 7th place on the Green Party list and the Greens were now down to 6 seats. But Green Co-Leader Rod Donald died tragically in late 2005 which meant that Nándor got to re-enter Parliament for one final term, during which he achieved the cannabis law reform movement’s one and only small success, new licensing rules for industrial hemp.
After the 2005 election I came out fully as a drug user and became the Libertarianz Party’s Spokesman on Drugs. In 2008 I stood again on the Libertarianz Party list and also as the Libertarianz Party candidate for the Mana electorate. I got 64 votes. The Libz gained 1% of a percentage point, skyrocketing to 0.05% of the party vote. Meanwhile, the ALCP rebounded from their record 2002 low and got a 0.41% share of the party vote. Nándor quit Parliament and went away to cleanse his soul. After the 2008 election I jumped waka and joined the ALCP.
In 2011 I stood for Parliament again, this time on the ALCP list and as the ALCP candidate for the Mana electorate. Of course, by this time I fully realised that my chances of ever getting into Parliament on a cannabis law reform ticket were close to zero. I now regarded what I was doing as an exercise in educating the public and getting the cannabis law reform message out there, and my electoral results as a barometer of my success in that regard. I was simply taking a stand and speaking out against the injustice of the War on Drugs. I’d figured that I’d get more bang for my buck, as it were, campaigning under the ALCP banner instead of the Libz banner, and I was right. I got 334 votes as an ALCP candidate, up from 64 votes as a Libz candidate, and the ALCP’s share of the party vote went up 0.05% to 0.51%, its best result since 1999. The Libz once again barely registered with a mere 0.05% of the party vote, and soon after called it quits and disappeared from the New Zealand political scene.
Significant and sensible cannabis law reform started to happen elsewhere in the world. On 1 January 2014 cannabis law reform activist and Iraq war veteran Sean Azzariti became the first person to legally purchase cannabis for recreational use in Colorado. I was sure in my own mind that this could only bode well for the ALCP’s electoral prospects here in New Zealand. In 2014 I stood for Parliament again, again on the ALCP list and as the ALCP candidate for the Mana electorate. I got my best result yet with 403 votes as the ALCP candidate, but the ALCP’s share of the party vote dropped back down to 0.46%, much to my surprise and chagrin. And, also much to my surprise and chagrin, John Key’s National Party was returned for a third term. Worst of all, National’s lapdog Peter Dunne was returned as Associate Minister of Health, thereby ensuring that there would be no cannabis law reform for a further three years.
I’ve become very cynical. To me it doesn’t seem like a very big ask to be allowed to grow and use a harmless medicinal herb. I’ve been advocating for safe, sane and sensible drug law reform for three decades and seen nothing happen except some farmers who were prepared to jump through bureaucratic hoops being allowed to grow industrial hemp.
I’ve participated in our democracy, at some considerable financial and emotional cost to myself. And achieved precisely nothing in terms of legislative gains. Meanwhile, arch-prohibitionist Peter Dunne, in league with Satan, pushed through the Psychoactive Substances Act. Instead of drug law reform, New Zealand got landed with peak prohibition. What a total fustercluck.
I’ve always voted for cannabis law reform but I’ve never gotten what I voted for. Insanity is voting for the same thing over and over and expecting a different result every time. But I’m not crazy, just a bit of a slow learner. I tried voting but it didn’t work. So now I don’t vote. I’m plotting to overgrow the government instead.
The ever elusive 1% (give or take a square mile when you adjust your fedora) are the morally destitute few who reside at the apex, profiting profoundly from all forms of tyranny.
If we are not challenging all forms of tyranny (especially our own, if you have kids you know what I’m talking about) that means we have been divided and conquered and are distracted by subsets and definitions in our search for freedom and enlightenment. The thing about tyranny is, you can’t legislate against it because legislation is tyranny however well meaning it might have been at the outset.
We have to look further for solutions to our problems, and stop thinking that somebody else should do something. What can I do to help us all move towards a community that finds all forms of wretched, swaggering authoritarianism abhorrent and socially dangerous? The argument against capitalism or socialism or communism by themselves is a confused one because people aren’t even speaking the same language and it becomes a battle of definitions. If we talk about the plutocracy that runs reckless in each of those ideologies we can get closer to moving the mindsets that enslave us in our own heads.
When considering viable socio-political options it has to be, not just okay, but also appreciated that people have differing aspirations and want different outcomes from the same general existence. If we try to bend others to our will or exploit others unfairly for either our own gain or for a supposed greater good we are missing the point of what freedom from tyranny means and continuing the cycle of social chaos …moving in directions that aren’t forwards.
It’s great to experiment by cutting straws on the diagonal and being imaginative but acting out a process that TELLS PEOPLE WHAT TO DO, and even simply tolerating such a performance, is how we keep ourselves from rising up and moving on as a species.
But how do we deal with obvious wrongs like theft, rape and murder without telling people what to do? There are two enemies here. Acts of rape and murder are included in the crime of TELLING PEOPLE WHAT TO DO, whilst theft is about dishonesty. Dishonesty is a lot more complicated to draw moral conclusions about in a world where involuntary directives and dishonest tactics are accepted and venerated by voting populations.
The contradiction of power structures that punish theft and violence with theft and violence instead of leading by example should be glaringly obvious but it seems they well and truly are not. Why is that? Is it because there is very little encouragement for honest critical thinking and self responsibility? Is it because mistrust is easier than curiosity in matters we don’t understand?
It seems fashionably acceptable for people to get offended and lash out instead of exploring why we feel offended. Another option besides chimping out and getting uppity is to ask ourselves if this feeling is rational and fair, or if it’s just a belligerent non acceptance of someone elses point of view. Even if it’s the most thoughtlessly bigoted and backwoods retarded thing we’ve ever heard in our life, playing the victim of someone’s boorish stupidity and reacting in kind is, well …what does that say about us?
My political question is this:
>>>How do we tell people to stop telling people what to do without telling them what to do?<<<
An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.
The Mexican replied, “Only a little while.” The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish? The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. The American then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”
The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siestas with my wife Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life.”
The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually New York City, where you will run your expanding enterprise.”
The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”
To which the American replied, “15—20 years.”
“But what then?” asked the Mexican.
The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions!”
“Millions—then what?”
The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”
Neither do we. A revolution will only ever get you back where you started. That’s how come it’s called a revolution. Revolutions happen every day.
One problem with Government is tax and the enforcement of paying it. If, instead of tax, we paid a voluntary community donation disconnected from any central vacuum we could start to behave more like decent consenting human beings.
Privatization of community resources such as power, water, libraries, muh roads …from a government who doesn’t lower taxes as a result is something worth getting all WTF about. It’s utterly hypocritical for a government who has, if not stolen …taken what they want at the threat of taking more or locking people in cages, to use any corrupt and wasteful way they see fit, to turn around and take the piss even more with a user pays system on top of everything.
Many many good people are (it would seem by how upset they get at the idea of tax being theft) happy to pay protection money to these gangsters because things do get done without us having to think about it. But what if we learned how to do life without government What if we could not worry about feeding the poor because we fed the poor without businesses or the gummint making stax of cash from the feeding the poor programme. What if we quietly did our own thing and stopped bothering to even look at the brick wall covered in electrified razor wire with pots of boiling oil at the top?
Let’s stop thinking we need to vote for some apparent lesser evil who lies to us EVERY time and lord over us from between their 500 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets.
Reality Attack: The government is unlikely to let anyone quietly not be governed without crying and breaking things.
A common misconception is that voting has something to do with making the trains run on time. Actually voting is just passing the buck for someone else to do something constructive in your community. And if you believe a politician has any vested interest in hands on helping your community thrive, you only have to look at their track records after they’ve been voted in to see how important a bunch of other things suddenly become.
Promises promises, and then deadpan faced earnest excuses. They have no shame in insulting our intelligence when it comes to not following through. If you want me to provide proof of this then sorry …I’m not going to. Mainly because if you don’t believe me I don’t see how any actual facts will help you when you’ve lived through the experience yourself year after year.
Instead of believing anything I have to say I implore you to have a gander at this long list of documented histories and draw you own conclusions about what integrity means and what a mistake it is to believe you can vote for it.
Keep in mind that our Prime Minister is “earning” $448,569. per annum to tell us well devised lies about his intentions and attend barbecues with the shabby common people for hot dogging photo opportunities.
Whether you voted for him or not, your vote has fully endorsed the process of allowing these social criminals to continue basking in the lucrative power that this country’s beloved democracy happily showers down upon them.
This is an outrage. PLEASE STOP VOTING! Volunteer at a soup kitchen instead. Thank you for your time.
Auckland mayoral candidate from Not A Party: Adam Holland. Photo / Supplied
Friday, 11 March 2016, 10:00 am
Press Release: Adam Holland
Today it brings me much honour to announce to my dear people of Auckland my greatest policies for the people of Auckland when elected Mayor in October.
The statistics on unemployment are staggering, crime is on the rise, we’re paying far too much in rates. Something just simply has to happen.
I have a policy to finally tackle these problems facing our great city; to secede from New Zealand entirely and build a wall around the new Nation of Auckland where we will be forming our own government consisting of you, the people, and myself as head of state.
The Great Wall of Auckland will be paid for by New Zealand, not Auckland, and if the people of New Zealand want to complain about it, that’s fine because we have 1.4 million people, and the vast majority of naval vessels, fighter jets, soldiers etc.
The wall around Auckland will open up tens of thousands of jobs, stop a large amount of crime, allow us to better vet immigrants entering our new beautiful country, and Chinese property investors will no longer be allowed to buy property in Auckland, it’s destroying Auckland, and we need to make Auckland great again, not sell it out to a bunch of ripoff merchants.
I can promise that not a single Aucklander will be paying a single dollar in rates, zilch, zero percent. We will still be allowed to travel freely through New Zealand, that I can assure you.
