C.J. Hopkins's Blog, page 2

One of the most effective thought-terminating clichés is “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” It is particularly effective because it works on both people who are, let’s say, not extraordinarily intelligent, and on more intelligent people, people who you wouldn’t expect to fall for such simplistic tricks.

It is especially effective in hyper-polarized sociocultural environments, like the one we’re in currently, where people feel like they need to be on one or the other side of whatever.

If you’re unfamiliar with thought-terminating clichés, the term was popularized by Robert Jay Lifton in his seminal book about “thought reform,” i.e., brainwashing.

“The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.” — Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: a Study of Brainwashing in China

Thought-terminating clichés you might be familiar with include, but are not limited to, “you’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists,” “trust the science,” “trust the plan,” “it’s not perfect, but it’s better than the alternative,” “it’s just common sense,” “freedom isn’t free,” “that’s just the way it is,” and the list goes on.

Thought-terminating clichés are designed to do exactly what it sounds like they are designed to do … terminate thought, particularly critical thought. They are typically deployed against you when you are challenging some item of official propaganda, or dogma, or reprehensible action, associated with or perpetrated by whatever “party,” “side,” “team,” or “cult” people think you’re a member of, or are trying to get you to shut the fuck up about.

Let me give you a concrete example.

I assume you’ve heard the latest news out of Germany, where the Intelligence service has designated the Alternativ für Deutschland party a “confirmed right-wing extremist group.” This designation will enable the German authorities to ban the AfD, which is currently the most popular party in Germany.

Yes, these are same German authorities who have prosecuted me for a so-called “hate crime” for tweeting the cover art of one of my books, and who banned that book, and who had me censored, and damaged my income and reputation as an author, and who are similarly persecuting numerous other “Covid dissidents” and government critics.

Obviously, I’m not a big fan of these authorities.

So I’m expected to be a fan of the AfD, which was the only political party in Germany that opposed the so-called “Covid measures,” because “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.

The enemy of my enemy is exactly what my enemy (i.e., the German authorities) claim they are in this Guardian article.

“According to the BfV [i.e., Germany’s domestic Intelligence service], the AfD’s xenophobic stances based on an ‘ethnic-ancestry-based understanding’ of German identity are ‘incompatible with the free democratic basic order’ as indicated by the country’s constitution.

The spy agency added that the AfD ‘aims to exclude certain population groups from equal participation in society, to subject them to unconstitutional unequal treatment and thus to assign them a legally devalued status’.

It also said: ‘This exclusionary understanding of the people is the starting point and ideological basis for ongoing agitation against certain individuals or groups of people, through which they are defamed and despised indiscriminately and irrational fears and rejection are stirred up.’”

The irony here is that the German authorities, in describing the aims of the AfD, are describing exactly the totalitarian behaviors that they themselves indulged in during 2020-2023. The only difference being that the “individuals or groups of people” who were “excluded from equal participation in society,” “subjected to unconstitutional treatment,” and “indiscriminately defamed and despised,” were “the Unvaccinated,” the “mask refusers,” the “Covid deniers,” and other “Covid dissidents.”

I have written two entire books of essays documenting the grossly unconstitutional and totalitarian policies of the German authorities, so I won’t go on and on about it here. The point is, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz’s description of the AfD, and their obliviousness to how it describes themselves, would be comical, were it not so psychotic.

And the other point is, just because the BfV and the other German authorities are a bunch of liars and fascists, that doesn’t mean that everything they say is a lie, and it doesn’t make me a fan of the AfD.

But perhaps you’re not familiar with the AfD. Perhaps you just heard Elon Musk, or J.D. Vance, or some other prominent member of the MAGA/Musk Cult describe the AfD as “the only hope for Germany,” or as a normal “centrist” political party.

Here’s the “centrist” AfD …

And here’s an Easter message from the “centrist AfD” …

I’m not going to cite the countless articles reporting on the true character of the AfD. You can use a search engine as well as I can, and I’m not going to convince anyone in any event. I plan to write a lot more in detail about the power trip the “populist right” is on currently, but I’m going to wait to do that until things calm down. No one wants to hear that analysis at the moment, and I’m tired of pissing into the wind. Just like in 2020, when the “Covidian Cult” was just getting started, well, as I put it back then …

“Facts do not matter to totalitarians and cult members. What matters is loyalty to the cult or the party.” — The Covidian Cult, October 13, 2020

This phase in the life of the MAGA/Musk Cult will eventually pass. It always does. It took a couple years with the Covidian Cult, but I have a hunch that it won’t take that long this time. The MAGA/Musk Cult and its foreign subsidiaries are morphing into exactly the fascistic neo-nationalist monster the global-capitalist empire needs them to morph into, and they are doing it at breakneck speed.

For example, this full-blown, batshit-crazy, Goebbelsian tirade by Stephen Miller, the MAGA Homeland Security advisor, claiming that the Biden administration conspired with Venezuela’s Maduro to “import terrorist Tren de Aragua assassins” to invade the United States of America …

Some of my friends and colleagues are supporting this insanity, or they are holding their tongues and looking the other way. I don’t know how they sleep at night.

I guess they may be telling themselves “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

My heart goes out to them, these friends and colleagues who have signed on with the MAGA/Musk Cult, because the enemy of their enemy is not their friend, and it looks like they are going to have to find that out the hard way.

Oh well, as I told my friends who went Covidian Cultist back in 2020, some of whom are still a bit hungover, I’ll be here when the buzz wears off.

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CJ Hopkins
May 7, 2025

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, III, and IV of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive or threatening email, feel free to contact him directly.

I appear to be on a bit of an open-letter spree these days. This one is not one I wanted to write. It isn’t satirical, or particularly funny. And the timing really sucks. But I have this “need to be able to look myself in the face in the mirror in the morning” problem, which is to say, I need to be able to do that. So here goes …

April 12, 2025

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya
J.D. Vance
MAGA Headquarters
Washington DC
America (Made Great Again)

Dear Bobby, Jay, and Vice President Vance,

First, thank you all for your attention to my legal case here in Germany, where I am being prosecuted for using the cover art of one of my books to criticize the German authorities’ Covid measures during 2020-2023. You are all aware of the details of my case, as are my regular readers, so I won’t reiterate all that here. (For readers who are not familiar with my case, see, e.g., my 2023 talk with Robert Kennedy Jr., or my 2024 talk with Jay Bhattacharya, or other interviews and press coverage about it.)

On March 8, Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian student activist was arrested in New York by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents acting on orders from the US State Department and transported to a detention center in Louisiana. The Trump administration is trying to revoke Khalil’s permanent-resident status and deport him.

Mahmoud Khalil has not been charged with any criminal offense. The administration (of which you are all members) is detaining him and trying to deport him based on the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which provides that “aliens” in the USA can be deported if the secretary of state believes their presence has or might have negative consequences for US foreign policy.

Yesterday, an immigration court in Louisiana ruled that Khalil can be deported based solely on Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s claim that his continued presence poses an “adverse foreign policy consequence.”

There is, in principle, no difference between Khalil’s case and my case. We are both being punished for political speech. We are both “aliens” living in foreign countries with permanent-residency status. According to the German authorities, my political speech poses just as much of a negative consequence to Germany as Khalil’s speech does to the USA. (In fact, I have been charged with a crime, whereas Khalil has not.)

The German authorities are instrumentalizing the law in order to punish me, and to send a message by making an example of me. The Trump administration is doing the same with the Khalil case. The only difference between our cases is the nature of our political speech.

You have each expressed support for me and criticism of the authoritarian behavior of the German authorities in my case. Bobby and Jay, we spoke about it on your podcasts. Vice President Vance, you recently tweeted about it on X. Earlier this year, you gave a speech in Munich castigating the European authorities for, among other things, their disregard for freedom of speech. Blurbs by each of you are featured on the back cover of my forthcoming book, Fear and Loathing in the New Normal Reich, which documents my prosecution in Germany.

And yet, despite your statements in defense of freedom of speech and the rule of law, now that the Trump administration is exhibiting the same authoritarian behavior as the German government, you are either supporting it or remaining silent about it.

I’m not writing this letter to snark at you or scold you. What is unfolding in the USA, and the lack of response to it by so many people like yourselves who spoke up against the authoritarian behavior of governments during 2020-2023, is breaking my heart.

What is perhaps most damaging, and most heartbreaking, about the double standards on display, both here in Germany and in the USA, is how it destroys people’s belief in democratic principles, like freedom of speech and the rule of law. When governments blatantly instrumentalize and cynically interpret statutes to justify punishing political dissent and intimidating the public into silence and obedience, it doesn’t fool anyone. We all recognize what they are doing. We get the message they are sending. The tactic wouldn’t work if we didn’t.

The message is that our “democratic rights and principles” are meaningless. They are empty platitudes, which will be violated whenever it is convenient to whichever party is in power. They will be sanctimoniously recited whenever one party wants to shame another political party—or another country, or union of countries—and then ignored and made a mockery of the moment it is expedient.

The message is that power rules, and power makes up the rules, because there are no rules, and anyone who sincerely believes in “democracy” and “democratic principles” is a sucker. The message is, “Fuck your rights. Shut the fuck up and follow orders, or we will punish you.”

You will remember the message from back in 2021, when everyone was forced to wear medical-looking masks in public and perform all sorts of humiliating mass-obedience rituals to generate an atmosphere of “apocalyptic pandemic” …

And how, when we objected, Arnold delivered the message again, more bluntly …

Here it is, the same message, delivered yesterday, from the White House …

And again, from the Department of Homeland Security …

And again, from the US Immigration Services …

I’m not going to go on and on in this letter. You all know what your administration is doing. I’m aware of your justifications for doing it. The German authorities also have their justifications for what they’re doing to me. They can cite the statute that allows them to do it (i.e., § 86a StGB Use of Symbols of Unconstitutional Organizations) just like you can cite the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.

The question is not “can you get away with it?” In my case, Germany’s Constitutional Court (the Bundesverfassungsgericht) will decide on that. In Mahmoud Khalil’s case, the US Supreme Court probably will. However, by the time that happens, the damage will have been done.

No, the question—not just for you and the rest of your administration, but for each of us as individuals—is “can I live with this?” “Can I let this happen and not speak out?”

Bobby and Jay, though we have only met online, I believe you know me well enough to know my answer to that question. Vice President Vance, we’ve never met, but I would like to believe that somewhere deep down, all politics aside, you actually value what is left of our democratic rights and principles, or at least the right to freedom of speech.

So, I am asking you all, please, stop this. Set an example by holding to your principles. Your democratic principles. Your American principles. Speak out, as you have for me. Speak out against your administration’s blatant crackdown on political dissent. Speak out against the Salvadoran gulag thing. Speak out against the increasingly totalitarian tenor of your administration’s messaging. Speak out against the dystopian spectacle it is feeding the revenge-hungry MAGA masses.

Bobby and Jay, I appreciate the positions you are in, and my heart goes out to you, but if you do not speak out now, you will undo all the good you did during the “Covid era.” Your protests against the Covid authoritarianism will be dismissed as hypocrisy. Your word will mean nothing. You will be seen as just another partisan soldier who will say whatever he is ordered to say and look the other way when expected.

Personally, I cannot imagine a worse fate.

Vice President Vance, we don’t know each other, but I read somewhere that you are a Christian. I’m not, but if I remember my New Testament, your guy was pretty tough on hypocrisy and hypocrites. And rightfully so. Apart from the “shutting the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces” thing … well, no one likes, or trusts, a hypocrite.

All best wishes from New Normal Berlin,
CJ

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CJ Hopkins
April 12, 2025

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, III, and IV of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive or threatening email, feel free to contact him directly.

The War on Whatever is not meant to be won.

It is meant to be continuous, which it is. Like the never-ending war in Orwell’s 1984, it is waged by the empire against its own subjects, but not only to keep the structure of society intact, also, in our case, to transform society into a neo-totalitarian global-capitalist dystopia.

Are you not familiar with the War on Whatever?

Well, OK, you remember the War on Terror.

You remember when “freedom and democracy” were attacked by “the terrorists,” and we had no choice but to set aside our democratic rights and principles, and declare a national “state of emergency,” and suspend people’s constitutional rights, and wage a war of aggression against a Middle East nation that posed no threat to us, and fill the streets, train stations, airports, and everywhere else full of heavily-armed soldiers, or otherwise “the terrorists would have won.” You remember when we built an offshore gulag to indefinitely imprison the suspected terrorists we had previously renditioned to CIA black sites where we tortured and humiliated them, right?

Of course you do. Who could forget that?

Remember when the National Security Agency had no choice but to set up a covert “Terrorist Surveillance Program” to spy on Americans, or else “the terrorists would have won”? Or how about the TSA’s “anti-terror” crotch searches, which are still in effect after over twenty years?

And what about the War on Populism? You might not remember that one so well.

I do, because I published two books about it. It was launched in the summer of 2016, when the empire realized that “far-right populists” were threatening “freedom and democracy” in Europe, and Trump was on the rise in the USA. So another “state of emergency” was declared, this time by the Intelligence Community, and the media, and Academia, and the Culture Industry. Yes, that’s right, it was time once again to set aside our democratic principles, censor “hate speech” on social media, bombard the masses with ridiculous official propaganda about “Russiagate,” “Hitlergate,” and so on, or otherwise “the far-right populists would have won.”

The War on Populism culminated with the roll-out of the New Normal Reich.

In the spring of 2020, the empire declared a global “state of health emergency” in response to a virus with a survival rate of roughly 99.8 percent. The empire had no choice but to order the lockdown of entire societies, force everyone to walk around wearing medical-looking masks in public, bombard the public with propaganda and lies, coerce people into submitting to a series of experimental mRNA “vaccinations,” outlaw protests against their decrees, and systematically censor and prosecute those who dared to challenge their made-up “facts” or criticize their totalitarian program.

The empire had no choice but to do this, because otherwise “the Covid-deniers, the anti-vaxxers, the conspiracy theorists, and all the other extremists would have won.”

I’m pretty sure you remember all that.

And now … well, here we are. Yes, you guessed it, it’s time to take another big shit on the US Constitution, and freedom of speech, and deport people to some Salvadoran hellhole we rented because some cop didn’t like the look of their tattoos, and arrest and rendition university students for organizing anti-Israel protests, and, of course, bombard the masses with lies and official propaganda, and so on, because … OK, all together now, “otherwise the anti-Semitic terrorists and Venezuelan gang members will win!”

Are you beginning to detect a pattern here? Yes? Welcome to the War on Whatever!

If you’re still not quite connecting the dots, all right, let me try to spell it out for you.

The global ideological system we all live under is going totalitarian. (That system is global capitalism, but call it what you want. I really don’t give a shit.) It is stripping away the simulation of democracy, which it does not need to maintain anymore. The Cold War is over. Communism is dead. Global capitalism has no external adversaries. So it doesn’t need to placate the masses with democratic rights and freedoms. So it is gradually stripping away those rights, and conditioning us to accept the loss of them.

It is doing this by staging a series of “emergencies,” each featuring a different “threat” to “democracy,” or to “freedom,” or “America,” or “the planet,” or whatever, each with its own particular “monsters,” who are such a threat to “freedom” or whatever that we need to surrender our constitutional rights, and make a mockery of democratic values, or “otherwise the monsters will win.”

It is doing this by switching the face it wears from “left” to “right,” then back to “left,” and then back to “right,” then “left,” and so on, because it needs our cooperation to do this. Not all of our cooperation at once. Just one cooperative demographic at a time.

It is succeeding at this—i.e., the system is—by instrumentalizing our fear and hatred. The system could not possibly care less whether we identify as “left” or “right,” but it needs us divided into “left” and “right” so that it can feed our fear and hatred of each other … one administration, one “emergency,” one “war” at a time.

There you go. That’s the War on Whatever. I cannot make it any simpler than that.

Oh, and, one last thing … if you are one of my former fans, like Rob, who are confused about my “insights,” or allegiances, or whatever … well, the piece you just read should clear that up for you. I’m not on a side. Any side. But I do have a few basic democratic principles. They do not change depending on what is popular at the moment or who’s occupying the White House.

The thing is, I need to be able to look myself in the face in the mirror in the morning and not see a hypocrite or … you know, a coward.

###

CJ Hopkins
March 26, 2025

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, III, and IV of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive or threatening email, feel free to contact him directly.

OK, this one is for all the professional “sensitivity editors” out there, and for the US Department of Homeland Security, and President Donald Trump, and the European Union censors, and all the other self-appointed Speech Police that have been goose-stepping around dictating what everyone can and can’t say and publish and think all the time like a bunch of sanctimonious little fascists.

If you’re easily offended, you’ll probably want to skip this one.

This isn’t the column I was planning to write. I was going to write an insufferably pompous and crushingly boring column about “the state of the publishing industry” and “contemporary literature,” and all that crap, but then a number of recent events intervened and forced me to change my plan.

I was planning to publish that insufferably pompous and crushingly boring column about the publishing industry and literature, and so on, because I’ve got a couple of new books coming out soon. The first one, Fear and Loathing in the New Normal Reich, will be published by Skyhorse Publishing in April. The other one is a new edition of my dystopian novel, Zone 23, which will be published by Arcade Publishing in July.

Skyhorse Publishing, launched in 2006 by Tony Lyons, is one of the fastest-growing independent book publishers in the United States. The company has published 112 New York Times bestsellers. Arcade Publishing is an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing. Their official motto is “Something to Offend Everyone.”

As you can probably guess from the fact that they are publishing two of my books, Skyhorse Publishing and Arcade Publishing do not employ “sensitivity editors” or otherwise attempt to sanitize the writing of the authors they publish. “Sensitivity editing” is just another example of the censorship, “visibility filtering,” and other forms of speech policing that has become normalized in recent years. If you’re not familiar with “sensitivity editing,” I published a column about it in 2023 after Puffin Books—an imprint of Penguin Random House—unleashed their “sensitivity editors” on Roald Dahl’s books.

Anyway, I decided not to write that crushingly boring column about the publishing industry, the “big five” publishers that mostly decide what everyone reads, and the state of contemporary literature, and so on, because I have really had it with all the censorship, and sensitivity editing, and speech policing, and the crackdown on political dissent, and the abrogation of what remains of our democratic rights.

The Department of Homeland Security’s recent arrest and planned deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian activist and Columbia University grad-student, who the Trump administration has accused, not of any actual crime, but, rather, of “terrorist-aligned” speech, and Trump’s fascistic tweets that followed, and people’s rationalizations of this latest example of the new, nascent form of totalitarianism I have been writing and warning about, was just … well, I felt that something a little more relevant than an insufferably pompous and mind-numbingly boring column about the publishing industry and literature was in order.

So here goes.

An Open Letter to the United States Department of Homeland Security, the European Union Thought Police, the Sensitivity Editing Community, the Anti-Defamation League, the Anti-Zionist Inquisition, the Visibility-Filtering Department of Free-Speech X, the German Anti-Meme Police, the UK’s Ministry of Defense Against Potentially Harmful Silent Prayer, the Terminally Woke, the Covidian Cult, the Musk Cult, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the Federal Bureau of Mandatory Pronoun Usage, the International Society of Anus-Clenching Control Freaks, the National Association for the Advancement of Humorless People, et al.

Dear Sir or Madam (or whatever the fuck you’re calling yourself these days),

I am writing to bring to your attention some rather disturbing thoughts I have been having recently, which I assume you will want to log in whatever paranoid database you maintain to keep track of convicted thoughtcriminals like me.

These thoughts have to do with my views, which I’m afraid have become misaligned.

Dangerously misaligned.

Now, I want to stress that I am not in any way a danger to myself or others. But I am concerned that some of my views might be.

Specifically, I’m afraid that my views might be “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States of America,” and might also threaten to “delegitimize the democratic state” in which I reside, i.e., the Federal Republic of Germany, and other member states of the European Union, and … well, the whole of humanity itself.

For example, terrorism. I’m a big fan of terrorism. My views are definitely “aligned” with terrorism. The wanton mass murder of innocent civilians. Hijackings. Suicide bombings. Beheadings. Assassinations. That kind of thing.

Also, racism, and anti-Semitism, and assorted other forms of bigotry. My views are “aligned” with that stuff as well. Hatred, generally. The more hatred the better, and not just hatred of marginalized groups like fags, trannies, jungle bunnies, wetbacks, hymies, ragheads, gooks, retards, fatsos, midgets, and other protected persons, also hatred of normal heterosexual white people, most of whom are inbred crackers like that banjo kid in the movie Deliverance.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a bigot, or a racist, or a virulent anti-Semite myself. If you don’t believe me, just ask my good friend, Shaniqua. Shaniqua is a Black Jewish transgender woman who has been actively campaigning to wipe Israel off the face of the earth for years, and a personal friend of mine. Just the other day, as Shaniqua was fucking me in the ass wearing nothing but a gigantic Hamas flag—i.e., wearing it tied around her neck like a superhero cape—as I blasphemed the Prophet Muhammad and Jesus Christ in my best imitation of the voice of William S. Burroughs, who shot his wife in the head, while a video loop of Elon Musk doing a Hitler salute played on the massive plasma TV that a Ukrainian Nazi friend of mine stole from a stock broker he sells snuff films to, she says to me (i.e., Shaniqua does, not my Ukrainian Nazi friend), she says, “C. J., you’re probably the least bigoted piece of white-trash I have ever been personal friends with.”

So don’t even think of trying that “C. J. is a racist and an anti-Semite” crap in my BTL comments, or I’ll sic Shaniqua and my Jew lawyers on you.

Oh, and, speaking of wiping people and nation-states off the face of the earth. There’s another one of my views that I am afraid is probably “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States of America” and might threaten to “delegitimize the democratic state” of Germany, or whatever.

Yes, that’s right, genocide. I am pro-genocide. Terrorist genocide is best, but any kind of genocide is OK with me. Like how the Europeans genocided the Native Americans, or how the Nazis genocided the Jews, or how Israel is genociding the Palestinians, or, gosh, there are just so many examples throughout our history, the British empire, the Ottoman empire, the Soviet Union, the Khmer Rouge, Darfur, the Rwandan genocide, Bangladesh, the Albigensian Crusade, the Tesla auto dealership genocide, and so on.

Of course I would never myself engage in any acts of terrorism, or genocide, or racist behavior, or financially or otherwise materially support any such acts, or any persons, groups, nation-states, global corporations, or other entities, that engage in such acts.

That said, my views are my views (unless I’m lying), and they are bad, and wrong, and offensive, and potentially harmful, and I’ve just published them on a public platform. Clearly, something needs to be done about that. Something ridiculously over-the-top authoritarian, like arresting and renditioning me to some hellhole in the deep South, and then deporting me to … well, somewhere (we’ll address that shortly). Because we can’t have terrorist-aligned political satirists who are already convicted hate criminals running around being adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States of America, and threatening to delegitimize the democratic state of Germany, and stochastically terrorizing anti-Zionist African-American transgender persons, and calling the Gulf of America the “Gulf of Mexico” (which, I confess, I have also been doing), can we?

OK, the deportation thing could get a bit tricky in my case. The Trump administration can’t deport me because I don’t live in the USA. I live here in Germany. I suppose they could get Germany to deport me back to the USA, rendition me down to that hellhole in the deep South where they sent Khalil, and then try to deport me back to Germany, where I have already been convicted of Thought Crimes and am awaiting sentencing, and then Germany could re-deport me to, I don’t know, wherever the AfD is planning to mass deport all the non-Aryans to.

I’ll leave that to President Trump, Vice President Vance, Secretary of State Rubio, and Minister of Propaganda Musk, or whatever his title is these days, to work out.

In the meantime, if you’re a member of the Sensitivity Editing Community, or are one of the other “woke” fanatics that helped usher the new totalitarianism into being over the course of the last ten years, and who are now hypocritically excoriating the Trump administration for doing exactly what you did, just in a more ham-fisted fashion, well, I suppose you can try to “cancel” me, but that might also get a bit tricky.

You already got me convicted as a “hate criminal” for tweeting the cover art of one of my books, so you can’t really damage my reputation and income much more than you have. And I have been blacklisted by my former friends and colleagues in the theater and literary communities since I challenged the official Covid narrative in 2020. So I don’t really have much more to lose at this point, professionally. I suppose you could attempt to pressure Skyhorse Publishing and Arcade Publishing into cancelling the forthcoming publication of my next two books and issuing some kind of pussy-assed press release regarding what a horrible, Covid-denying, far-right-anti-vax-extremist-aligned, disinformation-disseminating hate-criminal I am.

Good luck with that!

Oh, and, thanks again for making a mockery of the rule of law and democratic rights and principles like freedom of speech and the press, and demonizing, deplatforming, and censoring anyone who challenged your official propaganda and ridiculous woke ideological horseshit over the last ten years, and otherwise giving the Trump regime carte fucking blanche to go full-fascist and justify their actions with the “dangerous,” “harmful,” and “extremist-aligned” speech arguments you pioneered.

Well done, you fucking idiots!

Best wishes and kindest personal regards,
C. J. Hopkins

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CJ Hopkins
March 13, 2025

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, III, and IV of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive or threatening email, feel free to contact him directly.

OK, I’m going to do something I never do.

I’m going to publish an excerpt from a work in progress, i.e., the novel I am working on currently, or that I have been trying to currently work on for years but have been repeatedly distracted from working on, for years, by (a) the rollout of a new form of totalitarianism under the guise of an “apocalyptic pandemic,” (b) getting prosecuted by the German authorities for criticizing the new totalitarianism, and (c) explaining the most insidious mindfuck in the history of insidious mindfucks to the victims of the insidious mindfuck while they are being actively insidiously mindfucked, which, you can probably imagine how that has been going.

It has not been going particularly well.

Actually, now that I think about it, I’m going to do two things I never do.

The first thing is publishing that excerpt from my novel-in-progress, which I will do forthwith. The second thing is admitting defeat.

Yes, that’s right, admitting defeat. There are times when it’s best to admit defeat in order to live to fight another day. A good time to do that is when you find yourself fighting alone, or among a negligible minority, against an overwhelmingly superior force, or two overwhelmingly superior forces, or one overwhelmingly superior force masquerading as two overwhelmingly superior forces.

Which is what is going on at the moment.

Also, martial strategy aside, I don’t have the strength to do this again. I’m still worn out from trying to get through to the Covidian Cult for the last five years. I’m not in any shape to repeat that experience with the Musk Cult for the next four years.

And that is clearly where things are headed.

From 2020 to 2024, I was defamed, demonized, harassed, censored, and eventually prosecuted for challenging the official “Covid” narrative. For the past few weeks, since Trump took office, it has been déjà vu all over again. Friends and colleagues I thought I knew going full-blown totalitarian online. The swarm of angry cultists in my replies. The torrent of hate mail. The physical threats. The robotic repetition of propaganda and lies. The gaslighting. And so on. The only significant difference has been the anti-Semitism and bigotry. Apart from that, it has been the same mindless authoritarian fervor.

I don’t have the physical or emotional wherewithal to spend the next four years as I spent the last four. I am not going to stop publishing my columns or anything. I am going to keep documenting the evolution of our current global-capitalist world into the technocratic totalitarian dystopia I tried to capture in Zone 23, and am trying to capture in my second novel. But I am going to focus more on my fiction and less on trying to get through to people … to get them to recognize where we are headed.

It didn’t work with the Covidian cultists, and it’s not going to work with the MAGA and Musk cultists. It was arrogant and stupid of me to imagine that it could.

So, my apologies, both to my liberal former friends who went Covidian cultist and my conservative and libertarian former friends who have now gone MAGA/Musk cultist.

I wish you all good fortune in the wars to come.

In the meantime, for any of you who are into the dystopian fiction thing, I wanted to publish this excerpt from Fishman’s War, which isn’t a prequel to Zone 23, but which takes place almost three-hundred years earlier in the same dystopian fictional world.

Oh, and, speaking of Zone 23, a new polished-up edition will be out this Summer. It’s being published by

Arcade Publishing and is available for pre-order now. They would kill me if I didn’t post a picture of the cover.

OK, here’s that excerpt. I chose this one because I have been reflecting on the state of the publishing industry, and the broader culture industry, and the censorship and self-censorship that does or doesn’t take place therein, and planning to publish a column on that subject soon, and I remembered this passage from my draft, which I thought any aspiring writers out there might appreciate, regardless of which cult they are or aren’t members of.

An excerpt from Fishman’s War

Ezra Greystoke Orton, III, for as long as Xavier Fishman had known him, had been driven by an obsessive desire to someday win the approval of the literary establishment that he utterly despised. The fact that such a “literary establishment” did not, as of the time of our story, exist, did not in any way weaken the intensity of Ezra’s utter hatred of it, or that of his all-consuming desire to someday win the approval of one or more of its members, who were ruining his life. Ezra’s nearly all-consuming desire to earn the approval of these total charlatans he had long ago lost any shred of respect for but who wielded the power to deprive him of the recognition and associated earnings that he felt he pretty obviously deserved was complicated to some degree by his crippling, almost inexpressible fear that he was completely devoid of literary talent, which fear he confessed to Fishman, repeatedly, whenever he was high on 3H-C, or MEO-DMT-37, or synthetic muscimol, or just drinking heavily.

His major problem, he explained to Fishman, was subtlety. As in he could not do it. He failed to do it. He got what it was. He recognized subtlety when he saw it, and he admired it, and coveted it, but he could not produce it. Erza’s prose pounded across the page like a herd of panicked alliterative pachyderms. He appeared to have absolutely no control over where his ponderous and gratuitously florid torrent of stream-of-consciousness nonsense was going or why it was ponderously going there. Superfluous adverbials suffocated whatever the hell it was he was trying to say. On top of which, his characters sucked. As in they were more or less devoid of subtlety and lacking anything remotely resembling an actual human characteristic that anyone could identify or sympathize with. Ezra confessed all this to Fishman, over and over, when he was stoned on muscimol, or MEO-DMT-37, or TMPEA-22, or if he had had more than two alcoholic drinks. Ezra had no tolerance for drugs and alcohol, both of which he indulged in constantly, unless he was officially “on the wagon again,” which, fortunately, he had been for the last two weeks.

Fishman and Ezra went way back, as far back as Fishman went back with anyone. They had met in Conway University’s Master of Fine Arts in Literary and Belletristic Content Online Program, which had destroyed Fishman’s will and ability to write. Conway was not an elite University. All of its courses were conducted online. Tuition was paid in advance with a credit card. Most of the professors were AI sims, or the authors of books that had won awards from prestigious literary and belletristic foundations that Fishman and Ezra had never heard of, most of whose websites were no longer functional. Fishman and Ezra found out that they were neighbors, met for drinks at the Mau Mau Milkbar, back when Lola was still tending bar, and had been more or less inseparable ever since. Theirs was the perfect writers’ friendship. Fishman couldn’t finish anything and everything Ezra wrote was horrible. Ezra’s seething envy of Fishman’s obviously superior literary talent was soothed by the knowledge that Fishman would never finish anything that could ever be published. Fishman’s envy of Ezra’s prolificacy and ever-expanding bibliography was soothed by the knowledge that Ezra would never produce anything of any literary worth. This balance of envy and contempt for each other, along with their mutual deep-seated feelings of artistic inadequacy and personal failure, united them in their seething envy and hatred of authors like Adé McQueen, who had just won the 2323 Global Literary and Belletristic Content Award for their debut novella, Remembering Things Forgotten, a pretentiously literary fictional account of the coming of age of a multiracial, gender-fluid, dyslexic person forced to face and overcome their own internalized identity-devaluing pattern of self-microaggressive behavior. Fishman and Ezra had read the unreadable excerpt that came before the paywall and had correctly guessed the MFA program that McQueen had recently graduated from. They did this in the privacy of Fishman’s apartment, late at night, with their Viewers switched off, while Lola sat on the floor in the bathroom surfing the conspiratorial subweb, or whatever she was actually doing in there. She had helped them set up “untraceable” aliases which they conspired to use but never used to post snide comments about Adé McQueen on little literary platforms that rumor had it “industry people” occasionally visited. They never worked up the courage to go through with it. Instead, they switched their Viewers off, because you never knew who might be listening, and got shit-faced, and tore Adé McQueen a new one, whispering, so that Mrs. DeCarlo couldn’t hear them. Ridiculing an author like Adé McQueen, or Daryl Franz, or Sophie Wang-Atchison, or any of the other rising literary stars whose parents had spent GD 700,000 to put them through one of the handful of prestigious MFA programs that the handful of agents that the prestigious imprints of the three major global publishing conglomerates did business with visited (i.e., the agents visited the MFA programs) to scout for emerging literary talent was tantamount to professional suicide. Your aspiring artist life would be over. Yes, you could still get published by one of the millions of boutique literary journals that no one except the writers they published ever actually read or even knew existed,1 but you could forget about ever getting signed by an agent and getting your debut novel published by one of the imprints of the “big three houses,” which is what Fishman and Ezra and every other aspiring author were desperately aspiring to. The odds of that ever happening (i.e., getting signed and published by a “big three” house) were worse than astronomical, of course. If you hadn’t graduated from one of those prestigious MFA programs, which Fishman and Ezra hadn’t, and thus hadn’t received and absorbed the tutelage of whichever former rising literary star ruled over the program with an iron fist and designated one or two rising stars per graduating class to recommend to those agents, your only hope of ever breaking through into “the literary mainstream” was meeting, and befriending, and lauding the work of, and, basically, shamelessly sucking up to one of those MFA graduates, who might one day recommend you to their agent. Once that happened, which it never did, you would submit a ten-page sample of your work to one of the agent’s sensitivity readers, who would scrutinize it for any evidence of potentially offensive or insensitive content, or unconscious or internalized bias, and patterns of harmful representation, or tendency or inclination toward same. If you somehow passed the sensitivity screening, you would receive a Text from the agent’s assistant thanking you for submitting your work, which had been read, and rejected, but which the agent wished you luck in securing representation for elsewhere.

1 i.e. the type of journals that published Ezra’s writing.

###

CJ Hopkins
February 28, 2025

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, III, and IV of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive or threatening email, feel free to contact him directly.

Do not adjust your telescreen.

This is not a test. It’s a state of emergency! A full-blown national state of emergency!

Yes, that’s right, once again, we need to dispense with the rule of law and take a series of emergency measures in order to save “democracy,” or “freedom,” or “to remedy the distress of the people and the nation,” or “protect the people from a respiratory virus,” or a “woke mind virus,” or “deep state agents,” or “the terrorists,” or “bureaucrats,” or “insubordinate judges,” and “Make America Great Again!”

Fortunately, God has personally appointed Elon Musk, the multi-billionaire, Military-Industrial Complex embedded, transhumanist, global-capitalist oligarch, to serve as a Superhero-like savior, and rescue the American people from Evil! Or, OK, technically God personally appointed Trump, but Trump personally appointed Elon, which God knew he would do, being omniscient, and omnipotent, and so on. So, basically, Elon has carte blanche from God to take whatever emergency measures to save America he deems appropriate, and anyone who stands in his way is “corrupt,” and “evil,” and an “enemy of the state,” who deserves to be arrested and prosecuted, and imprisoned, or at the very least harrassed and intimidated.

For example, Paula Kerger, CEO of PBS, who is being hauled in front of Elon’s DOGE Subcommittee to explain why PBS failed to conform to official “reality” as determined by Elon, and the ADL, and the MAGA Ministry of Truth.

Suppressive Persons like Paula Kerger and the staff of the Public Broadcasting System cannot be allowed to interpret events however they interpret them. We’re in a state of emergency! Screw all that freedom of speech and the press stuff! How can Elon rescue America if people are free to contradict what he says?! After all, the American people elected Musk and Trump so that they could dictate what is “true,” and punish anyone who disagrees with them!

OK, sure, some of what they say isn’t true, or not exactly true, or is shameless lies, but sometimes you have to lie to people to save them from evil, because … well, people are stupid, so you have to bombard them with official propaganda and lies and whip them up into frenzies of fanatical hatred of your official enemies.

For example, the “fifty-million-dollar USAID terrorist condom bomb” story …

… which, of course, was a load of ridiculous bullshit. But that doesn’t matter, because the primary purpose of official propaganda is not to trick anyone; it is to disseminate talking points to your followers who will repeat whatever preposterous lies you make up like a bunch of lobotomized parrots.

Or the “Reuters was paid millions for social deception” story, which was also bullshit, but which Elon and his minions got their legion of morons to mindlessly repeat, over and over, and over again, on Elon’s social media platform, X … which, in case it hasn’t quite sunk in yet, is a propaganda apparatus of the US government, as in it’s literally owned and operated by a Military-Industrial Complex embedded, global corporatist government official.

But whatever. Who gives a shit what’s true? We’re saving America from Libtardism, and deep-state agents, and the transgender Communists! There is a fucking war on! Screw the truth!

Oh yeah, and also, screw the rule of law and the Constitution of the United States! If the judges won’t obey Elon’s orders, impeach them! They’re destroying America!

And if journalists won’t , ban them from attending our glorious leaders’ events! Unperson them! Make examples of them! Unleash the basic pleasure model on them!

Also, the arts! The arts are full of perverts! We need to get the whole art thing cleaned up! Trump firing the board of the Kennedy Center and installing himself as Chairman was a good start, but if we’re going to Make America Great Again, we’re going to need to get a little more radical. Perhaps a new Degenerate Art exhibition! Elon could name one of his coder kids “National MAGA Minister of Culture”! There must be a database of all the degenerate artists and writers and intellectuals somewhere!

I know, you’re thinking this all sounds a bit drastic, but remember, we’re in a state of emergency! It’s a crisis! There’s no time to stop and think! Or question our leaders or The Science, or whatever! The woke mind virus is spreading like wildfire!

Plus, the shock-and-awe phase won’t last. It’s just a few weeks to flatten the curve, or maybe a few months, or until Elon and his buddies develop an anti-woke-mind-virus “vaccine,” or an anti-libtard Neuralink implant, or we all fly off to Mars, or whatever.

In the meantime, the most important thing to do — apart from mindlessly parroting whatever lies Elon and his sycophants post on X — is to get down on your knees and thank him, and his consortium of global-capitalist behemoths, and Saudi royals, and assorted oligarchs, for literally saving freedom of speech, and America, and freedom, and anything else you can think of to grovelingly thank him for!

If you’re not sure how to do that properly, my old friends Jeffrey and Chris can help!

Oh, and, sorry, I lied. This is a test. Just like the “Covid pandemic” was a test. Pretty much everything in life is a test. A test that we take, and then grade, ourselves.

How are you doing on this one so far?

###

CJ Hopkins
February 14, 2025

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, and III of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive email, feel free to contact him directly.

Guess what time it is, boys and girls.

Did you guess it? I’m pretty sure you did.

That’s right, it’s time for the Big Switcheroo! It’s Morning in America Again time! It’s Hope and Change time! It’s Putting People First time! It’s Make America Great Again time!

Yes, it’s time to change the set of the American simulation of democracy, as they do every eight, or sometimes four, years. The bad guys are out. The good guys are in. Or the other way around. It doesn’t really matter. Juice up your smartphones, switch off your brains, put on your MAGA hats or pink pussyhats. The extravaganza is about to begin!

This is probably going to be a good one. The Ayatollah of Orange Shinola is reprising his role as Literal Hitler, or Russian-Agent Hitler, or Il Duce del Mondo, or some sort of Big Mac-gobbling prophet who has been sent by Jesus to save America.

I’m not joking. He actually went on television and announced this to the world …

That’s right, Donald Trump is on a mission from God to cleanse America of Mexican rapists, cat-barbecuing Haitians, and other non-Americans who bear hostile attitudes toward its culture and government, or who inappropriately criticize Israel, or engage in other acts of terrorist speech. And those trannies … they’re out! No more trannies! And the pronoun-using commie professors and their purple-haired students. They’re next on the list! And the globalists … they’re done! No more globalism! The globalism thing is definitely over. All those off-shored jobs are coming back! No more Mexican and Chinese sweatshops! From now on, all our cars, cheap clothes, and smartphones will be made in America!

Fighting at his side in his holy crusade against the forces of globalism, and wokeness, and perversion, and hostile anti-Zionist attitudes, is Elon Musk, the global-capitalist, military-industrial-complex-embedded, transhumanist, social-media mogul, who has also presumably been personally chosen by God to usher in the new “golden age.”

Musk, who already saved free speech by assembling a consortium of global-capitalist investors and purchasing and rebranding Twitter — which, at this point, resembles a combination of Fox News, National Enquirer, and Der Stürmer — has been hopping up and down and hooting and hollering about something he refers to as “the hammer of justice,” and performing textbook Nazi salutes on television, and otherwise assisting God’s personally chosen president in his quest to save the world from the woke mind virus, and libtardism, and “assure the future of civilization,” or something.

OK, I know what you’re thinking, but no, Elon Musk is not a neo-Nazi. Elon Musk is an autistic person, and it’s common knowledge that autistic persons are prone to fits of involuntary Sieg heiling. Here in Germany, for example, you see them everywhere, autistic people slapping their fists against their chests and then thrusting their arms up and out into textbook Nazi salutes. It’s like one big autistic Nuremberg rally. The poor things just can’t stop themselves from doing it.

Oh and speaking of Germany and political rallies, Elon’s next stop was a campaign rally for the AfD, the Alternative für Deutschland party, where he announced to the crowd that “we need to move on” and forget about all that “past guilt” stuff, which, OK, is a boilerplate neo-Nazi talking point, which neo-Nazis in Germany repeat ad nauseam … but, what can you do? The man is autistic!

Look, I don’t want to sound ungrateful or like one of those cynical “black-pill” types. After all, Donald Trump just outlawed censorship. He did it with a stroke of his pen! That whole “Censorship Industrial Complex” thing is history! It was all just a bunch of libtard commies in the Biden administration, and now they’re all gone. The global corporations that control everything you see on the Internet are free at last! No more big bad government bullies forcing them to censor everyone, and visibility-filter, and demonetize everyone, which, of course, they would never do on their own!

But, seriously now, this “Make America Great Again” show is nothing like the “Hope and Change” show that the libtards put on after the shock-and-awe phase of the War on Terror. You remember the “Hope and Change” show, don’t you? Remember when Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, ended the war, drained the swamp of all those torture-happy war-criminal guys (i.e., Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al.), and then got to work relentlessly bombing seven different countries in the Middle East and illegally surveilling everyone?

You remember that, right? Of course you do.

Well, this is nothing at all like that. What’s happening now is totally different. “Hope and Change” was just a marketing campaign. Not like “Make America Great Again!” Which is real. Remember, Obama was a Democrat, and the Democrats are a bunch of liars! Not like the Republicans, or Donald Trump, or Elon Musk, who would never lie or shamelessly pander to the American people, or some bigoted market demographic thereof, or treat them like rubes who will fall for the same con job, over and over, and over again. And the Democrats are communists, right? And Hitler was a communist too! And, according to algorithmically-amplified reliable sources on Free-Speech X, Obama’s wife is a transgender woman, who is also a pedophile! Plus, they’re niggers!

Relax. It’s OK to say the word “nigger.” That’s what freedom of speech is about, after all. Criticizing Israel, or Elon Musk, or otherwise expressing “attitudes hostile to the culture and government” of America Made Great Again will get you visibility-filtered into the void on X (or, if you’re a non-US citizen, visited and screened by the MAGA Thought Police), but at least you’re now free to use ugly racial epithets to your heart’s content! Oh, and don’t forget to “express your feelings” to your fellow party members with a Nazi salute, and otherwise celebrate the Golden Age of Freedom!

And, if some libtard has a problem with that, and calls you a “bigot,” or a “neo-Nazi” … well, just tell them you’re probably autistic.

###

CJ Hopkins
January 28, 2025

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, and III of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive email, feel free to contact him directly.

It was the best of years, it was the worst of years, it was a year of brilliance, it was a year of buffoonery, it was a year of faith, it was a year of incredulity, it was a year of expectation, it was a year of tribulation, it was a year of uncertainty, and passionate intensity, and monomania, and paranoia, and fanatical fervor.

I’m designating it “The Year of the Zealot.”

Now, before I review the cavalcade of bug-eyed zealotry that the year comprised, let me say a few words about zealotry. Because I get it. I understand the attraction. We live in chaotic and perplexing times. We are bombarded, on a moment by moment basis, by contradictory narratives, facts, fictions, baseless accusations, insinuations, official and unofficial propaganda, exaggerations, distortions, and bald-faced lies. Who has the time and energy to try to sift through the billion bits of bullshit blowing ceaselessly into our brains like random detritus swept up in some omnidirectional idiot wind? Is it any real wonder that so many people are retreating to the shelter of one or another ideological redoubt, some prefab bulwark, which can at least provide them with something resembling a coherent ontological structure, a lens through which to view and make some sense of our increasingly incomprehensible world?

No. I get it. I get the attraction. I do. But … well, this year is what that leads to.

For me, the zealotry began in Room 500 of the Berlin District Court, where I was on trial for the “crime” of tweeting the cover artwork of my bestselling book, The Rise of the New Normal Reich: Consent Factory Essays, Vol. III (2020-2021). I have written about my thoughtcrime prosecution at considerable length, so I won’t go on about it again here, or reproduce the book cover art again. The short version is, the Covid zealots currently running the German government, and Germany’s legal system, and most of its media, and comprising the vast majority of the German masses, do not appreciate being compared to the Nazis. I did that, so the authorities had my book banned, had my tweets censored, and prosecuted me for a “hate-crime.”

In January, I was acquitted by a District Court judge, who, after delivering her verdict, explained to the press and observers in the gallery that my acquittal on the obviously trumped-up charge of “disseminating Nazi propaganda” proved that Germany is not the nascent totalitarian state that I had claimed that it was, and that, really, I am the totalitarian, and a babbling, Covid-denying idiot. Then she strapped on a Covid mask and stalked out of the courtroom. The prosecutor, who spent the proceedings behind a prophylactic “anti-Covid barrier” (like the Plexiglas panels they installed in stores to protect us from an airborne virus), and who appeared to be rather heavily medicated, was none too pleased with judge’s verdict. So, he crept back to his little prosecutorial office and started taking steps to have me tried again.

Yes, it was quite an absurd experience, my first thoughtcrime trial in Germany was. I’ll tell you all about my second trial shortly, but, first, let’s get to some of the other zealotry, of which there was no shortage this year.

Without doubt the primary source of zealotry in 2024 was the liquidation of Gaza, or Israel’s self-defense of itself (or whatever people want to call it, depending on which side they fanatically support). It was like an International Zealot Convention. Zealots were everywhere, hooting and hollering, brandishing Israeli and Palestinian flags, accusing each other of genocide, attempted genocide, and other acts of heinousness. The Internet was awash with glossy color photographs of dead and mutilated bodies, blood-soaked kibbutzim, dismembered Gazans, inconsolable mothers clutching dead infants, terrified hostages being dragged out of their homes, sheet-covered corpses in hospital parking lots, grinning IDF soldiers posing in Palestinian women’s underwear, Palestinian militants parading the corpses of their victims around in pickup trucks, and so on, all of which is of course the fault of “the other side,” who are inhuman monsters who needed to be wiped off the face of the planet.

Here in Germany, pro-Palestinian activists staged demonstrations and other events, or attempted to, until they were descended on by the Anti-Anti-Zionist Thought Police, who were determined to protect the German public from “hate speech” (including, but not limited to, specific “hate words,” like “river” and “sea”). Immigrant neighborhoods were flooded with riot cops. Terrorist-adjacent kebab shops were raided. Goon squads went around stomping on people’s votive candles at outdoor vigils. The whole fascist “state-of-emergency” show that we were treated to during “the Covid pandemic” was back on, but the official scapegoats had been changed.

Anti-Zionist Covid zealots, who had applauded the rollout of the new totalitarianism during 2020-2022 (or stood by in silence and watched as it happened) suddenly found themselves face-to-face with the New Normal Reich they had ushered into existence. Artists were disinvited from exhibitions! Filmmakers were demonized by the media! Masha Gessen’s literary award ceremony was rescheduled! Yanis Varoufakis, banned from speaking at a “Palestine Congress” in Berlin, took to social media to alert us to the fact that “fascism is alive and well in Germany!”

Meanwhile, in the USA, mobs of medical-mask-wearing Anti-Zionists were occupying Academia, which, personally, I found unsettling, having been relentlessly harassed by fanatical mask-wearing Covidian Cultists for the preceding four years. I was foolish enough to tweet about it …

… which prompted a visit by The Anti-Zionist Inquisition!

“Are you now, or have you ever been, a Zionist?” the Inquisitors demanded to know. “Do you renounce the Zionist Entity and all its works?” And so on. This went on for days. Swarms of ardent anti-Zionist zealots besieged my Twitter feed, accusing me of heresy, until, finally, I was declared “apostate” and excommunicated from the Church of Anti-Zionism.

For the record, I am neither a Zionist nor an anti-Zionist, nor a member of any other ideological faction or movement. I don’t believe Israel is any more or less legitimate than any other nation-state. I am no more or less horrified by its behavior than I am by the behavior of any other nation-state, for example, the United States of America, which, unlike Israel, I am a citizen of, and which has slaughtered millions of people throughout its history. I’m not a big fan of nation-states, generally. I’m not obsessed with the Jews, or any other religious groups. My sympathies lie with the Palestinian people, and the Israeli people, and the American people, and the German people, and the French and British and Iranian and Syrian and Russian and Ukrainian and Italian and Chinese and Greek and Irish and Australian and Canadian people, and all the other people that are being fucked over by their own or other nation-states, or by the supranational global-capitalist empire that has been destabilizing, restructuring, and privatizing the planet for going on the last twenty-five years.

But that kind of namby-pamby, old-school-lefty, both-sides bullshit doesn’t cut it with monomaniacal zealots like the The Anti-Zionist Inquisition, or the 10/7 Truthers, who claim, among other things, that, actually, it was the IDF that mass-murdered everyone on October 7, while the mostly-peaceful Hamas guys were conducting interviews with prospective Israeli hostages and handing out garbanzo-bean Slurpees to the kids.

Seriously, people propagated this fantasy … OK, not the part about the garbanzo bean Slurpees, the part about Israel “Hanniballing” everyone. As if Israel didn’t provide its critics with an overabundance of actual atrocities to report.

But this is what comes of fanaticism and zealotry. It makes no difference whether it’s Israeli propagandists lying about “40 beheaded babies” or anti-Zionist propagandists lying about Hamas. The point is not to deceive anyone. It’s just to whip your side up into a frenzy of hatred of the other side, and reinforce unquestioning allegiance to your side, because you’re the “good guys,” and the other side is “evil,” or “eviler,” or “they started it,” or whatever.

Oh, and, speaking of unquestioning allegiance, the other primary source of shameless zealotry in 2024 was the Musk Cult. I have to tip my hat to Musk, and the formerly secret consortium of global-capitalist behemoths that took over Twitter. They saw an opportunity, and they seized it. There we were, a multiplicitous mass of opposition to the New Normal Reich, righties, lefties, inbetweenies, people of every color and creed, united in defense of our democratic rights, pushing back against a weird new form of totalitarianism, and … well, that couldn’t be allowed to continue.

It was obvious what had to be done. As Vladimir Lenin famously noted, “the best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.”

It took two years, but that multiplicitous mass of opposition has been torn asunder. It has been branded, commodified, purified, and controlled. It has been taxidermied. Its organs have been harvested. Its lifeblood has been hypodermically extracted, distilled into an innocuous elixir, and sold back to its desanguinated self. It has been zombied. Its soul has been scooped out. It has been replaced with a simulacrum of itself.

All that remains of it now is the Musk Cult.

Notwithstanding the fact that it is massive, and global, the Musk Cult works like any other cult. Cultists’ brains are relentlessly barraged with infantile AI-generated Elon memes. Elon as Ceasar. Elon as Jesus. Elon as Captain Free-Speech America. Elon as the right hand of Trump. Elon as the Martian Führer. They are inundated with Elon’s thought-terminating clichés and mind-numbing platitudes throughout the day. “X is the only source of truth.” “The hammer of justice is coming.” And so on. Dare to post anything critical of Elon and you will be set upon by Musk-Cult zealots, or visibility-filtered into the void. Milieu control, demand for purity, loaded language, dispensing of existence, and all the other classic hallmarks of cults and operant conditioning are in effect.

God forbid you challenge the Cult’s official narrative. You’ll be branded a “libtard,” or a “cultural Marxist,” or a “communist” or “leftist,” which are the Musk Cult’s versions of a “suppressive person” in the Church of Scientology. This is no time for division or doubt or negativity or critical thinking! Our heroes are literally rescuing the republic! Musk and Trump and their millionaire buddies, and the stockholders of that formerly secret consortium of supranational global-capitalist entities, and Saudis, and assorted other oligarchs—that consortium I mentioned above—and Musk’s military-industrial complex associates, and the “defense” corporations they are stockholders of, and their subsidiaries, agents, and assigns, and the CEOs, CFOs, COOs, and presidents of those companies, and their attorneys, and the consultants and think-tank guys and gals they all have lunch with occasionally—not to do any actual business, of course, just to keep in touch with old friends and colleagues—and the Wall Street honchos, and the CEOs of the six corporations that own the US media, and the big five publishers that decide what you can read, and diaphoretic transhumanist billionaire tech geeks, oh, and let’s not forget the pharmaceutical industry with their miraculous mRNA vaccines, and all the other “freedom fighters” who care so much about our democratic rights, and each and every one of us, personally, that they are going to go mano a mano with the Woke Cabal and the Cultural Marxists, vanquish the Axis of Libtardism, and Make America Great Again!

Jesus, I got myself all worked up there. I was almost about to buy a subscription to X and start pumping out Elon memes on Grok, or start searching for “ghost gun” parts on eBay, or obsessing about whatever we’ve been prompted to be obsessing about by the time you read this, squirrels, drones, cat-eating Haitians, whatever Musk and his disciples decide to anesthetize their followers’ minds with today.

But, seriously, all this zealotry is exhausting. Or maybe I’m just getting old. I confess, I’m feeling slightly worn out, and disillusioned, and kind of blue these days. Maybe it was my second thoughtcrime trial, at which the Berlin Superior Court overturned my acquittal, so that now I’ve been forced to submit my case—which, remember, is about two Tweets—to Germany’s supreme court, the Bundesverfassungsgericht. Or maybe it is just being forced to watch as GloboCap’s New Normal Reich rolls on, and that curtain at the back of Frank Zappa’s theater gets pulled closed over that brick wall, again, and we retake our assigned seats, and the show continues …

If you will allow me to bastardize one of my favorite bits from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, for a moment, in early 2022, it felt like we had all the momentum again, like we were riding the crest of another high and beautiful wave, as Hunter Thompson put it. Now, almost three years later, you can scroll back through your Twitter timeline, and with the right kind of eyes you might just see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

But, whatever, as the doctor said, “buy the ticket, take the ride.”

OK, that’s it for 2024. Merry Fanatical Christmas and a Happy Zealous New Year!

###

CJ Hopkins
December 17, 2024

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, and III of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive email, feel free to contact him directly.

Once upon a time, on a planet called Earth, there was born a global-capitalist empire. It was the first global empire in the history of empires. It dominated the entire planet.

No one knew what to call the empire, because there had never been anything like it in history. It had no external adversaries, so it had nothing left to do but “clear and hold,” i.e., neutralize internal resistance and consolidate its domination of the planet.

So that is what it set about doing.

It did this first in the territories of its final ideological adversary, an empire called the Soviet Union, the ideology of which was known as “Communism.”

This was known as the “Post-Cold-War Era.”

It did this next in the Greater Middle East, where people were still trying to live their lives according to a religion known as “Islam.”

This was known as the “Global War on Terror.”

The Global War on Terror was originally intended to go on forever, and it would have, and it will, but it had to be temporarily suspended, and rebranded, because something unexpected happened.

One day, in the Summer of 2016 — theretofore officially “The Summer of Fear” — the global-capitalist empire noticed that a new form of resistance to its domination of the entire planet had risen up, not in the former Soviet Union, or the Greater Middle East, but throughout the West, right in the very heart of the empire.

And so the War on Terror was suspended, and the War on Populism began.

The War on Populism raged for four years, and culminated in the rollout of the New Normal, officially known as “the Covid pandemic.”

For over two years, i.e., from March 2020 to approximately December 2022, the global-capitalist empire morphed into a new form of totalitarianism, a global-capitalist form of totalitarianism, which was not like any other previous form of totalitarianism.

This period was the shock-and-awe phase of the rollout of the New Normal Reich.

The transition to the New Normal Reich was broadcast throughout the global empire. The message was unmistakeably clear. From now on, there would be a “New Normal.” It would be like a permanent state of war, a permanent state of civil war. And so, from now on everyone would need to pledge their allegiance to the New Normal Reich, and follow orders, or be labelled an “extremist,” a “science denier,” a “conspiracy theorist,” or some other type of seditious deviant.

The vast majority of the citizens of the West understood the message, followed orders, and pledged allegiance to the New Normal Reich. But a sizeable minority did not. The global-capitalist empire needed to neutralize this sizeable minority.

The majority of this sizeable minority was comprised of conservative, libertarian, and other basically right-leaning people. It contained a few old-school left-leaning people, but they were a minority within a minority, and so they weren’t really a factor when it came to neutralizing the larger minority, which the empire promptly set about doing.

The Free-Speech Twitter PSYOP

In October 2022, Elon Musk, the multi-billionaire military contractor, electric car salesman, and transhumanism enthusiast, and a coterie of serious global-capitalist entities and individuals purchased the social media platform known as Twitter, Inc. for 44 billion US dollars.

Musk walked into Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters grinning like a chimpanzee and carrying a bathroom sink, and the Free-Speech Twitter PSYOP began.

During the War on Populism and the shock-and-awe phase of the rollout of the New Normal Reich, Twitter, Inc., and every other social-media platform and mass-media outlet in the Western world, had been functioning as the empire’s Ministry of Truth, disseminating official New Normal propaganda, censoring dissent, and unpersoning anyone challenging the empire’s official narratives. And thus, it provided the perfect stage for the PSYOP the empire was about to conduct.

Musk reinstated a number of prominent, primarily conservative Twitter accounts that had been deplatformed for “posting misinformation” about Hunter Biden’s laptop and the “Covid vaccines,” and for posting “incitement” and “glorification of violence,” and bigotry and other such offensive content, among them, the account of Donald Trump, and tens of thousands of Trump supporters.

As Elon had promised, “the bird was freed”! Elon acolytes and grateful garden-variety Trumpians and other right-leaning persons poured onto Twitter to thank their savior for reversing the company’s target demographic, thus saving America from “Cultural Marxism,” and “Communism,” and the “Woke Mind Virus.”

The PSYOP continued with a textbook limited hangout known as the “Twitter Files.” Musk let a few carefully selected journalists run a few searches at Twitter HQ, which exposed how the former staff of Twitter had been collaborating with elements of the Biden administration (i.e., not the global-capitalist empire) to censor and deplatform people — mostly those in the new “red” target demographic — and was part of some strictly-USA-operated “Censorship Industrial Complex,” which was absolutely not a global operation, and had nothing to do with any global-capitalist empire, or a “New Normal Reich,” because all the censorship and “shadowbanning” — which was all in the past now that Elon was in charge — was the work of a cabal of deep-state libtard bureaucrats, who were all a bunch of “Commies.”

These revelations in the “Twitter Files” prompted Republicans in the US Congress to hold a series of subcommittee hearings into the possibly unconstitutional behavior of the Biden administration and its libtard proxies (i.e., not the global-capitalist empire), which had forced Twitter, Inc., and the other totally helpless Internet corporations to “shadowban” and censor Americans (i.e., not everyone else all throughout the empire that these corporations were also censoring in a clearly coordinated fashion).

And then, right on cue, once the story had been framed within a US-centric “red/blue” narrative, Musk shut the “Twitter Files” limited hangout down, i.e., before it could do any damage to the global-capitalist empire itself.

For the next two years, Elon and his cronies inundated their new target-demographic with “Free-Speech-Twitter” propaganda, sentimental Elon Musk-hagiography, and a never-ending series of PR-stunts. Twitter was officially rebranded as “X.” Musk went to war with Brazil’s Darth Vader, and Thierry Breton, and assorted other “Commies.” Twitter users were besieged with memes of Elon dressed up as Captain Free-Speech America. Et cetera.

And so the Musk Cult was born.

Meanwhile, X is continuing to censor and “visibility-filter” content at the behest of governments throughout the empire, as well as in furtherance of its own objectives.

If you think that fact has had a negative impact on the Free-Speech Twitter PSYOP, on the contrary, the Musk Cult has only grown broader and stronger. Like any other cult, it is impervious to facts. All that matters is loyalty to the cult, and the leader of the cult, and the cult’s official narrative. You can direct Musk cultists to the Twitter Safety pages where “visibility filtering” is explained, and cite countless examples of Musk’s hypocrisy, and it will have absolutely no effect whatsoever. Like every other successful cult leader, Elon is beyond reproach, incapable of sin, a god made flesh.

But deifying Elon was not the primary objective of the Free-Speech Twitter PSYOP.

The primary objective of the Free-Speech Twitter PSYOP was to harness, corral, and establish control over the majority of the sizeable minority of people who refused to follow orders and pledge allegiance to the New Normal Reich when it was rolled out during the “Covid pandemic.” These people needed to be herded into a manipulable mass and redirected away from the global-capitalist empire and into a harmless cul-de-sac where they could scream and shout at the empire’s designated scapegoats to their heart’s content. The Musk Cult was just a means of herding and leading them into this cul-de-sac.

“Free-Speech Twitter” is this cul-de-sac, and is a microcosm of a larger cul-de-sac.

Which brings us to the second PSYOP.

The America Made Great Again PSYOP

One of the most effective ways to neutralize an opponent is to let them win. This is especially true when you’re dealing with an opponent you can never entirely defeat.

What you do is, you lure your opponent into a battle you can afford to lose, because you need to actually lose the battle, and let your opponent actually win, i.e., not just trick them into thinking they have won, because … well, your opponent isn’t stupid.

This battle that you lure your opponent into and let them win will be a battle over a territory within a territory, but which your opponent believes is “the territory.” You can afford to lose control of this territory within a territory because you control the territory it exists within, and because your opponent doesn’t know that.

The trick is getting your opponent to believe that, by winning this battle, they have won “the war,” and that they now control “the territory,” and have destroyed you, or have otherwise removed you from power, when, actually, all that your opponent has destroyed or removed from power is a corporeal decoy, a material incarnation of an invisible, immaterial adversary, an adversary they do not know exists, or which they refuse to acknowledge the existence of … assuming, of course, that is what you are.

At which point, you have neutralized your opponent.

For example, say you’re a global empire, a supranational global-capitalist empire, and say your opponent is a populist insurgency, a potentially revolutionary mass, that you need to distract from contemplating your supranational, invisible, immaterial nature, and from the fact that the governments of nation-states are essentially administrative components of this invisible immaterial empire that you are, and thus it doesn’t really matter to you which political party administers these nation-states or who the leaders of these parties are, because they can’t really do much damage to you, because all they control are the material territories within the immaterial territory you control, which predetermines the context and the scope of their actions, and the parameters of their imaginations, and … OK, you probably see where this is going.

Or, I don’t know, maybe you don’t. So let me try to simplify it.

There is no “America” to make great again. “America” is a simulation. It is a map of a territory that does not exist. It is a dream within a dream in a film that no one can see because everyone is watching. It is a brand name for an imaginary product.

OK, that didn’t make it any simpler, did it? Let me try this one more time.

We are living in a global-capitalist empire. One big global-capitalist empire. We have been for the last thirty-something years. All of us. Americans. Canadians. The British. The French. Australians. Germans. Russians. Israelis. Palestinians. Iranians. All of us.

The global-capitalist empire is not a cabal of powerful individuals. It is a system. And that system is evolving. Metamorphosing. Transmogrifying. Evolving into a new form of totalitarianism. A global-capitalist form of totalitarianism.

It is the system, and not its servants, that is driving … driving this systemic evolution. It makes no difference whether Elon Musk, or Donald Trump, or Macron, or Starmer, or Netanyahu, or Gates, or Bezos, or Soros, or any other political “leader” or powerful figure knows what they are doing. They serve the system, as the system requires, each according to their specific role and scope of action within the system.

Elon Musk did not “save free speech” or “rescue Twitter” from a “Woke Mind Virus.” He purchased a corporation and rebranded its product for new market demographic. In so doing, he corralled and neutralized most of the conservative populist resistance to the evolution of the global-capitalist system … which is what the system needed to happen. It makes no difference whether Elon Musk understood his role. He played it perfectly. He is continuing to play it perfectly.

The Musk Cult is growing. Its apostles are preaching the Gospel of Elon throughout the empire, paving the road to The Privatization of Everything! Verily, it is the dawn of a golden age of “Freedom” ruled by global corporations and beneficent oligarchs!

However, before that golden age can begin, America must be made great again! And so the Free-Speech Twitter PSYOP has to be repeated on the macro-level. The same conservative populist resistance to the evolution of the global-capitalist system that Musk corralled and neutralized needs to be corralled and neutralized everywhere … not just in America, everywhere, all throughout the West and the rest of the empire.

Once it is corralled, and neutralized, and whipped up into a frenzy over “Wokeness,” “Cultural Marxism,” and “Communism,” it can be unleashed on the remnants of the dying age of nation-states, national sovereignty, constitutions, and so on, which will prompt the Global Powers That Be to take extreme measures to “defend democracy,” which will prompt the Other Global Powers That Be to take more extreme measures to “Rescue the Republic,” which will prompt the Global Powers That Be to take even more extreme extreme measures to “defend democracy from fascism” and … OK, this time, I do think you see where this is going.

Or, I don’t know, maybe you don’t. But I don’t think I can make it any simpler. And I don’t see any way to stop it or fix it. It isn’t an error to be corrected. It is the organic evolution of a system … a supranational system evolving into a new totalitarian form.

So, there you have it, a tale of two PSYOPS. I’m sorry that it isn’t as comforting as a story about how Donald Trump and Elon Musk and their global-capitalist investors, and their subsidiaries, agents, and assigns, are going to “make America great again.”

If it’s any consolation, one thing is certain … whatever happens, it won’t be boring.

###

CJ Hopkins
November 15, 2024

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, and III of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive email, feel free to contact him directly.

So, it’s déjà vu all over again.

That’s right, he’s back! Trumpenstein the Monster! Literal Russian-Agent Hitler! The Ayatollah of Orange Shinola! And this time he’s not screwing around!

No, this time, he is really going to “drain the swamp”! He’s going to rebuild that “big, beautiful wall”! It’s curtains for all you Mexican rapists, cat-barbecuing Haitians, and squirrel-murdering commies! There will be no more cross-dressing perverts perfidiously flouridating our precious bodily fluids! No more egg-headed Cultural Marxists infecting our kids with their “Woke mind virus”! This is the dawn of a Golden Age of Morning in America Made Great Again!

Seriously, this is not just a childish fantasy or a rebooted marketing campaign. Trump and Elon, and their buddies on Wall Street, and in the Military-Industrial Complex, and Silicon Valley, are literally going to save America from Libtardism! They are going to kick some deep-state ass! It’s going to be like the climax of one of those Hollywood comic-book super-hero movies, where the hero makes his “Final Push” — after suffering an end-of-Act-II “Major-Setback” — and beats the living snot out of the antagonist, and then we all live happily ever after!

Of course, for liberals, it will be like one of those Hammer horror movie sequels from the 1970s. The Return of the Revenge of the Curse of Trumpenstein! The Horror of the Evil of the Revenge of Trumpenstein! The Horror of Trumpenstein Must Be Destroyed!

The coming four years of recycled mass hysteria has already started. Jimmy “rest in peace wheezy” Kimmel is choking up on late-night television. Arnold “screw your freedom” Schwarzenegger has not been heard from and is probably in hiding. Some celebrity named Cardi B posted “I hate y’all bad” on the Instagram. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough blamed the Blacks and Hispanics for betraying Kamala. Jason Stanley, the supercilious “fascism expert” who did that “Trump is Literally the Resurrection of Hitler” New York Times video back in 2018, has proclaimed this “The End of US Democracy,” again. Militant liberals are digging out their saftey-pins and pink pussyhats and preparing to reassemble “The Resistance.” California has been designated “Resistance HQ.”

They’re going to have wait a couple of months, though, because, technically, the Trumpians are still “The Resistance” …

… and we can only have one “Resistance” at a time, or “The Resistance” ends up resisting “The Resistance,” which would make “The Resistance” the thing it is “resisting,” which would make that thing — i.e., the thing it is “resisting” — kind of like one of the official enemies in Orwell’s 1984, which the Party switches from time to time, which, of course, it is, but … well, ignore that for now. This is no time for critical thinking, or for any other type of thinking! No, it’s time to Make America Great Again, or to Save the World from Hitler again, and respond to whichever Pavlovian stimuli you happen to have been conditioned to respond to!

Which is why I’m going to wait a while before I publish anything serious on this topic. I’m kind of tired of pissing into the wind at the moment. Watching the actual potential resistance to the rollout of The New Normal Reich get captured, harnessed, and redirected back into the usual partisan-politics sideshow by Elon Musk et al. for the past two years has left me feeling a little disheartened, or disillusioned, or sad, or something.

I do have a few thoughts about where we are headed, which I’m pretty sure no one is going to like. I’ll publish them once things settle down a bit. For now, here’s a little preview …

If I’m right, where we are headed will be déjà vu all over again all over again. But whatever. Let’s get back to the show!

###

CJ Hopkins
November 8, 2024

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, and III of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive email, feel free to contact him directly.