Alastair Crooke — Strategic Culture March 13, 2023
Just occasionally, a window is opened onto the truth of how the ‘system’ works. Momentarily, it stands naked in its degeneracy. We avert our eyes, yet, it is a revelation (though it shouldn’t be). For, we see clearly how tawdry has been the attire which clothed it. ‘Liberalism’s’ seeming success – almost wholly an ephemeral PR production – serves only to make its underlying internal contradictions more obvious; more ‘in your face’ – much less credible.
This unravelling speaks to a failure to satisfactorily resolve liberal modernity’s inherent contradictions. Or, rather its unravelling derives from the choice to resolve a waning legitimacy, through an ever more totalistic and ideological reaching for hegemony.
One such window has been the sordid affair of the UK pandemic lockdowns – as revealed by a paper trail leak of 100,000 ministerial WhatsApp messages, managing the lockdown project.
What did they show (in the words here of pro-government leading political commentators)? An ugly picture of how a western Establishment interacts in adolescent sniping at each other, and in its utter disdain for the populace.
Janet Daley writing in The Telegraph:
“It [lockdown] wasn’t about science, it was about politics. That was obvious as soon as the government began talking about following The Science – as if it were a fixed body of revealed truth … they were engaged in a deliberately misleading campaign of public coercion. The programme was designed to frighten – not inform – and to make doubt or scepticism appear morally irresponsible – which is precisely the opposite of what science does”.
“The model for the monumental government programme in which sitting on a park bench, or meeting with extended family, became a criminal offence – was the nation at war. Horrifying levels of social isolation were deliberately designed to present the country as mobilised in a collective effort against a malign enemy. Much of this went way beyond what we generally regard as authoritarianism: even the East German Stasi did not forbid children from hugging their grandparents, or outlaw sexual relations between people who lived in different households. Every other consideration had to be relegated in a heroic national struggle against an invading army whose objective was to kill as many of us as possible. And this enemy was particularly insidious because it was invisible”.
“We have been granted a rare glimpse of Power’s true nature away from the media gaze: how, in private, it schemes, swears, sulks and derides. On full display are all its dismal paradoxes: its fierce megalomania and constant seeking of reassurance from political aides; its tendency to groupthink and relentless sniping.
“One feels a new cold solidarity with 1970s [Watergate] America in its horror at the “low-grade quality of mind” that characterised their political class. But perhaps the strongest parallel with Watergate is that … the state’s operations seem suffused with humdrum nihilism. It is there in the amused crusades to “scare the pants” off people. It is in the deadpan mocking of holidaymakers locked up in quarantine [hotels] (“hilarious”). It is in the remorseless dedication to “the narrative”.
“How zealously the state threw themselves into implementing draconian measures, once it had decided at HQ that lockdowns were the correct populist call. We have come to learn how Hancock (Health Minister) conspired to “sit on” scientists, who he denounced as “wacky” or “loudmouth” for defying the official lines. We must digest the knowledge that civil servants insisted the “fear/guilt factor” was “vital” in “ramping up the messaging” during the dubious third lockdown. Just as unedifying is the revelation that, in the run up to this lockdown, politicians seized on a new variant as a tool to “roll the pitch with”. Perhaps most galling is Patrick Vallance’s (Scientific Adviser) advice that the Government should “suck up the media’s miserable interpretation of scientific data” to then “overdeliver” in an atmosphere of cranked up fear”.
“We see the PM appallingly served and briefed. Almost suspiciously so. At one stage, he is so in the dark about Covid’s fatality rate that he misinterprets a figure by a factor of one hundred. [Yet] the most revealing moment came in June 2020, when the mild-mannered Business Secretary, argued for certain rules to be advisory rather than compulsory. At this stage, Covid circulation had plummeted – deaths had fallen by 93 per cent from the peak: “Why is she against controlling the virus”, the minister complains. She is motivated by pure Conservative ideology! The Cabinet Secretary retorts [i.e., she is libertarian].
“The Lockdown Files include thousands of attachments sent between ministers. When I first came across them, I hoped to find high-quality top-level secret briefings. Instead, ministers were sharing newspaper articles and graphs found on social media. The quality of this information was often poor, sometimes abysmal”.
The ‘Lockdown Files’ – as published in the UK by The Telegraph – expose a toxic culture where any minister or civil servant asking “awkward” questions knew they were liable to be briefed against, sidelined or ostracised. ‘Off the boil’ Members of Parliament thought to oppose lockdowns were placed on a secret Red List, and the then Health Secretary’s aide wrote, “these guys’ re-election hinges on us: We know what they want”.
But the Files reveal something even more chilling. What was the overall public response to the publication of the files? Plainly said: It is that a majority of the people are so numbed and passive – and so in lockstep – as the state inches them through a series of repeating emergencies towards a new kind of authoritarianism, that they don’t fuss greatly, or even notice much.
To be clear, the Lockdown episode is iconic of this new schema of control effected through hegemony, ideology and tech. Autonomy for the individual – and his or her search for a life, lived with meaning – now is displaced by its opposite: The instinct to subjugate and dominate, and to impose order on an inchoate and seemingly threatening world.
The surveillance-based liberal managerial state has, as Arta Moeini has written, ballooned into “a totalistic and aspiring globe-spanning Leviathan”, fraudulently disguised in the feel-good casing of liberal democracy – the key liberational elements of which, having been long replaced by their antonyms, in an Orwellian inversion.
To be clear: All the excesses of state power that occurred in the UK during the pandemic were permitted within the realms of the Western political system. The state may at any time suspend the rule of law for what it deems the greater good. The pandemic merely exposed the workings in extremis of liberal democracy – channelling Carl Schmitt’s notion of a “state of exception” being the source-code to state ‘sovereignty’ over the populace.
In this ethical vacuum, and with the capsize of societal meaning, western politicians can only snipe coarsely at one-another, Lord of the Rings-style, whilst hoping to surf whatever ‘the narrative’ and the media ‘play’ of the day can ‘up their level’ in the power matrix. To be blunt, in its lack of any deeper guiding principle, it is purely sociopathic.
However, in pushing the pendulum of the liberal schema so hard over towards the hegemony extremity, it has caused the other end to the spectrum of the overall liberal schema to catch fire: The demand to respect individual autonomy and freedom of expression. This antithesis is particularly apparent in the U.S.
Liberalism was conceived during the early French Revolution as a project of systemic liberation from oppressive social hierarchies, religion and cultural norms of the past, so that a new order of liberated individualism could come into being. Rousseau saw it as a radical clean break from the past – a disembedding of the individual from family, church and cultural norms, so that he or she could better evolve as a unitary component to a redeemed universal governance.
This was the meaning to liberalism in its early phase. However, the subsequent Reign of Terror and mass executions under the Jacobins signaled the schizophrenic connection between ‘liberation’ and the desire to force compliance on society. The persistent appeal of violent revolution versus imposed (Utopian) ‘redemption of humanity marks the two oppositional poles to the western psyche which today is being ‘resolved’ through the tilt to ‘hegemony’.
This inherent tension between the radical liberation of the individual and a conformist ‘world order’ was to be resolved via ‘new universal values’: Diversity, gender and equity – plus restitution awarded to the victims for earlier discrimination suffered. This ‘liquid modernity’ was thought to be ‘globally neutral’ (in a way that Enlightenment values were not), and therefore could underpin the western-led World Order.
The contradiction inherent to this was too evident: The Rest of World sees the ‘liberal’ order as an-all-too obvious device to prolong western power. They refuse its ‘missionary’ underside (this aspect was never present outside the Judeo-Christian Sphere), and the claim that the West should determine what values (whether Enlightenment or Woke) by which we all must live.
The non-West observes rather, a weakened West and no longer feels the need to offer fealty to a global ‘overlord’. The meta cycle of enforced westification (from Petrine Russia, Turkey, Egypt – and Iran) is over.
Its mystique, its thrall is gone, and though lockdown compliance in the UK (and Europe) was indeed achieved through ‘project fear’, the success came at the expense of public trust. To be plain: the authority of Authority in the West increasingly is distrusted – at home, as overseas.
The crisis of liberalism’ contradictions and waning authority deepens.
Carl Schmitt’s other two mantras were firstly, to keep power: ‘Use it’ (or lose it); and secondly, configure an ‘enemy’ as polarising and as ‘dark’ as possible in order to keep power – and to keep the masses fearful and compliant.
Hence, we have seen Biden – lacking an alternative – resorting to radical Manichaeism to bolster Authority against his domestic opponents in the U.S. (ironically casting them as enemies of ‘democracy’), whilst using the Ukraine war as the tool by which to cast the West’s war on Russia too, as an epic struggle between the Light and Dark. These Manichean ideological source-codes for now, dominate western liberalism.
But the West has put itself into a trap: ‘Going Manichean’ puts the West into an ideological straight-jacket. It is a crisis of the West’s own making. Put bluntly, Manichaeism is the antithesis to any negotiated solution, or off-ramp. Carl Schmitt was clear on this point: the intent of conjuring up the blackest of enmities, precisely was to preclude (liberal) negotiation: How could ‘virtue’ strike a bargain with ‘evil’?
The West is too dysfunctional and weak now to fight on all fronts. Yet there can be no retreat (without some de-legitimising humiliation of the West).
The West has gambled all on its fear-led, ‘emergency-crisis’ managed ‘control’ system to save itself. It’s hopes now are pinned on its ‘Beware! The big boss has gone angry-mad’ act; he might do anything’, which it hopes will cause the world to back-off.
But the Rest of World is not backing off – it is becoming more assertive. Fewer believe what the western Élites say; fewer still trust their competence. The West has recklessly ‘placed its bet’; it may lose all. Or, more dangerously, in a fit of anger, it may kick over others’ gaming tables.
He quotes presstitute Janet Daley who states that lockdowns were not about science!?!?!?
It was about science. The Nazi regime said day after day, hour after hour, that they were following the best scientific advice, and all done on the basis to save lives, and save the NHS.
We live in a one party state. There’s no politics as such, just a performance for the thicko sheeple. Matthew HanDcock standing behind the lecture playing with his hard on, while Gina stood weak kneed in the wings, desperate to get into the nearest cleaning cupboard.
Like I said at the time, and said it many times. All the political players are thinking about is how to use Covid to further they ambitions.
All we’ve seen is misdirection, and confusion. All part of the the delaying tactic, while the narrow sham inquiry plods along. The inquiry will probably say mistakes were made, and that the Nazi one party state, didn’t do more, or act fast enough, but we must congratulate Boris for trying to preserve our freedoms. lol
As I’ve alluded to previously, the ‘Axis Of ZOG’ just rolled “snake eyes” in the global “Last Chance Saloon”…
The die is indeed cast.. and guess what? YOU lose.. BIG time!
So, as ZOG-Gov in frustration now turns its gaze towards YOU, expect the WORST… you WON’T be disappointed!
Par 2: “Or, rather its unravelling derives from the choice to solve a waning legitimacy through an ever more totalistic and idealogical reaching reaching for hegemony”. Wha-at?!
Could we have this article translated into common English please?
As Australia decides to throw $400 billion on nuclear-powered submarines built in USA and a few others designed in the UK either as a defensive measure or offensive measure against China, our politicians have failed to take into consideration that a very, very significant percentage of the Australian population are Chinese.
Go figure. Let’s hope there isn’t a war and the best outcome is that Australia is squandering $400 billion just to keep the American rogue state war machine happy?
Good article BUT TOO LONG!
Not enough time to read long long articles which are good but not amazing. Same goes with videos.
If it contained photos videos and other evidence showing some of the criminals involved in child killing sacrifice and proved the existence of ritual murder so we could take to the streets to find and despatch the killers then all well and good if it’s a long article then I get that. Anything else at this stage in the game is wasting time.
Tick Tock
lt seems that the regime has activated all of it’s ‘alternative media’ sleeper cells in a desperate attempt to avert the ahem..public’s gaze and steer them away from the obviously scripted nature of Operation Covid and it’s impositions..
and of course it’s theatrical ‘execution’ by narcissists and puppets and alphabet lntel..on behalf of a certain moneyed interest..
Who have had it planned out for years (and in fact tried it before)… and who now vainly hope to spin it into the usual damage limitation cul-de-sac’s employed when their plans go awry..
that being..
the ‘flawed human popinjay’ acting irrationally and from which mistakes were made and of course ‘lessons can be learned’.. and about which they will employ the usual tools of white wash inquiries and kicking the can…
The rather large problem they have though.. as they divert you into the usual ‘human interest’ fabrications and associated handwringing and predictable bleating…
ls the Evidence of deliberate malfeasance littered all over it…which is now being collected and pieced together by people who can still think critically and of course the unmanageable scale of their crimes and the deluge about to hit them..
One of the most interesting aspects of the Psy-Op was the ahem…unmasking of much of the fake alternative..
An Apocalypse..indeed…
“The West” has been so dumbed down that I still see people wearing masks while driving.
It is arsoles like those that screw it up for the rest of us, and the world is full of them. Democracy is to blame. Thomas Jefferson called democracy “Mob Rule”. I know people in management positions who won’t believe anything unless they read it in the newspapers or see it on TV.
Title -“The Spy Who Loved Hamas. And Hezbollah. And Iran. Just who is ex-MI6 superstar Alastair Crooke working for, anyway?”
Quote – “It is much too early to say whether the process of engagement Crooke has nurtured will go down in history as a turning point in the West’s understanding of Islam or as yet another crackbrained attempt at dialogue with people who are not very reasonable. But it has given him an advance look at tomorrow’s headlines, which in the end is the fatal ambition of every old spy.”
Source – https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/09/spy-who-loved-hamas-and-hezbollah-and-iran/
So where was the old spy on the Covid fraud in March 2020? Even the Islamic nations played their parts in the fraud. Has Cooke come running out to join in the condemnation of our governments because the wheels have so clearly fallen off the failed plandemic to usher in the global community he was so earnestly pushing? Where did his Conflicts Forum get its funding? Sounds very much like Soros “open society” thinking and his work very much on the NWO one-world religion push.
Apart from what these authors are saying, they all seem to be Johnny-come-lately’s throwing a great deal of intellectual condemnation based on various mistaken “isms” and historical trends showing how our governments failed us. The facts, however, are very simply. Our governments have turned into institutions of evil, in which mass deception of the people is entirely Kosher and they just keep doing it over and over again to us. The other fact is that every leading institution in and out of the government followed the top-down, money-power lead without a peep of protest despite the obvious contradictions and harms.
this are only a fraction of ruling western fraudsters
of WEF/NWO/Corona vax . PDF to zoom 169 pages :
last try
https://clubderklarenworte.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Netzwerkanalyse-Corona-Komplex.pdf
in spite of zooming i think PDF needs
a big monitor to be readable .
Your local pharmacy could be on the brink of collapse if the Government doesn’t announce more funding. [1] The closure of pharmacies could mean you and your family not being able to get the treatment or medication you desperately need.
Yet migrants coming in do not pay anything for hospital doctors or dentists
Since 2015, funding has been cut by 30% and hundreds of pharmacies that play a huge and vital role in our communities have closed their doors for the final time. [2] This simply cannot continue.
That’s why the Save Our Pharmacies campaign group have started a petition calling on the Health Secretary to safeguard NHS pharmacy services and ensure local pharmacies have a future. [3] The petition has already been signed by thousands of people and continues to grow.
So if you want to make sure your local pharmacy can keep its doors open, sign the petition now, and send a clear message to the Health Secretary: save our pharmacies!
YES, I’LL SIGN!
Campaign created by Save Our Pharmacies campaign group
Sign the petition
To: The Health Secretary and NHS England
What: Please provide immediate, fair and sustained funding, to safeguard NHS pharmacy services and ensure local pharmacies have a future.
Why is this important: Our local NHS pharmacies are on the brink of collapse, despite having proven during the pandemic that they are more needed now than ever. Since 2015, their funding has been cut by 30% and 720 pharmacies have permanently closed, putting vital NHS services at risk. Without fair funding from the Government, many more pharmacies will be forced to close.
Something the government can do straight away is to fund a ‘Pharmacy First’ Service in England so people with minor illnesses can be treated on the NHS by their local pharmacy, instead of having to wait to see a GP for a prescription.
Community pharmacies provide vital health and social care in communities across the country, including the most deprived neighbourhoods. Please back our local pharmacies – so they can continue to keep people well and save lives!
Read more…
Sign the petition
Thank you for being involved,
David, Megan and the 38 Degrees team
NOTES:
[1] Sky News: Hundreds of community pharmacies ‘could close due to rising costs’
[2] See note 1
[3] Save our Pharmacies
38 Degrees: Save our pharmacies – protect vital NHS services
38 Degrees wouldn’t exist without you, Jill.
The Covid “Killer Vaccine”. People Are Dying All Over the World. It’s A Criminal Undertaking
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, March 11, 2023
Theme: Crimes against Humanity, Science and Medicine
print
First published on November 26, 2022
***
We are being accused of “spreading disinformation” regarding the Covid-19 vaccine.
The Reuters and AP media “trackers” and “fact checkers” will be out to smear the testimonies of parents who have lost their children.
“Once the Lie becomes the Truth, there is no moving backwards. Insanity prevails. The world is turned upside down.”
Let us be under no illusions, the Covid Jab is not only “experimental”, it’s a Big Pharma “killer vaccine” which modifies the human genome. The evidence of mortality and morbidity resulting from vaccine inoculation both present (official data) and future (e.g. undetected microscopic blood clots) is overwhelming.
The official data (mortality and morbidity) as well as numerous scientific studies confirm the nature of the Covid-19 mRNA vaccine which is being imposed on all humanity.
Peer reviewed reports confirm the causes of vaccine related deaths and “adverse events” (injuries) including among others blood clots, thrombosis, myocarditis, cardiac arrests.
The stated objective is to enforce the Worldwide vaccination of 8 billion people in more than 190 countries, to be followed by the imposition of a digitized “vaccine passport”. Needless to say this is a multi-billion dollar operation for Big Pharma. It’s a crime against humanity.
The global vaccine project entitled COVAX is coordinated Worldwide by the WHO, GAVI, CEPI, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in liaison with the World Economic Forum (WEF), the Wellcome Trust, DARPA and Big Pharma which is increasingly dominated by the Pfizer-GSK partnership established barely four months before the onset of the Covid-19 crisis in early January 2020.
The Covid 19 “Vaccine” from the very outset in January 2021 has been conducive to a Worldwide Upward Movement in Mortality
This is Not Manslaughter. It’s Murder
Yes, It’s a killer vaccine. That message should be loud and clear.
This is happening all over the world: children and adolescents are dying.
Crimes against humanity, crimes against our children.
Read More :
The Covid “Killer Vaccine”. People Are Dying All Over the World. It’s A Criminal Undertaking
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, March 11, 2023
Theme: Crimes against Humanity, Science and Medicine
print
Translate Website
First published on November 26, 2022
***
We are being accused of “spreading disinformation” regarding the Covid-19 vaccine.
The Reuters and AP media “trackers” and “fact checkers” will be out to smear the testimonies of parents who have lost their children.
“Once the Lie becomes the Truth, there is no moving backwards. Insanity prevails. The world is turned upside down.”
Let us be under no illusions, the Covid Jab is not only “experimental”, it’s a Big Pharma “killer vaccine” which modifies the human genome. The evidence of mortality and morbidity resulting from vaccine inoculation both present (official data) and future (e.g. undetected microscopic blood clots) is overwhelming.
The official data (mortality and morbidity) as well as numerous scientific studies confirm the nature of the Covid-19 mRNA vaccine which is being imposed on all humanity.
Peer reviewed reports confirm the causes of vaccine related deaths and “adverse events” (injuries) including among others blood clots, thrombosis, myocarditis, cardiac arrests.
The stated objective is to enforce the Worldwide vaccination of 8 billion people in more than 190 countries, to be followed by the imposition of a digitized “vaccine passport”. Needless to say this is a multi-billion dollar operation for Big Pharma. It’s a crime against humanity.
The global vaccine project entitled COVAX is coordinated Worldwide by the WHO, GAVI, CEPI, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in liaison with the World Economic Forum (WEF), the Wellcome Trust, DARPA and Big Pharma which is increasingly dominated by the Pfizer-GSK partnership established barely four months before the onset of the Covid-19 crisis in early January 2020.
The Covid 19 “Vaccine” from the very outset in January 2021 has been conducive to a Worldwide Upward Movement in Mortality
This is Not Manslaughter. It’s Murder
Yes, It’s a killer vaccine. That message should be loud and clear.
This is happening all over the world: children and adolescents are dying.
Crimes against humanity, crimes against our children.
Read More :
https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-covid-killer-vaccine-people-are-dying-all-over-the-world-its-a-criminal-undertaking/5800358
we live in the Annunaki world of lies !
dont listen to the ruling Annunaki media !
Carl Jones–the People vs. the government is also politics, even, or especially, in a One-Party State
Have the ‘ACAB’s’ started to round up & prosecute !
Have the media gone wholesale ‘headline’ informative.
(Imagine that !)
I, like most of you probably. was openly called ‘A Nut job’ because I riled against the narrative, & refused all the restrictions. now………..
I’m sick to death of people, Telling me, they “knew all along” & suggest various excuses, like “I only went along with it so I could go on holiday”. (grrrrrr) How shallow can people be. & claim they have done a ‘180’ in the process.
Are we now at a stage, Where education & the resulting ‘intelligence’ is devoid of any modicum of COMMON SENSE, That this whole fiasco is going to be passed off with a shrug of the shoulders & an indifferent frown, & as many of you have suggested, ‘Brushed under the carpet & forgotten’.
Yes. Don’t we know it.
And the proof !
Apparently we are still going to pay heavy taxes/price because the climate ‘issues’ won;t go away.
Jimmy Grant will still be encouraged & ALLOWED to by-pass all normal requirements for entry into the country.
We’ll still be under the tyrannical embrace ..& ACCEPT IT, of compound interest & all that that entails.
Dolphin Square, along with tatchelites will continue unabated, while family run enterprises continue to go out of ‘business’, & the medical profession remains baffled as to why heart attacks & cancers continue in people who did appear quite healthy/normal previously, literally weeks beforehand.
& of course, It will remain a CRIME….to mention ‘the Tribe’ & all their evil doings.
and still. After all what’s just happened recently, and if ‘all’ was revealed, Look at their reactions, that dumb, vacant stare, as you try & tell them about the 11th of Sept,
The Kellergi plan, That it was the Olympic that WAS sunk, That the moon landing never happened. etc etc (make your own list) And that ‘Nut job’ tag will still be thrown your way.
The show will go on, nothing is about to change for the better.
@ Glenn Ashton
I hear you my friend. Rarely do I agree with absolutely everything a commentor says but you hit the nail on the head for me.
Every commentor on this site is of great value to me, even the ones who I least agree with. I could enjoy a coffee etc with any of you.
Not every article Rixon puts up is trustworthy but cheers bro for the effort.