Installing new governance

The world we live in is still mostly governed by a ponzi scheme of power, wealth and celebrity. Those at the top of the ponzi scheme are standing on nothing but the world’s acceptance of their right to be there. This acceptance is coerced from the billions of people below by presentation and control of information. As soon as enough people realize the emperors have no clothes, it will collapse with incredible speed.

Megaphones

The five eyes empire has existed in a large part due to thought control through media ownership. The right to free speech was stolen from people, who are called trolls if they use their newfound voices, and perverted into a freedom for the powerful corporate press to overwhelm the voices of the people. NGOs force sovereign nations to allow huge corporate megaphones control of the presentation of information to their own populations. The only alternative that could compete in the past was state media. In the five eyes and much of the west, state media and imperial media are the same so the people were kept tranquilized. States with governments who want to combat imperial control face international wrath if they remove or restrict the imperial media.

The role of corporate media in the 2002 two day coup in Venezuela was widely recognized, particularly in spreading false information internationally to aid with a rapid recognition of an illegitimate government as also happened in Paraguay in 2012 and so many other places.  But when a heavily US funded campaign for another Venezuela coup attempt in 2014 complained that corporate media were being censored, some of those who fight censorship on the Internet leaped to help amplify the massive voice of English speaking corporate media over the voices of Venezuelans and punish Venezuela’s elected government for fighting imperial coercion and coup incitement. Anti-censorship anarchists acted as tools of the empire and censored the people with corporate noise.

The same mindset objected to the ‘silencing’ of RSD Nation which had speaking engagements canceled by the #takedownjulienblanc campaign. RSD Nation is a multinational corporation at the forefront of the ‘pick up artist’ scam industry. They promise to teach social skills to awkward young men and instead demean them and teach them behaviours certain to destroy their social life and likely to get them assaulted or arrested. They also teach men to assault women. They have a huge corporate platform which is further amplified by fawning corporate media profiles. When public outrage cancelled engagements, those brainwashed by a corporate definition of censorship were horrified.

People are taught to scream ‘Censorship!’ every time a demagogue or corporation has their volume reduced to a level more closely approaching that of everyone else. They were taught this by the demagogues and media corporations. Censorship is when a person is prevented from speaking. Everyone at RSD Nation could still speak, their defenders could still defend them. They have the right to speak, they do not have the right to international corporate amplification of their speech. If someone at your dinner table starts speaking into a bullhorn, removing it is not censorship. The bullhorn was censoring everyone else. Neither the boys and men he was exploiting nor the women he was teaching them to assault had equivalent platforms, and in any case, removal of a demagogue from his pedestal is not censorship. We are governed by propaganda and demagogues, this is just revocation of power.

The five eyes in general and caucasian men in particular have all censored everyone else in the world with the megaphones they themselves were born with. The people have the right to choose amplification and the people have the right to remove demagogues. Corporations don’t exist except as a concept, the principals behind them are the corporate oligarchs and turning down their volume is removing corporate influence. The people brought the oligarchs into this world and the people can take them out again, and this is how it is done. 

People who are actually being censored are ignored. No NGOs are fighting the censorship of those in refugee camps, those without regional Internet access, those in prisons, those homeless or too impoverished to afford online access, Gazans whose power has been cut, indigenous populations of South America with greatly restricted access, those with language barriers, or illiteracy. These obstacles are not even recognized as censorship but their right to be heard publicly has been taken.

There have been several actions in the last couple years to amplify those unheard voices. In 2013, OpRohingya brought a genocide which had been almost completely ignored by the media to global attention. In 2013, OpGabon convinced a much wider audience of the incredible but well-documented fact of ritual killings in Gabon and complicity at the highest levels of government. Prior to OpGabon, Gabon President Ali Bongo had denied ritual killings existed and refused permission for citizens to conduct a protest march. After the launch of the campaign, he not only acknowledged ritual killings and promised action against them, but his wife co-opted the march and posed as an activist fighting against her own husband’s policies for a cause he denied existing two weeks earlier. Fear of this new awareness canceled a visit between US President Obama and President Bongo, at that time both a member of the UNSC and frequent member and soon to be President of the UNHCR. 

With every campaign we move a bit closer, the bubble the oligarchs are standing on becomes thinner, the voices below become louder and the oligarchs become more nervous. A campaign to raise awareness of a hunger strike at Guantanamo contained four words, “We will shut Guantanamo” which caused the US military to disconnect the Internet at Guantanamo for five days, effectively silencing themselves and acknowledging their fear of simple public awareness. Several campaigns worldwide against ineffective or unjust police and court action have forced cases to be investigated or reopened.

Self governance is choosing who and what to amplify. Everyone has the right to be heard publicly, everyone does not have the right to be amplified.

Thought bubbles

Private conversations and quiet groups are essential for some people to feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and exploring ideas. Most people have some conversations they would like to have in small groups. Some of us belong to hundreds of restricted forums of one kind or another where we incubate ideas and collect our thoughts. Sometimes information needs to be shared that would be harmful shared publicly.

These closed forums with small trusted circles are essential if thought is to progress. Ideas which seem radical and dangerous if presented too quickly, developed improperly or to the wrong initial audience may be killed (sometimes along with their originator) before they ever have a chance to be presented or heard properly.

As soon as the idea is developed, it should be presented to the wider society it is meant to influence. A fully developed idea which is being taught and discussed by only one segment of the society runs the risk of developing a cult in the middle of a society. The nature of cults will lead to its members being isolated and probably shunned from the society they were a part of. Since many of these forums are closed due to a fear of rejection by society, the longer they remain echo chambers closed to outside thought, the greater their fear and isolation becomes. If a villain is presented for the cult to hate and the villain is sufficiently dehumanized that the cult loses empathy for them, the society is harbouring an auto-immune virus that will attack them in the future. States which act as closed thought bubbles and promote hatred are at risk of external war.

If the demagogues that grow out of these thought bubbles are powerful enough, they can turn large segments of a society against its own people, even convince them to commit long-term mass murder as the current examples of Monk Wirathu, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and Abubakar Shekau are showing yet again. If their disciples are met with equal violence and hatred, the divide is complete, two polarized sides are formed, actions and reactions drive each farther apart. 

The sociopathic behaviour of the PUA industry is a very natural result of not being able to hear other voices, particularly as it is targeted at those already suffering from an inability to connect to others. People who do not feel accepted by society gather in closed forums where everyone reinforces each others beliefs and anyone who disagrees is banned or derided. Information is only presented which reinforces their beliefs. The ‘other’ is demonized as being impossible to talk to. The participants of RSD Nation seminars are derided and humiliated to further lower their self-esteem and make them more dependent on these forums for validation and more likely to behave in a way the group deems acceptable. Opposing closed bubbles with an exclusive interest in opposing information are created for the feminist communities and then the two react off each other with the media happily adding fuel. Just like the jihadi forums and others with extreme views, they find they are met with shock and disgust in the wider society and feel more and more like they can only talk freely among themselves. 

There is rarely an objection when a military or government ruler is tried for crimes against humanity they only ordered and did not commit themselves. Charles Manson was imprisoned for murders he did not physically take part in. Is the PUA community responsible for the recent murders by Elliot Rodger? Are the community leaders responsible? In a decentralized community, who is a leader? These thought bubbles provide opportunity for many dangerous legal precedents, more outlawing of conspiracy, of privacy and of thought.

Self-governance is auto-coercion. People are so accustomed to being moved in a solid ideological block by some paternalistic authority that they no longer take responsibility for their own thought much less that of others. The myth of free will frees everyone of responsibility for any action they did not actually take themselves. But social coercion always exists and no one is without potential influence on those around them. Those who let their forums become closed to outside thought, those who allowed demonization and othering of those locked outside, those who allowed dangerous demagogues to rise, all bear some responsibility. A society is a network of relationships. A self-governing society is one which uses those relationships to form an auto-coercive, living culture of norms and acceptable behaviour.

Self-governance does not mean no one is responsible. It means everyone is.

The right to associate or not to associate

A state is an economic market. People are catalogued as the product of a state and hard coercion in the form of death and imprisonment is used to force people in or out of the pre-ordained markets. A state is tyranny and its borders are tyranny.

A nation is a group voluntarily associated and bound by a living social contract of agreed upon behaviour and obligations to the nation. A nation has the right to accept anyone who agrees to the social contract and shun anyone who does not. Nations are completely within their rights to refuse to associate with demagogues from the PUA industry or anyone else they wish to shun. If other nations do not agree with them, if for instance a nation’s shunning creates apartheid or refusal of refugees or any other practice which outside nations disagree with, they can isolate and shun the first nation.

This has been happening recently with nations boycotting Israeli corporations in response to their war crimes. Even though the states are perfectly accepting of Israeli criminal action, the nations within them have used the BDS and BlockTheBoat actions to bypass states and shun Israeli corporations directly. State sanctions today such as those placed on Cuba, Iran and North Korea are directed at entire populations. Since the victims of state sanctions have not all voluntarily accepted the principles they are being shunned for, these sanctions are collective punishment and a war crime. Shunning Julien Blanc is not a war crime. Neither is shunning Israeli corporations.

One effect of a world run by imperialism is those from the top of the ponzi scheme are accustomed to what they feel is their right to travel everywhere and behave in any manner they wish as long as they do not actually violate laws. If they have enough money and the right passport, they have access to lodging, food, and all they require to treat traveling as an imperial safari where they can float above the inhabitants and the approval of those they are visiting is in no way necessary. Julien Blanc had the right passport and paperwork, he had the money, he had the approval of every corporate and government body internationally. The disapproval of people has stripped all of those privileges from him and left him just an unwelcome visitor, welcomed by states but shunned by nations.

The emperors have no clothes

This changes everything. No one realizes it yet, but nations took control of borders from states. States are being sanctioned directly by people worldwide with no involvement from their governments. International aid is being provided directly without NGOs. A demagogue was stripped of his power by the people he demonized. An international stigmergic action ordered a long string of international corporations to shun another international corporation. In 2010, corporate and government shunning was ordered by states against Wikileaks despite approval from the people. In 2014 a much bigger corporate and government shunning was ordered by people against RSD Nation despite approval from the states. 

If we can do this, we can also shun Bush, Blair, and every demagogue. If we can create an international stigmergic action to shun the entire PUA industry and the principals behind it, we can also shun the entire fracking industry and the principals behind it. If we can drive people from our nations, we can accept refugees and others into them.

We are in a prison of our own minds holding our own chains around us. We create our oligarchs and fight for their right to oppress us. We recognize their vapour wealth and vapour capital as real. But everywhere on earth, it is changing.

A new form of governance is already here.

This article has been stigmergicly translated into French by hellekin.