The Long Game

So, I’m laying awake this morning thinking about how unbelievable all this mass hysteria is, when the thought occurred to me, “Hey, it is unbelievable! Literally unbelievable.” As in, not to be believed. That’s not to say that what is happening isn’t happening, it clearly is. But the idea that this is a spontaneous uprising, that a Black felon dying during an arrest in Minneapolis actually sparked riots in places like Copenhagen and Berlin … that’s pretty far-fetched.

Now, we talk about “astroturf” and George Soros-funded organizations a lot, but it doesn’t take much digging to start uncovering companies like Crowds on Demand ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowds_on_Demand ), founded by Adam Swart.

From the Wiki, it’s easy to find out more of what’s going on by adhering to the principle “SJWs always project.” You look at what the SJWs are complaining about, then dig into the opposite. For example, John Oliver did an episode about astroturfing. Of course, he does it from the perspective of the left, that this is a thing that evil corporations do. He spends the entire episode making the case that astroturfing companies exist and are active all over, but then turns around and says “The very existence of groups like Crowds on Demand means that something authentic can now be tainted. In fact, conspiracy boards now regularly and wrongly cite Crowds on Demand as providing everything from paid protestors for Charlottesville to crisis actors for the Las Vegas shooting, and that is hugely dangerous!”

See what he’s doing there? When it’s the evil corporate right astroturfing, believe it, but left-wing astroturfers, no way, those are totes legit. Of course he ties the right-wing accusations into something like the Las Vegas shooting to try to emotionally influence his viewers.

He implies a lot about Rick Berman, “Dr. Evil” and the Center For Consumer Freedom, but when it comes to the meat of his accusations, he makes a point of saying he’s not allowed to legally express them, “I can’t say. I legally can’t say. I want to. I badly want to, but I’ve been explicitly told I can’t.” Well, why not? If he had actually done some real journalism and had evidence to back up what he was saying, of course he could say. Investigative journalism is a thing, he works for a very wealthy corporation and truth is a defense against libel and slander. By saying 'I can’t say,' what he’s really saying is that his claims are tendentious, and he can’t back them up. It’s funny that a sidebar to the article about the astroturfing episode is an article “Here’s Why it’s a Bad Idea to Sue John Oliver”. Yes, Oliver is just a brave truth-teller being silenced by The Man for telling the truth about Rick Berman.

So, since the marching orders for the Left are “Hate Rick Berman,” I decided to check out who hates Rick Berman and the Center for Consumer Freedom, now the Center for Organizational Research and Education. I noted that the wiki page for this organization is careful to detail concerns about its corporate funding. A lot of the subtext in Oliver’s show and a lot of left wing criticism of astroturfing is that if a corporation funds it, they must be lying, which is, of course, not self-evident. They simply want you to incorporate that assumption into your thinking.

Well, who hates CORE/CCF? Why, the CDC, CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest), MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), PETA, PCRM (Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine). Barring the CDC, which itself is a heavily politicized agency, these are all leftist groups and all arguably astroturfed.

CSPI particularly stuck out at me, as it is famous for its dishonest, astroturfed campaigns. Of course, its wiki page wants us to believe that it is not astroturfed at all, that its $20 million/year operating budget comes primarily from 900,000 subscriptions to its Nutrition Action Healthletter. For comparison, that’s significantly larger than the circulations of the New York Times or the Washington Post. It’s bigger than the print circulation of USA Today. It’s about half the circulation of Time Magazine, one of the biggest magazines in the world. And what do we know about Time Magazine? It’s in near financial ruin. It has changed hands several times over the past several years because it’s a dying business with declining readership. The subscription magazine business model is not a healthy one. Yet we’re to believe that this crappy newsletter has 900,000 reliable subscribers and expenses so low that it manages to fund most of the rest of the organization’s operations. I smell plastic grass. Tell me another story.

So, yes, astroturfing is big business, especially on the left (We know especially on the left, because it is the left complaining about it through John Oliver. See “SJWs always project”).

I believe the current BLM/Antifa protests are a heavily astroturfed psyop. Most of the protestors out there are legit, but that’s because it only takes a handful of astroturfers to play off the predictable responses of credulous leftist protestors. The fact that BLM is just a front group isn’t even arguable. BLM contributions go directly to the Democratic Party. I also think the entire thing has been planned out way beyond the seemingly chaotic moment, and is taking into account the response of the average normal citizen on the center to right.

First we have the response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, which was a truly fortuitous virus in that it is primarily deadly to the old – the most conservative demographic. It also spreads relatively easily, but is almost no danger to the youngest, most radical, credulous, left-leaning portion of the population. They ginned up fears of this virus and pushed to see how much totalitarian control they can exhibit over the world population (Spoiler: near total). If the virus had been treated normally, with normal moderate precautions, it would have really represented no particular threat to the world economy. Most of the harm was done by the response to the virus.

They waited for people who still care about civil liberties to start acting out, then they demonized them: crazy, anti-Semitic, racist, anti-science nuts who are risking everyone’s lives by gathering in crowds and spreading the virus!

Then the George Floyd protests. A total flip of the script. The mainstream right is supposed to react exactly as it has: “See what hypocrites they are! Protests on the right were crazy, but when these BLM and Antifa goons protest, it’s fine!” The people organizing the protests make sure they’re as violent and unreasonable as possible. Lots of rioting and looting. And that’s not hard, because they’ve been nurturing Black and left-wing Anti-Americanism for decades.

All the BLM demands, all the ostentatious kneeling and submission to Blacks, yeah, that’s going to be with us a long time, but it’s not really the endgame. Neither is the defunding/abolition of cops. Anyone with a brain knows that is never going to happen. Oh, they will allow some defunding, all right, but just enough to cause enough disorder to scare normie back into line.

What’s coming is, they let the normies do their work for them. Normie is going to get increasingly shocked by all the apparent insanity. They still haven’t recovered from being terrified about COVID-19. First the crazies on the right (never mind that they were peaceful), then the crazies on the left! Rising crime rates over the summer or the next year or two will cement the call: “What we need around here is just some freaking order!”

“Oh, please don’t throw me in that briar patch, Br’er Normie!” And order is just what the authoritarian left is waiting in the wings to provide. Of course the left can stop the riots – they started them. Of course they can refund the cops -- they defunded them! And those civil liberties, clearly they were getting out of control. We need to dial back those crazy freedoms because, darn it, they were just being misused by both the left and the right! We want everyone to be safe. We want everyone to get along. We need to dial back the “racism” and “hatred.” We need to make sure that the stuff people say online is more “responsible.” And thank goodness Google, Twitter and Facebook are there to help!

You want a picture of the future? Imagine a Trust and Safety Council stomping on dissident speech, forever.

ETA: When I talk about the mainstream right acting exactly as planned, this is exactly the sort of thing I am talking about. What is going on in the video discussed in the post is absolutely not going to convince normie that gun control is a bad idea!