4:16:23

The New World Order, Ralph Epperson, 1987:

Michael Schellenberger, 2023:

“There is a pattern. Those urging censorship of ‘misinformation’ are spreading it. Those who condemn ‘extremism’ demand extreme policies. And those who denounce ‘hate’ are filled with loathing for their political enemies.”

Exiting the Vampire Castle, Mark Fisher, 2013

“But the rejection of identitarianism can only be achieved by the re-assertion of class. A left that does not have class at its core can only be a liberal pressure group. Class consciousness is always double: it involves a simultaneous knowledge of the way in which class frames and shapes all experience, and a knowledge of the particular position that we occupy in the class structure. It must be remembered that the aim of our struggle is not recognition by the bourgeoisie, nor even the destruction of the bourgeoisie itself. It is the class structure – a structure that wounds everyone, even those who materially profit from it – that must be destroyed. The interests of the working class are the interests of all; the interests of the bourgeoisie are the interests of capital, which are the interests of no-one. Our struggle must be towards the construction of a new and surprising world, not the preservation of identities shaped and distorted by capital. If this seems like a forbidding and daunting task, it is. But we can start to engage in many prefigurative activities right now. Actually, such activities would go beyond pre-figuration – they could start a virtuous cycle, a self-fulfilling prophecy in which bourgeois modes of subjectivity are dismantled and a new universality starts to build itself. We need to learn, or re-learn, how to build comradeship and solidarity instead of doing capital’s work for it by condemning and abusing each other. This doesn’t mean, of course, that we must always agree – on the contrary, we must create conditions where disagreement can take place without fear of exclusion and excommunication.

We need to think very strategically about how to use social media – always remembering that, despite the egalitarianism claimed for social media by capital’s libidinal engineers, that this is currently an enemy territory, dedicated to the reproduction of capital. But this doesn’t mean that we can’t occupy the terrain and start to use it for the purposes of producing class consciousness. We must break out of the ‘debate’ set up by communicative capitalism, in which capital is endlessly cajoling us to participate, and remember that we are involved in a class struggle. The goal is not to ‘be’ an activist, but to aid the working class to activate – and transform – itself. Outside the Vampires’ Castle, anything is possible.”

Michael Schellenberger, “The Narcissism Of Woke Totalitarianism,” 2023

“The [Roald] Dahl censorship is occurring against the backdrop of an increasingly censorious Wokeism. Over the last few weeks, we have seen a witch hunt against psychologist Jordan Peterson, an open letter from 1,000 writers, authors, and journalists demanding that The New York Times not report on problems with prescribing gender dysphoric children puberty blockers, and a State Department-funded “Disinformation Index,” which slandered The New York Post, Reason, and other reputable publications as fonts of disinformation, and urged corporations to redirect their advertising spending to publications including Huffington Post…Totalitarianism is characterized by efforts to completely remake every aspect of society, including cultural life, and Wokeism today is re-writing texts, de-certifying disfavored individuals, cutting off funding, getting people fired, and pressuring social media platforms to deny access or secretly censor. Woke totalitarians are plainly seeking the total reorganization of society along the lines of a racist “hierarchy of oppression” that puts black and indigenous people above other “people of color,” (i.e., Latinos and Asians) as a single “BIPOC” ruling class. This is ostensibly to create the reverse of past hierarchies and is thus transparently vengeful and racist. It is worth reminding ourselves that freedom of speech is not just ‘another issue;’ it is the foundation of democracy. Without it, we can’t address any other problem, particularly sensitive ones concerning race and sex. And without it, we cannot truly live as free, dignified, and civilized humans.”