Suppression/Propaganda in Media

[Elvis]

they removed their data caps and nothing happened. It's almost as if the caps are there to fleece the customers and nothing else.

Exactly! The ISPs add nothing, they only get in the way leech money.

[alloneword]

C J Hopkins was acquitted yesterday.

His statement to the court (for posterity):

Berlin District Court, January 23, 2024

My name is CJ Hopkins. I am an American playwright, author, and political satirist. My plays have been produced and received critical acclaim internationally. My political satire and commentary is read by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. 20 years ago, I left my own country because of the fascistic atmosphere that had taken hold of the USA at that time, the time of the US invasion of Iraq, a war of aggression based on my government's lies. I emigrated to Germany and made a new life here in Berlin, because I believed that Germany, given its history, would be the last place on earth to ever have anything to do with any form of totalitarianism again.

The gods have a strange sense of humor. This past week, thousands of people have been out in the streets all over Germany protesting against fascism, chanting "never again is now." Many of these people spent the past three years, 2020 to 2023, unquestioningly obeying orders, parroting official propaganda, and demonizing anyone who dared to question the government's unconstitutional and authoritarian actions during the so-called Covid pandemic. Many of these same people, those who support Palestinian rights, are now shocked that the new form of totalitarianism they helped usher into existence is being turned against them.

And here I am, in criminal court in Berlin, accused of disseminating pro-Nazi propaganda in two Tweets about mask mandates. The German authorities have had my speech censored on the Internet, and have damaged my reputation and income as an author. One of my books has been banned by Amazon in Germany. All this because I criticized the German authorities, because I mocked one of their decrees, because I pointed out one of their lies.

This turn of events would be absurdly comical if it were not so infuriating. I cannot adequately express how insulting it is to be forced to sit here and affirm my opposition to fascism. For over thirty years, I have written and spoken out against fascism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism etc. Anyone can do an Internet search, find my books, read the reviews of my plays, read my essays, and discover who I am and what my political views are in two or three minutes. And yet I am accused by the German authorities of disseminating pro-Nazi propaganda. I am accused of doing this because I posted two Tweets challenging the official Covid narrative and comparing the new, nascent form of totalitarianism that it has brought into being -- i.e., the so-called "New Normal" -- to Nazi Germany.

Let me be very clear. In those two Tweets, and in my essays throughout 2020 to 2022, and in my current essays, I have indeed compared the rise of this new form of totalitarianism to the rise of the best-known 20th-Century form of totalitarianism, i.e., Nazi Germany. I have made this comparison, and analyzed the similarities and differences between these two forms of totalitarianism, over and over again. And I will continue to do so. I will continue to analyze and attempt to explain this new, emerging form of totalitarianism, and to oppose it, and warn my readers about it.

The two Tweets at issue here feature a swastika covered by one of the medical masks that everyone was forced to wear in public during 2020 to 2022. That is the cover art of my book. The message conveyed by this artwork is clear. In Nazi Germany, the swastika was the symbol of conformity to the official ideology. During 2020 to 2022, the masks functioned as the symbol of conformity to a new official ideology. That was their purpose. Their purpose was to enforce people's compliance with government decrees and conformity to the official Covid-pandemic narrative, most of which has now been proven to have been propaganda and lies.

Mask mandates do not work against airborne viruses. This had been understood and acknowledged by medical experts for decades prior to the Spring of 2020. It has now been proven to everyone and acknowledged by medical experts again. The science of mask mandates did not suddenly change in March of 2020. The official narrative changed. The official ideology changed. The official "reality" changed. Karl Lauterbach was absolutely correct when he said, "The masks always send out a signal." They signal they sent out from 2020 to 2022 was, "I conform. I do not ask questions. I obey orders."

That is not how democratic societies function. That is how totalitarian systems function.

Not every form of totalitarianism is the same, but they share common hallmarks. Forcing people to display symbols of conformity to official ideology is a hallmark of totalitarian systems. Declaring a "state of emergency" and revoking constitutional rights for no justifiable reason is a hallmark of totalitarian systems. Banning protests against government decrees is a hallmark of totalitarian systems. Inundating the public with lies and propaganda designed to terrify people into mindless obedience is a hallmark of totalitarian systems. Segregating societies is a hallmark of totalitarian systems. Censoring dissent is a hallmark of totalitarianism. Stripping people of their jobs because they refuse to conform to official ideology is a hallmark of totalitarian systems. Fomenting mass hatred of a "scapegoat" class of people is a hallmark of totalitarianism. Demonizing critics of the official ideology is a hallmark of totalitarian systems. Instrumentalizing the law to punish dissidents and make examples of critics of the authorities is a hallmark of totalitarianism.

I have documented the emergence of all of these hallmarks of totalitarianism in societies throughout the West — including but not limited to Germany — since March of 2020. I will continue to do so. I will continue to warn readers about this new, emerging form of totalitarianism and attempt to understand it, and oppose it. I will compare this new form of totalitarianism to earlier forms of totalitarianism, and specifically to Nazi Germany, whenever it is appropriate and contributes to our understanding of current events. That is my job as a political satirist and commentator, and as an author, and my responsibility as a human being.

The German authorities can punish me for doing that. You have the power to do that. You can make an example of me. You can fine me. You can imprison me. You can ban my books. You can censor my content on the Internet, which you have done. You can defame me, and damage my income and reputation as an author, as you have done. You can demonize me as a "conspiracy theorist," as an "anti-vaxxer," a "Covid denier," an "idiot," and an "extremist," which you have done. You can haul me into criminal court and make me sit here, in Germany, in front of my wife, who is Jewish, and deny that I am an anti-Semite who wants to relativize the Holocaust. You have the power to do all these things.

However, I hope that you will at least have the integrity to call this what it is, and not hide behind false accusations that I am somehow supporting the Nazis by comparing the rise of a new form of totalitarianism to the rise of an earlier totalitarian system, one that took hold of and ultimately destroyed this country in the 20th Century, and murdered millions in the process, because too few Germans had the courage to stand up and oppose it when it first began. I hope that you will at least have the integrity to not pretend that you actually believe I am disseminating pro-Nazi propaganda, when you know very well that is not what I am doing.

No one with any integrity believes that is what I am doing. No one with any integrity believes that is what my Tweets in 2022 were doing. Every journalist that has covered my case, everyone in this courtroom, understands what this prosecution is actually about. It has nothing to do with punishing people who actually disseminate pro-Nazi propaganda. It is about punishing dissent, and making an example of dissidents in order to intimidate others into silence.

That is not how democratic nations function. That is how totalitarian systems function.

What I hope even more is that this court will put an end to this prosecution, and apply the law fairly, and not allow it to be used as a pretext to punish people like me who criticize government dictates, people who expose the lies of government officials, people who refuse to deny facts, who refuse to perform absurd rituals of obedience on command, who refuse to unquestioningly follow orders.

Because the issue here is much larger and much more important than my little "Tweet" case.

We are, once again, at a crossroads. Not just here in Germany, but throughout the West. People went a little crazy, a little fascist, during the so-called Covid pandemic. And now, here we are. There are two roads ahead. We have to choose ... you, me, all of us. One road leads back to the rule of law, to democratic principles. The other road leads to authoritarianism, to societies where authorities rule by decree, and force, and twist the law into anything they want, and dictate what is and isn't reality, and abuse their power to silence anyone who disagrees with them.

That is the road to totalitarianism. We have been down that road before. Please, let's not do it again.

[Belligerent Savant]

^^^^^^
This is excellent, and spot-on. Cheers, alloneword.

[guruilla]

I haven't been following this thread or (obviously) posting at this board for a while; but I just came by to see if there were any threads on the Holocaust™ since I am venturing down that rabbit hole currently at my substack. I wasn't really surprised to see locked threads on the subject, such as Holocaust Religion/ Industry in the Service of Israel (locked by Project Willow after a mere 2 days in 2014).

I then checked the RI rules from Jeff W in 2006 and sure enough:

Propagation of fascist, neo-Nazi and "white pride" causes, including sympathetically linking to sites which advocate such, will not be permitted. This includes revisionist histories of the Holocaust.

My reason for looking into this subject again (I started to back in 2009 but backed away because I could see it wouldn't end well), besides the obviously changing landscape in 2024 viz a viz Israel (among other things; covid has also demonstrated how effectively a massive lie can take hold over billions of people), was realizing that: a) since it is effectively illegal to question the Holocaust in 19 countries, many seemingly honest, non-ideologically-motivated researchers have been seriously shafted by these laws (like CJ Hopkins, who affirms the Holocaust; or Roger Waters, ditto!); b) this fact in itself has been remarkably ignored over the years, not just at RI and by otherwise conscientious citizens who normally care about freedom of speech, but even by me (despite knowing something was off about the equation, repeated by Jeff above, that Holocaust revisionism = neo-Nazism).

Since it is quite possibly the biggest fish of all as regards suppression propaganda in the media, I decided to go after the white whale of conspiracy theories, chips fall where they may. My approach is summed up as follows:

So what if, then, in the spirit of honest inquiry, we were to talk about alleged Holocaust Deniers in the spirit of “innocent until proven guilty,” to give them the benefit of the doubt as human beings who might be driven by something other than hatred? What if we were to dispassionately examine their arguments? And what if, by doing so, we sometimes found not hatred or insanity (or a psyoperative posing as a researcher), but a sincere desire to get to the truth?

I might add, what if we found also some truth? Then we'd really be f***ed.

Anyway, I hope this wont get BS's thread locked (or myself banned, though I am OK with that); but it seems to me that it is time to ask, fearlessly, whether our priority is to the truth, or to staying on ideologically safe ground even if it means upholding lies (no matter how large they might turn out to be).

For those interested, my current series is here: https://childrenofjob.substack.com/

[Belligerent Savant]

.
I always welcome your perspectives here, guruilla; among other traits, your musings often exhibit courage, an increasingly rare trait.

I will read through your piece as time allows but the below passage from the first few paragraphs certainly resonate:

Researching an established historical narrative … to see how it holds up to scrutiny involves two angles of approach:

1) Checking the evidential body behind the narrative to see if it is accurate

2) Looking for counter-evidence that refutes the narrative

In the process of this rearrangement of evidence, it is more than merely tempting to assemble a new narrative—it is unavoidable. The main thing, then, is to avoid, as much as possible, premature narrative-building, out of a desire to “win the argument”—including, or especially, the one in our own minds.

The desire to reduce cognitive dissonance, as it increases in the face of two contradicting versions of reality/truth, can certainly be overwhelming. We want to make sense of the new evidence as quickly as we can, to escape the gravitational pull—the spell—of the old narrative, which is constantly trying to pull us back in (even though we can no longer quite believe in it).

[guruilla]

Thanks, BS.

To be doubly clear, in case anyone's starting to feel anxious here (inc mod's), the Holo-Denial narrative is useful as an example of (undeniable) suppression (and fairly easily provable propaganda in the MS narrative), independently of how accurate any of the claims of revisionists turn out to be, provided they are sincerely & not ideologically motivated (which I have found easy enough to confirm to my own satisfaction, eg Nick Kollerstorm, with whom I spoke recently for Jobcast).

And in a wider sense, precisely because this whole area of mis- and disinfo is designed to fuel a kind of righteous obsession, on both sides, it presents an opportunity to engage with the problem of propaganda-suppression in a way that doesn't play into the divide-&conquer tactics behind it, and to develop more "neti neti" equanimity in the face of schismogenetic forces, both within & without.

It might be timely to post a quote I'm sure has appeared at this thread somewhere on its 41 pages at least once already:

“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” (William Casey, CIA Director, 1981 to 1987)

"Propaganda-derangement-syndrome" (PDS) = the sabotaging of human sense-making abilities via cognitive warfare, beginning & ending with our ability to discern truth from falsehood. What can't be said too often, IMO, is that this isn't only a means, but an end in & of itself - as implied in the above quote.

Desired result: inmates becomes guards; populace polices itself, internally as well as externally.

[DrEvil]

I think the reason for the "no Holocaust denial" rule is pretty obvious: keep the fucking Nazis out. You let one Nazi have a drink at your bar, next week he comes back with a couple of mates, and before you know it all your regulars have left and you're the Nazi bar.

May not be much of an issue now that most of the regulars already left, but back when Jeff made the rules there were a lot more people posting. Easier to just nip it in the bud than deal with the bullshit and the thinly disguised "just asking questions" brigade.

[Elvis]

Check this out!

"State of the Not So Free Press with Mickey Huff"

https://realprogressives.org/podcast_ep ... ckey-huff/

“We’ve been trying to get people to stop saying ‘mainstream media’ because there’s nothing mainstream about 90 percent of the media being controlled by 6 private, for-profit corporations or 5 other big tech companies. There’s nothing mainstream, or Main Street, about the ideas and the views that they platform. It’s corporate media or establishment legacy press, and then there’s independent media which means very little.”
— Mickey Huff

Project Censored was founded by a communications and sociology professor in the 1970s. He asked himself how it was that Richard Nixon was elected by a landslide despite ample coverage of his misdeeds and corruption in the independent alternative media. And why did it take so long for the establishment press to catch up?

Steve’s guest Mickey Huff discusses the work of Project Censored today and the current state of the press. They talk about how the corporate media’s coverage is based on American exceptionalism and propaganda efforts, as well as the receding role of independent local outlets. They emphasize the importance of critical media literacy and how the media landscape has become more complicated with the rise of social media. They touch on the influence of big tech and billionaires on the media, and look at it as another example of corporate exploitation of workers.

Mickey Huff is an educator, radio broadcast producer/host, podcaster, author/editor, the current director of Project Censored, and the president of the nonprofit Media Freedom Foundation. Since 2009, he has coedited the annual volume of the Censored book series and has contributed numerous chapters to these works since 2008. His most recent books include United States of Distraction: Media Manipulation in Post-Truth America (and what we can do about it), co-authored with Nolan Higdon, and Project Censored’s State of the Free Press In 2024, co-edited with Andy Lee Roth. Mickey is currently a professor of social science, history, and journalism at Diablo Valley College where he co-chairs the History Area and is chair of the Journalism Department.

https://www.projectcensored.org

On Twitter:

@mythinfo
@ProjectCensored

[alloneword]

"Propaganda-derangement-syndrome" (PDS) = the sabotaging of human sense-making abilities via cognitive warfare, beginning & ending with our ability to discern truth from falsehood. What can't be said too often, IMO, is that this isn't only a means, but an end in & of itself - as implied in the above quote.

Desired result: inmates becomes guards; populace polices itself, internally as well as externally.

One of the things that became glaringly apparent to me over the past few years is that the purpose of so much of this propaganda is not so much to tell you what to think, but rather it is carefully engineered to try and convince you what others think.

You touched on this in one of your podcasts, regarding the human mind being hard-wired to be mortally afraid of social ostracization and becoming cast out from one's social group. This appears to have a deep evolutionary basis, in that such an occurrence would quite possibly have meant literal death.

This existential dread has proved to be a most effective leverage point, the employment of which is not even wholly reliant on the creation of the initial division - you can literally have a group that who are all disposed to the same opinion, yet if they are prevented by such a fear from individually voicing that common thought, it becomes easy to manipulate them into appearing to support a view that is contrary to that held by all of them.

But certainly, if division (real or perceived) can be created, fostered or nurtured, this will be exploited by the propagandists. The more polarising, the better, as we see.

Which brings me to a second notion... That all of these 'big lies', these confected narratives that contain elements that don't stand up to even the most cursory scrutiny or inquiry, that they are this way by design. These threads are left hanging out, precisely for inquiring minds to pull on and become entangled on their way down the rabbit hole. A hole that divides all the way down, along a pre-dug trajectory, until reaching it's inevitable dead end.

If they made the narratives more coherent, or the rebuttal of doubters more convincing, they might actually decrease the divisionary effect and even risk propagating the opposite.

At it's (cold, dead) heart, I honestly think it's driven by a sort of jealousy. It always seems to strive toward a single goal, which is to make us believe that we are not - or actually manipulate us into not being - intrinsically social and co-operative (all be it 'conditionally'). It doesn't understand our true nature, it sees it as pitiable and weak and so despises it, wants to kill it and seeks to weaponise it against us.

Not content with dividing us across oceans, borders and religions, they've achieved it across communities, genders, kitchen tables, beds. I would say they'll keep going until they've divided our minds, but they show no signs of stopping there.

[guruilla]

I think the reason for the "no Holocaust denial" rule is pretty obvious: keep the fucking Nazis out. You let one Nazi have a drink at your bar, next week he comes back with a couple of mates, and before you know it all your regulars have left and you're the Nazi bar.

May not be much of an issue now that most of the regulars already left, but back when Jeff made the rules there were a lot more people posting. Easier to just nip it in the bud than deal with the bullshit and the thinly disguised "just asking questions" brigade.

[guruilla]

You touched on this in one of your podcasts, regarding the human mind being hard-wired to be mortally afraid of social ostracization and becoming cast out from one's social group. This appears to have a deep evolutionary basis, in that such an occurrence would quite possibly have meant literal death.

In the one I just posted y-day as happens; not sure if that's the one you are referring to? (Trigger Warning: It could be illegal in 19 countries to click on this link)

Which brings me to a second notion... That all of these 'big lies', these confected narratives that contain elements that don't stand up to even the most cursory scrutiny or inquiry, that they are this way by design. These threads are left hanging out, precisely for inquiring minds to pull on and become entangled on their way down the rabbit hole. A hole that divides all the way down, along a pre-dug trajectory, until reaching it's inevitable dead end.

If they made the narratives more coherent, or the rebuttal of doubters more convincing, they might actually decrease the divisionary effect and even risk propagating the opposite.

Truly excellent point, and where I seem to be heading with this "unholy" (heretical) research: to demonstrate this exact mechanism. Hopefully not in a self-sacrificial manner!

The main challenge, as I see it, is to resist the almost over-powering desire to make sense of the new data (and shore up the de-stabilization caused by old data that fails to hold up) by imposing the same narrative framework on it, i.e., good guys vs bad guys. We so badly need to take sides (find an identification point) in every story, to find a position that feels secure, that we end up joining the first controlled opp/psyop that comes along. We forget never, ever to suspend disbelief.

The answer seems to be - don't get fixated on facts or interpretations; keep moving until you get to the very last turtle holding the whole she-bangle together (Big Mama pun intended).

Or as I just read this morning:

The book of Job is about the impossibility of man’s ever understanding the causal links (the story), and yet his need to trust that God does indeed uphold the world, that there is a story there of which we are a part. It shows that man must neither simply accept that there is a story nor refuse to believe that there is one, but that it is his duty constantly to question God (and himself) about it. In Kierkegaard’s wonderful phrase, it keeps “the wound of the negative open.”

The Book of God: A Response to the Bible, p. 290, by Gabriel Josipovici

[Belligerent Savant]

.
Cogent observations/thoughts, guru and alloneword.
I've had similar thought patterns but the last few replies by each of you articulated well what remained somewhat ill-formed (at least as far as words/language) in my mind.

[alloneword]

i.e., good guys vs bad guys. We so badly need to take sides (find an identification point) in every story, to find a position that feels secure, that we end up joining the first controlled opp/psyop that comes along.

It's an idea I've discussed here before, but I'm not completely sure that this apparent preference for 'good guys vs bad guys' narrative isn't in itself manufactured.

By that I mean that when content with a narrative framework which eschews such familiar patterns does somehow make it's way into popular culture, it seems to be both critically and publicly acclaimed - 'The Wire', 'Game of Thrones' etc. So it could be argued that it's not purely down to 'what the audience demands'.

Your comment on finding of a 'position that feels secure'... That crystalised something - it's all so infantilising. 'Explain the world to me as if I was six'. Looking across my kids bookshelves, I find the odd 'original' versions. Spoiler: The wolf/witch/whatever eats the kids. The End.

Admittedly, to a certain extent in our daily lives we all place events into our own personal narrative framework, one in which we ourselves at least play the 'good guy', if not 'the hero'. Whether this tendency is innate, inculcated or a mixture of the two, it surely makes the suppression of our co-operative nature and the process of division much easier.

[guruilla]

I'm not completely sure that this apparent preference for 'good guys vs bad guys' narrative isn't in itself manufactured.

By that I mean that when content with a narrative framework which eschews such familiar patterns does somehow make it's way into popular culture, it seems to be both critically and publicly acclaimed - 'The Wire', 'Game of Thrones' etc. So it could be argued that it's not purely down to 'what the audience demands'.

Your comment on finding of a 'position that feels secure'... That crystalised something - it's all so infantilising. 'Explain the world to me as if I was six'. Looking across my kids bookshelves, I find the odd 'original' versions. Spoiler: The wolf/witch/whatever eats the kids. The End.

Admittedly, to a certain extent in our daily lives we all place events into our own personal narrative framework, one in which we ourselves at least play the 'good guy', if not 'the hero'. Whether this tendency is innate, inculcated or a mixture of the two, it surely makes the suppression of our co-operative nature and the process of division much easier.

Reminds me of a subtler point in your last I skipped over:

One of the things that became glaringly apparent to me over the past few years is that the purpose of so much of this propaganda is not so much to tell you what to think, but rather it is carefully engineered to try and convince you what others think.

What I got from this, intended or not, is that a big part of the schismogenesis is making us think that other people think things we find threatening, without really testing this assumption (because it can't be tested, on anything but a one-to-one basis; this problem is compounded, and then some, by the internet, where NPCs have become a literal thing).

For example, the possible push to make it seem as though more people were agreeing with the covid-policies & mrNA drive than actually were: this can then make us more on guard, more inclined to double-down and take a stronger, more defended position, than we would otherwise, feeling like we need to keep the bastards at bay (viz a viz TDS & the fear of "deplorables").

"Woke" proceeds this way also: it assumes a position of superiority that asserts that anyone who is right-minded believes these things (it is on "the right side of history"); that can actually cause many people to get in line, because they think they are outnumbered when they are not (so it is a self-fulfilling bluff); on the flip side, when we take an anti-woke position as a reaction to this, and feel drawn to people who do the same, we are falling into the same trap, potentially, since many of those folk may be insincere or in countless other ways untrustworthy.

My enemy's enemy is not necessarily my friend, just as my friend's enemy isn't necessarily my enemy.

More importantly, it really can't ever be about numbers. All this group-think goes only in one direction, away from truth/the soul/reality, because if discerning what's true is based on how many people agree with me (or how safe my position feels), it is guaranteed I'll never get to the truth.

How much of the schismogenetic social engineering is all about theory of mind, creating it and controlling it? While we (here at RI) all know, for example, that the PTTB work day and night to control what most people think, what's less acknowledged or discussed is the effort to make us really care what other people think (why should we? I mean, they might be NPCs, right??). We then start to imagine all sorts of things they might be thinking, when truth be told we don't really know even if most people think at all (the evidence suggests not).

So my point about good vs bad narratives (which you zeroed in on) has to do with our need to cast ourselves in/identify with the "good guy" position in our own narratives (minds), which always involves casting others as bad guys. It doesn't really matter how nuanced our entertainments are, the fact is we always wind up investing in characters we like and (in a different way) in characters we dislike, if not detest; because otherwise there is no tension, no drama.

This is played out dramatically with any really sensitive issue around suppressed information and illegitimate (propaganda) narratives that do the suppressing (mentioning no names), which is when people "automatically" (though really they are being externally controlled but do not know it) assign an ideological motive and agenda (eg, Nazi! Bad!) to suppressed information, and specifically to the people who are trying to present it, which of course has baked into it the presumption that they are on the side of the good, and justified in suppressing discussion.

For me, it is only logical to suppose that the more fiercely suppressed a certain kind of discussion, research, or fact-base is, and the more it is cast in the role of "bad guy" and punished accordingly, the more of a threat it must be seen as by TPTB. Only a very naive (I am being kind) soul could suppose, in 2024, that such forces of social control (the ADL, say) would be genuinely protecting us from fake news in order to stem back some evil tide, of Nazis or whatever. (Though this doesn't mean there isn't such a tide, such forces may also be intent on creating it, and/or know that suppressing it is the best way to create it).

Not that anyone is asking, but I only stayed away from the subject of HoloDen for so many years, not because I ever doubted it had validity, but simply because I knew the potential costs were too high. How many others have done the same is impossible to guess, except that they must be legion. OTOH, I also lacked the necessary maturity to tackle it, so I am glad I waited. And now it is more apparent than ever how the two sides of the "debate" potentially reinforce each other, and how essential keeping them at odds is to preventing any kind of real dialogue from occurring.

And as Kollerstrom said to me in the interview, without the possibility of honest discourse, we are truly lost.

[alloneword]

What I got from this, intended or not, is that a big part of the schismogenesis is making us think that other people think things we find threatening, without really testing this assumption (because it can't be tested, on anything but a one-to-one basis...)

You got my meaning exactly.

I'd add that even with the one-to-one 'meatspace' interactions, though, the assumption is likely to remain untested, through fear that the other person might think or believe things which would lead them to find us threatening. Our mutual aversion to conflict would be likely to ensure that testing the assumption is socially unacceptable. John Nash would have loved COVID.

To me, the really impressive/sick part of all that was in how it quickly became established that the most moral, caring and community-minded thing to do was to criminalise human interaction and call for the ostricisation - internment even - of healthy individuals who declined to submit to an experimental gene therapy or participate in the visual theatre of face covering... As a result, many even felt empowered and righteous enough that it even overcame that aversion to conflict. They actually succeeded in weaponising our own humanity against our humanity. Again.

But yes, I can't find issue with anything you've written here. It's all a trap, with division, mistrust and atomisation as it's intended outcome, now (as you hinted) becoming supercharged by novel applications of technology.

One thing I'm not sure if I got across regarding the non-'goodguy/badguy' narratives - basically, the characters are all dicks. They all do both laudable and lamentable things, but their actions tend to be dictated by some circumstantial or systemic driver over which they have no control and often little awareness, as opposed to some innate value or character trait. The tension and drama stem from that. I tend to find such narratives more relatable, being something of a dick myself.

In case you were wondering, I've kept an open mind on many issues, likely because I grew up within a culture where the equation: '1940s German = Nazi = Evil' was axiomatic, yet I always knew this to be false.
Thanks for the Kollerstrom interview, BTW. He didn't conform to the preconceptions I'd formed (based on what, I don't recall). I might have to steal his book from somewhere before I form any real opinion.