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By Paul McGuire
May 26, 2014
NewsWithViews.com

Newsweek/Newspeak ran a cover story, “The Plots to Destroy America,” about the danger of conspiracy theories and why government agents should use “cognitive infiltration” to infiltrate social media. The article argued that people who question the official story about current events are dangerous “extremists” and that they are guilty of what amounts to what author George Orwell called “Thought Crime” in his dystopian novel 1984.

In Orwell’s 1984 the purpose of “Newspeak” was to create a language that would enable a totalitarian state by making it virtually impossible for people to think. Freedom of speech, thought, and a free media are the primary threats to all totalitarian states. In every totalitarian state a specific vocabulary is created in order to prevent freedom of thought, speech, and the media. Terms like political correctness, “extremist,” and “conspiracy theory” are nothing more than ploys to control thought by those who have been brought under cult-like subjection to totalitarianism.

The Newsweek/Newspeak article accused anyone who held a view or opinion different from the official dogma of a corporate controlled media (owned by just six corporations) of being a very dangerous extremist. It is an irony that many of the self-appointed “Thought Police” in the media and academia who decry the religious dogma of the Catholic or Protestant churches are the zealots of the new religion of political correctness. It is these same zealots who are leading an inquisition against anyone who dares to question their religion. You can be sure that the zealots of the religion of political correctness have their own religious hierarchy where they have placed themselves as the enforcers of the Oligarchy.

It is an irony that the philosophical ideas of the Free Speech Movement that began at Berkeley University in the 1960s have given rise to an intellectual fascism that will in time transcend the authoritarianism of the Third Reich. The celebrated author, Thomas Pynchon would be labeled a dangerous extremist for his views in Gravity’s Rainbow and other books.

“There is a theory going around that the U.S.A. was and still is a gigantic Masonic plot under the ultimate control of the group known as the Illuminati. It is difficult to look for long at the strange single eye crowning the pyramid which is found on every dollar bill and not begin to believe the story, a little. Too many anarchists in 19th-century Europe—Bakunin, Proudhon, Salverio Friscia—were Masons for it to be pure chance. Lovers of global conspiracy, not all of them Catholic, can count on the Masons for a few good shivers and voids when all else fails.” - Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

The author of the article “The Plots to Destroy America,” Kurt Eichenwald, has written a number of good articles and the novel, The Informant, which was made into a feature film. I don’t know what Eichenwald’s motives were in writing the article, whether financial or agenda-driven, but the article was way below his usual pay grade… intellectually dishonest from beginning to end. The article lumps all those who question the official story line and conspiracies into a contrived generalized mass of wacko-tin-foil hat conspiracy theorists. In order to make the Orwellian narrative “The Plots to Destroy America” work the author carefully cherry picks the least credible conspiracy theories, a string of cartoon character conspiracy theory cultural icons and spins words in such a way to demonize those who raise conspiracy concerns, instead of actually dealing with any of the facts and documentation. But that is not the primary point. The reality is that we live in an America where we enjoy the Constitutional right to Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, and Freedom of the Press. This means people have the Constitutional right to believe and discuss any conspiracy theory, no matter how ridiculous, that they want to. That is what Freedom of Speech is all about and that is the difference between America and nations like the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and Nazi Germany.

Eichenwald writes “Extremist organizations latched on to Agenda 21 as an attempt by the U.N. and the ‘New World Order’ to seize private property to advance the causes of communism and to crush all dissent.“ He makes no attempt to factually address the above statement which he himself wrote and deliberately manipulated in order to make it appear absurd. Throughout the article he carefully concocts statements or takes statements out of context in order defeat his own “straw man” arguments. But he never addresses the issues he raises; he simply censors them in an Orwellian style by repeating the mantra “extremist” and “extremist organizations.” The issue is not whether or not these statements are true, false or an exaggeration; the issue is that people have the right to believe them without fear of being treated like “Thought Criminals” and subject to “cognitive infiltration.”

The implication that people who hold what the Oligarchy call “extremist” views are criminals or insane is reminiscent of the Soviet Union, where the secret police would routinely label all political dissidents or anyone who dared to question the official dogma as insane and lock them up in mental hospitals.

Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World, argued in favor of a “Scientific Dictatorship” ruled by an elite. This is not a conspiracy theory; you can actually hear Huxley’s words recorded on audio on a number of internet sites. But even Huxley recognized that the people whom our society considers normal are the ones who think inside the box, and they are actually the ones who are insane because they have perfectly adjusted to an abnormal society.

“The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.” - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

Eichenwald continues “But accusing political opponents of serious wrongdoing based on unsubstantiated nonsense plays havoc with social discourse. When each side attacks the other based on wild theories—calling them terrorists, anti-American, murderers, racists and the like—the tribal divisions cripple basic governance.” The hypocrisy of that statement is stunning because by calling people “extremists” you are destroying social discourse.

Newsweek’s/Newspeak’s article calls for the ideas of Cass Sunstein, a professor at Harvard Law School, to be implemented. Sunstein wrote Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas, where he suggests that there should be “cognitive infiltration of extremist groups,” which means secret government agents should enter chat rooms and join social networks and introduce doubts about conspiracy theories.

Newsweek’s/Newspeak’s article calls for the kind of totalitarian state that George Orwell warned of in 1984, Aldous Huxley wrote about in Brave New World, and Thomas Pynchon in Gravity’s Rainbow. The real danger to America is not from people who believe in conspiracy theories; the real threat is from those who have set themselves up as a ruling oligarchy and want to exercise authoritarian control over people’s thoughts, ideas, and speech. Terms like “cognitive infiltration” and calling people “extremists” are the language of an Orwellian totalitarian state. Freedom of speech and thought is essential to a free society.

While at Stanford, author Ken Kesey volunteered to take LSD as part of a government sponsored MK ULTRA / mind control experiment at a hospital. Even Cass Sunstein admits that he was wrong about MK ULTRA and government mind control experiments being a conspiracy theory. Ken Kesey wrote the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest after his experience taking LSD in a hospital. In the novel, Kesey portrays America as a giant mental hospital run by an authoritarian “Big Nurse” who controls her patients through medication, enemas, and electric shock therapy.

It is interesting to note that most of the “experts” quoted in the Newsweek/Newspeak article who wanted to see those who held conspiracy theories totally controlled were academic professors like Sunstein. Without question these people collectively represent the “Big Nurse” in Ken Kesey’s critically acclaimed novel. Kesey was a leader in the 1960s counter culture which vehemently opposed the idea that people who do not conform to societal norms are defective and criminals. Yet Newsweek/Newspeak and other elitist voices have become the embodiment of George Orwell’s “Thought Police” and Ken Kesey’s “Big Nurse.”

History shows us that ideas have consequences and the ideological fascism which causes college students to riot when a speaker does not conform to the politically correct dogma and the calls for cognitive infiltration will eventually produce not only concentration camps of the mind, but physical concentration camps that will be populated by the “useful idiots” on the right and on the left who believe that authoritarianism can produce Utopia.