Guided By Gaslight

Navigating the 2nd Matrix of Controlled Opps Psyop

(Audio version for paid subscribers at the end of piece.)

Controlled Psychological Opposition Operations As Usual

This week I became aware that the IM1776 magazine was plugging Elon Musk, again.

Since I know someone (Thomas Milliary) who writes for them, as well as one of the editors (Daniel Miller), and because I had submitted to them a while back, the piece got my attention. It is called “In Praise of Elon Musk.”

The article includes this line:

The elites’ pathological hostility to both Musk and Trump flows from a haunting fear that they’re losing control of the narrative, thanks in no small part to the digitized, real-time, transnational freedom of speech promoted by X.

Fighting words!

But what caught my attention was the weird and twisted logic by which a supposedly rigorous alternative publication was somehow imagining that multi-billionaires and former and future presidents were not of the elite.

Like politicians of a kinder, gentler, more innocent time, these guys are on our side.

And things look good, because “they” (the establishment elite that doesn’t include Trump or Musk) have lost control of “the narrative” (apparently there is only one) because of a social media platform.

One formerly controlled by US intelligence.

That a tech billionaire managed to use his clout and wonga to rescue from the Jaws of Establishment Wokedom.¹

---

I am aware that the term “controlled opposition” is an all-too easy dismissal, and that it only carries weight for those who already think that’s what it is.

And because it is lacking in moving parts, I want to come up with a summation of “controlled opposition” that is more nuanced, has more variables, for people who are on the fence, at least, or who are susceptible—ahem, I mean open—to this strange (to me) idea that there might actually be some good (or lesserly evil) guys, in positions of high power and influence, getting ready to take/bring back “democracy.”

---

When it comes to finding genuine alternate public figures who won’t lure you into some sort of algorithmically enhanced honey trap, I would say you have to look long and hard.

Obviously, we cannot trust the algorithms to lead us where we need to go. A given commentator has a lot of followers because they have the algorithms behind them; and the greater the numbers, the more the algorithms push them forward, to capture your attention; and so on.

That this may be self-running and systemic has given rise to the idea that the internet has created a “land of equal opportunity” for all. But the internet was designed by military-intelligence agencies and technocratic think-tanks, not to create equal opportunities for all, but to create a self-running control system by using an appearance of equality to act as an artificial selection system, to increase the noise and reduce the signal.

It is a field in which “random” or “organic” elements spontaneously entering into our awareness (our feed) become less and less of a possibility every day.

Think about how you arrived here, at this site. To find it, you had to look pretty hard or go through a long chain of links, or else just be damn (I am putting all false modesty aside here) lucky. Probably, it was word of mouth that got you here, albeit maybe in the form of recommendations from other substack accounts, most or all of which are roughly as marginal as I am.

Yet I have been doing this for thirty years—almost since the start of the internet.

What took you so long?²

Back to What?

My view is simple to the point of seeming simple-minded to some: if a disseminator of “dissidence” has a platform of more than 100K followers—or the equivalent in terms of being centered in the “alt-media”—I generally don’t waste my time on them.

True, I might appear on their show (Shaun Attwood), and I am not saying they must be a “shill” to have such high numbers behind them. But, at the very least, they can’t be rocking any serious boats. (I also did a Lotus Eaters show, which was created by the very popular Carl Benjamin, who may surface again before this “shillopedia” is complete.)

When it comes to characters like Alex Jones, Joe Rogan, Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, or Donald J. Trump, whose public performances are often all about rocking the boat of “the Establishment”—about being a credibly (?) genuine threat to “the Deep State”—it’s self-evident to me that they can’t be trusted.

Why? Because they aren’t dead (or even 100% de-platformed, à la Julian Assange).

---

In my recent Dodcast with Luke Dodson, Luke brought up how formerly solid researchers of “conspiracy” (long-term social engineering agendas), researchers with a pretty good understanding of how highly sophisticated and far-reaching these agendas are, are starting to waver. They are starting to mumble about alternate sorts of technocracy, as if there were actually some “grass roots” uprising of tech-billionaires, preparing to reboot the system and get it back on track.

Back to what?

I don’t bother to ask, because I am pretty sure they don’t mean back to before the Serpent diddled Eve.

Propaganda Springs Eternal

So IM1776 is selling the increasingly popular idea of major figures on the world stage somehow being on “the other side,” fighting against “the Deep State”? 

That there is an opposition that is uncontrolled, one that has arisen organically through the meritocracy of the tech revolution (tech-gnosis?), via the internet and Silicon Valley, in the guise of self-made billionaires (with blood-boys to keep them looking fresh and youthful; but let’s not mention that).

It is a curiously retrograde sci-fi fairy story about a world in which anything is possible. Even that Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, or Donald Trump, are truly self-made billionaires who did it without any help from the system—without being positioned as an instrument of it—and that they are now a thorn in the side of it. That they knew how to play the system right, to get it to work for them, so they could then go against it.

It is a higher level of the old idea of the meritocracy, the American dream, and it feeds into the idea of a genuine “resistance.”

And as with the previous dream, you may have to be asleep to believe it.

---

IM1776 is sponsored by the Claremont Institute, an “anti-woke” group whose current pinned tweet boasts:  “@JDVance1 [sic] is closely tied to Claremont circles, frequently speaking at their events and appearing alongside their scholars. In a statement to @amconmag, Claremont President @RpwWilliams called Vance ‘the ideal pick for Trump’s Vice President.’”³

The IM1776 team includes Christopher Rufo (who has done some good reporting on the transgender agenda) and Curtis Yarvin, “friend” of Peter Tiel, according to a 2022 Vanity Fair piece. It is best I don’t even get started on Yarvin, however, as that would require a piece unto itself.⁴

What this happy, hopeful narrative centers on is a higher level of bipartisan politics, in which it appears there is now an attempted “coup”—a succession drama—with outsiders like Yarvin, Vance, Musk, and Thiel worming their way into the Kastle, whipping out their swords, and killing the old guard. (Turns out this is actually the plan, though I had no idea when I wrote that line.⁵)

That former paranoids are choosing to believe that these shadowy tech wizards are somehow something other than the right side of a totalitarian lock-step to digital dystopia, complementing and continuing (by opposing) the work of the deranged “woke,” “cultural Marxist” left, this says a great deal about how far the theater of propaganda has advanced, in its levels of sophistication.

And no doubt, it is an edge of the seat performance. So much better than boring old election dramas. (US election dramas break the mould of ordinary TV shows: they get better written with each new season.)

Yet, as absurd and palpably unrealistic as the idea of tech billionaires working to save the US from “the regime” may be to many who are reading this, it does seem that it is taking root in a lot of people’s hearts and minds.

Trust Your Uplink

At the time of covid and the mRNA roll-out, or the CIA and Russiagate before that, some of us were bewildered to see that, all of a sudden, people were trusting in organizations and agencies that, only six months earlier, they knew to be irredeemably foul.

Why?

Because they were told to and they were scared?

Yes, I am afraid it is really that simple.

When things are getting really bad, really fast, people are getting more desperate every day, with every bit of click bait they fall for.

What are they desperate for? They are desperate for relief. And relief comes in the form of hope.

Hope is the feeling that, yes, this is a terrifying situation, but no, it is not hopeless. Someone is taking care of the situation.

Belief in a good technocracy that is self-made and offering a genuine solution—even if the solution involves trips to Mars, inflammable electric cars, and uplinking your brain to the electronic body of Anti-Christ, okay, I know it sounds insane, and it’s really horribly creepy, but God dammit it, it’s our only hope!

Suspend your disbelief, and you too can feel okay again. For a little while.

Things have got so bad, and they’re looking so bad, that people are willing to believe pretty much anything. (UAPs coming soon to a parking lot near you?)

Like Big Pharma can be trusted with untested experimental gene technology. They wouldn’t lie, would they? Like the CIA can protect us from Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. They wouldn’t ever make stuff up. Would they?

The art of people like Elon Musk (after the CIA and Hollywood) is to get you to believe things you have known, since Santa Claus lost his sparkle, cannot possibly be true.

Over the Paywall: Shill networks & Self-supporting narratives, Assets Vs. Handlers: Alex Jones & David Icke, the Higher Purpose of Paranoia, X Marks the Spot (We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Pyramid)