n C.J. Hopkins
Brave New Normal So the War on Populism is finally over. Go ahead, take a wild guess who won
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âll give you a hint. It wasnât the Russians, or the white supremacists, or the gilets jaunes, or Jeremy Corbynâs Nazi Death Cult, or the misogynist Bernie Bros, or the MAGA-hat terrorists, or any of the other real or fictional âpopulistâ forces that global capitalism has been waging war on for the last four years. What? You werenât aware that global capitalism was fighting a War on Populism? Thatâs OK, most other folks werenât. It wasnât officially announced or anything. It was launched in the summer of 2016, just as the War on Terror was ending, as a sequel to the War on Terror, or a variation on the War on Terror, or continuation of the War on Terror, or ⊠whatever, it doesnât really matter anymore, because now weâre fighting the War on Death, or the War on Minor Cold-like Symptoms, depending on your age and general state of health. Thatâs right, folks, once again, global capitalism (aka âthe worldâ) is under attack by an evil enemy. GloboCap just canât catch a break. From the moment it defeated communism and became a global ideological hegemon, it has been one
evil enemy after another. No sooner had it celebrated winning the Cold War and started ruthlessly restructuring and privatising everything than it was savagely attacked by âIslamic terroristsâ, and so was forced to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, and kill and torture a lot of people, and destabilise the entire Middle East, and illegally surveil everybody, and ⊠well, you remember the War on Terror.
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hen, just as the War on Terror seemed to be finally winding down, and the only terrorists left were the âself-radicalisedâ terrorists (many of whom werenât even actual terrorists), and it looked like GloboCap was finally going to be able to finish privatising and debt-enslaving everything and everyone in peace, wouldnât you know it, we were attacked again, this time by the global conspiracy of Russian-backed, neo-fascist âpopulistsâ that caused the Brexit and elected Trump, and tried to elect Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, and loosed the gilets jaunes on France, and whoâve been threatening the âfabric of Western de-
22 ColdType | Mid-April 2020 | www.coldtype.net
mocracyâ with dissension-sowing Facebook memes. Unfortunately, unlike the War on Terror, the War on Populism didnât go that well. After four years of fighting, GloboCap (aka the neoliberal Resistance) had ⊠OK, they had snuffed both Corbyn and Sanders, but they had totally blown the Russiagate psyop, and so were looking at four more years of Trump, and Lord knows how many of Johnson in the UK (which had actually left the European Union), and the gilets jaunes werenât going away, and, basically, âpopulismâ was still on the rise (if not in reality, in hearts and minds). And so, just as the War on Populism had replaced (or redefined) the War on Terror, the War on Death has been officially launched to replace (or redefine) the War on Populism ⊠which means (you guessed it), once again, itâs time to roll out another âbrave new normal.â The character of this brave new normal is, at this point, unmistakably clear ⊠so clear that most people cannot see it, because their minds are not prepared to accept it, so they do not recognise it, though they are looking right at it.
