187 Comments

How blind can you be?? A rich oligarch that uses an overload of lies to confuse & control people as president, with the richest people right behind him. They are breaking down all checks & balances, taking down democracy, and now taking the money out of the Treasure.

Preparing camps for migrants, lowering taxes for the rich, trade wars that make live expensive, take control of the media, removing opposition,...

How blind can you be??

You wrote a book about this.

He is installing a fascist regime, Mattias.

If you want to understand how Trump uses confusion for (mind)control, read The Cult of Trump, by Steven Hassan.

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Cult-of-Trump/Steven-Hassan/9781982127343

Also read the posts on totalitarianism by Timothy Snyder, David Corn, Robert Reich and especially Heather Cox Richardson

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I am not comfortable with the level of Musk apologetics in this article. Musk did not take over Twitter to rid it of censorship, he bought it just so he could push ideas and introduce algorithmic bias of his own. Also it did not run "better than before": Technically Twitter ran just fine, and once the infrastructure is running, barring IT disasters it can keep doing so for a long time with minimal maintenance.

I believe the method is pretty typical for a radical right style of governing: don't reform but "clean up", put an axe in it, destroy a structure. Something with a little extra symbolic violence simply. Think about basically any parliamentary speech by Vlaams Belang mandataries, their discourse will usually sound something like this.

Also, while I am at it, I feel I might as well adress the elephant in the room: Musk is a ridiculously powerful person at this point, possibly way more powerful than any globalist organisation, all on his own, with the dollars he has and the amount of technology and infrastructure he can command. Abstracting even his role as a paper burner for the US gov't, the worlds biggest superpower to be reformed to a great extent to his own liking and convenience. A man who names a child *checks notes* "X Æ A-12" in honor of a fighter jet.

Rational or not rational is a side concern to me at this point. If this situation is not worrying, I don't know what is.

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Barely a month in and it becomes more and more clear how the Dark Enlightenment movement of Musk is committing a coup, installing an authoritarian regime that does not care for the People let alone minorities. On the contrary, books are banned, immigrants put in camps, DEI forbidden. You can't laugh with Muskolini on X, that gets you banned.

Musk spreads lies while he enriches himself. Civilians hack the Treasury system with access to public data and trillions in payments.

Civil Servants are fired and replaced by loyalists.

Fear is growing.

Trump is destroyed all checks and balances. Ignores Court ruling.

Unknown men with guns are obstructing entrance to Members of Congress.

A cleptocracy is installed. Musks distroys the Departments investigating him.

Farmers don't get paid as promised. Consumer prices increase.

Gaza will be a property paradise. Putin get his way.

How gullible & naive Mattias. You were supposed to be an expert on Totalitarian Regimes.

You are not.

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This is clarified thought in action and why I appreciate Substack. Thank you.

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Deeply thought. Thank you.

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Jan 16Edited

“Not that Republicans are without blame—they too have skeletons in their closets, and perhaps I’ll write about that another time.”

I will wait until you write about that. Then, I’ll be able to see if my impression of how biased this writing is, and how it even has a marketer tone, changes. However, the concept of Rs and Ds being wings of the same beast is not biased.

P.S. great metaphor: “but a bulldozer crashing through the wall of deception.” 👊🏾

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After Trump destroyed Biden in the first debate, Harris was chosen to fall on her sword. I don't think any one expected her to have a chance. The real miracle was the brilliant trolling & social media savvy of Team Trump. And the biggest turning point of course was RFK waking up with instructions from God to pour his support behind Trump. Trump hasn't even taken office & the ripple effect of his influence is felt around the world, especially with the quick resignation of Trudeau. I think we're in a massive Timeline Shift and I don't care what the black pill people say, it's a good thing & won't be perfect, but the dream team assembling is already setting in motion lots of sanity & a return of the spirit of the Constitution & renewal of the Republic.

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Trump is trading Ukraine to Russia for Greenland and Canada. Win-win for US and Russia. Better defense position for both and better economic ties for what both need (eg US needs minerals, Russia needs warm water ports and grain).

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This is a fair and accurate analysis of the places the new team can over extend and destroy what people believed they were trying to improve. Thank you very much!

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Amusings, watch for the really big movements as they determine most of the minor ones: Trump is trading Ukraine to Russia for Greenland and Canada. Win-win for US and Russia; Better defense position for both (US needs better Arctic border air:space defense) and better economic ties for what both need (eg US needs minerals, Russia needs warm water ports and grain). The play is less about what the relatively few people in those places want and more about what the super-powers want.

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Great analysis. Thank you for sharing this, and keep up the good work, Mattias.

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After reading this piece, I better understand why you think rationalism is the core problematic issue of our western civilization. Because you manage to analyze the whole Trump setup without ever mentioning Israel or the Jews in general who are the most irrational group of people with relevant influence in the world and over Trump. Please read the essays of Laurent Guyénot (https://radbodslament.substack.com) and also Israel Shahaks "Jewish history, Jewish religion", to better understand Jewish irrationality and the effect it has on the rest of the world.

Although technical tools require a big amount of rationality to be developed and built, their use normally doesn't require rationality. Even a rat could push the red button to start a nuclear missile. Our societies aren't rational at all. Markets are irrational, politics is irrational. Love life is mostly irrational, including procreation. I really don't know where you find your excessive rationalism in society..

You were one of the most fine observers of totalitarian reign during Covid. What else, than a whole bunch of irrational motives were at work there? Just because Covid was a scientific issue, doesn't mean that the concerned scientists need to be rational. They might be relatively rational during their work day in the laboratory, but when it's about the pay check at the end of the month their rationality evaporates. The whole greenhouse gas lie is fabricated with thousands of paid off scientists. Did you read the AIDS part of the book of Kennedy? 40 years of research for nothing! Official AIDS deaths in rich countries have statistically never left the two main risk groups of male homosexuals and drug addicts.

To talk about pseudo rationalism as a mask for irrational motives, that would be understandable for me; some kind of exoteric rationalism, as a counterpart to the whole exoteric bullshit that populates the religious sphere. But true rationalism in a modern society would lead to a very different outcome than the one we currently observe. True rationalism would overhaul the very structure of our political institutions in order to integrate the transition from agrarian to industrial society. It would make money obsolete. It would recognize that energy is not a limiting factor in the equation, as all matter IS energy. Please take your time to check out my argument. We need more people who get the whole picture in order to move on!

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“or will he continue to try to increase it by appealing to the lowest sentiments of his base and making minorities and the weak into scapegoats?” Am I misunderstanding this? It makes me think that Mattias has fallen for the lies about Trump being racist etc. Trump can be crudely funny but I have never heard him blame any minorities or the weak for anything. He is imperfect and he loves attention -BUT he loves America and he loves to win. When America wins, he wins.

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Had to stop reading when you mentioned Qaddafi

Qaddafi was responsible for the Pan Am 103 Bombing

I and most Americans care more about Qaddafi being killed and preferably having medically assisted torture... than we give a fuck about Muslims in Libya.

Islam Must Be Banned Globally except Indonesia and Arabia (maybe Ireland that lives Islamic Terrorists so much) so there are places to dump them

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Banning a religion is never a solution to anything. Do you support what the U.S. and France did to Libya, and what it still is today? Qaddafi wanted a pan-African currency. That was enough to get him offed.

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I'm not done with you yet you stupid terrorist c***

You completely ignore Qaddafi in Pan Am 103 which I stated in the earlier post so you have no excuse not to know about it

You deserve to be treated like a terrorist and Have the same fate as a terrorist victim

Two people from my grad school that were there when I was was on Pan Am 103

If you said this to my face I would beat you to within an interview like the only reason I wouldn't kill you is because then there would be no statute of limitations

All who conspire with terrorists, support terrorists, donate to terrorists, or apologize for terrorists are f****** terrorists and deserve the same fate as Terrorists

Terrorists and pedophiles are at the same level

There's no one worse than you

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You are one dumb mother f***** even for a terrorist supporters

Islam is not a religion. It is a violent supremacist totalitarian genocidal ideological cult as is collectivism

Both Islam and its ripoff LDS or falsifiable because each founding text purports to be the verbatim word of an infallible omniscient god dictated by an angel

But each is full of contradictions and falsehoods

Therefore the book is fake and the prophet is fake and it's not a religion it's a cult

Learn critical thinking learn to know what the f*** you're talking about before you post that you don't waste everyone's time

So f****** tired of ignorant m************ on social media that don't know what goddamn thing

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Thank-you Mattias, for bringing a healthy balance of hope with caution. Trump has the mandate, and everyone is paying attention to what he will do with it. He has every opportunity to bring the 'Logos' (leading with reason). Someone like Musk can bring the raw energy (Pathos). What is missing as it has been for decades, is the moral compass 'Ethos'.

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Well-said.

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Not one word about the Zionist lobby and their financing of Team Trump!

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Brilliant. Shine your light Mathias.

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Thank you Matias for shining the light of truth!

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Just saw your comment! We had the same sense of this essay! A light in the darkness!

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