The Digital Gulag – The Conspiracy Question (Part 2).

I find the conspiracy discussion so important that I am going to write a series of articles about it. Here is Part 2. As you might know, I don’t believe fanatical conspiracy thinking will lead us closer to adequately understanding what happens in the world. Nevertheless, the question of to what extent what currently happens in modern society, particularly the rise of totalitarianism, is driven by a grand conspiracy is legitimate. It has occupied the greatest thinkers on totalitarianism, from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to Hannah Arendt. Both ultimately rejected the idea that a totalitarian system arises from a conspiracy. I will attempt to articulate my own position on this matter point by point and as clearly as possible.

To begin with: when I reject an overall interpretation of what happens in the world in terms of conspiracies, it is not my intention to ignore the fact that a dangerous system of control is rising, where a small number of people (an ‘elite’) have the power to control almost everyone else. We are indeed at risk – if we aren’t already to some extent – of ending up in a digital gulag, with digital currencies and digital passports, where AI calculates how far each citizen can go today according to their ‘CO2 account’ and what they can or cannot eat for breakfast, what ‘chemical corrections’ are necessary for their blood values, and so on.

In line with the pervasive reversal of every truth in modernity, the emergence of the new totalitarianism, of course, take place under the (false) flag of democracy. All in all, Aldous Huxley had it pretty much right when he foresaw the following about seventy years ago:
‘By means of ever more effective methods of mind manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms – elections, parliaments, supreme courts, and all the rest – will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial. Meanwhile, the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the shows as they see fit.’ (Huxley, 1958, Brave New World Revisited)

Over the last century, there has undoubtedly been an increasing concentration of economic, banking, media, and ideological power. Fewer and fewer people have gained more and more power, and they are increasingly imposing their ideologies on the masses through subtle and less subtle forms of propaganda. They have virtually unlimited resources, constantly provided through a perverted system of central banks controlled by an even more central bank in Switzerland, the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, which is technically above the law and thus can do pretty much whatever it wants.

That such an ‘organism’ or ‘system’ is rising, we cannot really doubt. Many refuse to see this. Or they see it but don’t mind it. ‘Such a digitally controlled system is necessary to save the climate; surveillance isn’t bad if you have nothing to hide’, and so on. Without going too deep into it here, I think these people are blind to an inconvenient realty. Moreover, they are selectively blind. They refuse to see the dangers of Gates and Soros, calling anyone who wants to bring attention to these dangers a conspiracy theorist. But as soon as it’s about Elon Musk, they suddenly see a dangerous oligarch who wants to take over the world.

Here we also encounter a much broader phenomenon: people who identify with ‘the mainstream’ call anyone a conspiracy theorist who doubts the truthfulness of the mainstream narrative, but as soon as it concerns an enemy of the mainstream, such as Trump, Putin, or Saddam Hussein, they see conspiracies everywhere. These monsters are always secretly plotting to overthrow democracy or hiding weapons of mass destruction. I would simply suggest to all parties: take each other’s conspiracy theories a little more seriously, listen carefully, and try to be open-minded and separate sense from nonsense.

Ultimately, it’s about this: the rising surveillance state will be a tragedy for the human being. Again I hear some already saying, ‘But if you have nothing to hide, then it’s not a problem that there is surveillance everywhere?’ Such reasoning starts from a naive view on man and the world. The human being is a creature that can only thrive if it has a space where it can momentarily free itself from the control of another, among other things, in order to make choices that are truly its own; it is in making subjective choices that the very essence of a human being emerges and exists.

Totalitarianism is a system driven by a frantic desire for control, aimed at eliminating this space of subjective choice. In this way, totalitarianism destroys the essence of the human and indeed represents the ultimate evil. Human beings cannot be completely free; for example, they will always have to adhere to ethical principles in some way, but they absolutely need a certain freedom. Some will undoubtedly protest here as well: ‘But if freedom leads to climate catastrophes, then we can’t tolerate it!’ I will go deeper into this another time, but I want to emphasize this here: believe me, the last thing the surveillance state will do is ‘save the climate.’

Hannah Arendt believed that the end point of the totalitarianization process was not so much the creation of a society with concentration camps, but rather the transformation of the entire society into an open-air concentration camp. I see it as self-evident that we are moving towards that point (without saying that we will fully reach it).

So what is my point in resisting fanatic interpretations of this phenomenon in terms of a grand conspiracy? That is what I will be addressing in a series of publications over the coming months. The importance of this subject is undoubtedly enormous and even decisive, both intellectually, tactically, and ethically. That is why I will devote an extraordinary amount of attention to it in the coming period. I will primarily discuss the following points:

1. How exactly did this totalitarian structure arise? Was it planned and consciously built?

2. What is the psychology of the elite? What type of people are they? Are they more evil than the ‘ordinary person’?

3. What role does the population play? Are they merely victims, or did they help build their own prison?

4. What are the merits and weak points of thinking in terms of conspiracies?

None of these questions can be answered simply. We will approach them carefully and try to come to a nuanced and fruitful understanding of the grand conspiracy question from different perspectives. I look forward to a lively discussion about the nature of world events!

Mattias