Good article, the "four stages of reality" is definitely is especially interesting and it's definitely true that modern propaganda doesn't even have to have much relation to reality. You can see this also with the "mainstream alternative media": Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, Shapiro, etc. If they decide that mark Zuckerberg is now a conservative hero, despite his actions not matching this in the slightest, then that must be the case. Or that deep state contractor and globalist Elon musk is now a right wing standard-bearer. And now people are already forgetting about the H1B fiasco now that Musk has distracted them by pretending to give a shit about grooming gangs. No one remembers anything!
The new years terror attack psyops have also faded out of the public mind now that the media has moved onto the next big thing, and even though it seems like many people were extremely skeptical of both attacks it didn't matter in the end and hardly anybody will remember that these things even happened in a couple months anyway. Such are the consequences of the media constantly bombarding people with new headlines to be outraged and scared of everyday.
Thanks dgb, good comment. The public's memory is that of a gnat at this point, exacerbated by technology; there is no accountability and no follow-through for the many devious narratives crafted by our elites, many of which drift off and are forgotten. They do whatever they want and there is no pushback. They change narratives at whim, even contradicting their prior ones, and they are never punished for it. This is all going to end very badly.
To save you reading any more Baudrillard: "And that’s Baudrillard’s point: that the West’s suppression and fragmentation of the reality-principle in its citizens enables it to perpetrate its atrocities without public opposition. Once reality is dead for its own citizens, horrific surpluses of reality can be imposed on people of other regions. That in turn creates an opportunity for a terroristic counter-balancing of reality against its own people.
And yet reality in terrorist events – as we saw in Italy, Germany and Belgium – is precisely the issue. Baudrillard’s Gulf War essays are about mediation: they are predicated on the comparison of reference to referent. This aspect is completely missing from his reflections on 9/11. No ‘The September 11th Attacks Did Not Take Place’, nothing like that. Instead, he mythologizes the terrorists, aggrandises the ‘War on Terror’, and bows down before the ‘incandescent images’ of that day. The Spirit of Terrorism (2002), quite simply, is neocon propaganda. At the exact moment that his vision was vindicated, the Baudrillard I knew had vanished and been replaced by a replica. From that moment on, as his theory dictated, he was a shadow of himself, a simulacrum among simulacra." https://thelethaltext.substack.com/p/mccluhan-in-manhattan
Thanks Lethal. Yes, I don't plan to read any more of Baudrillard (and wouldn't have read more after the first book if I hadn't bought three of them!). True character is revealed in times of stress such as with 9/11, and it was especially interesting to see the mask off moments during COVID with public figures such as Jordan Peterson and Noam Chomsky (well, Chomsky went mask off a long time ago with his defense of Pol Pot). I'll check out the link, thank you.
You are welcome, Neo. Yes I'm kind of fascinated by these critical lacunae and self-betrayals. As for M. Baudrillard, at least you got a kick-ass essay out of it. C'est la vie.
This article reveals how the interplay between information, perception, and power has reached a point where distinguishing reality from simulation is almost impossible.
The media-government complex described here, and the hyperreality it produces, thrives on passivity. This turns the citizenry into spectators, not participants, making it all too easy to disengage and accept a curated version of events. By the same token, reclaiming agency demands engagement. It calls for scepticism, critical thinking, and a commitment to staying curious, asking questions, and digging deeper.
The idea of a grounding mechanism is so important here. In a world where it feels like everything is designed to confuse or mislead us, we need tools to make sense of it all. Recursive prediction, as mentioned, is one approach: test assumptions, refine perspectives, and stay flexible enough to adapt as the picture evolves. At the end of the day, it's not about having all the answers—it’s about staying engaged and not letting the simulation win.
What I really like about this article is that it reminds us that the system’s strength is also its weakness. Hyperreality only works if we go along with it. The more people question and resist, the weaker it becomes. We need to begin to think of as sovereign individuals rather than passive consumers of media slop.
Hi Aziz, yes, that's another example of a fake war, where 10/7 was both known in advance by Israeli intelligence and possibly planned by them in order to provide a casus belli for ethnic cleansing of the strip, which is very one sided. I've touched on this at various points including here: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/on-the-end-times-and-the-antichrist
It is likely the very same process is right now taking place within the walls of Israel, you know, those really high walls. It took me a great many years to sit with the degree to which wars are in fact faked, and for a variety of reasons. But, I now believe that is the case.
Imagine how tightly the image of what is taking place in Gaza is controlled by Mossad et al, given their motto. They tell us it is all about deception.
"...no individual person can own a shared description, and so we must be prepared if necessary to disagree about them. It could well be that a subject can never be closed, because none of us can say for sure, what something is or was, say for example a flower or a tree or a person or an appointment or an election. The description must be *shared* for it to stay most basic, most firsthand.
This is done most easily and understandably by computers and the internet."
Who Ordered the Maleficence?
Technology as a servant of society, not as its undertaker
> "the created hyperreality both supplants actual reality and then morphs actual reality into something totally different"
I find it hard to agree with the notion that this hyperreality has only begun recently. What does the industrial revolution have to do with it? Mass literacy and newspapers? Because to me, all cultures look equally artificial and detached from reality, purely by necessity of uniting large groups of people with stories, and having to compromise with reality as no survival strategy can be proven before being enacted. Muslims have genital cutting, explaining it with some form of a narrative - how is it not hyperreality? They consider bleeding penises to be a reference to Ibrahim - how is it not reality as a text?
> "it was a one sided massacre initiated by the United States! [...] Then the U.S. stood idly by as Saddam brutally crushed incipient rebellions by the Shia and Kurds under his rule and re-established his control - what kind of war was this exactly?"
I don't really understand why we need to make up new models to explain such easy stuff. America is the lord of the planet. Everything significant that happens in the world can be controlled. Every country lives on borrowed mercy from the insane Western Christian élite which has forbidden itself genociding foreigners.
So sure, in this case, the Americans had a deal with Saddam to have a nice little war to inaugurate the fall of Russia, why not? And Saddam agreed. This actually sounds manly and clean? Win-win? The Kurds are to Saddam what Saddam is to Washington.
> "[Baudrillard:] In the absence of the (greatly diminished) will to power, and the (problematic) will to knowledge, there remains today the widespread will to spectacle, and with it the obstinate desire to preserve its spectre or fiction."
Alright, this hits hard. Idiocracy rules. But what does it mean in reality? That the System has lost its mettle, and can't wage real wars at all? Or that we can never even know what the _real_ experts think because everything on boob-vision is a fake charade with gay clowns (Tucker, Soloviev)?
> "[Baudrillard:] Be more virtual than the events themselves, do not seek to re-establish the truth, we do not have the means, but do not be duped, and to that end re-immerse the war and all information in the virtuality from whence they came."
Yeah, that's literally what I'm telling my mom, treat the missile explosions as a lightning storm instead of some picture in a TV - you don't own the land the missile hits, and you don't live in that TV reality either, so why bother? For all we know, it's Oceania launching missiles at itself.
> "using recursive predictions to gradually refine and update one’s view of the world; the more one is proven wrong about predictions, the more one should refine one’s worldview."
Currently, my recursive prediction is concerned with the question whether the West is indeed split between America/EU, right/left, Trump/Biden, or these Greenland statements are mere signs of a changed course of a single organism.
> "This is complicated by the fact that paradoxically the more information we receive, the greater the corresponding loss of meaning associated with it."
That's why Redditards hate my schizo map! A good model of reality should be simple. Hence _political ponerology_ could be a thing as well (see Sofa Legion Strategos).
> "This brings us around to the Ukraine war. I’ve covered it twice before in May 2023 and February 2024"
Some of the points are still contestable - for example, a destruction of the Dnieper bridges would have led to a massive famine in the Left-Bank Ukraine. Now, why is famine not used as a weapon of war even in Gaza (google obesity in Gaza)? Because the Western élite is Christian to the core, with the most stringent ban on genocide. Hence why Russia can't use its nuclear arsenal to genocide my retarded country either. Morality and culture are as much in control as the deals behind the stage (and which one is supreme, I cannot know).
> "To me, the film raised the questions: is there a limit to elite propaganda? Does it have to be based in reality at all, especially in the modern era? Under what circumstances does it need to be based in reality, or at least to adjust itself to feedback received from the audience/masses?"
> "[Baudrillard:] “The image and information are subject to no principle of truth or reality.”"
Propaganda must not only attach itself to what already exists in the individual, but also express the fundamental currents of the society it seeks to influence. Propaganda must be familiar with collective sociological presuppositions, spontaneous myths, and broad ideologies- By this we do not mean political currents or temporary opinions that will change in a few months, but the fundamental psycho-sociological bases on which a whole society rests, the presuppositions and myths not just of individuals or of particular groups but those shared by all individuals in a society including men of opposite political inclinations and class loyalties. A propaganda pitting itself against this fundamental and accepted structure would have no chance of success. Rather, all effective propaganda is based on these fundamental currents and expresses them. Only if it rests on the proper collective belief will it be understood and accepted. It is part of a complex of civilization, consisting of material elements, beliefs, ideas, and institutions, and it cannot be separated from them. No propaganda could succeed by going against these structural elements of society. But propaganda’s main task clearly is the psychological reflection of these structures.
– Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, p. 38-9
Great stuff -- and the Baudrillard of 91 would agree -- but you should check out The Spirit of Terrorism (2002), which is pure necon propaganda. Please don't think I *like* Baudrillard -- I only ever wanted to steal his ideas and run with them in ways he chickened out of. I despise post-modernism; even modernism is a hoax. I can honestly say I have never spent a cent on him either! The idea of actually paying to read Baudrillard? (Sorry for laughing.) All that verbiage is pure camouflage. BUT his ideas, you must admit, are generative...
Good article, the "four stages of reality" is definitely is especially interesting and it's definitely true that modern propaganda doesn't even have to have much relation to reality. You can see this also with the "mainstream alternative media": Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, Shapiro, etc. If they decide that mark Zuckerberg is now a conservative hero, despite his actions not matching this in the slightest, then that must be the case. Or that deep state contractor and globalist Elon musk is now a right wing standard-bearer. And now people are already forgetting about the H1B fiasco now that Musk has distracted them by pretending to give a shit about grooming gangs. No one remembers anything!
The new years terror attack psyops have also faded out of the public mind now that the media has moved onto the next big thing, and even though it seems like many people were extremely skeptical of both attacks it didn't matter in the end and hardly anybody will remember that these things even happened in a couple months anyway. Such are the consequences of the media constantly bombarding people with new headlines to be outraged and scared of everyday.
Thanks dgb, good comment. The public's memory is that of a gnat at this point, exacerbated by technology; there is no accountability and no follow-through for the many devious narratives crafted by our elites, many of which drift off and are forgotten. They do whatever they want and there is no pushback. They change narratives at whim, even contradicting their prior ones, and they are never punished for it. This is all going to end very badly.
To save you reading any more Baudrillard: "And that’s Baudrillard’s point: that the West’s suppression and fragmentation of the reality-principle in its citizens enables it to perpetrate its atrocities without public opposition. Once reality is dead for its own citizens, horrific surpluses of reality can be imposed on people of other regions. That in turn creates an opportunity for a terroristic counter-balancing of reality against its own people.
And yet reality in terrorist events – as we saw in Italy, Germany and Belgium – is precisely the issue. Baudrillard’s Gulf War essays are about mediation: they are predicated on the comparison of reference to referent. This aspect is completely missing from his reflections on 9/11. No ‘The September 11th Attacks Did Not Take Place’, nothing like that. Instead, he mythologizes the terrorists, aggrandises the ‘War on Terror’, and bows down before the ‘incandescent images’ of that day. The Spirit of Terrorism (2002), quite simply, is neocon propaganda. At the exact moment that his vision was vindicated, the Baudrillard I knew had vanished and been replaced by a replica. From that moment on, as his theory dictated, he was a shadow of himself, a simulacrum among simulacra." https://thelethaltext.substack.com/p/mccluhan-in-manhattan
Thanks Lethal. Yes, I don't plan to read any more of Baudrillard (and wouldn't have read more after the first book if I hadn't bought three of them!). True character is revealed in times of stress such as with 9/11, and it was especially interesting to see the mask off moments during COVID with public figures such as Jordan Peterson and Noam Chomsky (well, Chomsky went mask off a long time ago with his defense of Pol Pot). I'll check out the link, thank you.
You are welcome, Neo. Yes I'm kind of fascinated by these critical lacunae and self-betrayals. As for M. Baudrillard, at least you got a kick-ass essay out of it. C'est la vie.
This article reveals how the interplay between information, perception, and power has reached a point where distinguishing reality from simulation is almost impossible.
The media-government complex described here, and the hyperreality it produces, thrives on passivity. This turns the citizenry into spectators, not participants, making it all too easy to disengage and accept a curated version of events. By the same token, reclaiming agency demands engagement. It calls for scepticism, critical thinking, and a commitment to staying curious, asking questions, and digging deeper.
The idea of a grounding mechanism is so important here. In a world where it feels like everything is designed to confuse or mislead us, we need tools to make sense of it all. Recursive prediction, as mentioned, is one approach: test assumptions, refine perspectives, and stay flexible enough to adapt as the picture evolves. At the end of the day, it's not about having all the answers—it’s about staying engaged and not letting the simulation win.
What I really like about this article is that it reminds us that the system’s strength is also its weakness. Hyperreality only works if we go along with it. The more people question and resist, the weaker it becomes. We need to begin to think of as sovereign individuals rather than passive consumers of media slop.
Great comment, James.
I agree. I have issues with what’s been going on in Gaza, too. So much obvious propaganda from both sides.
Opening the doors on the manufacturing of reality
How do you write at such length about a fake war without even once mentioning Israel's "war" on Gaza?
Hi Aziz, yes, that's another example of a fake war, where 10/7 was both known in advance by Israeli intelligence and possibly planned by them in order to provide a casus belli for ethnic cleansing of the strip, which is very one sided. I've touched on this at various points including here: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/on-the-end-times-and-the-antichrist
It is likely the very same process is right now taking place within the walls of Israel, you know, those really high walls. It took me a great many years to sit with the degree to which wars are in fact faked, and for a variety of reasons. But, I now believe that is the case.
Imagine how tightly the image of what is taking place in Gaza is controlled by Mossad et al, given their motto. They tell us it is all about deception.
A very interesting take on what is taking place there by a man from the Netherlands - https://www.martinvrijland.nl/en/news-analyses/palestijnen-zijn-tijdens-qatar-world-cup-2022-naar-dubai-en-abu-dhabi-verhuisd-de-gaza-oorlog-is-een-filmproductie/
Wasn't it Sean Penn who gave Zelensky one of his Oscars....? They tell us even.
"...no individual person can own a shared description, and so we must be prepared if necessary to disagree about them. It could well be that a subject can never be closed, because none of us can say for sure, what something is or was, say for example a flower or a tree or a person or an appointment or an election. The description must be *shared* for it to stay most basic, most firsthand.
This is done most easily and understandably by computers and the internet."
Who Ordered the Maleficence?
Technology as a servant of society, not as its undertaker
https://tomg2021.substack.com/p/who-ordered-the-maleficence
Now I understand the meaning behind the scripture saying "wars, and reports of wars"
Good article. I wish I could reject the unhappy premise, but like with many of your recent writings I can muster no rebuttal.
First of all, your post has been shared by a kind soul (you?) on r/conspiracy, small world!
https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/1hyytfs/the_ukraine_war_did_not_take_place/
> "the created hyperreality both supplants actual reality and then morphs actual reality into something totally different"
I find it hard to agree with the notion that this hyperreality has only begun recently. What does the industrial revolution have to do with it? Mass literacy and newspapers? Because to me, all cultures look equally artificial and detached from reality, purely by necessity of uniting large groups of people with stories, and having to compromise with reality as no survival strategy can be proven before being enacted. Muslims have genital cutting, explaining it with some form of a narrative - how is it not hyperreality? They consider bleeding penises to be a reference to Ibrahim - how is it not reality as a text?
> "it was a one sided massacre initiated by the United States! [...] Then the U.S. stood idly by as Saddam brutally crushed incipient rebellions by the Shia and Kurds under his rule and re-established his control - what kind of war was this exactly?"
I don't really understand why we need to make up new models to explain such easy stuff. America is the lord of the planet. Everything significant that happens in the world can be controlled. Every country lives on borrowed mercy from the insane Western Christian élite which has forbidden itself genociding foreigners.
So sure, in this case, the Americans had a deal with Saddam to have a nice little war to inaugurate the fall of Russia, why not? And Saddam agreed. This actually sounds manly and clean? Win-win? The Kurds are to Saddam what Saddam is to Washington.
> "[Baudrillard:] In the absence of the (greatly diminished) will to power, and the (problematic) will to knowledge, there remains today the widespread will to spectacle, and with it the obstinate desire to preserve its spectre or fiction."
Alright, this hits hard. Idiocracy rules. But what does it mean in reality? That the System has lost its mettle, and can't wage real wars at all? Or that we can never even know what the _real_ experts think because everything on boob-vision is a fake charade with gay clowns (Tucker, Soloviev)?
> "[Baudrillard:] Be more virtual than the events themselves, do not seek to re-establish the truth, we do not have the means, but do not be duped, and to that end re-immerse the war and all information in the virtuality from whence they came."
Yeah, that's literally what I'm telling my mom, treat the missile explosions as a lightning storm instead of some picture in a TV - you don't own the land the missile hits, and you don't live in that TV reality either, so why bother? For all we know, it's Oceania launching missiles at itself.
> "using recursive predictions to gradually refine and update one’s view of the world; the more one is proven wrong about predictions, the more one should refine one’s worldview."
Currently, my recursive prediction is concerned with the question whether the West is indeed split between America/EU, right/left, Trump/Biden, or these Greenland statements are mere signs of a changed course of a single organism.
> "This is complicated by the fact that paradoxically the more information we receive, the greater the corresponding loss of meaning associated with it."
That's why Redditards hate my schizo map! A good model of reality should be simple. Hence _political ponerology_ could be a thing as well (see Sofa Legion Strategos).
> "This brings us around to the Ukraine war. I’ve covered it twice before in May 2023 and February 2024"
Some of the points are still contestable - for example, a destruction of the Dnieper bridges would have led to a massive famine in the Left-Bank Ukraine. Now, why is famine not used as a weapon of war even in Gaza (google obesity in Gaza)? Because the Western élite is Christian to the core, with the most stringent ban on genocide. Hence why Russia can't use its nuclear arsenal to genocide my retarded country either. Morality and culture are as much in control as the deals behind the stage (and which one is supreme, I cannot know).
> "To me, the film raised the questions: is there a limit to elite propaganda? Does it have to be based in reality at all, especially in the modern era? Under what circumstances does it need to be based in reality, or at least to adjust itself to feedback received from the audience/masses?"
> "[Baudrillard:] “The image and information are subject to no principle of truth or reality.”"
I could quote Dr. Robert Morgan quoting Ellul.
https://archive.vn/xemdh
Propaganda must not only attach itself to what already exists in the individual, but also express the fundamental currents of the society it seeks to influence. Propaganda must be familiar with collective sociological presuppositions, spontaneous myths, and broad ideologies- By this we do not mean political currents or temporary opinions that will change in a few months, but the fundamental psycho-sociological bases on which a whole society rests, the presuppositions and myths not just of individuals or of particular groups but those shared by all individuals in a society including men of opposite political inclinations and class loyalties. A propaganda pitting itself against this fundamental and accepted structure would have no chance of success. Rather, all effective propaganda is based on these fundamental currents and expresses them. Only if it rests on the proper collective belief will it be understood and accepted. It is part of a complex of civilization, consisting of material elements, beliefs, ideas, and institutions, and it cannot be separated from them. No propaganda could succeed by going against these structural elements of society. But propaganda’s main task clearly is the psychological reflection of these structures.
– Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, p. 38-9
Great stuff -- and the Baudrillard of 91 would agree -- but you should check out The Spirit of Terrorism (2002), which is pure necon propaganda. Please don't think I *like* Baudrillard -- I only ever wanted to steal his ideas and run with them in ways he chickened out of. I despise post-modernism; even modernism is a hoax. I can honestly say I have never spent a cent on him either! The idea of actually paying to read Baudrillard? (Sorry for laughing.) All that verbiage is pure camouflage. BUT his ideas, you must admit, are generative...