This article was originally published by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead at The Rutherford Institute.
“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
— “The Hollow Men,” T.S. Eliot
Barely three years into the 2020s, and we seem to be living out the prophecies of the Book of Revelation with its dire warnings about plague, poverty, hatred, and war.
Just as the government hysteria over the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be dying down, new threats have arisen to occupy our attention and fuel our fears: food shortages, spiking inflation, rocketing gas prices, and a Ukraine-Russia conflict that threatens to bring about a world war.
Is this the end of the world as we know it? Or is this the beginning of the end of the world?
Will the world end with a bang or will it end, as T.S. Eliot concludes, with a whimper?
Robert Frost, torn between a vision of the world ending in fire (the hot flame of violence, anger, and greed) or ice (the cold burn of hatred), suggests that either would suffice to do the job.
And then there’s the Polish-American poet Czeslaw Milosz, who envisioned the day the world ends as a day like any other: “Those who expected lightning and thunder are disappointed. And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps do not believe it is happening now. As long as the sun and the moon are above, as long as the bumblebee visits a rose, as long as rosy infants are born, no one believes it is happening now… There will be no other end of the world.”
In Milosz’ words can be found a distant echo of a warning issued by Bertram Gross in his book Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America:
“Anyone looking for black shirts, mass parties, or men on horseback will miss the telltale clues of creeping fascism. In any First World country of advanced capitalism, the new fascism will be colored by national and cultural heritage, ethnic and religious composition, formal political structure, and geopolitical environment… In America, it would be supermodern and multi-ethnic-as American as Madison Avenue, executive luncheons, credit cards, and apple pie. It would be fascism with a smile. As a warning against its cosmetic facade, subtle manipulation, and velvet gloves, I call it friendly fascism. What scares me most is its subtle appeal. I am worried by those who fail to remember-or have never learned -that Big Business-Big Government partnerships, backed up by other elements, were the central facts behind the power structures of old fascism in the days of Mussolini, Hitler, and the Japanese empire builders.”
Look beyond the drum-pounding distractions of war and the fear-inducing tactics of the Deep State, and consider the long-term ramifications of the so-called sanctions being levied against Russia right now: not just the governmental sanctions, but the corporate lockdowns.
As CBS News reports, “Car shipments were paused. Beer stopped flowing. McDonald’s shut down sales of Big Macs. Cargo ships dropped port calls and oil companies cut their pipelines. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is leading some of the world’s best-known brands—from Apple to Disney and Ikea—to abruptly exit a country that’s become a global outcast.”
This is shunning on a global scale.
Some companies, as Fortune reports, have gone above and beyond what was required by government sanctions. For instance, “major oil companies, including Exxon, BP, and Shell, ended joint investment projects with Russian oil companies. Major retailers, including H&M, Nike, Ikea, and TJX, have shut down Russian sales and closed stores. Visa, Mastercard, and American Express shut down global services in Russia… Boeing cut off support for Russian airlines and closed its offices in Moscow, while Delta ended its Russian code-sharing arrangement… FedEx and UPS shut services to Russia. Apple, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft all have taken significant action to combat Russian aggression and disinformation.”
“You basically have Russia becoming a commercial pariah,” confirmed economist Mary Lovely. “Pretty much no company, no multinational, wants to be caught on the wrong side of U.S. and Western sanctions.”
Russia’s military aggression has paved the way for a show of force by a punitive Big Business-Big Government power alliance that, until recently, had been exerting itself on a smaller scale to sanction individuals whose behavior was deemed to be hateful, discriminatory, conspiratorial or anti-government.
There’s no going back from here.
This may well be the end of the world as we know it.
This particular apocalypse is the fallout from a silent coup that has given the Corporate State a taste for punitive power and an understanding of the ease with which it can use that power to manipulate, control and direct the world governments.
For good or bad, it will change the way we navigate the world, redrawing the boundaries of our world (and our freedoms) and altering the playing field faster than we can keep up.
This new world order—a global world order—made up of international government agencies and corporations owes its existence in large part to the U.S. government’s deep-seated and, in many cases, top-secret alliances with foreign nations and global corporations.
This powerful international cabal, let’s call it the Global Deep State, is just as real as the corporatized, militarized, industrialized American Deep State, and it poses just as great a threat to our rights as individuals under the U.S. Constitution, if not greater.
We’ve been inching closer to this global world order for the past several decades, but COVID-19, which saw governmental and corporate interests become even more closely intertwined, shifted this transformation into high gear.
Now, in the face of Russia’s aggression, fascism is about to become a global menace.
Given all that we know about the U.S. government—that it treats its citizens like faceless statistics and economic units to be bought, sold, bartered, traded, and tracked; that it repeatedly lies, cheats, steals, spies, kills, maims, enslaves, breaks the laws, overreaches its authority, and abuses its power at almost every turn; and that it wages wars for profit, jails its own people for profit, and has no qualms about spreading its reign of terror abroad—it is not a stretch to suggest that the government has been overtaken by a power elite that does not have our best interests at heart.
Indeed, to anyone who’s been paying attention to the goings-on in the world, it is increasingly obvious that we’re already under a new world order, and it is being brought to you by the Global-Industrial Deep State.
It remains unclear whether the American Deep State (“a national-security apparatus that holds sway even over the elected leaders notionally in charge of it”) answers to the Global Deep State, or whether the Global Deep State merely empowers the American Deep State. However, there is no denying the extent to which they are intricately and symbiotically enmeshed and interlocked.
Consider the extent to which our lives and liberties are impacted by this international convergence of governmental and profit-driven corporate interests in the surveillance state, the military industrial complex, the private prison industry, the intelligence sector, the security sector, the technology sector, the telecommunications sector, the transportation sector, the pharmaceutical industry and, most recently, by the pharmaceutical-health sector.
All of these sectors are dominated by mega-corporations operating on a global scale and working through government channels to increase their profit margins. The profit-driven policies of these global corporate giants influence everything from legislative policies to economics to environmental issues to medical care.
On almost every front, whether it’s the war on drugs, or the sale of weapons, or regulating immigration, or establishing prisons, or advancing technology, or fighting a pandemic, if there is a profit to be made and power to be amassed, you can bet that the government and its global partners have already struck a deal that puts the American people on the losing end of the bargain.
We’ve been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long—sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs—that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we’re certainly on that downward trajectory now, and things are moving fast.
The “government of the people, by the people, for the people” has perished.
In its place is a shadow government—a corporatized, militarized, entrenched global bureaucracy—that is fully operational and is not only running the country but is about to take over the world.
Given the trajectory and dramatic expansion, globalization, and merger of governmental and corporate powers, we’re not going to recognize this country (or the rest of the world) 20 years from now.
It’s taken less than a generation for our freedoms to be eroded and the Global Deep State’s structure to be erected, expanded, and entrenched.
Yet mark my words: the U.S. government will not save us from the chains of the Global Deep State.
The current or future occupant of the White House will not save us.
For that matter, anarchy, violence, and incivility will not save us.
Unfortunately, the government’s divide and conquer tactics are working like a charm.
Despite the laundry list of grievances that should unite “we the people” in common cause against the government, the nation is more divided than ever by politics, by socio-economics, by race, by religion, and by every other distinction that serves to highlight our differences.
The real and manufactured events of recent years—the pandemic, invasive surveillance, the extremism reports, the civil unrest, the protests, the shootings, the bombings, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the fusion centers, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, the distribution of military equipment and weapons to local police forces, the government databases containing the names of dissidents and potential troublemakers—have all conjoined to create an environment in which “we the people” are more divided, more distrustful, and fearful of each other.
What we have failed to realize is that in the eyes of the government, we’re all the same.
When the government and its Global-Industrial Deep State partners in the New World Order crackdown, we’ll all suffer.
If there is to be any hope of freeing ourselves, it rests—as it always has—at the local level, with you and your fellow citizens taking part in grassroots activism, which takes a trickle-up approach to governmental reform by implementing change at the local level.
One of the most important contributions an individual citizen can make is to become actively involved in local community affairs, politics, and legal battles. As the adage goes, “Think globally, act locally.”
America was meant to be primarily a system of local governments, which is a far cry from the colossal federal bureaucracy we have today. Yet if our freedoms are to be restored, understanding what is transpiring practically in your own backyard—in one’s home, neighborhood, school district, town council—and taking action at that local level must be the starting point.
Responding to unmet local needs and reacting to injustices is what grassroots activism is all about. Attend local city council meetings, speak up at town hall meetings, organize protests and letter-writing campaigns, employ “militant nonviolent resistance” and civil disobedience, which Martin Luther King Jr. used to great effect through the use of sit-ins, boycotts, and marches.
And then, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if there are any means left to us for thwarting the government in its relentless march towards outright dictatorship, it may rest with the power of communities and local governments to invalidate governmental and corporate laws, tactics and policies that are illegitimate, egregious or blatantly unconstitutional.
I don’t see it as fascism as I see it as a modernized version of Feudalism that is developing.
Feudalism in one form or another has been the predominant governmental and social structure throughout most of human history, maybe it’s the one most suited to human nature.
“A measure of wheat for a penny”
— from Rev 6:6
measure — An ancient Greek unit of dry capacity, about 1.1 liters (1 U.S. dry quart). In Athens, 1 choinix was the daily ration of grain for one man.
penny — denarion. 1 day’s pay from the parable of the laborers.
It’s a version of timocracy:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timocracy
Actually the most successful human political-economic model has been decentralized hunter-gatherers in terms of length of time and stability.
Nation-state tribal turfs but with free markets including political markets best replicate that model in modern tech and terms.
Its the extreme centrist models that make trouble going up then more coming down.
Feudalism is certainly the intended logical conclusion…that much is become now abundantly plain.
In the meanwhile it’s transition is being billed as “Stakeholder Capitalism”: THEY own everything…you and I don’t own the shirt’s on our backs. Remember the ads a few months ago, “You’ll own nothing…and be HAPPY!”? The PTB SERIOUSLY over-estimated both the impact of their engineered COVID AND our reaction to it. I believe they really thought it was going to be a “One and Done” type of operation…and now that the Cat is out of the Bag, that worries me. Allow me to explain…
Their intentions are now visibly plain and that’s a group that really doesn’t like exposure to the light of Day; it makes them vulnerable and they feel it even if the won’t consciously acknowledge it. That is why I believe that their actions are now so unpredictable. I frankly wouldn’t put – literally – ANYTHING beyond that mentality in terms of what they’d contemplate doing to Humanity at large – anything whatsoever. Fundamentally here we’re dealing with a group of Thieves…and they themselves know it as well.
Steal $500, 000 and you might be able to run far enough and dig in deep enough to evade those pursuing you, yes? STEAL 50 Trillion dollars and there’s no place you can run to that you won’t be pursued…to the death, something they also know.
Hence, thier only play is to create either A) a confusion so vast that none will ever track it all down or B) Eliminate ALL of your potential pursuers.
Currently, it appears that maybe – just maybe – they’re leaning towards the latter option; you decide for yourself based on what’s transpiring daily now. FWIW, the Hopi Indians have a prophecy about the end of the Fourth World (the one in which we currently reside) which goes as, “There will come a time when those in High Places will be HUNTED…and they will turn upon those hunting them and it WILL get out of hand.”
Good Luck to everyone…JOG
There really isn’t much difference either way. Both are slavery maintained by the violence of the government.
When Rome fell slavery was prevalent. But being a slave owner came with obligations, to feed, house and cloth your slaves.
Feudalism was established to remove that obligation from the rich landowners. Now the slaves (peasants) were tied to the land, owed the land owner their labor, but were responsible for themselves. The land owner held all the same rights over the peasants to punish up to capitol punishment for disobedience or running away. They still called the peasants slaves.
The only difference today is it is corporations and government, not rich landowners and government. Call it peasantry or Fascism it is the same thing.
The sad truth is, if we survive and/or avert a nuclear holocaust from Russia, we (true) Americans have to contend with a fascist uprising here at home. Fuck Russia, fuck trump, fuck MAGA, and fuck the “Americans” who stand with all of that.
That’s me Darwin. I will see you on the battle field.
Can’t wait, bitch. I bet you could use a haircut…???
That’s MISTER Darwin, fuckstick.
“This new world order—a global world order—made up of international government agencies and corporations owes its existence in large part to the U.S. government’s deep-seated and, in many cases, top-secret alliances with foreign nations and global corporations.”
Yet, he doesn’t interpret this to be the decadent mega-opilis of Bible prophecy, that falls in one hour. That maddened the nations with it’s cup of abominations. Which was hated and consumed with fire by a red beast.
Good article, though this is a return to the world as we knew it with some updates to the social engineering tech.
The Globalist Socialists are trying to recreate Cold War I for a new era, decoupling Russia and casting them into the Soviet role.
Russia is capitalist now, though, not purely cronyist, this is the Eurasian/Asian century, not the American Century.
Cronyism always loses in the long run no matter what it calls itself.
So this was a Snyder article after all? Says whitehead but the bottom has is Erik Blair’s diaries add. Anyway where’s the worlds bleeding ? heart for all the civil war and turmoil in Africa or Burma? This is all a distraction to usher in the great starvation!
BrooklynSez:
I am not so sure about all these conspiracies swirling around, globalists, facists, corportate cabals, government in collusion with corporate cabals. Etc.
I do know a bit about history. I see the parallels between the build up to WWI and WWII. The main difference right now is unlike the last two world wars, the powers that be i.e. UK, France, U.S. rtc. allowed Germany to be aggressive. Today in the NOW and it may be a bit late but i believe Putin bit off a piece of Dick a little too big for his mealy mouth.
The Sanctions are powerful the shunning of Russia is working IF the Alliance can be held together. I AM going to point out that Trumps fawning and ass kissing of PUKIN contributed in large part to this invasion. Yes the previous administration allowed his incursions into Ukraine before But they imposed sanctions and those sanctions were watered down and Trump bitched that we were too hard on Russia and he weakened them with the help of the REPUBLICANS, and even the Europeans especially the Germans folded because they are Russian Gas junkies.
Trump belittled NATO and undermined them at every chance he got, if he had gotten elected again we would have withdrawn from NATO. lets all agree Trump was helping PUKIN .
When PUKIN saw that the current administration was OK with Eastern European countries joining NATO he pulled the Trigger. Yes I know Poor Pukin and Russia were pushed against the wall….NATO aggression blah blah blah…….yea um no….those countries Ukraine. Moldovia,Romania,Hungary etc. with the exception of Belarus want nothing more than to be FREE of Russian aggrresion and influence that they have endured for the past centuries.
So please dont run the same lame argument about NATO aggression, a little history here, case in point Hungary 1957 Russian Tanks quashed an insurrection of people who wanted nothing more than to be FREE.
There was a time when Americans helped people around the world to be free. But that time is gone now lots of Amerucans admire a Scumbag like PUKIN and want that kind of strongman for a leader(careful what you wish for).
And the current shit show going on over there? Well time will tell if its going to spread.
As for new world order…I think the Chinese are the real boogie men we really have to worry about if they become so strong that they can take over the world they will. And those Americans who LOVE authoritarinism (looking at you Trumpers) can kiss your 1st,2nd,4th 5th amendments good bye as well as the rest of the constitution.
Btw I blame Corporate America and a Wimpy U.S. govt (conservatives and democrats too for the past 45 years) for allowing the outsourcing of jobs to China. But Corporate Greed has always won out, instead of doing the hard work of remaining competitive without sacrificing the middle class. AND NO Biden is not CHINA’s bitch, he has done more to counteract China than Trump look it up. From santions to the delisting chinese companies to signing the America Competes Act. He has done more than Rump.
As messed up as America can be at times, its still the greatest place in the world and on the contrary we enjoy a very good lifestyle compared to other parts of the world we are not constantly being hounded by the authorities…..well….. UNLESS your black or brown.
As a political scientist, I will offer my definitions of fascism.
1) Fascism 1.0: This was defined by Mussolini and it was the marriage of state and private business organised to achieve public goals. This led to corporatism.
2) Fascism 2.0: Corporatism. Corporatism is what we see in the US. It is a situation where you have all activity organised around legal entities known as ‘corporations’. These ‘corporations’ can function in the private, government or non-profit sectors. What matters is that they are legally established as corporations, ie: with a CEO, a registered business name etc.
3) Fascism 3.0: Nazism. Nazism has the first two fascisms as part of it but then adds race science as its glue. Race science advances what it believes to be the ideal race because that is hygienic and healthy. For example, it doesn’t like anything that pisses in the gene pool as this philosophy would see it. It definitely doesn’t do diversity.
4) Fascism 4.0 (we are here): This fascism also incorporates elements of the first 3 but it adds its new upgrades, for example, the metaverse, gene science, robotics, ubiquity, digital this and that, etc. It also offers fake diversity as it pushes everyone to the same interaction with the state. Fascism 4.0 wants, just like Nazism, to create something new. In this case it is called ‘transhumanism’: a fluid state where genetics, robotics, digital etc. all blur and blend together to create hybridised ‘new humans’. For example, the new trans man with the built-in vibrating dildo who can role play with you on your metaverse headset while you ride the subway to work. God knows what we will see in the next five years. They can already rewrite your genetic code, control you 24/7 through debt instruments, breed new humans in test tubes, etc. It makes you wonder what they want all the surplus, low IQ Africans for?? Organ harvesting?
Howdy Frank,
A very interesting taxonomy you have there, kudos therefore!
Ever heard of the Drake Equation? It’s easily accessed on Wiki. The basic notion was an attempt to determine – even vaguely – an estimate of just how often Life should arise in the Galaxy. Bear with me here since this plays almost directly into your fourth listing above.
Turns out that even by conservative estimates, there SHOULD be several to several dozens of highly advanced Civilizations in our home Galaxy, the Milky Way. After arduous, long-term searches for the slightest hint of the existence of such we have exactly ZERO indication that higher life exist…and if it did, rest assured, we SHOULD have seen some indication thereof at this stage.
In light of this inconsistency, some few years ago, a Worthy proposed “The Great Filter” conjecture. In brief, at some point in it’s development due either to unknown astrophysical or self-inflicted destruction (all?) Intelligent species apparently, just cease to exist.
Without getting into that in detail – since that can also be perused at Wiki – suffice it to say that amongst the numerous possible explanations which could serve to answer the ‘why’ involved, one particular possibility stands out in my opinion.
Specifically, the possibility I am referring to is that once a Civilization obtains sufficient (not complete) ability to begin tampering with the Code of Life, ie, their Genetic makeup, then catastrophe ensues.
Currently, medical science knows approximately Jack-Squat as to how ‘Protein Folding’ – the process whereby proteins interact and/or execute their functions – occurs. The problem lies in the computational horsepower required to solve even the simplest of such interactions. Classical Binary computing cannot address problems classified as “NP Hard” (also a topic at Wiki) which in simple terms describes processes whose difficulty of solution rises so quickly that all the binary-based computing horsepower in the entire Universe would be required.
However, Quantum Computing – theoretically – could solve such in relatively brief order. But there is a catch…the interval between obtaining the ability to manipulate the genomes in one’s bio-sphere and developing the necessary computational ability to analytically determine pre-facto exactly how a protein will behave – even in vitro, isolated – is likely a rather long period, too long.
If someone develops something which is subsequently released into the planetary biome then there’s simply no recalling it…and if that ends up through various processes including genetic random walk, becomes lethal to key biota then “Poof”…the entire planetary biome fails…or the sentient species is obliterated at a minimum.
Of late, this particular possibility seems more and more likely, used as a weapon of War. Nuff said, I’m sure.
Regards…JOG
The current government of the U.S. A. is Fifth Column. The Fourth Turning is close. Ammo up. We may be goners.
People on this site and others like this never fail to amaze me, you want a civil war you want an “apocalypse” or TEOTWAWKI type event so you can put your camo on and run around with your guns, i know, i know your going to shoot black and browns and liberals and then when their all gone your going to live in a very white beautiful christian nation with……I dont fuggin know…..all you conspiracy kooks all you keyboard warriors, pseudo tough guys here’s the thing, why is it so bad for you to realize that a civil war is not going to happen and that a civil war is NOT going to bring the results YOU want! Seriously Authoritarianism which is what most of you want is Facism or Nazism, but you won’t call it that……IDK maybe if you just concentrate on getting a life you might be happier…….stop stressing shit that you makes no sense like bringing back Jim Crow and focus on just fukkin living, smoke a joint drink a beer, a shot of whiskey, damn just get along for fuks sake.
Sadly I think i’m pissing into the wind. So let me close by telling you fantasy warriors this…….careful what you wish for because just like the Ukrainians who got a wake up call and are now in it to win it.
YOU may not be prepared for whats coming your way if you decide to start a civil war remember that. Yea yea yea spare me your macho B.S. were gonna steam roll the darkies and et. all and all the pussy liberals ……yea keep thinking that. There are many many more folks in the U.S.A. who push come to shove are not going to allow a civil war because of race.
Spot on. Good on ya, Brooklyn.
I certainly hope you ARE one of the goners. Fuck you.