Re: The vital importance of Controlling the Narrative

The Powers that Be HAVE to censor … and the ‘end game’ is undoubtedly digital currency and the banning of cash transactions.

When nobody can use this in the future, the Bad Guys will have won.

In the last five or so years, the word “narrative” has become omnipresent in media stories, both in the so-called mainstream media as well as the alternative media.

(It would be interesting to learn how many times this word has been used in articles or by public figures in interviews … certainly many millions of times).

In my own articles, I often include the modifier “authorized” in front of the word “narrative” as it’s long been clear to me the world’s most powerful people and organizations do everything in their considerable power to “control the narratives” that advance their agendas.

Those who desire greater power and influence know they can achieve this goal by controlling what most citizens on the planet think about a given subject or issue.

That is, if a certain group can “control the narrative,” this cohort of societal leaders can, indeed, control the masses … or produce a set of widely-accepted beliefs that will benefit the so-called “Powers That Be (PTB)” - another term that’s become popular in recent years and decades.

Indeed, I’ve come to believe the PTB’s never-ceasing effort to control the authorized narrative is the most significant project/goal of the people and organizations that control the world.

Covid was just an opportunity or a means to achieve the real goal …

For millions of global citizens, the most-significant global event of the past five years was the alleged emergence of a “deadly” novel virus, followed by the coordinated response to “slow,” “stop” or battle this purported grave public health threat.

However, I’d argue that the most significant (and ominous) trend of recent years was the creation of myriad propaganda initiatives (mis- and disinformation programs) that facilitated the eye-opening growth of bureaucracies and organizations created to spread false information … and control even wider swaths of the world population.

That is, Covid as we know it wouldn’t have been possible absent these narrative-control operations.

Furthermore, I strongly suspect the entire “end game” of the Covid response might have been a coordinated effort to produce a system that will make future narrative-control operations more likely to be successful.

Per my analysis, the objectives of the PTB include efforts to …

1. Remain in power.

2. Increase their power, influence and control.

3. Protect themselves from exposure for past nefarious activities, frauds, lies and crimes.

4. Bring to fruition other initiatives which could not be possible if these actors did not “control the narrative.”

The following developments made it possible for the world’s establishment rulers to, first, create bogus or dubious narratives and, then, ensure that skeptical critical thinkers would not reach enough citizens to challenge or debunk myriad false narratives:

The capture of the “mainstream” media (aka the corporate media or legacy media)

In the past five-plus years, I can still not identify one mainstream media organization that seriously challenged any of the authorized Covid narratives. This means that tens of thousands of journalists, editors and publishers working for hundreds of “news” organizations have exhibited 100-percent group think that one might have, incorrectly, thought was statistically impossible to achieve.

The 100-percent capture rate of legacy media took decades to achieve and might be the most significant societal development in my lifetime as the “watchdog” Fourth Estate completely abdicated its duty to hold powerful people and organizations accountable and failed to exhibit an iota of journalistic skepticism.

Expressed differently, if just a few prominent news organizations included authentic and skeptical journalists, many of the false narratives that ultimately went unchallenged probably could not have achieved the status of “scientific truths” or infallible components of accepted conventional wisdom.

Coordinated initiatives which created myriad organizations with the sole purpose of censoring or suppressing dissenting or alternative viewpoints

In the time period before official Covid (and even earlier), scores of organizations were created, funded, staffed and charged with the task of attacking and vilifying potentially-influential voices that were pushing back against false or dubious narratives.

The Public Substack news organization dubbed these organizations the “Censorship Industrial Complex,” which includes scores of university departments, think tanks, fact-checkers (like Media Matters, NewsGuard, politifact, etc.) as well as key officials in myriad governmental agencies and executive branches (including the White House).

Many prominent legacy news organizations, led by the BBC, created the “Trusted News Initiative” to ensure that traditional media sources also expanded efforts to flag so-called misinformation, disinformation and mal-information - terms that were created in recent years and now, per the authorized narrative, constitute activities that are “dangerous” or “threats” to public health, democracy or “national security.”

At the same time, giant social media and tech companies such as Facebook, (then) Twitter, Google, You Tube, etc. created “armies” of “content moderators,” algorithms and “community standards” all designed to suppress the speech of dissident voices.

While, to some extent, government coercion might explain these censorship initiatives/policies, it seems clear to myself that executives for these companies, largely, support efforts to “protect” users from information the “authorized narratives” claim is dangerous.

Participants in pre-Covid “pandemic planning exercises” (like Event 201), identified and created myriad strategies to suppress the views of skeptics or dissidents.

These strategies included carrots - paying “influencers” - and sticks - vilifying and punishing those who might push-back against the authorized narratives.

The effect of the above developments (plus schemes not mentioned) was to create an environment where criticism of policy was unlikely to “go viral.” Furthermore, large swaths of citizens quickly learned to “self censor” and keep any dissenting views private.

Due to decades of psychology and sociological experiments, government leaders and pandemic planners clearly knew that being a part of the “safety of the herd” is/was one of the most powerful psychological motivators of human behavior.

Per my assessment, all of the above developments were planned, coordinated, funded and ultimately involved participation from virtually every “important truth-seeking organization” in the world.

It should also be noted that “controlling the narrative” has probably always been a goal of society’s most powerful organizations and leaders. However, IMO, efforts to achieve this result clearly became a much-greater priority of the PTB in the past decade.

ASIDE:

On one level, the prospect of “controlling information” in a world where the Internet had become a major force might seem a far-more-challenging task. However, by “capturing” or co-opting the corporate entities that provide most content on the Internet, this objective was indeed, largely and surprisingly, possible.

Indeed, “capturing” the Internet might have become even more important to the PTB given the communication and information potential embodied by the world-wide web.

*** (Cross-posts and re-stacks are the most effective tool to expand the reach of “contrarian” authors.) ***

What’s the end game or why did “narrative control” become far more important?

In my opinion, the “end game” is a sinister world predicted by (once revered) intellectuals like George Orwell, a world where “Big Brother” controls all key information and the mass of citizenry (probably voluntarily) forfeits civil liberties, allowing the world’s real rulers to, in effect, enslave almost every citizen on the planet.

Ultimate control for the State will probably be achieved if and when digital currency is implemented and cash transactions are either abolished or significantly curtailed.

An off-shoot of digital currency will/would be digital “social credit monitoring” where the State can potentially, or hypothetically, control virtually every activity of human beings.

IMO, the justification for the State’s movement to implement digital currency (and ultimately ban cash transactions and install social credit monitoring programs) likely traces to the understanding of the world’s real leaders that the economy (which is really not “free”) can no longer produce a sufficient livable income for the masses.

I recently read that at least 20 percent of American government outlays are consumed by the health/medical and science establishment.

By numerous metrics, “public health” has never been worse and the cost of providing public health continues to greatly outpace inflation. (Official inflation is determined by the CPI, a bogus figure also created and controlled by the State).

Social security, government pensions and myriad welfare programs continue to represent ever-expanding percentages of GDP. (Also, outlays supporting the Military Industrial Complex are not going to decrease in a world where wars or “threats to U.S. National Security” are always going to be omnipresent) .

In an era where the federal government prints trillions of “dollars” as it needs, ever-expanding government outlays are now a given, which means real inflation is not going to, somehow, reverse.

In my view, the ultimate solution - one that might mollify the masses (and keep the proletariat classes from revolting) - is probably a Universal Basic Income (UBI), money that will be digitally distributed to citizens with, ultimately, hundreds of citizen-controlling caveats attached to the money the State effectively distributes and controls.

That is, even “The Magic Printing Press” will not produce enough money to provide a standard of living that generations have become accustomed to.

The very real possibility that AI (and robotics or automation )will replace millions of traditional jobs will also probably enhance the necessity for a UBI and digital payments.

Also, the (coordinated and intentional) influx or invasion of tens of millions of illegal immigrants into the populations of America and Europe in recent years continues the decades-long trend of importing workers who will work for much lower wages than many American citizens.

In my view, mass illegal immigration has always been a work-around designed to conceal or suppress real inflation as prices for many products and services would be significantly higher if cheap immigrant labor was not being utilized or available.

The “out-sourcing” of manufacturing to cheap-labor countries also kept prices lower than they otherwise would have been … as has the effort to keep the national minimum wage under $7.50 for decades.

If one “follows the money” and appreciates the effects of real inflation (which Ron Paul has always said is the “cruelest tax” on the working class), it seems plausible to conclude that, years ago, the PTB recognized a “tipping point” would/could soon arrive and large swaths of the population would begin to experience major negative changes in their standards of living and, thus, quality of life.

Per my analysis, for decades, government and shadow leaders have simply been adapting measures that allowed those who benefit from the “Status Quo” to keep “kicking the can down the road” for as long as possible,

As I’ve come to view things, “Covid,” was probably not an effort to save the world from a deadly novel virus but, instead, a bold geopolitical chess move to get the population closer to digital currency, expediting the arrival of the day when cash transactions were prohibited and Orwellian levels of social control could be more easily implemented.

(Whether the “vaccines” might have been viewed by at least a few Deep State generals as an effort to reduce the world population cannot be entirely dismissed IMO).

Also, IMO, the bogus “Climate Change existential threat” is also being utilized to advance the same program.

That was then; this is now (our ‘New Normal’) …

Circling back to the importance of authorized narratives, it’s striking to think about how different the world is in 2025 compared to 2019, 2005, 1995 or 1985.

Pre-Covid, nobody would have thought the government could tell half the population they couldn’t go to work or to church or eat inside a restaurant … or that no children could attend school or that citizens couldn’t visit their infirm loved ones in a nursing home or hospital.

Few citizens, raised to celebrate the importance of freedom and free speech, could have imagined that large swaths of common-sense and credible speech would be relabeled a “threat to democracy” or that so many contrarians would now be viewed as “dangerous” “extremists.”

However, one could argue that all of these changes had to occur if the Powers that Be were going to remain in control and enact the policies and laws that would create a “Great Re-set” or a “New World Order” - a world where the “New Normal” is far from normal in a historical context.

Nor do I think ‘they’ are going to stop …

Recently, I’ve posted many stories where I posit that the same “Narrative Controllers” may have increasingly turned their attention to the writers’ platform Substack, which, for several years (by default), became the sanctuary of dissident thinkers and “citizen journalists” - a work-around to captured MSM non-journalists.

As someone who thinks “controlling the narrative” is THE most-important objective of the world’s real rulers, it would be odd, and out of character, if the same powerful people and organizations simply ignored the potentially-significant impact of Substack “contrarians.”

Conclusion:

Any battle being waged to influence the “hearts and minds” of billions of world citizens would, of course, hinge on what side creates and then controls the world’s key narratives.

As it turned out, almost all of the key “authorized” narratives were bogus or dubious.

However, it doesn’t matter if the key authorized narratives are false if the majority of the public never realizes this (which was clearly the goal.)

Speaking for myself (on Substack, while I still can) … hiding the truth from the masses will continue to be the priority of the Powers that Be in years and decades to come.

For the adversaries of genuine freedom, censorship (controlling all the key narratives) is a necessity.

To remain in power, the PTB need total control - which will be achieved if and when cash is banned and digital currency becomes our New Normal.

***

*** (Recently noted: The writers who are experiencing exponential subscriber growth on Substack support the authorized narratives.) ***

Writer gratuities via Ko-Fi.