ESSENTIAL READING -- THE MEN IN BLACK AND HOW THEY OPERATE

THE MEN IN BLACK AND HOW THEY OPERATE

Paul Craig Roberts

 

 

 

Dear Readers, this is a long article. It is very good. It tells you who the Men in Black are, how they operate, and why they are more powerful than governments. You will see that governments, even if they intend to represent the public interest, are restrained by the power of economic and political lobbies. The reason elected politicians don’t deliver on their promises to voters is they cannot.

 

The article is from a source called The Heist. I do not know what it is or what its credibility is. However, I can attest from personal experience to the general validity of the article’s explanation.

 

The power of organized private interests is sufficient to prevent political change. We do not have to blame it on the Rothschilds, the Bilderbergers, the Council of Foreign Relations, Rockefeller, the World Economic Forum, or the British Royal family.

 

During these first days of the Trump administration, we have seen the power of the organized interests. Robert Kennedy cannot ban the Covid vaccines and glyphosate because Big Pharma and agri-business will not permit him. Trump’s tariff lists contain mainly exemptions at the demand of manufacturing interests, and his deportations must exclude restaurant workers, agricultural workers, and chicken slaughterhouse workers. No doubt the list of exemptions will grow.

 

Trump is impotent in delivering peace, because the military-security complex’s profits depend on having enemies.

 

Americans, being an insouciant people, always blame senators, representations and the president for not keeping their promises. The fact of the matter is that any politician’s promise that cuts across the interest of a lobby group cannot be kept.

 

One day, perhaps, Americans will wake up and become a sophisticated people. If so, they can serve as a countervailing power to the organized interest groups and, perhaps, take some of the power back into their hands. I can hope, but I am not going to bet on it.

 

The Heist

How They Stole Democracy in Plain Sight

July 18, 2025

 

Remember when Liz Truss got fired as UK Prime Minister for trying to cut taxes? It wasn’t that long ago. She won a vote in September 2022 to lead Britain’s Conservative Party. Her platform was simple: cut taxes to grow the economy. Pretty standard conservative stuff, really. But within weeks of taking office, she was forced out. The official story was that her economic plan ‘spooked the markets’ and threatened the economy.

 

Here’s what really happened — and why it should terrify you about the state of democracy.

 

The 49-Day Coup

 

Liz Truss made one fatal mistake: she tried to govern without asking permission from the real powers in charge. She announced tax cuts without clearing them with the Bank of England and its friends. The reaction was swift and brutal:

 

Official statisticians suddenly declared Truss’s plan had triggered an economic crisis. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) and Office for National Statistics (ONS) rang alarm bells that Britain’s finances were in peril.

 

Central bankers at the Bank of England said their data ‘proved’ her tax cuts were dangerous and irresponsible.

 

Financial markets — tightly intertwined with those same central banking networks — went haywire. The pound’s value plummeted and government bond yields spiked, as if the economy really was collapsing overnight.

 

Media outlets amplified the panic with breathless headlines about a coming catastrophe. Turn on the news and you’d think Britain was hours away from economic Armageddon.

 

In less than seven weeks, the message was clear: Truss had to go. After just 49 days in office, party insiders pushed out the democratically elected Prime Minister and replaced her with someone more ‘acceptable’ to the financial powers-that-be.

 

Today, well after Truss’s ouster, UK government debt is trading at even worse levels than during the so-called ‘Truss crisis’. The economic indicators that were supposedly in free-fall have deteriorated further. Yet now it’s all deemed fine — because the current government does exactly what the Bank of England tells them. In other words, the problem was never really the numbers on a spreadsheet; the problem was a leader who didn’t obey.

 

The COVID Rehearsal

 

Sound familiar? It should. We’ve seen this playbook before — most recently during COVID. Think back to the early pandemic:

Unelected health experts built scary computer models predicting millions of deaths.

Elected leaders were told they must follow these ‘expert’ recommendations or be labeled anti-science murderers.

The media ran nonstop fear campaigns with spiking case graphs and daily death counts.

Anyone questioning lockdowns or school closures was branded a dangerous crank spreading ‘misinformation’.

Did you vote for Neil Ferguson to lock down your economy? Did you vote for Chris Whitty to close your kids’ schools? Did you vote for the World Health Organisation to decide whether you could travel? Of course not. But somehow their expert opinions overruled every elected government on Earth simultaneously. Politicians everywhere fell in line behind the unelected authorities.

The same core pattern from the Truss saga repeated: an alleged crisis, experts seizing control, media- induced panic, dissenters silenced, and democratic process tossed aside. It worked under the cover of public health just as effectively as it did with financial policy.

 

The Pattern

 

By now a terrifying formula should be clear. This isn’t about one Prime Minister or one pandemic. It’s a repeatable method for overriding democracy:

Create a crisis with computer models. Predict a horrifying collapse – be it economic, medical, environmental – using complex simulations that most people can’t understand but that sound authoritative.

Declare that only experts can solve it. Insist that the emergency is so dire that normal democratic debate is too slow or too ‘ignorant’. Hand power to unelected technocrats because they have the ‘data’ and ‘expertise’.

Sideline or remove any elected leaders who won’t comply. If a politician tries to go against the experts or the narrative, crank up the pressure. Crash the markets, inflate the case numbers, whatever it takes – send the signal that this leader is endangering the public.

Give the public a single approved narrative through media. Drown people in dire headlines and authoritative pronouncements. Label any alternative viewpoint as dangerous misinformation. Keep everyone afraid and suspicious.

When the crisis passes, keep the new powers in place. Don’t restore the old checks and balances. Normalise the idea that unelected authorities call the shots. Then wait for the next crisis and repeat the cycle.

Repeat until democracy is dead.

 

Dialectics by Design

Why This Time Is Different

 

You might object: ‘Experts have always advised governments. Isn’t it good to listen to specialists?’ And you’d be right that experts have long played important roles. But something fundamental has changed in recent years.

In the past, experts advised and elected officials decided. A minister or president would hear from economists or scientists, weigh their input against other factors, and make a policy choice. The accountability ultimately stayed with the politician, who voters could reward or punish.

Now, experts decide and politicians obediently announce the decisions; the roles have flipped. Politicians have become mouthpieces for policies crafted behind closed doors by bureaucrats, central bankers, public health officials, and international committees. If an elected leader dares to deviate from what ‘the data’ supposedly dictates (as Liz Truss did), they are removed or neutralised by forces beyond their control.

We are watching the death of representative government in real time. And most people don’t even realise it’s happening because the takeover wears the disguise of ‘following the science’ and ‘responsible governance’. Who could be against safety, or health, or expert-approved prosperity? The loss of democracy doesn’t come with tanks in the streets; it comes with technocrats on TV calmly explaining why they need more power.

 

The Death of Democracy

The Question

 

At this point you need to ask yourself some uncomfortable questions:

If unelected officials can remove an elected Prime Minister simply for proposing a tax cut, then who’s really running your country?

If global health bureaucrats can override every parliament on the planet in the name of ‘emergency’, then what does your vote actually mean?

If climate scientists and central bankers can dictate energy policy, economic policy, even how you heat your home, without any democratic debate, then is representative democracy still alive or just a facade?

Because it’s looking an awful lot like the people you elected aren’t the ones in charge. So who is?

To find the answer, we have to understand how this system got built. The forces that took down Truss and locked down the world did not appear overnight. They’re the result of a blueprint 200 years in the making, a blueprint that has quietly replaced accountable government with rule-by-network. Let’s go back to where it all began.

 

The 200-Year Blueprint

 

So, who is running things if not our elected leaders? The system that removed Liz Truss — and that now dominates almost every country on Earth — wasn’t invented yesterday. In fact, it started as a banking scheme in 19th-century Britain. Over two centuries, that scheme evolved into a global model for technocratic control.

 

The Original Scam: London’s Bankers and the Clearing House

 

Picture Britain in the late 1700s. Commerce is booming, and dozens of small banks pop up to serve local communities. But there’s a problem: how do banks in different towns settle accounts with each other? Shipping crates of gold back and forth is slow, risky, and expensive.

The Bank of England (Britain’s central bank) steps in with a ‘helpful’ solution around 1800: the Clearing House. Instead of each bank individually moving money, all the banks agree to settle through the Bank of England. Every day, the Bank of England will centrally ‘clear’ the debts between banks and settle up who owes what.

At first glance, this seems like a great innovation. It makes the system more efficient and reduces risk. But here’s the genius of the scam: the local banks appeared independent, yet the Bank of England became the indispensable middleman for every transaction. It inserted itself into every corner of the financial system.

Over the coming decades, this gave the central bank enormous power. Why? Because any local bank that defied the Bank of England could be cut off from the clearing system. If you were a bank in 1850 and didn’t play by Threadneedle Street’s rules, suddenly your checks wouldn’t clear and your credit would dry up. In effect, you’d be out of business. Thus, even without formal authority over all those private banks, the central clearing house ensured everyone fell in line when it mattered.

 

Own nothing. Control everything.

The American Copy: Birth of the Federal Reserve

 

Fast forward to 1913. After a series of financial panics, American bankers and politicians decided to ‘modernise’ the U.S. banking system. What model did they choose? The same London clearing house trick, repackaged for America.

They created the Federal Reserve System and sold it as a decentralised network. Look, they said, we have 12 regional Federal Reserve banks across the country, not one central monolith! On paper it looked like the power was spread out. But in reality, all those regional Feds answered to the Federal Reserve Board (and, behind the scenes, to New York’s Fed and the Treasury). Just like in Britain, any bank that didn’t join the Federal Reserve’s clearing system would be ostracised from the economy.

The result? The U.S. now had a central bank pulling strings in the background, able to create money, set interest rates, and, crucially, bail out or shut down banks at will by controlling the clearing of funds. And once again, during any crisis the Fed could simply deny liquidity to any institution that bucked its wishes, forcing compliance. Same scam, new country, bigger scale.

 

Central Bankers & the Bretton Woods Committee

The Global Expansion: Enter the BIS

 

By the 1930s, the clearing-house model had proved its worth to those in power. What was left? Going global. In 1930, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) was founded in Switzerland. Officially, the BIS was created to help settle World War I debts, but it quickly morphed into something else: the central bank of central banks.

The BIS took the clearing-house concept and applied it to entire nations. It became the secretive hub through which major central banks coordinate and settle transactions. Even today, every few months the world’s top central bankers quietly meet at the BIS in Basel to sync up their policies.

This means no central bank truly acts alone. If, say, a country’s government wants to pursue an independent economic path that the network disapproves of, the central banks (through BIS coordination) can respond by restricting credit, manipulating currency flows, or in extreme cases, cutting that nation out of global financial networks. Sound familiar? It’s exactly how local British banks were disciplined in 1850, now scaled up to entire countries.

 

The pattern is always the same:

 

Create the appearance of decentralisation. (Many local banks! Many regional Feds! Many national central banks! Everything looks independent.)

Control the critical clearing mechanisms behind the scenes. (Whether it’s daily check clearing or international settlements, make sure all the key players rely on your central node.)

Use crises to enforce conformity. In normal times, let things run in the background. But when a bank or country strays from the desired line, use the clearing system as a weapon: deny them liquidity, trash their currency’s value, freeze their transactions.

Maintain the illusion of autonomy while expanding control. Keep selling the public on how ‘free and competitive’ the system is, even as you quietly tighten the reins. Each emergency justifies a bit more central intervention, which never fully goes away after the crisis.

By mid-century, finance was effectively conquered by this architecture. But here’s where it gets even more interesting: the same template was exported far beyond banking.

 

But Wait, It Gets Worse

 

What started as a banking architecture has now been applied to nearly every sector of society. The geniuses behind this system realised that the formula works for more than money. The key is to create dependency on a central clearing mechanism that you control, and you can dominate any field. Consider a few examples:

 

Healthcare: Your local doctor or hospital feels independent, but behind them stand medical boards, licensing authorities, and insurance billing codes that all serve as ‘clearing houses’. If a doctor strays from approved practice (say, promoting an unapproved treatment), they risk losing their license or insurance reimbursements — effectively being cut off from patients. During a health ‘crisis’, hospitals that didn’t follow World Health Organisation or CDC guidelines could lose accreditation or funding. Independence is an illusion; everyone answers to the central health bureaucracy in the end.

 

Science and Academia: We think of universities and researchers as free-thinking institutions. But their funding and reputations are cleared through a few key chokepoints: government grants, peer- reviewed journals, professional associations. If a scientist’s work doesn’t align with the ‘consensus’ set by bodies like the National Science Foundation, major journals, or the big funding foundations, their grants dry up and their papers don’t get published. Their career effectively ends. So an illusion of open inquiry persists, while an invisible hand steers the entire scientific enterprise by controlling the money and prestige.

 

Media: Thousands of media outlets operate, yet nearly all are plugged into a few advertising networks and tech platforms that serve as clearing houses for attention and revenue. If a news organisation reports something truly contrarian that threatens the system’s interests, they risk being cut off by advertisers, delisted by Google, or banned from social media. The result? Ostensibly independent media voices end up marching in lockstep narrative because the cost of defying the central info gatekeepers is financial ruin and digital exile.

 

Business: We have countless companies in every industry, but look at their lifeblood: credit and capital. Banks, big investors, and credit rating agencies now push identical agendas (for example, ESG scores or other ‘stakeholder’ metrics). A business that doesn’t comply might find its credit line pulled or its rating downgraded, making it hard to raise money. Meanwhile, international regulators coordinate rules that favor giant corporations and squeeze out unfavored players. One by one, independent businesses get folded into the same global corporate network, or they perish.

 

In each case, the architecture is the same as that 19th-century clearing house: apparent independence on the surface, central control beneath. Compliance is enforced not by overt dictatorship, but by choking off access to the systems every participant needs to survive.

 

Consent of the Unelected

Why Truss Got Crushed

 

Now we see Liz Truss’s ‘crime’ in context. She attempted to act like a genuine head of government, pursuing a policy (tax cuts) that her voters wanted. But the financial system she tried to operate in is part of a global network that doesn’t tolerate free agents. The moment she broke from the path ordained by that network, it was as if the immune system of the global financial order kicked in:

 

Markets didn’t tank by accident; they were the weapon aimed at her. The data and forecasts trotted out by agencies weren’t unbiased truth; they were strategic attacks, coordinated through the financial clearing system, meant to create an atmosphere of inevitable disaster around her. The media hysteria simply amplified what the network signaled was ‘the truth’.

 

Truss was crushed not by a flaw in her policy per se, but by the operating system of global finance reacting to an unexpected input. She was an anomaly to be eliminated, a local bank trying to defy the central clearing house and getting shut down as a result.

 

From Gold to Governance

The Terrible Truth

 

Almost every institution you interact with is now a branch of one giant global clearing house. Your bank, your doctor, your employer, your kid’s school, the news you read, the social media you use — all of it is quietly networked into central hubs of control.

 

The 19th-century London bankers stumbled on a formula that has been refined and expanded to near perfection. They figured out how to make people and organisations think they’re free while binding them into an invisible web of obedience.

 

And the most brilliant part? Most of the people working within these institutions don’t even realise it. The average journalist believes they’re reporting truth. The average scientist thinks they’re following evidence. The average banker thinks it’s just market forces. Each of them fails to see how their entire environment has been structured to reward conformity and punish true independence.

 

This system wasn’t built overnight. In fact, there was a critical moment when the blueprint took a great leap forward — a moment when two supposed enemies came together to ensure that no corner of the globe would escape the new architecture.

 

International Government

When East and West Agreed

 

Up to the mid-20th century, the control template spread through the Western world and its sphere of influence. But large parts of the globe were still outside the network – most notably the Soviet Union and its allies. That changed in the 1960s, when a series of quiet moves ensured that even rival superpowers would implement the same technocratic system. This was the decade when the blueprint went truly global. And it all centers around an unlikely secret alliance in the midst of the Cold War.

 

The President Who Said No

 

In the early 1960s, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara introduced a new high-tech management system at the Pentagon. It was called Planning-Programming-Budgeting System (PPBS), and it promised to apply rigorous computer analysis and systems theory to government decision-making. Initially, President John F. Kennedy went along with McNamara’s innovations in the Defense Department.

 

But as the months passed, JFK grew wary. He had lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when the world teetered on the edge of nuclear war. Part of what brought us to that brink were overconfident experts and military models that didn’t account for human nuance. Kennedy started questioning the wisdom of letting technocrats and computers dictate policy. He wondered: Should complex decisions that affect millions be reduced to formulas and flowcharts, outside of democratic debate?

 

By 1963, proposals were floating around to expand McNamara’s systems approach beyond the Pentagon. Some wanted a new ‘National Information Center’ that would centralise vast amounts of data and use PPBS-like techniques to manage not just defense, but domestic programs too. This would effectively hand unprecedented control to unelected analysts and mathematicians.

 

Kennedy balked. He began pushing back against these efforts to sideline traditional political judgment. In speeches, JFK spoke about peace, human values, and the limits of abstract models. Privately, he started cleaning house, removing some of the more fanatical systems analysts from influential positions. He was, in essence, saying no to the emerging technocratic takeover of government.

 

The Fourth Casualty

The Dallas Solution

 

On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. In that single moment, the resistance at the very top of the United States government vanished.

 

What happened next was startlingly convenient for the technocratic agenda:

 

Within days, President Lyndon B. Johnson quietly reversed JFK’s directive to begin withdrawing American troops from Vietnam. The war (which Kennedy wanted to wind down) escalated under the guidance of ‘expert’ strategists.

 

Johnson enthusiastically embraced the expansion of PPBS. By 1965, he issued an executive order mandating PPBS across every federal agency. What had been an experiment in defense became the operating system of the entire U.S. government practically overnight.

 

The White House welcomed back many of the technocrats whom Kennedy had kept at arm’s length. The intellectual heirs of McNamara’s systems analysis now had free rein.

 

Plans that had been on hold under JFK – like ambitious proposals for domestic surveillance and information control – found new life. Johnson’s administration began laying groundwork for gathering unprecedented data on citizens, all in the name of efficient governance.

 

Perhaps most tellingly, Johnson granted the Federal Reserve (the U.S. central bank) direct access to vast streams of economic data and new powers to intervene. The central bankers and systems analysts were forming a partnership, using data to steer the economy in a more hands-on way than ever before.

 

In short, the technocrats won. With Kennedy gone, nothing stood in the way of the managerial revolution in Washington. But here’s where it gets even more intriguing: nearly identical changes were about to unfold in the enemy camp — Moscow.

 

Inaugurated in Dallas

A Cold War Coincidence?

 

In 1964, at the peak of Cold War tensions, American banker David Rockefeller made a highly unusual trip behind the Iron Curtain to meet with Soviet leaders. Officially, the visit was about exploring business opportunities. But it raised eyebrows: Why was one of America’s most influential capitalists having secret chats with Kremlin officials, when the two superpowers were sworn adversaries?

 

Not long after, a mirror-image upheaval took place on the Soviet side. In October 1964, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was abruptly removed from power in a Kremlin coup. He was replaced by a leadership duo: Alexei Kosygin and Leonid Brezhnev. Just as in the U.S., a change at the top suddenly paved the way for a new technocratic direction.

 

By 1965, the ‘coincidences’ piled up:

 

In Washington, Johnson ordered PPBS installed across the U.S. government.

 

In Moscow, Premier Kosygin unveiled a plan for an All-State Automated System for managing the Soviet economy — often referred to as OGAS. This was essentially a Soviet PPBS: a computerised network to gather economic data and direct resources more efficiently from the top down.

 

Despite capitalism and communism being mortal opposites, PPBS and OGAS were nearly twins. Both relied on cutting-edge computers (room-sized machines at the time) and mathematical models. Both aimed to replace slower, locally informed decision-making with centralised data collection and algorithmic direction. Both were pioneered by economists drawing on the same new field of systems theory and cybernetics.

 

What are the odds that the United States and the Soviet Union would independently reinvent their governments along such similar high-tech lines at the very same time? Effectively zero. This was not an accident; it was coordination. Two rival superpowers were implementing the same control system, just with different branding.

 

The Moscow Connection

The Invisible College

 

So how could such coordination happen under everyone’s noses? In 1965, renowned economist Kenneth Boulding provided a clue. He wrote about the emergence of what he called an ‘invisible college’ – an international, informal network of intellectuals, scientists, and bureaucrats who shared a common vision for the future.

 

These people weren’t part of a conspiracy in the comic-book sense; they didn’t necessarily have secret handshakes or official membership. Instead, they were part of the same schools, conferences, and circles. They read each other’s papers and built on each other’s ideas. They attended the same meetings (often under the banner of neutral themes like ‘global development’ or ‘systems analysis’). Over time, they formed a consensus about how to manage societies more ‘rationally’.

 

The invisible college transcended borders. American and Soviet systems thinkers were in regular contact through academic channels and international organisations, even when their governments were publicly at odds. They spoke the same language of cybernetics and systems theory. They shared the belief that experts armed with big computers could run things more smoothly than politicians or local administrators.

 

It was this network that greased the wheels for PPBS in America and OGAS in the USSR. When Rockefeller visited Moscow, he wasn’t starting something brand new; he was likely reinforcing an existing understanding among the technocratic elite of both nations: Let’s not let politics get in the way of progress. We can compete on the surface (capitalism vs communism) while both adopting the same underlying model of centralised, expert-driven control.

 

In essence, by the late 1960s, the so-called enemies in the Cold War had a tacit agreement: Replace messy democratic or grassroots processes with centrally managed systems run by qualified experts. The invisible college was the bridge that connected East and West in this shared project.

 

The Invisible College

The Environmental Cover Story

 

By the end of the 1960s, the new global managerial system was taking shape. But they had a public relations problem: How do you justify deeper international cooperation between sworn enemies? How do you get ordinary people to accept more top-down control of their lives? They needed a noble-sounding reason to rally around.

 

They found it in the environment.

 

In 1969, memos and speeches from both American and Soviet officials started emphasising a common theme: the need for joint action on a global environmental crisis. Suddenly, the idea of ‘environmental cooperation’ was on the table, even as the Vietnam War raged and the space race continued. It seemed that when it came to pollution, climate, and planetary risks, the U.S. and USSR were willing to set aside differences.

 

This wasn’t a coincidence. It was a strategic decision to use environmental issues as the public cover for the technocratic convergence. After all, who could oppose cleaner air and water? Who could be against ‘saving the planet’? It was the perfect banner to hide the merging of systems behind a feel-good cause.

 

Key milestones came in the early 1970s:

 

In 1972, U.S. President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin signed a landmark Agreement on Environmental Protection between the two countries. It was one of the first official acknowledgments that the superpowers would work together on something.

 

That same year, the United Nations Stockholm Conference on the environment solidified the idea of a global response to ecological issues, giving international bureaucracies more justification to grow.

 

Most tellingly, also in 1972, the U.S. and USSR jointly helped create the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). This institute, based in neutral Austria, brought together scientists from East and West to work on computer models of global problems—environment, economy, population, you name it. It was literally founded to be a bridge for the invisible college, under the auspices of solving world issues.

 

The message was clear: A new age of global management was necessary to protect Earth and humanity’s future, and experts would lead the way. If that meant sidestepping some old national rivalries or traditional politics, so be it. It was all for the greater good.

 

D(eception)-Day

Destroying the Alternative

 

There was just one snag. As the U.S., USSR, and their allies converged on this new managed future, a few independent actors around the world tried to forge a different path. One of the most fascinating cases was Chile in the early 1970s.

 

Under President Salvador Allende, Chile embarked on a bold experiment called Project Cybersyn. Remarkably, Cybersyn was in many ways similar to PPBS and OGAS: it was a computer-driven system to help manage the economy. The difference? Cybersyn was explicitly designed to empower workers and decentralise decision-making. Local factories had input into the system, and it aimed to increase democratic participation in economic planning, not eliminate it.

 

In other words, Chile was developing a third model — one that used modern tech and models but kept the humanistic, democratic element intact. If it had succeeded, it might have offered a compelling alternative for other nations: a way to enjoy modern efficiency without giving up freedom or sovereignty to a global technocratic web.

 

We’ll never know if it could have worked. On September 11, 1973, Allende’s government was overthrown in a military coup backed by the CIA. The coup leaders swiftly destroyed Project Cybersyn. They didn’t just quietly shelve it; they broke it apart and made sure it couldn’t be resurrected. The Chilean economists and engineers who worked on it were jailed or exiled. Some were given such harsh prison sentences that it stunned observers — why punish nerdy systems engineers so severely?

 

The answer: they had built something very dangerous. Not dangerous to the Chilean economy (Cybersyn hadn’t been around long enough to fail or succeed), but dangerous to the emerging global order. An autonomous path was unacceptable. Just as a local bank in 1850 couldn’t be allowed to bypass the Bank of England’s clearing house, a country in 1973 couldn’t be allowed to bypass the nascent global clearing system.

 

After Chile’s coup, no other country dared try a fully independent technocratic experiment. From then on, whether nations leaned capitalist or socialist, they all ended up plugging into the same basic architecture we’ve been describing.

 

What Really Ended the Cold War

 

By 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War was pronounced over. The narrative we’re taught is that the Western capitalist system triumphed over the Eastern communist one. But if you’ve followed this story, you’ll see that something else was happening beneath the surface:

 

The two systems had already merged in practice. By the late 1980s, the USSR had stagnated and its leadership knew the centralised command model wasn’t working well. Meanwhile, the Western elites had increasingly embraced social engineering and centralised regulation alongside their market economics. Both sides were, in effect, gravitating toward a similar techno-bureaucratic middle ground.

 

When the Soviet Union collapsed, there wasn’t a sharp ideological about-face in Moscow so much as a transfer of ownership. Russian industries were rapidly ‘privatised’ and sold off to oligarchs connected to Western interests, but the same experts kept running the show. Many former Soviet technocrats and analysts slid seamlessly into roles in global institutions, banks, and corporations. They shared the same worldview as their Western counterparts.

 

The supposed victory of democracy over communism masked the real story: the victory of the invisible college’s model over any remaining alternatives. Russia in the 1990s didn’t become a Jeffersonian republic; it became an oligarchic-technocratic hybrid that plugged right into the global system (with people like a young Vladimir Putin, who worked with the St. Petersburg city government to attract World Bank projects, rising in this environment).

 

And what about the West? With the Soviet threat gone, Western leaders eagerly expanded global institutions: the European Union grew, the World Trade Organisation was formed, NATO shifted from defense to ‘stability operations’, and so on. All these moves concentrated more power transnationally, away from voters.

 

In truth, the Cold War ended not with one side defeating the other, but with both sides’ elites realising they could rule more effectively together. They shared the same basic blueprint of control, and by removing the facade of rivalry, they could get on with standardising the world.

 

The Missing Link

Hiding in Plain Sight

 

If you’re wondering whether this is all a bit far-fetched, just look at what’s happened since the 1990s. The same folks who built this system no longer have to hide it as much. The evidence is right in front of us:

 

The top figures from the US, Europe, Russia, China, and elsewhere all attend the same elite conferences (think World Economic Forum in Davos, the Munich Security Conference, Bilderberg meetings). They network and coordinate on global narratives, often behind closed doors.

 

Major policy agendas are strikingly uniform across countries. Whether it’s banking regulations, pandemic response, or climate policy, you see almost identical measures being implemented, usually justified by the same expert consensus.

 

The world’s biggest corporations and financial institutions use the same consulting firms (McKinsey, PwC, etc.) and standards, pushing identical strategies from Wall Street to Moscow to Beijing. They might squabble over market share, but they agree on keeping the overall game controlled.

 

Concepts like ‘stakeholder capitalism’, ‘ESG metrics’, and ‘public-private partnership’ have become global buzzwords, promoted equally by Western capitalists and authoritarian governments. This isn’t because of a spontaneous outbreak of like-mindedness; it’s the invisible college’s philosophy made mainstream.

 

When a genuine outsider or rogue state doesn’t conform (whether it’s a small country with an independent streak or a politician who isn’t on board), they quickly face unified punishment: sanctions, global media smears, economic isolation, coups. The playbook is standardised.

 

In short, the ‘invisible college’ that Boulding talked about in the ’60s isn’t so invisible anymore. It’s just dispersed across think tanks, boardrooms, government agencies, NGOs, and international organisations. They don’t wear badges saying ‘Global Manager’, but they don’t need to—their actions are evidence enough.

 

So by the late 20th century, the blueprint for control was fully built and tested. What remained was to actually use it on a grand scale. They had to wait for the right moment to flip the switch and show just how thoroughly they could steer the world. That moment came recently, and you lived through it.

 

To Feel Responsible for the World’s Destiny

Part IV: How Compliance Became a Moral Duty

 

Building a global control system is one thing. But convincing billions of people to accept it, even beg for it, is another. The masterminds of this new order realised they couldn’t rule by coercion and force alone; they needed to win hearts and minds. People won’t defend a system unless they believe in it.

So they pulled off their most insidious trick: making their power grabs feel morally righteous. They managed to turn basic compliance into a test of virtue. Here’s how they engineered that psychological coup.

 

The 1986 Declaration

 

A turning point came in 1986, at a conference in Venice where leading scientists and policy-makers from around the world gathered. Out of this meeting came the Venice Declaration, a document that sounds high-minded and noble. In essence, it said: From now on, science must serve the needs of humanity and be guided by ethical goals. Science should not just seek knowledge for its own sake, but direct itself to solving pressing global problems with a moral compass.

 

On the surface, who could disagree? We all want science to be ethical. But think carefully: who decides what’s ‘ethical’ and what the ‘pressing problems’ are? In practice, this declaration paved the way for predictions and models to define our values. If a computer model forecasts disaster, suddenly preventing that hypothetical scenario becomes the moral imperative guiding all scientific and political action.

 

This was the beginning of a perfect trap, a kind of loop that hijacks both science and conscience at the same time:

 

Make dire predictions using computer models. (E.g., ‘By 2050, the climate will be unlivable’, or ‘This virus will kill millions’, or ‘The economy will collapse if we don’t act’.)

 

Declare that these predictions create an absolute moral imperative. (‘Because our model shows catastrophe, we have an ethical duty to take drastic action now. Only immoral people would object.’)

 

Let the declared moral imperative guide what science and policy are allowed to do. (Research or proposals that might challenge the model’s assumptions get defunded or dismissed, because that would be ‘anti-social’ or ‘irresponsible’. We can’t even explore those ideas; it’s ethically off-limits.)

 

Only fund and publicise work that supports the original doomsday model. Over time, a ‘scientific consensus’ magically forms that just happens to agree with the predictions. Dissenting voices are labeled unscientific or immoral outliers.

 

Point to that manufactured consensus as proof the model was right. (‘Look, all the top experts agree this crisis is real and our response is necessary. The science is settled!’)

 

Round and round it goes. The model creates the morality, the morality shapes the science, and the ‘science’ (really just the model fed back to itself) validates the model. It’s a closed feedback loop. And the beauty of it? Most participants don’t realise it’s happening. They think they’re ‘following the science’ and ‘doing the right thing’, unaware that the entire process was engineered from the start.

 

The Venice Declaration

Weaponising Virtue

 

This loop alone is devious, but there’s a more direct psychological weapon at play: our own desire to be good people. The engineers of this system realised that if they frame compliance as a moral choice, most people will comply eagerly to feel like they’re doing the right thing. And anyone who resists can be painted not just as wrong, but as bad.

 

Think of how brilliant this is: instead of having to label every critic as an enemy (which can backfire if the critic has sympathetic qualities), you let society do the policing. People will attack each other simply for questioning the plan, because that questioner is now seen as endangering everyone.

 

They’ve effectively turned morality into a crowd-sourced enforcement tool. Here’s how it plays out in different arenas:

 

Public health: The slogan ‘Stay home, save lives’ turned staying indoors into a moral duty. If you objected to lockdowns, you weren’t just wrong — you wanted grandma to die. Masks became a symbol of virtue; questioning mask mandates meant you didn’t care about others. By casting every mandate as a life-or-death ethical test, they got neighbors to shame neighbors, friends to break friendships.

 

Environment: The phrase ‘Save the planet’ is literally a moral call-to-arms. If you dispute any climate policy, no matter how extreme or economically harmful, you’re a ‘climate denier’ who hates Mother Earth and doesn’t care about future generations. Young people especially have been taught that to be a good person, you must feel anxiety and anger about the climate and direct that at whoever the authorities point to (skeptical scientists, ‘greedy’ industries, etc.). Meanwhile, those authorities keep flying private jets to tell us to use less energy — a hypocrisy we’re not allowed to call out, because they are presumably doing ‘important work’ saving us all.

 

Social policy: Concepts like ‘if it saves even one life, it’s worth it’ or ‘the right side of history’ get tossed around to justify extreme measures. Every issue is framed as a grand moral test: you either agree with the prescribed policy or you are failing as a human being. Nuance? Trade-offs? Not allowed. We went from healthy debates about how to achieve good ends, to moralistic fights about what your stance says about your soul.

 

This shift has a chilling effect. People don’t just fear being wrong; they fear being seen as immoral. It’s not a battle of ideas anymore, it’s a battle for personal virtue in the eyes of others. That is a far more powerful motivator for most folks.

 

The Complete Architecture

The Carbon Guilt Trip

 

Let’s dig deeper into one example: climate change and carbon emissions. Here’s a case where economics was disguised as ethics so effectively that many don’t even see the sleight-of-hand.

 

We’re told there’s nothing more moral than reducing your ‘carbon footprint’. Entire lifestyles are now judged by how ‘green’ they are. But behind the scenes, a complex system is being built that has little to do with polar bears or forests – it’s about controlling economics via carbon, all under the moral umbrella of saving the planet.

 

Consider the setup:

 

First, predict an apocalyptic climate future with computer models. (We’ve all seen the graphs with red lines shooting up to doom.)

Second, declare a moral imperative to cut carbon emissions drastically. (World leaders literally say ‘It’s our moral duty to act on climate’.)

Third, implement policies that create artificial carbon scarcity. Governments set caps on emissions and issue a limited number of carbon ‘permits’ or credits. This creates a brand-new commodity: permission to emit CO2.

Fourth, force everyone to use this new system. If a farmer wants to run a tractor, a factory wants to run a furnace, or a family wants to heat their home, they must have carbon credits. No credits, no activity. Over time, everyday life becomes contingent on buying into the carbon control system.

 

What’s really going on here? They’ve invented a grand moral narrative (‘saving the climate’) to justify the creation of an expansive economic control grid. By deciding who gets how many carbon credits, they can decide who gets to do what, when, and how much. It’s central planning in all but name, made palatable by a veneer of ethical necessity.

 

And if you question any of it, you’re not debating policy anymore — you’re evil. Who wants to speak up and be branded a planet traitor? Thus the control grid grows with popular support, not resistance.

 

Meta-Objectives in the Meta-Crisis

The Emotional Hijack

 

Why is this strategy so devilishly effective? Because it hijacks our strongest emotional drivers: the need to belong and the need to feel virtuous.

 

In the past, governments might say ‘Pay this new tax because we need to fund X, Y, Z’. People could openly debate if it was fair or needed. But now the pitch is ‘Pay this tax or bad things will happen and you’re a bad person for opposing it’. It taps into fear (your dissent will cause harm) and shame (your dissent makes you a bad person).

 

It’s no surprise that public discourse has become so toxic and polarised. It’s by design. Every major issue is framed as an absolute moral struggle:

 

Complying with health mandates isn’t just following a rule, it’s saving lives (so resisting is tantamount to murder).

Paying higher fuel bills or taxes isn’t just an economic trade-off, it’s saving the planet (so complaining means you want to destroy Earth).

Allowing experts to track and trace everything isn’t a loss of privacy, it’s protecting the vulnerable (so if you worry about liberty, you don’t care about grandpa or the sick).

Our natural empathy and social instincts have been weaponised against our liberty. They’ve created a mental switch in many people’s heads that flips on the following circuit: Obeying authority = being good. Questioning authority = being evil. Once that is in place, the actual specifics of the policy almost don’t matter. Peer pressure and internal guilt will do the enforcement work.

 

Even politicians who might normally push back go along, because they know the media and voters (conditioned by media) will crucify them as immoral if they don’t. A mayor, president, or prime minister might privately think a certain expert mandate is overkill, but they imagine the headlines: ‘Leader X is ignoring the experts and putting lives/planet at risk!’ – and they quickly fall in line.

 

A Global Ethic

The COVID Playbook

 

We saw this dynamic play out vividly during COVID-19:

 

The Prediction: Models (like those from Imperial College London) initially claimed millions would die imminently without extreme measures.

The Moral Imperative: ‘Stay Home, Save Lives’. Those four words turned a complex policy question (do lockdowns do more harm than good?) into a simple morality test. If you left your house or kept your business open, you were a murderer by default.

The Social Pressure: People became informants on each other. Shaming photos of anyone on a beach or in a park spread online. Families were split apart by arguments over who was being ‘careful’ and who wasn’t. Big Tech platforms banned those who questioned lockdowns or mask mandates, branding it ‘misinformation’ that would literally kill people.

The Result: Small businesses were crushed, mental health cratered, children’s education suffered, basic rights were tossed aside – but anyone pointing out these costs was shouted down as being callous. Meanwhile, giant corporations and governments amassed more wealth and power. Once the dust settled, none of those powers were really relinquished. Emergency measures became new baselines.

The key point: people policed themselves and each other to enforce the new controls. The moral narrative did most of the heavy lifting.

 

The Pandemic Treaty

The Climate Playbook

 

Now apply the same structure to climate change:

 

The Prediction: We’re told we have 5, 10, or 12 years until irreversible damage, depending on the latest model. Floods, fires, extinctions – all charted out in predictive graphs.

The Moral Imperative: ‘Protect the Earth’ or ‘Think of the children’. Again, a complex set of trade- offs (balancing environmental, economic, technological factors) is reduced to a simple good vs evil framing. Drive an SUV and you’re killing future generations; fly less, eat bugs, and shiver in the dark and you’re noble.

The Social Pressure: Children are now taught in school to judge their parents for recycling habits or vacation choices. Activist groups glue themselves to artwork or block traffic ‘to raise awareness’, essentially demanding others heed the moral call. Social media piles on anyone who voices skepticism about a climate report or policy – they’re not just wrong, they’re a ‘denier’, equated with the worst people imaginable.

The Result (unfolding now): Ever-increasing energy costs and regulations, which transfer more control to central authorities (governments deciding which energy sources you can use, corporations deciding what products you can buy). When people struggle to pay bills or face blackouts, the blame is deflected: We brought this on ourselves by harming the planet; sacrifice is necessary. Meanwhile, the actual power structure – government-corporate alliances deciding who can produce energy and where – grows stronger.

 

In both COVID and climate, and many other arenas, the pattern holds. The details change, but the script is the same. It’s a kind of moral theater production put on to get everyone playing their assigned role.

 

Climategate

Why Traditional Politics Can’t Fix This

 

All of this explains why normal political back-and-forth often feels ineffective and feeble lately. We’re seeing passionate debates, elections, protests – yet the general direction of policy barely changes. Why?

 

Because traditional politics (left vs right, labor vs capital, etc.) is now wrestling on a stage controlled by this deeper system. When one party or politician tries to push back, they’re immediately framed as not just wrong-headed, but morally suspect. That means half the population will instantly tune them out, or worse, actively oppose them in the name of virtue.

 

Say a conservative politician argues against strict climate regulations, pointing out the economic harm to working-class families. The response? ‘You monster, you care more about money than lives and the Earth’. Now say a progressive politician questions a vaccine mandate on civil liberty grounds. The response? ‘You monster, you want to kill grandma and empower conspiracy theorists’.

 

With debate poisoned like this, what’s left? Only the technocratic center holds, because it defines the terms of the debate. Every mainstream party ends up enforcing the same core policies (with minor flavor differences), because straying outside that Overton window invites character assassination.

 

And if a truly outsider movement gains traction — one that tries to break the spell entirely — it’s either co-opted or crushed. Co-opted by drawing it into the moral framing (‘sure, you want freedom, but don’t you care about safety/planet/equality? Then support our plan…’), or crushed by denying it the oxygen of media coverage and financial networks.

 

The Third System

Breaking the Spell

 

Despite all this, there is hope. The ‘moral’ spell only works as long as people believe in the authority of those casting it. The moment you realise that those who set these ethical narratives are themselves acting in bad faith or out of self-interest, the spell is broken.

 

Start by flipping the script mentally:

 

What if not questioning these authorities is actually the immoral stance, because it allows wrongdoing to go unchallenged?

What if not resisting policies that harm people (even if they’re done in the name of safety or environment) makes you complicit in a greater evil?

What if the truly ethical position is to demand honesty, accountability, and transparency, even if that means being unpopular?

 

The heroes of history are often those who stood against the consensus of their time because they saw a bigger moral truth. We revere whistleblowers, dissidents, and truth-tellers of the past (in hindsight). The challenge is doing it in the present, when the crowd is shouting you down.

 

The first step to freeing yourself is recognising that your empathy and desire to do good have been used as chains. Realise that a system built on fear, manufactured guilt, and deception doesn’t deserve your obedience or your guilt. Once enough people see that, the entire operation loses its power. They can’t shame a population that’s no longer ashamed to question them.

Now, everything we’ve covered so far — the financial architecture, the global convergence, the psychological manipulation — set the stage for a truly grand finale. For decades, the engineers of this system have been preparing to flip the switch fully on a worldwide scale. In the 2020s, that’s exactly what they began to do.

 

The Ethical Approach

Part V: 2020 and Beyond – Their Victory Lap

 

All the pieces were in place. The networks of control spanned the globe, the narrative machinery was honed to perfection, and the public had been pre-conditioned. In 2020, it’s as if the orchestra conductor tapped his baton, and the symphony of the new order began in earnest. If the prior decades were about building and testing, this phase is about using the system to its fullest extent.

 

Simultaneous Activation

 

Think back to the year 2020 and the cascade of events that followed. Never before had so many facets of human society been directed in unison on a global scale:

 

Public Health: Virtually every country imposed lockdowns and strict health mandates based on the same models and guidance. Borders closed, internal movement stopped, daily life came under microscopic regulation. It was the clearing-house principle applied to human bodies — a central script distributed worldwide.

Economy: Small and medium businesses were largely shuttered unless deemed ‘essential’, while corporate giants thrived like never before. Governments and central banks injected trillions of dollars, euros, yen, you name it, in ways that mysteriously always seemed to benefit the biggest players. Wealth was massively transferred upward. Meanwhile, people were paid by the state to stay home, introducing many to the idea of a government check as their main income.

Technology and Surveillance: Work, school, and social life all moved onto a handful of tech platforms. Those platforms gleefully handed data to authorities. Suddenly, to participate in economy or education, you had to accept constant monitoring through your device. Smartphone apps tracked where you went and who you met. In some places, stepping outside your home required scanning a QR code. The infrastructure of a surveillance state became as normal as downloading a restaurant menu.

Social Order: Concepts like ‘social distancing’ trained us to see each other as walking biohazards. Gatherings with family and friends were recast as dangerous acts. We were told to interact through screens and remain physically apart. This was an immense social experiment: atomise individuals and make human contact conditional on government permission.

Information Flow: A few tech companies took it upon themselves to police all online content for ‘misinformation’ related to the crisis. They openly censored views from distinguished scientists and everyday people alike. The public-private line vanished: state officials would announce what counts as false, and Silicon Valley would dutifully erase it from the digital public square.

And all this happened nearly synchronously around the world. This was not one country’s overreaction; it was a globally coordinated script. For the first time, humanity witnessed the full power of the network that had been built: in the span of weeks, billions of people’s lives were fundamentally changed by technocratic decree, in near-unison, justified by expert authority.

 

The 2020 Convergence

The AI Endgame

 

While 2020’s pandemic response was the visible trigger, behind the scenes another force is accelerating the control grid: Artificial Intelligence. AI is the ultimate manager’s dream — tireless, all-seeing, and unemotional. And it’s being deployed to make the new system permanent.

 

Think of it this way: The goal of the technocratic elite is not to keep having to actively manage 8 billion unruly humans; that’s messy. The goal is to create self-regulating humans within a self-regulating system where open dissent or non-compliance becomes nearly impossible.

 

Here’s where they’re heading with AI and related tech:

 

Smart Cities: They’re rolling out urban designs where every movement is tracked by sensors and cameras feeding AI algorithms. Traffic, energy usage, water consumption, even waste disposal — all continuously monitored and adjusted. On the upside, it means efficient resource use. On the downside, if the system (or those who control it) decides your behavior is ‘suboptimal’, they can automatically restrict your access. Imagine speeding and instead of a cop, the city’s AI just shuts your car off or diverts it to a holding area. Far-fetched? The tech already exists.

 

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs): Many countries are exploring digital versions of their currency. Unlike cash, a CBDC can be programmed. If AI observes you buying ‘unhealthy’ food, carbon-heavy fuel, or anything deemed naughty, your digital money could simply stop working for those purchases. Or impose an automatic fine. Money as a direct control interface—no need for laws if the code can just nudge or force behavior in real-time.

 

Social Credit and Digital IDs: Link your every action and transaction to a digital identity. Then use AI to rate each person’s compliance. China’s already doing this openly. Western nations are creeping toward it under different guises (credit scores, trust scores, vaccine passports, etc.). The endgame is your ability to participate in society – from travel to loans to dating – gets conditioned on an AI- managed score. Step out of line, and the system flags you in a millisecond.

 

Information Filters: With AI, the dream of controlling information at scale becomes feasible. It’s not just about taking down a few tweets. We’re talking real-time tailoring of what each person sees based on their profile. If knowledge is power, they intend to give each of us only as much power as we’re ‘supposed’ to have. Your reality could be edited on the fly. And unlike ham-fisted censorship, it’ll be subtle. You simply won’t come across things the system thinks you shouldn’t.

 

Transhumanist Controls: On the horizon, they talk of melding humans with technology – chips in brains, nanobots in bodies. It sounds wild, but early forms are here (e.g., Neuralink prototypes, ‘smart’ pills with sensors). The sell is medical miracle or convenience. But imagine if the line between your thoughts and the system’s suggestions blurs. If you think this is too sci-fi, recall how quickly we went from carrying brick phones for emergencies to tiny devices listening to us 24/7. Each step seems small; the total journey is staggering.

 

The common theme: Remove human judgment and replace it with automated systems. People often assume the powerful will always need human enforcers, but with AI, even enforcement can be largely automated. Less Stasi, more Skynet – though it’ll look like a friendly assistant.

 

AI for Good

Your Last Choice

 

This is the trajectory we’re on. It leads to a world where the messy, beautiful unpredictability of human life is put into a tidy algorithmic box. Where you’re not so much living as being ‘managed’ by an integrated network of AI, surveillance, and policy – all for your own good, of course.

 

But here’s the thing: we’re not fully there yet. The years 2020 to 2023 showed how far the system has come, but also that it’s not invincible. There were glitches. Not everyone obeyed. Some places defied the script to an extent (certain states, countries, communities). And those cracks in the narrative are key.

 

We’re at a crossroads, and it might be the final one of this magnitude. It comes down to a very personal question for each of us:

Will you be a willing participant in this managed hive, or will you assert your humanity while you still can?

 

If you choose compliance as virtue, the path is seductively easy. You don’t have to think much about big issues; the system will tell you what to do. You might even feel a sense of relief handing over responsibility. Life can be comfortable in the gilded cage – as long as you color within the lines.

 

If you choose to resist, understand what that really means. It’s not waving a flag or a hashtag. It’s a fundamental mindset shift and a thousand little actions.

 

The Myth We Were Told

Why Now Matters

 

The years ahead are critical because the cage is being rapidly furnished and the door starting to swing shut. Once it slams and locks, escaping becomes exponentially harder.

 

Consider a future where:

 

Cash is gone; every transaction is surveilled or restricted. How do you financially support anything outside the approved system then?

 

Private car ownership dwindles; you must use centralised transport networks that can deny travel if your profile is ‘problematic’.

 

Independent media is fully strangled; the only information you get is through channels the AI deems acceptable.

 

Communities can’t self-sustain because regulations or carbon credits won’t let them, say, farm or generate power off-grid at scale.

 

Most people have accepted some wearable or implantable device ‘for health/security’ that constantly feeds data to the cloud. Saying no marks you as suspicious.

 

At that stage, even if you wanted to resist, your means to do so would be severely limited. Dissenters could be cut off from money, movement, and communication with a few keystrokes. It wouldn’t even require jack-booted thugs at the door; you’d just hit a digital wall everywhere you turned.

 

This is why now is the time. Because we’re not quite fully locked in yet. We still have legacy systems and freedoms that haven’t been entirely digitised or centralised. But the window is closing fast as the momentum of technological and policy change accelerates.

 

Cybernetic Empiriomonism

What Resistance Looks Like

 

Resisting a system this pervasive can feel overwhelming. But it’s not only possible; it’s profoundly human. It starts with mindset and extends to daily choices. Here are some ways to keep the spark of freedom alive:

 

Stay Human in a Digital World: Use technology, but don’t let it use you. Refuse gadgets and apps that aim to monitor and grade your every move. Preserve spaces in your life that are offline, untrackable, and free.

 

Use Cash and Alternatives:While cash still exists, use it. It’s anonymity in your pocket. Support local businesses directly. Trade services or goods in person. Every digital transaction that can be a cash transaction instead is a small act of rebellion against complete financial surveillance.

 

Build Parallel Systems: This could mean homeschooling or micro-schooling pods instead of total reliance on state education, or community-supported agriculture instead of depending solely on global supply chains. Create and join networks that do things on their own terms, even if small- scale. They can be lifelines if the mainstream system squeezes you.

 

Decentralise Your Life: Wherever possible, avoid single points of failure. Hold multiple sources of information (don’t rely on one platform’s algorithm), cultivate diverse skills (so you’re not utterly dependent on one job or system), and connect with people of various mindsets. The more flexible and self-reliant you are, the harder it is for any one lever to control you.

 

Peaceful Non-Compliance: Practice saying ‘No’ in small ways to regain the muscle. No, I won’t scan that QR code to sit in a café. No, I won’t fill that optional survey about my personal life. No, I won’t upgrade to the latest device that watches me. Pick your battles, but draw lines. If millions quietly opt out of bits and pieces of the program, it creates breathing room for everyone.

 

Support Truth-Tellers: When someone sticks their neck out to question the narrative, don’t join the mob against them. Even if you’re unsure about their stance, recognise the courage it takes to dissent in this climate. Defend the principle of open debate. The system thrives on silence and self- censorship; don’t give it that satisfaction.

 

Reconnect with Real Community: The flip side of atomising people is that genuine community becomes an antidote. Build trust with your neighbors. Have meetups where phones are off and conversation is real. Help each other in tangible ways. When people bond directly, fear-based messaging loses power. It’s easier to demonise strangers than friends.

 

Hold the Line Locally: National politics may be captured, but local officials still face direct pressure from the communities they serve. Show up. Ask hard questions. Demand transparency. Push back against technocratic policies dressed up as ‘sustainability’ or ‘safety’. A well-informed citizen at a town hall can do more damage to the system than a thousand social media posts. Start where you live. Make it uncomfortable for bureaucrats to rubber-stamp the global program.

 

Shine the Light: Awareness is the beginning of resistance. Their systems depend on darkness – on obscurity, complexity, and silent consent. But when you see clearly, name clearly, and share clearly, their hold weakens. Talk to others. Ask questions. Trace where the decisions come from. When enough people understand how the system works, it can’t work the same way anymore. Illumination is disruption.

 

Will these actions instantly topple the system? No. But they keep alive the parallel society – the society of free-thinking individuals who, when push comes to shove, will back each other up against control. That parallel society is like a seed bank, preserving the genetic diversity of freedom for a future re-sowing.

 

Plato’s Cave

The Window Is Closing

 

Let’s not sugarcoat it: the architects of this new order have enormous momentum right now. They are betting on the combination of fear, convenience, and inertia to carry us into a truly unfree world. They might be right; much of history is the story of empires and authorities expanding power until some collapse or reset.

But history is also full of turning points — moments when people surprisingly pushed back and changed the trajectory. Often it was at the last moment, when things looked dire, that a spark turned into a flame. We are living in such a moment.

 

The last few years have shown the hand of those in power. They feel confident enough to be more open now. That is frightening, but also an opportunity. Because when they act so blatantly, more people do wake up. Not everyone, maybe not even a majority. But a critical minority throughout the world is beginning to see the strings controlling the puppets.

The task now is to translate awareness into action — wisely, peacefully, but firmly. The more people who quietly disengage from the matrix in their own ways, and the more who connect with each other to build pockets of autonomy, the better chance we have that when the central system falters (and it will, because such complex systems always overreach), something of human society remains to rebuild from

.

To Immanentise the Eschaton

The Stakes

 

Let’s zoom out one final time. This isn’t just about taxes, or one pandemic policy, or one election. It’s about the future of the human species and its capacity for self-governance.

 

For thousands of years, people lived under various degrees of tyranny, often not even realising a better way was possible. Our modern age gave a glimpse of another path: the radical idea that ordinary people can and should have a say in how their lives are run. That bottom-up, emergent order can be better than top-down control. It’s an idea that birthed democracies, imperfect as they are, and drove movements for individual rights.

 

Now we’re facing a counterrevolution – one that doesn’t declare itself openly, but advances under technocratic jargon and moral rhetoric. It seeks to convince us that for our own good, we should relinquish what makes us human: our free will, our privacy, our unmediated relationships, our unfiltered thoughts. That we should hand all that to a system which promises safety, efficiency, and moral certainty.

 

If we fall for it, the story of humanity takes a dark turn. We will have chosen comfort (and really, an illusion of safety) over freedom in the most profound sense. Future generations could be born into a digital control grid that shapes their every experience from cradle to grave, without them even knowing what was lost.

 

But if we recognise what’s happening and choose differently, the future is still open. The crises and challenges will always be there, sure. But we can face them with our humanity intact, using tools as tools, not as masters. We can have experts as advisors, not as kings. We can cooperate globally on big issues without giving up local autonomy or personal freedom.

 

It starts with seeing clearly: The cage has been built. They are trying to get us to love the cage before they lock it. They want us to believe the cage is freedom (because it protects you from scary things outside).

 

Don’t buy it.

 

We’re at the eleventh hour, but the final story hasn’t been written. The chorus of the compliant is loud, but the heart of the free still beats. The fat lady is yet to sing.

 

The choice is yours, and ours, right now. Wake up, reach out, and decide what side of history you want to be on. Speak up, stand up, challenge conformity.

 

Because once the door closes, it might never open again.