Strange thing: no one opposes the bankers, including the left, who retreated
Rise of new powerful individualism that did not jibe with collective action
Individual radical watches city with cool, ironic detachment; experiencing the city, but not wanting to change it
New radicalism would try to change people’s minds with self expression, not collective action
Some of the left saw something else going on: this new generation was losing touch with the reality of power
Trump knew how to use this new kind of power: there was no future in building housing for ordinary people because all the government grants had gone
He saw other ways to get money out of the state: he bought up derelict buildings in NY, saying he’d transform them into luxury hotels and appartments
He negotiates the biggest tax break in city’s history: $160 million
City and banks agree and lend him the money
He pays nothing and transforms the city into one for the rich
Damascus
Conflict between 2 men: US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the president of Syria, Hafez al-Assad
This battle would have profound consequences –> idea that you could run the world as a stable system
Assad was brutal and ruthless, but he believed the violence was for the purpose of uniting Arab countries to stand up to the West
Kissinger, also ruthless, started in 1950s with “the delicate balance of terror”
This system ran the Cold War
Saw himself as a political realist; history is struggle of power between people and nations
Saw the world as a delicate system; must keep system balance
Set to impose this world systems analysis on Middle East; must deal with Assad
Assad convinced that Palestinian refugees must return to homeland if there were going to be peace with Israel
Kissinger thought that strengthening the Arabs would destabilize his balance of power: set out to fracture power of Arab countries by dividing them, pitting them against each other so they’d keep each other in check–“constructive ambiguity”
Series of meetings: he persuaded Egypt to sign separate agreement with Israel, while also leading Assad to believe he was working for a wider peace agreement that included Palestinians
In reality, Palestinians were ignored as irrelevant to power balance of the world system
Assad got pissed off over Kissinger’s going behind his back, would “release demons of Arab world”–he retreats and builds a looming palace in Damascus
Inside Soviet Empire
By 1980s, it was clear that the socialist dream had failed–its society no longer believed in a vision of the future
Technocrats, instead of reveal that the socialist dream had failed because of failures in planning, decided to pretend that everything was still going according to plan: a fake version of society emerges (hence the film’s title)
Everyone could see clearly that it wasn’t, but played along because they couldn’t imagine an alternative
Hypernormalization: you were so much a part of the system, that it was impossible to see beyond it; the fakeness was hypernormal (c.f. Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism)
Two brothers give literary voice to a new dissident movement–Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, science fiction writers
Roadside Picnic, which was adapted to film as Stalker
The Human Bomb
Ronald Reagan is sworn in January 20th, 1981
New vision of the world; simple, moral crusade; America must fight “evil” and make the world a better place; no longer Kissinger’s realist approach
Israel now determined to destroy Palestinians; in 1982, Israel sent massive army to encircle Palestinian camps in Lebanon
SABRA camps, 2,000 Palestinian refugees massacred in the camps, Israel allowed it to happen, as a Christian Lebanese faction (Israeli allies) executed it
In face of horror, Reagan insists on sending a neutral group of Marines to Beirut to keep peace
Assad was convinced of another reality: another American-Israeli conspiracy to quash Arabs
Assad set on getting Americans out of Middle East; joins up with new revolutionary force of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran (three years after the Iranian Revolution of 1979)
Khomeini would provide Assad with a new weapon he’d just created: suicide bombings, or “the poor man’s atomic bomb“
Khomeini came to power during Iranian revolution; claims that Shia Islamic tradition promotes the bombings (w/ self-mutilation/penitence=killing yourself for the greater good of the revolution)
Khomeini mobilized this force when it was attacked by Iraq and faced with almost certain defeat, given Saddam’s superior weapons, many supplied by America
Khomeini sent many young people to walk though mine fields and use their bodies to open up paths
Assad takes this new human weapon to the West for the first time: this is when it becomes form of suicide bombing
October, 1983, two suicide bombers drove trucks in Marine barracks in Beirut–241 Americans died
This was Hezbollah, mostly Iranian, but under control of Syria and Syrian intelligence agencies
Assad was using Hezbollah as proxies to attack America
Feb. 26, 1984: within 4 months, Reagan withdraws all American troops from Lebanon
American official says they were perplexed; America left and went home
Assad deemed victorious with his new weapon: this new power transcended politics and corruptions of the world; entered “new” and “better” realm
Altered States
Mid 1980s, banking and finance are growing; unlike older systems of power, it was mainly invisible
Corporations were making computerized networks of information that were invisible to politicians and regular folks
These networks gave extraordinary powers of control to the corporations
William Gibson writes series of novels, coins term “cyberspace” and represents it as raw, brutal, corporate power
New visionaries in America take Gibson’s idea and transform it into a new utopia
California
Techno-utopians turn Gibson’s idea on its head; reinvent cyberspace as a place where radical dreams could come true
Computer utopians meshed with retreated radicals; way to escape right-wing politics of Reagan’s America
This culture found its origins in the 1960s and LSD
Acid Flashback (1960s)
LSD would open your mind to new realities; free from politicians and those in power; an LSD society of peace
Cyberspace was real acid trip; free from hierarchies of corruption and corporations
Barlow’s manifesto told politicians and money to stay out: this vision dominates internet for the next 20 years
But 2 hackers call him out for being a utopian: Phiber Obtik and Acid Phreak
Infuriated with claim that cyberspace was without hierarchy
Acid Phreak hacks TRW (who built systems that ran Cold War, then adapted to run new systems of credit and debt)
TRW’s computers amalgamated American’s debt and issued credit ratings
The hackers broke in, stole Barlow’s credit rating, and published it online–demonstrating growing powers of finance; how companies that ran new systems of credit knew more about you, using that info to control your destiny
System that allowed this to happen was the networks of information connected by computer service, a new world power that had replaced politics
The Colonel
After humiliating defeat in Lebanon, Reagan set out to show that America’s crusade was worthy of admiration: so he chose a scapegoat “villain”: Colonel Gaddafi, the ruler of Libya
Americans were going to use Gaddafi to create a fake terrorist mastermind; Gaddafi was going to happily play along because it would turn him into a famous global figure
Gaddafi had taken power from a coup in the 1970s
He believed he was an international revolutionary set to challenge the west
He had attended a course in London from 1966, hated the patronizing racism he experienced
Once in power, he developed his own idea of revolution: “Third Universal Theory”–an alternative to capitalism and communism, he published it and no one read it
He funneled money to Ireland to fight the British colonizers; by 1980s, he had no allies and no global influence
This all changes: Dec. 1985 terrorists attack Rome and Vienna airports simultaneously, 19 people killed, including 5 Americans–pressure for Reagan to retaliate
Reagan immediately claims that Gaddafi was behind the attacks; but European security services that investigated attacks claimed that Libya was not involved at all–in fact, the mastermind behind the attacks was Syria and their intelligence agencies
Gaddafi doesn’t deny anything, leaning into the role and threatening suicidal attacks on America–he grabs publicity from Americans and dramatizes it
Gaddafi’s claims to stand for oppressed people around the world, even black Americans
Promised to supply weapons to 400,000 African American “army” to fight white America
Gaddafi hires German rocket scientists to build him rockets for space exploration
No one believes him: journalists write that he plans to attack Europe
Americans and Gaddafi now locked into mutually reassuring relationship process in which a powerful new image was created and captured the imagination of the West: Gaddafi was the super villain of a “rogue state”
Another terrorist attack at discotec in west Berlin–bomb killed American soldier
Americans release “intercepts” from National Security Agency that they claimed proved Gaddafi was behind bombing and also the mastermind behind range of other attacks–Reagan orders Pentagon to be ready to bomb Libya
Still, there were doubts; this time in the American government itself–analysts were taking Gaddafi’s claims about himself as fact and using it to reinforce real actions
In effect, therefore, America and Gaddafi were playing off of each other and constructing a fake reality
European intelligence claims that it, again, was Syria who attacked in Berlin, but America refused to listen, since attacking Syria was too dangerous
Why go for Gaddafi instead? He had no allies–Americans believed there would be less Arab and Soviet support for Gaddafi
April 1986, Americans attack Libya
Targets: Gaddafi’s own house; he claims his adopted daughter was killed–some children did indeed die because of America’s sloppy bombing techniques (foreshadow: Obama-era drone strikes)
Gaddafi takes theater op to push his 3rd universal theory
The Truth is Out There
1980s saw uptick in claims of UFO sightings
American government may have made it all up; there were new high-tech weapons; believed Soviets were far stronger than they were and so they ought to develop new weapons
They pick people out and give them forged official documents about UFOs, which spread like wildfire and create the 1990s uptick in obsession with UFOs–it also fueled belief that governments lie to you
Perception Management (1980s): tell dramatic stories that grip public imagination and tell stories about Central America, Middle East, Soviet Union
Didn’t matter if stories were true or false, as long as it distracted you and politicians from having to deal with real-life complexities of the world
Death of Facts–how can you manipulate the American people; reality is something you can play with
But something was about to happen that demonstrated just how far the American government was detached from reality: the fall of the Soviet Union
No one saw it coming: economists, politicians, academics, journalists, think tank experts
Managed Outcomes
In America, fall of Soviet Union showed that politicians would not rule the world
Instead, there was a new system that had nothing to do with politics–a system that didn’t try to change things, but attempted to manage a post-political world
First to describe this change: left-wing German political thinker: Ulrich Beck: “any politician who claimed to be able to change things was seen as dangerous”–politics was reduced to trying to manage unpredictable events
Larry Fink, a banker, builds supercomputer that will predict the future
He starts company called Black Rock, builds computer called Alladin, housed in a series of large sheds in the apple orchards outside Wenatchee, WA
Could use it to predict risk of investment; computer monitors the world events and compares with past events
Guides $15 trillion
Prozac use increases
Another way of managing people: artificial intelligence
Eliza: computer psychotherapist–just repeats back what the patient said in different words
In an age of individualism, what made people feel secure was having themselves reflected back to them, just like in a mirror
AI grew to do just that via “intelligent agents,” gather massive data about people that then predicted what you’d want in the future–a system that ordered the world in a way that was centered around you
A Cautionary Tale
New system’s flaw: real world can’t be predicted from past data–Trump would later learn this
Jess Marcum receives a phone call in 1990 form Trump asking fro help: the guy is a nuclear scientist-turned gambler who used photographic memory to beat Vegas odds
The banks that lent Trump millions realized that he could no longer pay the interest on the loans–his empire was facing bankruptcy
Kashiwagi comes to Trump’s casino and starts winning millions of dollars, Trump freaks out, seeks help from Marcum who comes up with bet that would get back money; Kashi loses, Trump thinks he’s got his money back, then Kashi gets murdered and Trump never receives his money
1991 Damascus: Assad didn’t want stability, he wanted revenge on the U.S. for what Kissinger did when he snubbed the Arab world during the Egypt/Israel talks
Dec. 1988: bomb explodes on Pan Am plane over Lockerbie in Scotland–investigators and journalists (justifiably) blame Syria; claim it was in retaliation for America’s shooting down an Iranian airliner in the Gulf months before
But, 18 months later, security agencies come out that they were wrong: indeed, this time it was Libya behind the bombing, they claimed
Still, journalists and politicians didn’t believe it: this was a cynical decision on America’s behalf as it looked for an ally in Assad for the coming Gulf War against Saddam Hussein
So once again, they blame Gaddafi as terrorist mastermind
But Assad was not in control: the “human bomb” he’d introduced was now about to spread like a virus from Sunni to Shia Islam
December 1992, Hamas kidnaps and stabs to death Israeli border guard–Israel’s response was insane, rounding up 415 members of Hamas, bussing them to a mountain in Lebanon, and leaving them in Hezbollah territory
There, they spent 6 months, learned from Hezbollah of power of suicide bombing
Hamas then infiltrates heart of Israel, unleashing newly learned suicide bombing tactics, targeting civilians for the first time
Hamas is Sunni, a sect of Islam that, unlike Shia, doesn’t have rituals of self-sacrifice
Most senior religious leader in Saudi Arabia insisted this new tactic was wrong
But mainstream theologian from Egypt called Sheikh Qaradawi seized the moment, issuing fatwa that justified the attacks—adding “it’s justified to kill civilians, including women, because the latter serve in the military and are part of the army”
Suicide bombs continue to bombard Israel, politics no longer serve to deal with the Palestinian crisis
Israeli election in 1996: Benjamin Netanyahu took power; he turnsagainst the peace process, fulfilling Hamas’ desires
Therefore, suicide bombing had destroyed the very political solution to the Palestinian crisis that Assad had hoped for when he first implemented the tactic
America at the end of the twentieth century
Optimistic visions of future had disappeared; experts begin to focus on dangers hidden in the future; pessimism spreads from rational technocratic world to the whole of culture
Everyone became obsessed with dark forebodings (cue scene of movies with imagery of American cities exploding)
Sept. 11, 2001
Suicide bombs, on a large scale
Reagan had experienced first suicide bomb some 20 years earlier–he leaves Syria, allowing Assad and suicide bombing to fester, going for Colonel Gaddafi instead
This changed the way people saw terrorism; instead of a violence born out of political struggles for power, it became replaced by a much simplerimageof an eviltyrant at head of a rogue state
After 9/11: this idea transforms into new and equally simple idea: remove tyrants and the oppressed people will willfully transform into a democracy
Tony Blair and George Bush become obsessed with ridding world of Saddam Hussein
Sept. 2002, head of MI6 rushed to Downing Street to tell Blair excitedly they’d found the source that confirmed everything
“Source” had direct access to Hussein’s chemical weapons program—but someone at MI6 noticed the description matched exactly the plot from 1996 movie “The Rock” starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage
Hafez al-Assad had died in 2000, and his son Basharal–Assadbecamethe new president of Syria
Bashar couldn’t escape the inexorable logic his father had started
He wasn’t into politics, was a computer nerd, loved Electric Light Orchestra, wouldn’t have been president if his brother, Bassel, hadn’t died in a car crash
But still, he saw America’s invasion of Iraq as just the first step of a plot by Western powers to take over whole of middle east
He knew the invasion pissed off radical Islamists in Syria who then wanted to go to Iraq and kill Americans—Bashar instructed Syrian Intelligent Services to help them do this
Syrian agents set up pipeline that began tofeed thousands of militants across the border and into the heart of the insurgency
Within a year, almost all of foreign fighters were coming thru Syria—they brought suicide bombing with them
More chaos—most of the jihadists had joined the group al–Qaeda in Iraq, which then turned to killingShi’ites in an attempt tocreate a civil war
The force that had originally been invented by the Shi’ites, suicide bombing, now returned to kill them
Tony Blairand George Bush were faced with a disaster as Iraq was imploding, while at home they were accused of lying to their own people to justify the invasion—they needed something toshow the invasion was having a good effect on the Arab world
So, they turned to help from Colonel Gaddafi, who would now be their new best friend and democratichero
Everyone, not just politicians, would become involved (PR, academics, TV, spies, musicians were all going to help reinvent him)—this would show just how many people in the West had become engineers of this fake world
Cue Blair and Bush making televised statements that Gaddafi was the shit for dismantling his WMDs
But Gaddafi never had WMDs, just old mustard gas in leaking barrels—but now he had to pretend he had them, and the West had to pretend they avoided another global threat
As partof the deal, the West claims that if Gaddafiadmitted that Libya had doneLockerbie bombings, they’d lift sanctions
But many who investigated Lockerbie were still convinced Libya hadn’t done, it was Syria
Still, Gaddafi confessed to get sanctions lifted
New lies built upon old likes to construct completely fake work
PR firms come to Libya to “reframe the narrative”
One firm is paid 3 million to turn Gaddafi into a “modern world thinker”
They bring other world thinkers to Libya to discuss Gadaffi’s ideas—like Lord Anthony Giddens, who had a theory called the Third Way
Gaddafi finally achieves life-long dream: he’s invited to the UN and gives talk about his theory for 2 hours; he even calls for investigation into MLK’s and Kennedy’s assassination
When in NY, he’s given a mansion tent, which is organized by Trump
A World Without Power
People in Britain and America turn away from politics; Iraq War causes them to feel they were lied to over WMDs, but also a deeper feeling: that whatever they did or said had no effect
Whole new generation of liberals, leftists, radical retreat, turning away from hypocritical political world to cyberspace
Now, cyberspace was insane with its human-behavior predictive algorithms, etc.
Judea Pearl, scientist, was father of modern AI; his breakthrough was to use Bayesian Belief Networks
BBN: systems that could predict behavior even when the information was incomplete
To make the system work, Pearl and others import a modelof human beings drawn from economics: they created rational agents
Rational agents: software that mimicked human beings but in a very simplified form; model assumed that the agent would always act rationally to get what it wanted and nothing more
Jaron Lanier, early utopian of cyberspace, warns of implications: the agents model will always be a cartoon, and so you’ll see the world as a cartoon through the agent, you’ll never know who they’re working for: you or someone else
Cue talk about fact that anyone and everyone can upload videos to cyberspace—terror videos, death videos, porn, etc.
First terrorist beheading video: victim was Judea Pearl’s own son, Daniel Pearl, journalist for WSJ
This was a world that old systems of power had difficulty dealing with; in wake of 9/11, security agencies secretly collected data on millions of people online
One program was called “Optic Nerve”: took stills from webcam conversations of people across the world in attempt to spot next terrorist attack
The program finds no terrorist; but did discover lots of dicks
But people use new tech to broadcast images of themselves that they want people to see them as
Like 2-way mirror, the simplified agents were watching, predicting, and guiding your hand on the mouse
Cue bubbles of self-interest: people only hear and see what they like, including news feeds
New power: decisions to show or hide certain things from you
Then oldutopian vision of cyberspacereemerges: cue Occupy Wall Street
Financial crisis of 2008, politicians save banks but do nothing about massive corruption that was revealed in its wake—reason cited was that it might destabilize the system
Public anger led to Occupy, which took Wall Street and then Washington
Occupy set out to build Barlow’s utopia—each person was an autonomous individual that expressed what they believed, yet still acted as a collective of components in a network that organized itself through the feedback of information around the system (using example the communication in large crowd where crowd repeats the words of one person to relay information to people out of ear-shot of original speaker)
You could organize people without the exercise of power
Cue ArabSpring in Tunisia –> Egypt
January 25, 2011, thousands of Egyptians come out in groups in Cairo and start moving toward Tahrir Square—seemed like a spontaneous uprising, but internet played key role
Egyptian Google employee sets up Facebook that helps to organizeit (named Ghonim)
Many Western Liberals see it as a powerful revolution that toppled a 30-year-old tyrant
Liberals weren’t only ones who saw their dreams fulfilled in Arab Spring, many political leaders of the West also supported revolutions, since it fit their simple idea of regime change
Democracy would finally flourish
So when an uprising began inLibya, Britain, France, and America supported it—suddenly, Colonel Gaddafi stopped being a hero of the West
All politicians, PR, and academics suddenly disappear, and Gaddafi becomes an evil dictator once again
November 2011, large convoy was spotted leaving Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte—American drone controlled from desert location in Nevada sent to follow it
Operator fires missile at lead car of convoy—Gaddafi flees to hid from rebel forces, hiding in drainage pipe; he’s murdered
Instead of becoming a democracy, Libya descends into chaos
Everywhere, movements were failing
Occupy reaches gridlock
They have no picture, no utopic vision of the future—their vision was about how you manage things, not an idea
Same in Egypt: once the march arrived in Tahrir Square, there was nothing to do—Muslim Brotherhood rushes in to fill vacuum
Mohamed Morsi becomes president, shocking liberals and left
Liberals and left turn to military to save them from Islamists
In Spring of 2013, military takes action, arresting president and killing hundreds of his protesting supporters—spectacle unravels in square as past internet activists welcome the return of the military (they’d been summoned there, again, via Facebook)
After failure of revolutions, it was not just radicals, no one in the west had an idea of how to change the world
At home, politicians had given all their power away to powers of finance and managerial bureaucracies that they in effect had become managers in themselves
Abroad, their adventures had failed and they’d been exposed as dangerous and destructive
Cue Russia: group of men who saw this era of uncertainty as opportunity theater where nobody knew what was true or fake any longer
They’re called “political technologists”: the key figures behind President Putin, keeping him in power unchallenged for 15 years
Some of them had been dissidents back in the 1970s and were greatly influenced by the Strugatsky brothers’ scifi writing
20 years later when Soviet falls, they rose up to take control of the media, using it to manipulate the electorate on a mass scale—reality was puddy in their hands
But technologist emerges who takes it all a bit further: Vladislav Surkov
He comes from the theater world, took its avant-garde ideas into the heart of politics
His aim wasn’t merely to manipulate people, but to go deeper and undermine their very perception of the world so they are never sure of what is really happening
He uses Kremlin money to sponsor all kinds of groups: from mass anti-fascist youth organizations to Neo-Nazi skinheads; as well as liberal human rights groups who attacked the government
Key: he let it be known that this is what he was doing: so no one knew what was real and what was fake—a strategy of power that kept people constantly confused, “a ceaseless shape-shifting that is unstoppable because it is indefinable”
Meanwhile, real power is elsewhere, exercised without anyone seeing it
Same thing is happening in the West
By now, it’s obvious the system had deep flaws –every month were new revelations: banks’ involvement in global corruption, massive tax avoidance by all major corporations, secret surveillance of everyone’s emails by NSA
Yet, no one save for low-hanging fruit are prosecuted—and behind it all, the massive inequality kept on growing
Yet, the structure of power remained the same, nothing ever changed, because nothing could be allowed to change the system
Cue: “then shapeshifting began” with Trump’s ever-changing campaign
Politics where everyone could be bought, using words that could have come from the Occupy movement
But he also uses the language of fascist neo-nazis
Doesn’t matter how little what he says relates to reality; this destroys journalism—Putin admires this
Liberals were outraged by Trump, took to internet to express their anger, which changed nothing—algorithms made sure that they only spoke to people they agreed with
Ironically, their massive amounts of angry tweets and facebook posts only benefited the large corporations who ran the social media platforms—“Angry people click more”
Trump and Serkov realize same thing: the version of reality that politics presented was no longer believable; the stories politicians tell their people about the world stopped making sense—in this face, you could play with reality and weaken old forms of power
Another force was about to show just how weak politics had become in the West: Syria
Syrian civil war: what started as Arab Spring exploded into battle to the death
Battle was between Bashar Assad and his opponents
At the heart of the conflict is the force his father brought to the west: suicide bombing
Back in 1980s, Assad saw suicide bombing as a way to drive Americans out of the middle east (when Regan sent “neutral troops” after SAMSA camp massacre)—over 30 years the tactic transformed into something of its opposite: tearing the Arab world apart
Hafez’s dream of a powerful Arab world was destroyed; in Iraq, extremist Sunni groups used suicide bombing to start sectarian war—now, groups like ISIS brought the techniques into Syria to attack not just Assad’s son, but his fellow Shi’ites
Like his father, Bashar retaliated with vengeful fury, and the country fell apart
Faced by war, Western politicians were bewildered: they were determined to claim Bashar was evil, but then realized that his enemies were more evil than he was
Britain, America, and France decide to bomb terrorist threat, effectively keeping Assad in power
Then it became more confusing: the Russians intervene; Putin sends hundreds of planes to combat troops to support Assad
No one knew what their underlying aim was—seemed to be using Serkov’s strategy of “non-linear warfare” that was used in Ukraine
This was a new kind of war where you never knew what your enemy was up to—point wasn’t to “win”, but to create constant confusion in order to manage and control
March 2016, Russians suddenly announce they’re leaving Syria, but in reality, they never left—they’re still there and no one still knows what they really want
Within Syria, there was a new Islamist ideologist that was determined to exploit growing uncertainties in West: Abu Musab al-Suri … “the Syrian”
He’d originally worked with bin Laden in Afghanistan, but had turned against him
He gave powerful lectures, stating bin Laden was wrong to attack America so strongly, since it caused a massive military retaliation that had almost destroyed Islamism
Instead, individuals should stage random small-scale attacks in West to spread fear and uncertainty to undermine waning authority of politicians
Cue speech by British politician stating that what happened in Paris is awful and that there’s a problem with “some” of the Islamic community “in this country” (fodder for Brexit)
“Both the Brexit campaign in Britain and Donald Trump in America had done exactly what al-Suri had predicted”
They used the fear to dramatize a world where everything—even going to a concert—had become a risky event
What had been seen as doomed campaigns on the fringes became frighteningly real
