Whose Great Narrative?

Fighting for the Terrain of the Imagination.

Dear Comrades,

This is Crow. I have decided to begin posting here again.

I quit several months ago, disgusted that so few people are willing to financially support independent journalism. In a fit of indignation, I took down almost all of my writing and pretty much told all my followers to go fuck themselves.

My thinking was this - people don’t actually want to create a revolutionary movement capable of contesting the hegemony of global capitalism. They want to feel important by being part of the intellectual avant garde.

Well, fast-forward a few months, and I have a real job. I’ve also quit drinking and drugging, and my mind is clearer than it’s been since before COVID turned the world upside down.

Now that my rage has subsided, I can see that I just need to be patient. I’m still in the dues-paying stage of my writing career.

The fact is that I like writing now. I never did before. I used to say “I don’t like writing. I like the feeling of having written.” I wanted to be a musician or a poet, but I’m not musically talented and no one cares about poetry anymore. Them’s the breaks.

Hunter S. Thompson used to say that if you want to go far in life, you gotta find the one thing that you can do better than anyone else, then do it.

For me, that’s writing. More specifically, it’s writing that questions the assumptions of the reader and the legitimacy of authority. And people are more into that kind of thing now than they have been since before the world changed forever back on September 11, 2001.

I honestly feel like I’ve already made it as a writer. The money will come in time, of that I am convinced.

I believe in myself, and that itself is something to celebrate. And the fact that I’m not beholden to anyone means I can do and say whatever I want. That’s a privilege that few journalists in the history of journalism have enjoyed. I would be a fool not to make use of this incredible blessing.

I also feel like all signs point towards an era of increasing censorship. How long will the freedom we now enjoy here on Substack will last? I don’t want to be kicking myself later for failing to make the most of it.

I didn’t want to be a journalist not only because I didn’t want to follow in my father’s footsteps. The fact is that before Substack, journalists had to follow the editorial policy set by the publisher. Such is no longer the case. If he were still alive today, my father would weep for joy.

The fact that it’s extremely difficult to make a living writing nowadays shouldn’t distract us from the fact that we are living in a Golden Age of Journalism.

Anyway, I have some big news about a major new project forthcoming, but for now I will repost one of my best pieces, which is called Whose Great Narrative?, which is also available as a zine.

If you would like what I do, and want to share my ideas, I encourage you to print out copies of this zine and distribute them in your area.

A ready-to print PDF can be found here.

for the wild,

Crow Qu’appelle

Whose Great Narrative?

In 1992, following the Fall of the Soviet Union, political theorist Francis Fukuyama declared “The End of History”, by which he meant that Western liberal democracy would forever be the final form of government for all nations. There could be no progression from liberal democracy to any otgher system, he declared. History had a destination all along, and we had arrived.

Clearly, we can look back on this now and see this as foolish drivel, but his ideas were taken seriously by intellectuals at the time.

The Nazis were much more grandiose. They declared that their glorious new reich would last for a thousand years. It lasted for twelve.

People thought the Soviet Empire would last forever. When it came crashing down, it was shockingly sudden.

Human beings seem congenitally unable to realize that they are in a boom until that boom goes bust. Of course, our overlords want for us to think that their dominance over us is total. There is a good reason that they want us to believe this; for it is the exact opposite of what is true. They want for us to think that resistance is futile precisely because they cannot afford to have us revolt. They want to believe that the war has already been won, that their “Fourth Industrial Revolution” is inevitable, and history is proceeding inexorably towards the technocratic dystopia that Klaus Shwab and his brood of vipers envision. Bullshit.

One thing is true - they have created an extremely effective propaganda machine. Credit where credit is due. But the whole idea that the elites of the World Economic Forum have the power that they want you to believe that they have is bullshit. Convincing the populace that you are all-powerful and actually being all-powerful are two very different things. I am reminded of the Wizard of Oz, the pathetic little man hiding behind a curtain, projecting the image of a terrifying sorcerer. This is the essence of propaganda. It exists to trick you into giving your power away. It is not us who needs the exploiting class, but they who need us. As Etienne de la Boetie put it in his classic treatise “The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude”:

“Obviously there is no need of fighting to overcome this single tyrant, for he is automatically defeated if the country refuses consent to its own enslavement: it is not necessary to deprive him of anything, but simply to give him nothing; there is no need that the country make an effort to do anything for itself provided it does nothing against itself.”

Propaganda operates to prevent you from becoming conscious of your power and your own interest, both individually and as a member of your class. For if you were aware of what was is in your own best interest, you would see that your best interest was also the best interest of your class, and that is to revolt and overthrow your oppressors.

Furthermore, if you knew the power that you wield collectively, you would wield it to your advantage. Hence the goal of propaganda is not just to persuade you to be pro-war or anti-Muslim or whatever, but also to keep your focus perpetually on something, be it elections or war or sports or a virus, lest you begin to think for yourself.

For as long as you are kept in a perpetual state of agitated distraction, you cannot even conceive of your own self-interest, because even knowing what you want requires knowledge of self, and there knowledge of self is attained only through introspection. Propaganda exists to prevent thinking.

As De La Boetie said:

“It is therefore the inhabitants themselves who permit, or, rather, bring about, their own subjection, since by ceasing to submit they would put an end to their servitude. A people enslaves itself, cuts its own throat, when, having a choice between being vassals and being free men, it deserts its liberties and takes on the yoke, gives consent to its own misery, or, rather, apparently welcomes it.”

An image is being presented to us of a united front of the world’s richest and most power-hungry people. Give me a fucking break.

The greediest people on the planet cannot truly have solidarity with one another – they are each in effect power-junkies, and all what all true power-junkies crave is more power for themselves, individually. They should regarded as slaves to their addiction, no different than crack fiends.

While it is possible for billionaires to strike alliances out of a common interest, their interests can only ever be temporarily aligned. You can bet that, behind the scenes, different factions of the elite class are already plotting and scheming against each other, and that they will stab each other in the backs at the first opportune moments. And once that happens, they will be at war with one another again.

This isn’t necessarily cause for optimism. Such intrigue will likely have disastrous consequences. It’s not hard to imagine a new world war in the near future. War is, after all, a great way to stimulate the economy, and we all know the crash is coming.

Over two thousand year ago, Plato spoke a truth that has stood the test of time.

It is this: WHO TELLS THE STORIES RULE SOCIETY.

Rulers have always known this. Why do you think that Klaus Shwab blathers on about “the Great Narrative?” Our rulers know the power of stories.

What is this “Great Narrative”? Are others as nauseated by its vacuity as I am? I don’t see anything compelling in the sickeningly sugar-coated fascist PR bullshit of the Great Reset. To me, it’s an obvious con job that stretches human credulity to its absolute limits. Behind the globalese rhetoric about sustainability, inclusivity, and saving the planet, you can tell that the propagandists are grasping at straws

What the Great Reset boils down to is a pretty incredible admission on the part of the ruling class. The world’s foremost capitalists are essentially acknowledging that capitalism is ruining the planet. The robber barons themselves have admitted that the jig is up, and that a new paradigm must replace it.

Think about that. They’re basically saying that revolution is inevitable. That’s what the Fourth Industrial Revolution is really all about. They see a revolution coming and they want to pre-empt it, to co-opt it before it has a chance to come into its own. That’s why they’ve pioneered a type of propaganda that pretends to address the problems of the world. But the real problem of the world is that it’s run by psychopaths. The globalists can’t solve the problem, because the problem is them.

Their “Great Narrative” is pathetic. It is proof of their profound ignorance of any meaningful solution. Rather than learn to live within the natural limits of the planet’s ecology, the “solution” that they are offering is to further extend their domination of nature through a laundry list of sci-fi technologies. All of this, of course, will only make the problem worse. Their best idea amounts to ripping up the floor-boards to feed the fire.

Their solution to the collapse of capitalism? More capitalism. Their solution to the ecological crisis created by capitalism? More capitalism. The stupidity is astonishing. Klaus Schwab and his ilk should not be seen as geniuses, but as buffoons.

It’s hard to know if they really believe their own hype. Do they really believe that they can attain immortality, achieve bio-digital convergence, and become Gods?

If they do, they are delusional, and their hubris will be their downfall. As for me, I ain’t buying it. What goes up must goes down, and the likes of Klaus Shwab will bite the dust just as surely as you or I.

Nothing lasts forever. No one gets out of this world alive. And like my mom always taught me, Pride comes before a Fall.

The globalists are right about one thing, though. The world does indeed need a new Great Narrative, and one will surely materialize in the years to come. Nature abhors a vaccuum.

The task before us, then, is to come up with our own Great Narrative – a Great Narrative for the people, which places this moment in time in its context, which tells us how we got into the mess that we’re in now, and also where we are going, or at least where we want to go.

I refuse to believe that we can’t come up with a better narrative than the polished turd being peddled by Shwab. If humanity can’t come up with anything than this asisine nonsense, perhaps we deserve to perish.

But c’mon. We can do better than this crap. Humanity is damn good at telling stories. We’ve got the upper hand here, and we should play to our strengths. If we get our shit together, we’ll have these fuckers by the balls. We just need to get it clear in our minds what it is that we’re trying to do.

We must fight for the terrain of the imagination.

We must cast a new spell.

for the Wild,

Crow Qu’appelle

P.S. This essay is partly inspired by a conversation that I had with Sean Stone, son of the legendary Oliver Stone. I encourage you to check out the interview below.