The era of free-market triumphalism has come to a juddering halt, and the crisis that destroyed Lehman Brothers in 2008 is now engulfing much of the rich world … The crisis of liberal capitalism has been rendered more serious by the rise of a potent alternative: state capitalism, which tries to meld the powers of the state with the powers of capitalism. It depends on government to pick winners and promote economic growth. But it also uses capitalist tools such as listing state-owned companies on the stockmarket and embracing globalisation. Elements of state capitalism have been seen in the past, for example in the rise of Japan in the 1950s and even of Germany in the 1870s, but never before has it operated on such a scale and with such sophisticated tools … Ian Bremmer, the president of Eurasia Group, a political-risk consultancy, claims that this is "the end of the free market" in his excellent book of that title. He exaggerates. But he is right that a striking number of governments, particularly in the emerging world, are learning how to use the market to promote political ends. The invisible hand of the market is giving way to the visible, and often authoritarian, hand of state capitalism. – Economist
Dominant Social Theme: Look, capitalism has had its day. Now it's the turn of the BRICs and "state-directed" capitalism. In fact, Europe and America need to be more like Brazil and China!
Free-Market Analysis: Way back in July, we wrote about Ian Bremmer and how his book, The End of the Free Market, constituted another power elite dominant social theme. It was obvious then (though not obvious, we need to point out, that Bremmer is aware he's become the focal point of an elite meme), and we're not at all surprised the Economist is featuring this meme now. (See excerpt above.)
The Anglosphere elite NEEDS a bogeyman like state capitalism to continue to move Western societies toward command-and-control facilities. What the Economist calls "state capitalism," of course, would be referred to as "fascism" in another era. Nice to dress it up, though. Sounds much more academic.
So how did we know back in June what was headed in our direction? Because our major focus is on understanding the elite's dominant social themes, their "promotions." As hard as it is to believe, the matrix of belief structures that the elites have erected around the world are nothing more, in our view, than a PROMOTION.
A promotion is a story for grownups, usually revolving around greed or fear. The promotion is usually a kind of directed history, in which people are steered in a certain direction by various media tactics. The media assumptions are eventually fulfilled with great fanfare. It is all predetermined, but it doesn't look that way to the average viewer.
The directed history part of the resultant synthesis is rarely mentioned. And yet it seems to be the most critical. It is only by steering a synthesis in the proper direction that one makes progress. Once the critical point has been reached, the elites are not bashful about creating false-flag operations.
Thus, an argument over global warming having been joined, the elites will make sure that one of their major media mouthpieces – like Time magazine – runs a cover story featuring two polar bears trapped on an ice flow that's melted and separated from a main glacier.
Later it will be discovered that the polar bears can swim and that they were in no danger at all, as a result of a minor summer thaw. But the damage is done nonetheless because the damage IS SUPPOSED to be done. The photo is an operative phenomenon. That's why explanations after the fact don't matter.
Over and over, it's been proven that this fact, or that episode, is in fact a concoction. But by then it doesn't matter because the PROMOTION is already operative. The significant event's certitude is never to be an issue. Its relevance is its availability not its validity.
This is very frustrating for people to understand who approach the current polity from a rational standpoint. They tend to believe they have to "win the argument" on rational grounds.
But the Anglosphere power elite has NO such compunctions. For these top men and their immensely privileged families, the many themes that people are transfixed by – from gun control to Peak Oil, to the war on terror, to global warming – are nothing more than promotional memes, floated for very specific purposes.
Promotions are developed all the time. The history of organized human communication is a kind of promotional history. The motivating factor is money or power. In modern Western society promotions of a certain sort are almost ritualized.
Stock market rollouts are inevitably promotions. Even the largest IPOs are likely planned as self-fulfilling prophecies in which the IPO's marketers make certain claims (already fulfilled) that are then actuated. The stock price goes up and the people behind the IPO pocket millions or even billions.
This is how the Anglosphere power elite works. They have it down to a science, and THEIR promotion – their ultimate deal – is the biggest show on earth. They want nothing less than a New World Order, a full-fledged empire of which they will be in charge. They're promoting it all the time. The signs are obvious. You just have to look.
The trouble with promotions, however, is that when they are penetrated they are no good. People cease to believe and word spreads. So far, the Anglosphere elite behind the New World Order promotion is resolutely refusing to face reality.
They've been penetrated. They've been exposed. They've been found out. But the costs are too high, the consequences are too severe, the reality too grievous for them to accept.
Their sunken costs are phenomenal. From universities, to think tanks, to the banks and corporations, religions, political and military structures, the Anglosphere elite has spent literally trillions – tens of trillions – creating an unparalleled network that acquiesces obediently to the ongoing construction of one-world government.
And this is where the Anglosphere crosses the line, of course. They are not content with a "promotion." They utilize the full force of government to ensure that their promotions predict reality. And that ain't kosher. It's one thing to convince people. It's another to kill them, or promote them at the point of a gun.
Still, not all their promotions are successful. Some, like Global Warming, are provably false. Even the Anglosphere cannot predict the weather and thus those involved have had to falsify data. A few decades ago that wouldn't have mattered but in the Internet era the malfeasance was discovered and exposed.
The best promotions are perhaps the military ones. It is fairly easy for the Anglosphere to set up a war (controlling both sides of the conflict) and then gradually, through a series of self-fulfilling prophecies, create the necessary conflict. Wars have the benefit of polarizing populations and also of militarizing society, making people easier to control.
Economics is another area where the Anglosphere can bring to bear effective promotions. Via central banking, the Anglosphere can create tremendous booms and busts, and even depressions. These cataclysmic events can then be a catalyst for closer world government and even a one-world currency. We've argued this is taking place today.
Still, when all is said and done the Anglosphere needs to ARTICULATE what is taking place – or at least what they want to happen. They need spokespeople like Julian Assange (possibly) and others who can explain what is going to happen and when. Often, political people are used for this critical process.
This is, in fact, the utility of many of America's former presidents. It is not coincidence that so many of them travel the world on seemingly unlimited budgets. They are employees of the nascent globalist state, dedicated travelers spreading the globalist Word that the great banking families want them to promote.
Occasionally, we have the rare treat of anticipating a power-elite promotion, for they are being rolled out all the time. One just has to be patient and to watch. In the case of the promotion we are featuring in this article, we became aware of it some six months ago, back in July. Here's what we wrote at the time:
This is a rare event. It is like watching a dormant volcano come to life. Or an island being raised in the ocean from resultant lava flows. It is a one-of-a-kind opportunity. We are bearing witness to the creation of a brand new dominant social theme. It is a most important occasion in the life of our modest electronic paper. The meme we are referring to is the one that is currently being propounded by Ian Bremmer of the Carnegie Foundation and Foreign Policy magazine.
And what a meme it is! And how timely as well! In the nick of time, actually. Things are not going especially well for the power elite and its grab for global governance. The combination of the Internet and a fiat-money implosion has made populations restive. There is too much pressure, too much anger, to easily proceed to further internationalism. Allies are nervous. Political systems are not yielding the required results, or not easily anyway. The whole program has become overly transparent. The pattern is obvious even to bloggers. (The Bell comes to mind?) And that's bad news …
Enter Bremmer. Here is a young man (a sociopolitical/media star actually) who is a walking compendium of elite relationships. Bremmer's books include "The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall (Simon & Schuster, 2006), named a Book of the Year by The Economist magazine … and the national bestseller The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations. Is it a coincidence that he has received so much attention?
No, it's not a coincidence. Now the Economist has returned to the capitalism versus state capitalism promotion as we knew they would. There is little emphasis in the article that China (or Brazil or Russia) are currently racked by tremendous corruption and inflation. More importantly, the report we mentioned yesterday – that the Chinese system itself may be overturned by rebellion – is not one prominently featured here.
That's because a good promotion sticks to the argument it is promoting. This particular meme is intended to move "capitalism" further toward authoritarianism. It is the Hegelian Dialectic in action, and Mr. Bremmer enunciates it eloquently.
We will point out once again (just to make sure) that we have no idea if Bremmer is aware that he is enunciating a larger power-elite promotion. He may simply have come to his conclusions on his own. But they are nonetheless ones that the elites apparently want to feature. They need government levers to pull. Government shrinkage is antithetical to their method of operation, which uses mercantilism. Here's a final point made by the article:
The rise of state capitalism is also undoing many of the assumptions about the effects of globalisation. Kenichi Ohmae said the nation state was finished. Thomas Friedman argued that governments had to don the golden straitjacket of market discipline. Naomi Klein pointed out that the world's biggest companies were bigger than many countries. And Francis Fukuyama asserted that history had ended with the triumph of democratic capitalism. Now across much of the world the state is trumping the market and autocracy is triumphing over democracy.
See! The state has arisen once more. Never mind that it is merely an excrescence of central banking or that most of the growth is phony, caused by monetary stimulation. None of that matters. The point is to have the discussion and to use it as a pretext for more WESTERN state control. Doesn't even matter if it's true. Cause the events to take place, even ephemerally. Discuss them and refer to them. Create legislation surrounding them and make that legislation operative. Direct your history!
