The difference between ideology and citizens’ lived experience is becoming explosive
Every political and social order comes in two flavors: What its small elite and the minority exploiting it to the full want everyone to believe, and the reality that most of its members actually live in. The two never match, but this mismatch need not be a big problem. However, if the difference becomes too great and too obvious for too long, no order can continue unchanged.
None of the above is news. Keen observers have long understood that things get shaky when a majority loses their belief in – or at least passive acceptance of – the prevalent ideology (in the original meaning of the term, namely, as the elite’s imaginative story about reality, keeping the non-elites compliant).
In such a situation, things will change, but it is hard to predict how, exactly. An acute ideology-reality mismatch can lead to rebellion and, if the latter succeeds, revolution. Yet it can also make the elites ramp up their indoctrination or become more punitive, adding more direct compulsion to keep those below in line. There is always also the option of going to war with enemies abroad – real or, much more likely, invented – to distract from disunity at home. Finally, all of the above can happen in a messy sequence, or even at the same time.
Despite differences and tensions, the West does constitute some form of political and social order. In its elites’ ideology, as spread by their compliant mainstream media, it is a fairy-tale realm of political and economic freedom, combining representative democracy with free markets, the rule of law, individualism, and superior “values” to make the best of all possible worlds. In reality, obviously, it’s a dark zone of capitalist oligarchy with increasingly authoritarian tendencies. Not the Hobbits’ cozy Shire; rather Sauron’s domain under construction.
Markets, for one thing, are not “free,” but routinely and crassly gamed by insiders. Currently for instance, both the beginning of the criminal Israeli-US war against Iran and deliberately timed, repeated rumors about peace have facilitated manipulative trades worth billions of dollars.
The September 11, 2001 attacks can be considered the evil Big Bang of our current iteration of mass manipulation, authoritarian power grabs in the name of “emergency” response, permanent warfare, and lying so intense it is sometimes hard to remember there is a truth. As the rebellious US ex-MAGA conservative Tucker Carlson has just reminded us, 9/11 was also accompanied – and preceded – by trading, for which the description “highly suspicious” is an understatement.
Democratic political representation and freedom of thought and speech are, at best, if not outright deceptions, then myths. That is, a messy hodgepodge of scraps of reality and large doses of invention. The rare scraps of reality are now diminishing ever further.
Concerning freedom, Britain under the widely hated Starmer regime, for instance, is a Zionist police state. It goes further than smearing and suppressing any action on behalf of the victims of Israel’s crimes, including genocide, as ”antisemitism”; it also condemns any statements of public solidarity with the victims. There is no rule of law worthy of the name: perfectly legitimate speech is prohibited as “terrorist,” the police harass political dissidents as well as the courts and their procedures. These themselves are unreliable (ask Julian Assange), and are brazenly bent out of shape to produce unfair trials and punitive sentences.
Regarding representation, take Germany, for instance: It now has a breathtakingly, historically unpopular government that is only even in place because the last election saw widespread and statistically bizarre miscounts which together acted – very un-randomly – to conveniently eliminate a whole new-left party (the BSW), and thus its voters, from parliament.
The German new right (AfD) and its voters, meanwhile, are openly threatened with unconstitutional punishment if they dare succeed too much: vote too much AfD and your kid’s high school diploma will be treated like dirt. Yes, that crude; that really is the current level of shamelessness among Germany’s self-radicalizing Centrists.
Even the most conformist inhabitants of the West, moreover, cannot close their eyes anymore to the empirical fact that conspiracies are all too real and exert great, heinous influence by vicious means. You cannot have both your masses soundly believing in the myth of fair popular representation and an Epstein scandal; it is proof of the massive over-representation of a very particular set of interests, and even foreign states, through networks of subversion and blackmail. The system may survive at first, but its base will be undermined by mass frustration and cynicism.
Today, the states of the West, in short, has much in common, and most of it is terrible. That is why we are observing one big trend across it now: In the words of the Wall Street Journal – not usually known for subversive dissidence – “Europeans are fed up and taking it out on their leaders.” Polls show massive discontent across NATO-EU Europe. And not only polls but real elections, too: Britain’s Starmer regime has just received a horrific drubbing in local elections that may well mark the impending end of the UK’s dysfunctional and unfair two-party system.
In a study rating the popularity of 24 leaders, the three worst performers were the heads of France, Germany, and the UK: The top tier of the NATO-EU Europe complex is held by its least popular rulers. But that doesn’t mean others are doing much better. The leaders of Italy, the Netherlands and Spain all have disapproval ratings between 55 and 57 percent.
But what would the West be without its “indispensable” leader? Peruse the Financial Times, another mainstream media outlet above any suspicion of rebelliousness, and you’ll find that there is unhappiness across the Atlantic: In the US, more than half of all voters disapprove of President Trump’s policies, too.
Almost 60 percent are unhappy with Trump’s handling of inflation. Just like his awful predecessor, the senescent Gaza genocide accomplice Joe Biden, Trump is now haunted by a cost-of-living crisis. Like Biden, Trump has only himself to blame: the two key factors driving up consumer prices are his crude tariffs and his predictable fiasco in Iran. Fifty-five percent of voters believe that Trump has hurt the economy; only a fourth think he has helped it.
It is always tempting to focus on each case of malaise individually: here the German mess with its peculiar East-West tension and its comically self-pitying leader Friedrich Merz, for instance; there the French decrepitude with its constitutional design flaws and the raging narcissist Emmanuel Macron at the center; and there again, the British establishment’s traditional vassalage to the US combined with its perverse relationship to Zionism and genocidal Israel. In the case of America, it is, of course, the upcoming midterm elections that attract the most attention.
But what if we adopt a longer view? Where is all of this misery going? Again, more than one outcome is possible. Full disclosure: I find things desperate enough not to mind rebellion and revolution. But it would be foolish not to consider other scenarios, namely those that the Western elites would prefer: Increasing repression is an obvious fact already. Distraction by war abroad as well: those labeling the Israeli-American assault on Iran Operation Epstein (instead of ‘Epic’) Fury have nailed it. Berlin, being Berlin, naturally is gearing up to fight Russia directly (as opposed to “only” indirectly as it is now), and so is, alas, much of the NATO-EU complex. The future is unpredictable. Except for one thing: Change is inevitable. Don’t bank on it being for the better.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
