Brave New World
a disaster film
PAL, 18´
Translated from French
TO THE STATES
To the States, or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist much, obey little,
Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city, of this earth, ever afterwards resumes its liberty.
1860
WALT WHITMAN
Since all that one grasps is wind,
Since all is nothing but ruin and despair,
Think : that which is is not,
And what is said not to be is there !
OMAR KHAYYAM
1. War propaganda
On September 11th, 2001, the world media mobilized in no time for one of the greatest propaganda operations ever performed. They vied with one another in amateurism, credulity and fanaticism, as they announced the coming of a terrorist Apocalypse.
A few hours were enough to pass on everywhere the order to reveal the name of the “number one suspect” based on the extravagant documents allegedly “left behind by a kamikaze in an airport parking lot.” Osama Bin Laden and his radical Islamist following were then depicted as the absolute Evil, the demoniac Adversary whose madness always justifies the most violent reaction.
“As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen. (…) The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor (…). Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters, perhaps even – so it was occasionally rumoured – in some hiding-place in Oceania itself.” — GEORGE ORWELL, 1984
Bin Laden – Goldstein’s image merges into that of another monster living in the bowels of the earth, the Antichrist, this old dragon, Satan. Ideology and police truncheons are the weapons used all around the world by this antique apocalyptic manichaeism so that we can fully appreciate its modernity : historically behind Islam as well as Christianity, it comes back to rule once again as the religion of an era of decadence, tragedy, ignorance and slavery, but this time on a global scale. Now comes the time when false prophets and pseudo messiahs proliferate, denouncing each other as agents of Satan to be exterminated. Now comes the time when grotesque tyrants proclaim themselves champions of the happiness of the people they oppress.
“Our nation was chosen by God to be a model.” — GEORGE W. BUSH, August 28th, 2000
“The stupendous drama of the Last Days was not a phantasy about some remote and indefinite future but a prophecy which was infallible and which at almost any given moment was felt to be on the point of fulfilment.” — NORMAN COHN, The Pursuit of the Millennium
2. An integrated terrorism
Like the demons of medieval imagination, the kamikaze terrorists were what one calls “models of integration.” Their mission required them to blend in the American population, sharing its daily life, work, leisure moments and lifestyle : in short that they turn themselves into good patriotic and industrious Americans. This did not stop them from being closely watched by the US security services, merely doing their job and having known about the terrorists’ real intentions for a long time, thanks to allied informers. Moreover, in a world overwatched by Echelon and its many clones, and on a ground prepared by fifty years of secret war against a so-called “communist” threat, it is both logically absurd and practically impossible that a hidden network of fanatical conspirators could outwit the services which from the very beginning allowed it to exist. It would therefore be nothing else than an act of faith to give any credit to the deficient scenario elaborated by cynical liars for the sake of a besotted and servile audience.
That is how the imbeciles ignore, and the hypocrites pretend to ignore, that a plot against the state is too important a thing to be left to the state’s enemies, even more so when such a plot is as wide as that of September 11th.
“These tigers have hearts of sheep, heads full of wind ; one has only to speak their language to enter their ranks.” — MAURICE JOLY,Dialogue in Hell between Machiavel and Montesquieu
To be kept efficiently under control, the Islamists belonging to a network like Al Qaeda must blindly obey leaders who must themselves be trained and funded by the security services of particular states. Following a kind of strange schizophrenic pattern, these leaders may be convinced that they are working for their own perverse cause. And that is how good patriotic and industrious Saudis turn themselves into kamikaze terrorists.
3. Who would benefit from the crime ?
This seemingly unholy alliance is first of all the result of a real association of strictly economic interests in which oil takes first place. Thus the purpose of the “reprisals” against Afghanistan, planned several months before the casus belli of September 11th, was to repair the image of the Afghan central power, in order to negotiate with it, at minimum cost, the construction and protection of the American-Saudi pipeline to channel the black gold from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to Pakistan. “At minimum cost” means without carrying on any further the ill-starred experiment of Talibans cageing up women, and without Massoud. The profits some people expect from the exploitation of the last known large oilfields are much larger than the speculative gains made by themselves, or others, through the common insider trading which took place on September 11th.
The main political consequence is just as clear : the American administration achieved power through the first real non-election in the history of this country and gained its national and international legitimacy by the stage-managed burlesque tragedy of a fun-fair monkey disguised as a war commander leading a universal crusade. Thus firmly supported, this administration was then able to start implementing most of its platform, ultra-liberal as regards economical issues and ultra-repressive regarding public freedom ; and to do that in a minimum of time, even if that meant organizing the “anthrax psychosis” in order to temporarily muzzle up Congress, the last democratic windbag in the United States.
By way of rebound all the world leaders are forced by the events to form a solid block with their American counterpart, and they quickly seize this windfall : they are all doing their best to implement at a local level most of the same platform, going as far as importing the “anthrax psychosis” in “kit form”, as in France and Germany; or by inventing a national variant, like the phantom suicide truck in Italy. They all rush to grant themselves the means to put an end to what is worrying them so much, this wide rejection that seeks its reasons and ends from Seattle to Teheran, Pretoria to Tizi Ouzou ; and they all rush to enjoy their fleeting triumph.
A class fully conscious of the scale of its domination expresses its international solidarity in this chorus of cynical jubilations, and it is the main scandal which must be always concealed and never mentioned.
“Secrecy dominates this world, and first and foremost as the secret of domination.” — GUY DEBORD, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle
4. About “conspiracy theories”
The events have revealed the existence of a gigantic conspiracy. To maintain the people in a state of passivity, one only needs to blur their critical abilities to discern who is really plotting against whom. Different scenarios then spontaneously develop, adapting the official thesis which is nothing but the “theory” of the Islamic conspiracy, with different audiences being preconditioned to adopt one or another version. The Islamists can therefore believe it is the Christians who are conspiring against the Muslim world, or rather recycle the ancient “theory” of the Jewish conspiracy. The radical left can come up with the “theory” of a fascist conspiracy or CIA plot – even though its point of view would require to understand such events in the context of their global meaning and motion.
All these fragile constructions are based on a sometimes subtle use of partial truths. Therefore certain fractions of the numerous secret services of the Americans, the Saudis, the Pakistanis and perhaps of the special services of some oil companies were in all probability the initiators of Massoud’s assassination and the September 11th attacks ; but manipulated Islamists also played a determinant role. It is also very likely that some fascist groups took part in launching the “anthrax psychosis” in the United States. Only one thing clearly emerges from all this noxious fog : all those profiting by this new slaughter are closely connected together by strong ties of complicity.
The various “conspiracy theories” result in fragmenting the truth, then integrating each part of it into a pseudo global tissue of gross errors and paranoid lies which collapses without any external help when faced with reality. They are then used just like magic spells, in various environments, in order to refute immediately any authentic criticism that the different agents of silence could have failed to eliminate. For example one day it could be said, should this seem desirable, that this film spreads a conspiracy theory, or alternatively a ridiculous paranoia, which amounts to the same thing.
5. A new era
The September 11th attacks cannot be understood but as the end product of a complex transitory process that was set into motion about ten years ago. The year 1991 was indeed publicly marked by the Gulf War and the disintegration of the U.S.S.R., which durably imposed on the world the military and economic hegemony of the United States. It was also secretly marked by the start of the “dirty war” in Algeria – the laboratory state where the Islamic variant of modern state terrorism was tested, then systematized, renewing a technique of government first used in post 1968 Italy, and being imposed world-wide since.
It is the same people, after a few generational changes, who now rule the United States, as well as Algeria, Italy and other countries. But they have drawn the lessons from their ten years in power : they have understood that to increase their profits they will henceforth need a world-wide reign of terror and obscurantism. By now they know better what makes them richer, what makes them stronger, the use they can make of the means they have granted themselves and what the mesmerized populations are ready to believe in and to go through.
The provocation of September 11th inaugurated a 21st century which is already about to reproduce it feature by feature : a disaster film directed by idiots, full of obscurantist sound and terrorist fury, signifying nothing.
NOSOTROS
November 2001