Awakening from Empire Propaganda Starts with One Small Act of Heresy
ANGLO AMERICA, 6 Jan 2025
Caitlin Johnstone - TRANSCEND Media Service
Stained Glass window depicting a heretic, in the Cathedral of Saint Rumbold in Mechelen, Belgium. Image via Adobe Stock
2 Jan 2025 – Escaping from the matrix of the mainstream western worldview is like escaping from a cult: it starts with one tiny heresy. One small, secret thought that goes against all your indoctrination.
Maybe it’s the realization that you’ve been lied to your whole life about Israel and Palestine. Maybe it had something to do with watching the mass media manufacture consent for the invasion of Iraq. Whatever it is, it starts out as a tiny little mental suspicion that the information sources you’ve been trusting to help form your understanding of the world might not be nearly as trustworthy as you’d been led to believe.
If you talk to anyone who’s ever left a cult, they’ll generally tell you that it started out the same way for them. They see a sign that the cult leader claiming he’s Jesus might actually be kind of petty and egotistical. They find themselves questioning whether Sri Baba Shiva really needs that many Rolls-Royces. They wonder if maybe Pastor Jeremiah is saying God wants him to have so many wives for reasons that have more to do with what Pastor Jeremiah wants than what God wants. These little heresies eventually add up and snowball into an avalanche which collapses the indoctrination that was keeping them in the cult that whole time.
It actually tends to play out this way when it comes to leaving any psychologically abusive relationship. A little spark forms in the back of the victim’s mind questioning whether the thoughts their partner put in their head are really true — and noticing who would benefit if they weren’t. Enough little sparks like that, and you eventually get a fire that burns the whole relationship down.
Those are the kinds of sparks we’re trying to get flying when working to wake people up from the indoctrination of the empire. We’re trying to get those first tiny heresies to form in people’s minds, using whatever’s happening in the news at the moment or whatever relevant ideas are trending.
We don’t need to get anyone to wake all the way up in one go — we just need to get the snowball rolling. One little heretical thought can be all it takes to get someone seriously questioning whether everything they’ve been taught about the world is a lie.
So we point out the lies wherever we find them. Any glaring plot hole in the official narrative anywhere it pops up. Right now Gaza is a constant deluge of information and raw video footage that can spark some major heresy if it is truly seen and ingested. The way we were just told to cheer for Syria being taken over by Al Qaeda is another. The lies we were told about Ukraine and the events that led up to the war is another.
Every day there’s something coming up that you can show anyone who will listen to you, saying, “See? Look at that! They lied! They’re lying right now! I wonder what else they’re lying about?”
And it just takes one. One well-placed spotlight on one obvious plot hole is all it takes to get someone pulling on a thread that will eventually unravel the whole matrix of delusion for them. And once they’re awake, they can join us in helping to wake up the others.
So make a vocation of being a serial blasphemer. Get people asking the inconvenient questions, and spark as many small acts of heresy as you can. People are only going to awaken from the imperial narrative matrix one pair of eyelids at a time, and we each have the opportunity to spend some time every day trying to help open them.
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Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper. Contact: admin@caitlinjohnstone.com
Go to Original – caitlinjohnstone.com.au
Tags: Mainstream Media MSM, US empire, West, World
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One Response to “Awakening from Empire Propaganda Starts with One Small Act of Heresy”
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Very valuable commentary. However there is a tricky question to be asked. Is it fruitful to assume that ensuring that people “awaken” is the most strategically appropriate? It is clearly an excellent endeavour into which considerable energy can be invested — but what if only a small number respond? How to engage with the reality of the many who do not — just despair? Perspective is to be gained by recognizing that one is oneself relatively unawakened (as the future may well perceive to be the case). And of course many perceive others to be unawakened from their own righteously enlightened perspective — as is the case of the religions which deprecate each others illusions, and as does science of them. Those who assume they are awake readily frame others as “asleep” or simply “wrong”. Each of us is so framed by others. The challenge seems to be how to allow the “wrong” a place in one’s cognitive ecosystem. A good metaphor is offered by electricity which requires two wires — positive and negative (if not “earth”). Many seem to assume that the goal is to remove the “negative” wire — and then all would be well. Funnily electricty does not then “work” — same goes for negative feedback in viable systems thinking.