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Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy
2024 Is the Last Year of Free Speech and Democracy in the Western World
2024 Is the Last Year of Free Speech and Democracy in the Western World
Paul Craig Roberts
Don’t let the alarmist sound of this column’s title put you off. It is not a “conspiracy theory.” This column is a factual report as you will see if you read on.
Everyone needs to understand that the ruling elite in the US are implementing a decision to redefine democracy in a way that eliminates democracy, makes Congress superfluous, voting pointless, and discards the Constitution as an outdated document inconsistent with the power the ruling elite intend to wield over Americans and the rest of the world.
The decision has been made to redefine democracy from the will of the people to protecting “the sanctity of democratic institutions.” Precisely, what are “democratic institutions”? They are not the institutions, such as Congress and representative government or the rule of law and an independent judiciary, that we currently regard as democratic institutions. “Democratic institutions” are the institutions of the censorship industry, such as the military/security complex, State Department, NATO, CIA, FBI, IMF, World Bank, NGOs, the Atlantic Council, the Aspen Institute, the presstitutes, Black Rock, JP Morgan/Chase and other of the consensus-building institutions that set agendas and control the narratives. To express disagreement with the consensus these elite institutions build is considered to be “an attack on democracy.” In other words, “democracy” is the property of the elite institutions, and the sanctity of these elite institutions must be protected from the people defined by Hillary Clinton as “the Trump deplorables.” The will of the people is eliminated from the picture.
It might surprise you, but universities (Stanford, for example, is fully involved), major corporations especially the tech companies and social media, law schools, medical associations, and governors and members of Congress associated with the WEF accept the redefinition of democracy that excludes the will of the people. They also agree that the Constitution is inconsistent with the power they intend to wield over citizens. As I write the State Department is busy at work obstructing the House of Representatives inquiry into the executive branch’s use of taxpayers’ money to censor what we may hear about Covid, the Covid “vaccine,” election fraud, the Ukraine war, Iran, Russia, China, etc. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/house/2860918/state-department-obstruct-censorship-investigation-house-gop/
On February 16, Tucker Carlson interviewed Mike Benz, the world’s leading expert on the censorship industry. Here you have a complete and accurate explanation of who rules us–and No it is not the Rothschilds and the Bilderbergs–and why the US government has decided to deep-six the First Amendment: https://tuckercarlson.com/uncensored-the-national-security-state-the-inversion-of-democracy/
The decision has been made, and it is currently being implemented. It means that suppression will be used to convert the entirety of the Internet and social media into a propaganda ministry serving official narratives. All of the hope that libertarians had of the freedom to speak that the Internet would provide has turned out to be unrealistic. You can see already the trouble Elon Musk is in for permitting free speech on X. The government has launched investigations of Musk and his companies with the intent of forcing him out. Both the state of California and the EU have moved against Elon Musk to force him via enormous financial penalties to turn over to the censorship industry the information that the previous owner was supplying, information used in AI programs to determine who to ban and what tweets to take down.
Soon the alternative and social media will exist only as propaganda sites for the “consensus-building elite institutions.”
The disintegration of Western civilization is proceeding so rapidly that I cannot keep up with it even as a full time job. As I reported yesterday ( https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2024/02/18/french-democracy-establishes-medical-tyranny/ ) the French government has just criminalized medical truth, and WHO is about to do so in May of this year. People will no longer have control over their own health decisions.
The US government not only keeps the US border wide open for “people of color,” Washington also supplies the NGOs who are recruiting the immigrant-invaders with hundreds of millions of dollars with which to provide the immigrant-invaders with food, water, medical care, and sleeping accommodation along the mapped routes. https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2024/02/18/the-genocide-of-the-west/
It can’t happen you say? But it is happening right in front of our eyes.
Insouciant gullible Americans are expert at fleeing from unsettling bad news. Thus, they pave their own path to tyranny. Tyranny is easy to establish over peoples who have confidence in their Constitutional rights and integrity of their institutions. The more patriotic the population is, the more susceptible it is to deception and betrayal by government. Try telling patriots what is happening to them, and they will call you a commie for speaking badly about their beloved country.
Christian evangelicals have no opposition to the evil that is engulfing us, because they have been brainwashed that they will escape it by being wafted up to Heaven. The growth of evil is actually their escape from a sinful world into Heaven. The more evil, the sooner their escape.
For most of the rest, liberal interventionists and hegemonic neoconservatives have taught that America is exceptional and indispensable, so how can anything go wrong.
Combine these awareness-blockers with the fact that uncomfortable truths are a bad news turnoff, and that censorship is being established as a national security matter with the argument that it makes us safe and “protects democracy.”
Consequently, the criminalization of truth is rushing ahead. Even the word “truth” is slated to become a hate word that cannot be spoken.
Any information that you have saved that helps you to understand the tyranny that is engulfing us should be stored in thumb drives and not in the cloud as all information undermining of the “consensus-building institutions” will be consigned to the memory hole.
Note: at the 47-48 minute mark in the interview, the redefinition of democracy is explained. As there are more US government agencies committed to the death of the First Amendment than you have ever heard of, watch the one hour video several times in order to gain an appreciation of how deep the rabbit hole is.
Note: The Atlantic Council, one of the main anti-democratic “consensus-building (false narrative) organizations,” is possibly associated with the Burisma/Hunter Biden scandal. Burisma, a Ukrainian company, put Hunter Biden on its board and paid him large sums of money for his father’s protection against prosecution of the company by Ukrainian authorities. US Vice President Biden actually admitted on TV, indeed he was proud of it, that he used billions of dollars in US taxpayers money to threaten Ukraine to withhold the US aid unless Ukraine fired the prosecutor, an offer Ukraine could not refuse. Atlantic Council board members Sally Painter is under investigation by the US Justice (sic) Department for illegal lobbying on behalf of Burisma. She and former Atlantic Council board member Karen Tramontano created a partnership between the Atlantic Council and Burisma.
Burisma contributed $300,000 to the Atlantic Council. Perhaps it was the purchase price for Burisma officials to speak at Atlantic Council forums and for prestigious Atlantic Council members to speak at a Burisma conference in Ukraine in 2018. All of this to show American protection of the company to Ukrainian prosecutorial authorities.
In 2021 the United Arab Emirates Embassy donated more than $1 million to the Atlantic Council, and the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs added another $100,00-250,000. This might have been the purchase price for the Atlantic Council to use its influence to have the UN choose the UAE for the location of its 2023 climate change conference.
Apparently, the Atlantic Council did not make the required or proper disclosures of the UAE’s donations.
The Atlantic Council, a principal member of the anti-democratic censorship industry is supported by the hapless, unaware American taxpayers by grants of taxpayer’s money from the Departments of Defense, State, and Energy and by the US Agency for International Development. Thus, it is clear that “our” government in Washington is financing the replacement of American Democracy subject to the will of the people with the government’s protection of the elite institutions that have changed the definition of democracy to mean the service of their agendas.
Here are other major donors to the Atlantic Council:
Adrienne Arsht, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, the Rockefeller Foundation, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the United Arab Emirates, a Swiss company System Capital Management, Abu Dhabu National Oil Company, the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the US Department of State, the Embassy of Bahrain, the Embassy of Japan, the Finish Ministry of Defense, the Lithuanian Minister of Defense, the Norwegian Ministry of Defense, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Chevron Corporation, Google, Crescent Petroleum, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Raytheon Technologies, John F.W. Rogers (Goldman Sachs), Carnegie Corp of New York, Delegation of the EU to the US, Foreign Ministry of Germany, JP Morgan Chase Foundation, US Department of Defense, US Department of Energy, Charles Koch Foundation. Amazon, Verizon, Pfizer, Aramco, Lockheed Martin, Omidyar Network.
All of this information is available on the Atlantic Council’s website: https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/atlantic-council/
So, No, it is not a conspiracy theory.