CJ Hopkins: Israel’s 9/11

 

“I know it’s difficult at times like this, but please try not to let people fuck with your head. Try not to let them punch your buttons. Try not to let them make you react to emotional stimuli like Pavlov’s dog. Take a break from the mass hysteria. Try to see things clearly. Try to understand the goals and tactics of both sides of this conflict, regardless of which side you think you’re on…”

 

Israel’s 9/11

by CJ Hopkins
October 15, 2023

 

Sorry, but I’ve seen this movie before.

I saw it in New York in 2001.

On the afternoon of September 11, I stood among the crowd on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and watched what was left of the Twin Towers burn. Walking home as the sun was setting, it appeared to be snowing. It wasn’t snowing. The snowflakes were bits and pieces of paper, burnt ginger orange and rust brown around the edges, which the wind had carried across the East River, contracts, memos, actuarial tables, pages torn out of trashy paperback books, scribbled notes, pink telephone messages, the children’s drawings and affirmations that adorn the colorless upholstered walls of corporate cubicles throughout America.

It was snowing relics, the hideous detritus of thousands of people’s mundane lives.

America had been attacked. It was time to come together as Americans, to put aside our political differences, to rally around the flag, and the president, and go and kill a whole lot of people who had absolutely nothing to do with it.

You might be too young to remember that time. I remember it vividly. I remember it in detail. I remember how the nation “came together.” I remember how the Western world “stood with America.” I remember how we declared a “Global War on Terror,” how we “took the gloves off,” both at home and abroad, how the government and the media whipped the public up into a bloodthirsty, jingoistic frenzy. I remember being called a “traitor,” a “Saddam apologist,” a “terrorist sympathizer,” because I wouldn’t wave the flag, and “stand with America,” and get on board with murdering hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children.

So, forgive me if what follows seems a bit cold. As I said, I’ve seen this movie before.

Actually, I’m pretty torn up at the moment. Many people are. It’s been quite a week. I was planning to publish one of my satirical columns about the recent events in Israel and Gaza. It was going to focus on the “40 beheaded babies” propaganda. I started it. And stopped it. I cannot do it. Not today. I just don’t have it in me.

Instead, I’m going to drop the sarcasm for now, and say a few things for the record. Maybe just to get this out of my system. Nothing I publish is going to change what has happened, or what is going to happen in the coming days and weeks, or anyone else’s mind, probably.

I am not going to condemn the Hamas attack, as hideous as I think it was. I do not condemn things on command, or perform any other kind of tricks on command. If that’s what you’re looking for, get a dog.

That said, I am not going to call the Hamas attack “resistance” or try to justify it. I refuse to justify mass murder. If you’re OK with mass murdering civilians for your cause … OK, but own it. Call it what it is. And spare me the “legitimate resistance” bullshit.

Same goes for Israel. If you “stand with Israel” as it murders civilians, fine. Own it. Give me a break with the “Israel has the right to defend itself” bullshit, and own it.

Whatever “side” of this conflict you are on, at least have the integrity to call things what they are.

Here is what things are, in a nutshell.

Israel is a nation-state. It is doing what a lot of nation-states have done throughout the history of nation-states. It is wiping out, or otherwise removing, the indigenous population of the territory it has conquered. It has been doing this for 75 years. The indigenous population, i.e., the Palestinians, have been trying not to get completely wiped out, or otherwise removed from their indigenous territory, and lashing out at Israel in a variety of ways (i.e., from throwing stones to committing mass murder).

That is what is happening. The rest is PR. Public relations. Propaganda.

If you “stand with” the nation-state of Israel and its ongoing efforts to wipe out and otherwise remove the Palestinians from the territory it controls, I get it. The United States of America did that to its indigenous population. The British Empire did it in its colonies. A lot of nations and empires did it. It is standard nation-state behavior. There is nothing aberrational about it. If you can live with supporting that … OK, go for it, but spare me the sanctimony and the “unprovoked attack” crap.

If you “stand with” the Palestinians in their ongoing efforts to not get wiped out, or otherwise removed from their homeland, I get it. My sympathies are with them too. I’ve never found nation-states particularly sympathetic, especially when they are in their Mercilessly-Wiping-Out-the-Indigenous-Population phase. However, if you believe that “standing with” the Palestinians means celebrating mass murder, and making excuses for it like “settlers are not civilians” … OK, fine, but count me out.

What’s my point? Well, my point is, at times like this, everything conspires to keep everyone from seeing things clearly and thinking critically. Everyone’s selling you a narrative and punching your emotional buttons to force you into joining their side.

Hamas is playing on your basic human decency … your empathy for the Palestinians. Their game is, if you support the Palestinian people, you have to support the Hamas attack and condone the mass murder of unarmed civilians.

Israel is playing on your basic human decency … on your sympathy for the murdered Israelis. Their game is, if you don’t support the mass murder of Palestinian civilians that is now in progress, then you are a “terrorist-sympathizer,” who hates the Jews.

Both of these parties are fucking with your head, as are their assorted propaganda-spewing mouthpieces. They are trying to force you into a position where your only choice is to support mass murder.

You do not have to support mass murder.

I know it’s difficult at times like this, but please try not to let people fuck with your head. Try not to let them punch your buttons. Try not to let them make you react to emotional stimuli like Pavlov’s dog. Take a break from the mass hysteria. Try to see things clearly. Try to understand the goals and tactics of both sides of this conflict, regardless of which side you think you’re on. If you do not know the history of this conflict — the conflict I described above in a nutshell — please take a few minutes and educate yourself. It’s actually not that complicated.

Here’s a fifteen-minute film to get you started.



That’s it, for now. I’m sure I’ll be writing more about this in the coming weeks. As far as I can tell, what we’re about to witness is going to be protracted and extremely ugly. The IDF appears to be preparing to liquidate a sizable portion of Gaza. One assumes Hamas has prepared for this, as that was obviously what their massacre was meant to provoke. Who knows how long the fighting will last, whether it will spread, and what it will lead to?

In the meantime, everything is going by the numbers. The nations of the New Normal Reich are marching in lockstep. This is “Israel’s 9/11.” Democracy is at war with “evil” again! The demonization and criminalization of dissent that was rolled out during the “Covid pandemic” in 2020-2022 has gone into overdrive. Germany, France, and other countries have banned demonstrations expressing support for the Palestinians. Here in Berlin, police are roaming the streets, harassing and arresting Arab-looking kids, and anyone improperly criticizing Israel. Anti-Israel social-media content is being censored and visibility-filtered, while fascist content like this gets a pass …

In Neukölln, the district where I live in Berlin, a major “police action” was recently launched because someone spray-painted “fuck Israel” on a sidewalk. Oh, yeah, and then there was the German schoolteacher who punched a 15-year-old student in the face for defending his friend whose Palestinian flag the teacher had snatched out of his hand. And so on.

And this is only Week One. And you know what happens in Week Two, don’t you?

Sorry, I know, I’m spoiling the movie for the folks out there who haven’t seen it. I’ll shut up now and let you get back to it.

 

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Cover image credit: DangrafArt

CJ Hopkins: The Criminalization of Dissent (Continued)

 

“Never, ever, give in to a bully. The second you do, that bully owns you. What the bully wants, more than whatever he is demanding, more than anything else in the world, is your fear. The bully interprets your fear as respect, because the bully doesn’t understand respect. The bully craves your fear, and your obedience, because they reify the bully’s “authority.” They enable the bully to feel powerful and important. The bully needs to feel “powerful” and “important” because the bully feels weak and unimportant, and afraid. All fascists are essentially cowards. They are cowards, and nihilists, who hate themselves, and fear themselves, and hate and fear life, which is why they are so obsessed with controlling everything.”

 

The Criminalization of Dissent (continued) 

by CJ Hopkins, Consent Factory
September 10, 2023

 

So, the Berlin State Prosecutor has launched another criminal investigation of me. Apparently, I’m being charged with reporting on the original investigation of me that the Berlin State Prosecutor launched in June.

What happened is, the prosecutor visited my blog and read a column I published in July, The Criminalization of Dissent (Revisited), which included screenshots of the alleged “hate-crime” Tweets that the original criminal investigation is based on, and that resulted in the Order of Punishment that the Berlin District Court handed down two weeks ago. So, the prosecutor opened a new criminal investigation and sent my attorney an official notice explaining the gravity of the additional charges.

The charges are of the utmost gravity. I am officially accused of “relativizing” or “minimizing” the crimes of the Nazis … by republishing the two Tweets that I originally tweeted.

Here, once again, are the Tweets …

Yes, that’s right, I just published them again. I am going to explain why I published them again.

I’m not going to explain the Tweets again. I have explained them in several previous columns. I have explained them to Matt Taibbi of Racket News, Max Blumenthal of The Grayzone, James Freeman, Patrick Henningsen, Elena Louisa Lange, Dirk Pohlmann, and Christine Black at Brownstone Institute (forgive me if I’m forgetting anyone). I explained them to Stefan Millius of Weltwoche, and to another journalist at a big Swiss newspaper. My attorney has explained them, in German, to the prosecutor, and to German audiences on Kontrafunk. RT published a piece explaining them. I believe they have been exhaustively explained.

Not that they ever really needed explanation. You would have to be a certified moron to believe they “minimized,” or “relativized,” or in any way made light of the crimes of the Nazis. You and I are not certified morons. Neither is the Berlin State Prosecutor. Neither is the District Court of Berlin. Not to put too fine a point on it, the charges are horseshit, and everyone involved knows it. They are a blatant pretext to crackdown on dissent.

OK, now let me explain why I just published the Tweets again, knowing full well that the Berlin State Prosecutor is probably going to read this column, become extremely agitated, and charge me with additional “hate crimes.”

No, I am not a glutton for punishment. I’m not at all enjoying my introduction to the so-called “German legal system.” It is taking up my time. It is making me angry. It is upsetting my wife, which I do not appreciate. It is costing me a lot of money. It has forced me to ask other people for money, which is something I do not like to do. It’s screwing with my sleep. It is distracting me from my work. And so on. Which is exactly the point.

The goal of horseshit prosecutions like mine (and those of many other dissidents currently) is (a) to punish us for speaking out against “New Normal” totalitarianism by making our lives as miserable as possible, (b) to make examples of us to discourage others from speaking out, and (c) to intimidate us into shutting the fuck up.

Totalitarians, fascists, and other power freaks are essentially just glorified schoolyard bullies. They may cloak themselves in the mantle of the law, but their modus operandi is brute force. Beneath all the bullshit, their message is simple: “either do what we say, or we will hurt you.”

OK, prepare yourself, because I’m going to give you some advice. I do not generally like to do that, but, in this case, I’m going to make an exception.

Never, ever, give in to a bully. The second you do, that bully owns you. What the bully wants, more than whatever he is demanding, more than anything else in the world, is your fear. The bully interprets your fear as respect, because the bully doesn’t understand respect. The bully craves your fear, and your obedience, because they reify the bully’s “authority.” They enable the bully to feel powerful and important. The bully needs to feel “powerful” and “important” because the bully feels weak and unimportant, and afraid. All fascists are essentially cowards. They are cowards, and nihilists, who hate themselves, and fear themselves, and hate and fear life, which is why they are so obsessed with controlling everything.

The point is, never give in to a bully. Never reify a bully’s “authority.” If you do, you will find yourself sucked into the bully’s sadistic, nihilistic “reality.” You will be playing by the bully’s rules. And that is all “reality” actually is, a set of rules we agree to play by, or, in this case, do not agree to play by.

So, getting back to my criminal case, and the Berlin State Prosecutor’s latest attempt to bully me into shutting up and demonstrating my “respect” for the “authority” and “power” of the Berlin State Prosecutor, fuck that. I do not respond well to threats. I do not take orders from totalitarians and fascists, or any other type of authoritarians or bullies. So that is why I have republished those Tweets, and why I will continue to republish those Tweets every time the German authorities threaten me with additional criminal charges for refusing to obey their “authority.”

Again, I am under no illusions. I expect the prosecutor to file new charges and issue further threats, which I will defy, which will lead to additional charges, and so on. I am not looking forward to that, but I don’t have any other choice, not if I want to be able to respect myself.

If you have any doubts about whether that will happen (i.e., an endless cycle of new bullshit criminal charges stemming from my repeated refusal to respond to the German authorities’ bullying), well, let me tell you about another dissident the German authorities are currently persecuting. I’ll do it quickly, and then I’ll let you go.

As many of my readers are aware, I am presently holed up in an undisclosed location in the Italian countryside. Michael Ballweg, the founder and lead organizer of the “Querdenken” movement, was also here for a while. Michael, who is an excellent cook, whipped up some delicious “extremist” dinners, after which we all sat around “denying Covid,” “conspiracy theorizing,” brainwashing each other with “Russian propaganda,” and “delegitimizing the state,” and so on. Late at night, when the other “extremists” were sleeping, Michael and I discussed our criminal cases.

Michael’s case is a bit more serious than mine. Michael just spent nine months in jail. The German authorities have seized his assets, and frozen all his funds, so he is homeless, and bankrupt, and they are prosecuting him for attempted fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion, or, in other words, for launching a protest movement. If you’re not familiar with Michael and Querdenken, you can read the official propaganda disseminated by the usual “mainstream” media or the Intelligence officers who edit Wikipedia, or … here’s a Spiked article to start you off. Then, go ahead, do your own research.

The most absurd aspect of Michael’s case is the German authorities’ “theory of his crimes.” According to this theory, Michael’s devious scheme was to commit serious fraud by … well, basically, launching a nationwide protest movement that was certain to get a ton of media attention and incur the wrath of the German authorities. As any criminal mastermind will confirm, the best way to commit major fraud is to absolutely infuriate the government by organizing a series of massive protests, and generate tons of media attention, because you definitely want as much publicity as possible while you are defrauding your unsuspecting supporters of their voluntary donations to your cause.

Seriously, this is their “theory of the crime,” which would make Michael Ballweg the most idiotic and incompetent fraudster in the history of fraud.

I could go on about his case, and mine, or those of the numerous other dissidents that are currently being made examples of, and about the broader GloboCap crackdown on dissent, which is happening, not just in New Normal Germany, but all throughout the New Normal Reich, but I need to end here and go water some plants. I am serving as “caretaker” of this thoughtcriminal sanctuary, and I take my responsibilities seriously.

I’ll keep you (and the Berlin State Prosecutor) posted on my further “hate crimes.” In the meantime, best wishes from somewhere in Italy!

 

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The Criminalization of Dissent (Revisited)

by CJ Hopkins, The Consent Factory
July 3, 2023

 

Greetings from Thoughtcriminal 231Js1736/23!

That’s my official Thoughtcrime Case Number, which my attorney needs to reference in all our official correspondence with the New Normal Thoughtpolice. I think I’m going to silk-screen it on a T-shirt and wear it on my first day in Moabit Criminal Court, “the largest criminal court in Europe with 340 judges and 360 prosecutors.”

That’s right, the Berlin State Prosecutor’s office is pursuing its criminal investigation of me for allegedly “disseminating propaganda, the content of which is intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization,” which according to Germany’s Grundgesetz could send me to prison for up to three years.

My attorney wrote to them and politely explained how ridiculous their investigation is and why they should summarily drop the charges, but New Normal Germany has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to Thoughtcrime, especially Thoughtcrime involving any kind of Covid-denying propaganda.

The “propaganda” in question is these two Tweets.

Which, OK, I just disseminated them again, so there’s another three years in prison. Or, I don’t know, maybe it’s six years in prison, i.e., three years for each separate count of Thoughtcrime.

I wrote those Tweets in German, so let me translate.

The one on the left reads, “The masks are ideological-conformity symbols. That is all they are. That is all they have ever been. Stop acting like they have ever been anything else, or get used to wearing them.” The hashtag translates as “Masks are not a benign measure.”

The one on the right is a quote by Karl Lauterbach, the Minister of Health of Germany, tweeted by Die Welt, a national newspaper. It reads “The masks always send out a signal.” And, yes, Karl, that’s exactly the point I was making.

The image is from the cover art of my book The Rise of the New Normal Reich: Consent Factory Essays, Vol. III (2020-2021), which was banned in Germany by Amazon, Inc. two days after I tweeted the above Tweets. (It appears to also be banned for sale in German bookstores, but I don’t have confirmation of that.)

My attorney just received the screenshots of these Tweets from the Berlin State Prosecutor a few days ago. Up to then, we didn’t know what they were, and we couldn’t find them, because they have been censored by Twitter, presumably on the orders of the German Thoughtpolice. We knew they featured the cover art of my book, because the Prosecutor’s office described it, but we didn’t know about the “Covid denial.”

So, essentially, I’m facing criminal charges, and being threatened with who knows how many years in prison, or thousands of Eurodollars in fines, for (a) stating what has now been widely acknowledged, and what was generally understood by every serious epidemiologist until the Spring of 2020, namely, that mask-mandates do not work, and thus are nothing but symbolic measures designed to generate and enforce mass obedience, and (b) insulting the Minister of Health of Germany, who happens to be a fanatical serial liar who is directly responsible for the serious injury and death of … well, we’ll never know how many people.

Neither of which are actual crimes. Not even in the Federal Republic of Germany.

The pretext for the charges I am facing is the swastika behind the mask, which, as I noted in a recent essay, is a play on the international bestseller, The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich, by William Shirer, which you can buy in any bookshop in Berlin.

Incidentally, my book has also been a bestseller, at least on Amazon (in countries where it’s not banned) and Barnes & Noble, but I’ve still got a little ways to go before I get to Shirer territory.

So, there you are … those are my Thoughtcrimes.

I’ve been writing about the “New Normal” as a new form of totalitarianism for several years now. I wrote about it in one of my essays, The Criminalization of Dissent, in May of 2021. Some of my colleagues rolled their eyes. They thought I was being hyperbolic again. I wasn’t. This is what I meant. It is literally the criminalization of dissent.

I wasn’t the only one covering the story of the criminalization of dissent in Germany. The New York Times reported on it in April of 2021 …

“The country’s domestic intelligence agency says it will create a new department to deal with extremism among conspiracy theorists.” (German Intelligence Puts Coronavirus Deniers Under Surveillance)

As did Aljazeera …

“For intelligence officers to be legally allowed to start observing parts of the anti-lockdown movement, Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) had to create an entirely new category of groups because the ‘Querdenkers’ do not fit neatly into the existing classifications of right-wing or left-wing. The new category is for groups suspected of being ‘anti-democratic and/or delegitimizing the state in a way that endangers security.’ The designation allows intelligence officers to gather data about individuals and their activities, and could in a further step include shadowing people and tapping their communications.” (German Spy Agency to Monitor Some Anti-Lockdown Protesters)

I was not a member of the “Querdenker” movement, or any other movement for that matter, but I doubt that makes any difference to the BfV or the Berlin State Prosecutor. Anyone even vaguely prominent who spoke out against the “Corona measures” is fair game for threats and prosecution. The beneficent-sounding Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, or BfV, is basically Germany’s FBI. It’s now two years after the above stories were published, and they are still on the hunt for “Covid deniers,” “conspiracy theorists,” and other such persons suspected of “delegitimizing the state” … whatever that Orwellian language means.

Of course, it doesn’t matter what it means. It means whatever they say it means. That’s what it means. It means it doesn’t mean anything, and they do not have to pretend it means anything. It means, “Shut the fuck up. Get in line. Do what we tell you. Say what we tell you. Think what we tell you. Or we will fucking get you. We will make up some charges and prosecute you. We will censor you into Internet oblivion. We will shut off your fucking bank account. We’ll send the IRS to your house. We’ll ruin your career. We’ll hurt your family. We will extradite you to the USA and lock you up in Supermax prison for 175 fucking years.”

How am I doing? Do I sound hyperbolic?

And, no, of course I’m not just talking about Germany. The criminalization of dissent is being rolled out everywhere. Ireland is just the latest of dozens of countries all throughout the West that are criminalizing so-called “hate speech.” The specifics are different but the message is the same, “Watch what you say, or we will prosecute you, or otherwise seriously fuck you up.”

Oh, and also, I should probably mention, my lawyer advised me not to republish those Tweets. He completely understands where I am coming from, but it is his job to look out for me and to try his best to … you know, keep me out of German prison, which I’m not making easy for him.

Now, I want to be very clear about this. I have no desire to go to German prison. I am about to turn 62 years old. I’m not at all interested in tossing anyone’s salad or having my salad tossed by anyone, especially not a pumped-up, tattooed member of some local Turkish drug gang, or an actual German neo-Nazi, but I’m not going to be intimidated into shutting up or toning my act down to placate the New Normal Thoughtpolice.

The thing is, I don’t respond well to bullies. I feel a particular antipathy toward them. I’m not very fond of liars either. And totalitarians … there’s another group of people I don’t like. I am not ashamed to admit my bias against such people. I wish them ill. I am sorry about whatever vicissitudes of fortune or experience turned them into lying, bullying, totalitarian creeps, but they can suck foul wind out of my ass if they think I am going to bow down to them. They can do what they want to me. They have that power. They can silence me for a while if they want. But they cannot make me silence myself.

And they cannot make me pretend to respect them.

The Germans are real big on respecting authority. So am I. But authority is earned. It does not stem from a title or a uniform. It stems from knowledge, experience, integrity, and honorable behavior, not from brute force. Fascists, totalitarians, and the like do not deserve our respect. They deserve our scorn. They deserve our derision. I have plenty of it for them.

Also, there are the kids to think about. I don’t have any, but other people do. What kind of an example are we setting for the kids if we start censoring (or “sensitivity-editing”) ourselves every time some fascist bully threatens to put us in jail if we don’t? A lot of the young people are already pretty pussified as it is these days. I’m certainly not a tough guy or anything, but sometimes, in life, you have to fight, and it doesn’t really matter if you get your ass kicked.

Oh, and, if you’re contemplating writing to me and telling me to “get the hell out of Germany” or inquiring as to why I haven’t “gotten the hell out of Germany,” please do not do that. I am extremely tired of hearing it. Instead, just wire a high six-figure sum into the Swiss account I will be setting up shortly, and, I promise you, I’ll get the hell out of Germany, and send you a postcard from an undisclosed location somewhere in the Ionian Sea.

In the meantime, I’ll definitely keep you posted on Case 231Js1736/23, and maybe I’ll go ahead and do up that T-shirt. Wait, what am I thinking? This is New Normal Berlin! I could find a VC, round up some 20-year-old, transgender, Ayahuasca-guzzling tech bros (or “tech persons with penises” or whatever the proper “non-harmful” nomenclature is at the moment), and start up some type of totally Bitcoined bespoke Thoughtcriminal T-shirt business!

The way things are going, I’ll probably make a killing … or at least I’ll be able to cover my legal costs, which, after that last little gratuitous outburst, Lord knows what kind of new charges I’ll be facing!

 

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Cover image based on creative commons work of CDD20 & OpenClipart-Vectors