C.J. Hopkins and the Rise of the New Normal
"You do not do that by being polite, conciliatory, or avoiding conflict. You do that by generating as much internal conflict within the cult as you can." — C.J. Hopkins
C.J. Hopkins book The Rise of the New Normal Reich: Consent Factory Essays, Vol. III (2020-2021) was recommended to me via Mark Crispin Miller's substack. Amazon has banned the book in some markets, most notably Germany where C.J. has lived for the last 20 years.
I try to stay as current as possible with all this COVID bullshit so I almost didn't consider reading this book because the essays end on January 22, 2022, almost a year-and-half ago. I mainly bought it to keep as a record of what happened, but this book is much more than a chronicle of the evil we've all witnessed the last three years.
The COVID CULT
C.J. compares the Covidians to people inside a cult. The big difference here is that cults are usually small islands within the sea of common culture, whereas now the cult is the ocean and we, the unvaccinated (and the vaccinated who now understand the lies), those of us who have not been sucked in to the propaganda, are a minority living on our small islands of sanity. C.J. writes:
The sad fact is, just as any individual, no matter how intelligent and psychologically healthy, can fall victim to a cult under the right set of conditions, any society can fall victim to totalitarianism.
Earlier C.J. wrote:
One of the hallmarks of totalitarianism is mass conformity to a psychotic official narrative.
The book is worth it just to get his full take on the people who we are now living among.
How Do We Change the Cult Members?
This is the other aspect of the book I liked. At this point those of us who have not been taken in by all the bullshit also understand or have experienced the difficulty talking to people who are still cult members. Reason is not going to win the day. Here's what C.J. writes:
It is not a matter of persuading or convincing people to accept the new “reality.” It’s more like how you drive a herd of cattle. You scare them enough to get them moving, then you steer them wherever you want them to go . The cattle do not know or understand where they are going. They are simply reacting to a physical stimulus. Facts and reason have nothing to do with it.
How do you reach someone like that? He says we need to understand this when speaking with Covidians:
You think you are having a debate over facts, but you are not. You are threatening their new “reality.”
"Reality" is whatever the cult leaders say it is. It has nothing to do with actual reality. Here's C.J.'s strategy:
So we need to adopt a different strategy. We need to make the monster show itself, not to those of us who can already see it, but to the New Normal masses, the Covidian Cultists.
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This is how you take down a cult from within. You do not try to thwart its progress; you push it toward its logical conclusion.
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You do not do that by being polite, conciliatory, or avoiding conflict. You do that by generating as much internal conflict within the cult as you can.
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Make the New Normals face the monster, the monster they are feeding…the monster they have become.
This is an excellent book. I highly, highly recommend it.
Buy the book: I'm Nobody. Who Are You? Can We Save the World?
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This article also appears on my website, The Asylum. The website also has several things that are not possible to do on Substack: The World Economic Forum Members Reference (thanks to Dr. Malone), Red State/Blue State reference showing Senate and House percentages by party affiliation, quotes, a large resources section, a robust search feature and some other things unique to the site: quizzes, word games and leaked communications. These latter three are satirical and funny, at least in my mind, but you'll have to be the ultimate judge on that.